Oil and gas company Sinopec says 45,000 companies have registered to buy and sell on its B2B e-commerce site.

Chinese oil and gas company Sinopec does things on a big scale, and that includes B2B e-commerce.

The company, ranked third in the 2017 Fortune Global 500 ranking of companies by sales, opened up its internal procurement website to other buyers and sellers in 2016, and in 2017 booked 149.5 billion yuan ($23.2 billion)  in sales on the site, Epec.com. The formal name of the state-owned conglomerate is China Petroleum and Chemical Corp., but it is widely known as Sinopec.

Operating units within Sinopec still account for a big majority of sales on Epec.com, but 12,800 of the 210,000 orders placed on the site in 2017 came from outside companies. Those outside buyers accounted for 33 billion yuan ($5.2 billion) of the 149.5 billion yuan worth of purchases on Epec.com in 2017.

Sinopec says 45,000 companies have registered with Epec.com and that the site offers 42.5 million products. Products listed include industrial supplies and equipment and office supplies.

Epec.com began accepting buyers and sellers from outside of China in 2017, and says 6,500 international buyers have registred, along with 535 suppliers offering 3,500 products.

The global business accounted for 824 deals valued at 2.7 billion yuan ($430 million), according to Epec.com. Companies from the United States, Germany, Russia, India and Brazil are among those registered on the site, Sinopec says.

Epec.com works with six Chinese banks to help suppliers obtain loans by providing the banks with transaction records that verify the suppliers’ revenue. Epec.com says it helped suppliers borrow 2.2 billion yuan ($350 million) in 2017, up 47% from a year earlier.

The company also reported that buyers paid online for 38.2 billion yuan ($6.0 billion) worth of purchases in 2017, with other payments made by bank transfers and other means.

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Epec.com also began offering in 2017 a ratings system for 20,000 suppliers offering products on the website.

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