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Washington Gala apples. Image from Sunshine Fruit  

Online retailers in China enjoyed a record-breaking performance on last Wednesday’s Singles Day, with pioneer of the shopping festival Alibaba reporting US$14.3bn in sales across its various websites on Double 11. The figure broke the Guinness World Record for “the highest online sales revenue generated by a single company in 24 hours.”

According to Guinness World Records, the majority of Alibaba's sales revenue on Singles Day came from its two flagship platforms, Taobao and Tmall. The latter, which is Alibaba’s online mall for brands, also broke eight other records.

“The most apples sold on a single online platform in 24 hours” is one of eight records that recognise the highest sales volumes of a single product, with 641,899kg (641 tonnes) of apples sold on Tmall on Singles Day.

Tmall’s spokesperson said that the record-breaking sales included apples from all over the world, such as Gala apples from France, Red Delicious and Granny Smith from the US, and Hakesu Candy from China’s Xinjiang region.

One of the bestsellers was Gala apples from Washington. Tmall sold more than 1m Washington Gala apples on Singles Day this year, and the majority of those sales came from Sunshine Fruit, fresh fruit trader Kingo’s e-commerce brand. Working in collaboration with Washington Apple Commission, Sunshine Fruit took nearly 70,000 orders for the variety on Singles Day, selling more than 800,000 Gala apples.