Muyuan Foods, the Chinese hog-farming giant long nicknamed the “Pig King,” completed a secondary listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on 6 February 2026, joining its Shenzhen A‑share listing to form an A+H capital platform. Shares opened at HK$39 and the company’s market value at debut was about HK$226 billion, signaling a fresh tranche of international capital for a business that has grown into a dominant force in China’s protein supply.
The company’s rise is as much a story of scale and scientific farming as it is of capital markets. Founded by Qin Yinglin, who left a government job in the early 1990s to start pig farming with 22 animals, Muyuan has expanded into feed, breeding, slaughter and processed meat under a “fully self‑reared, full‑chain, intelligent” model. It reported roughly 71.6 million pigs sold in 2024—around 10% of China’s national total—and increased that output to about 77.98 million the following year, leaving competitors such as Wens Foodstuff farther behind.
The Hong Kong listing is practical as well as symbolic. An A+H presence gives Muyuan access to international investors, deeper liquidity and a global brand platform while preserving its mainland investor base. For Muyuan, which already accounts for a double‑digit share of China’s pork production, extra capital is being pitched as insurance against the sector’s cyclicality and as fuel for overseas expansion and breeding‑base investment.
Qin and his wife Qian Ying are beneficiaries of the company’s stock performance and operational scale. Hurun placed the couple at roughly RMB187 billion of wealth in 2025, a figure that restored them to the top of Henan’s rich list after a mid‑year challenge from new‑economy entrepreneurs. That personal wealth narrative has been interwoven with company milestones and helped crystallise Muyuan’s profile as a benchmark of modern agribusiness.
Muyuan’s dominance is not accidental but the product of long‑term choices: early adoption of lean genetics, sizeable capital investment, and concentrated production that has ridden the industry’s consolidation. China’s sector has been moving toward larger, more industrialised farms—over 70% of national output now comes from holdings that sell more than 500 pigs a year—creating a structural advantage for firms that can scale, standardise disease control and lower unit costs.
The company’s listing also underscores a wider provincial story. Over the last two years a cluster of Henan‑based consumer and food companies has pursued Hong Kong listings or A+H strategies, from beverage and fast‑food chains to frozen and processed‑food groups. That flow reflects both Henan’s deep food‑industry ecosystem and provincial policies promoting an integrated “farm‑to‑table” food cluster that can leverage logistics, labour and scale economies.
Yet the business model that rewards scale also concentrates risks. Large‑scale hog producers remain exposed to animal‑disease shocks, swings in feed and pork prices, and tightening environmental or food‑safety regulation. Overseas expansion will bring biosecurity and operating challenges in unfamiliar regulatory regimes, and Hong Kong investors will be attentive to governance, pricing cycles and the company’s plans for using new capital.
For global markets, Muyuan’s listing is a reminder that China’s food‑production footprint is consolidating quickly, with implications for pork prices, feed demand and supply chains. For Hong Kong, it is another mainland heavyweight choosing the city as an international financing venue, reinforcing the exchange’s role as a conduit for China’s large industrial and consumer groups to access foreign capital.
Muyuan’s journey from a 22‑head start to the world’s largest pig integrator captures broader shifts in China’s economy: the industrialisation of agriculture, the rise of mega‑producers, and the willingness of traditional sectors to seek global capital and new markets. The IPO is therefore a milestone not merely for one company or one province, but for the maturation of food supply chains that underpin domestic consumption and increasingly reach overseas tables.