Muyuan Foods Co., Ltd.

Muyuan is the world's largest hog producer by head count and the only company on these two tables that runs no contract farms at all. FY2025 revenue of RMB 144.145 billion, about US$20.2 billion, was earned entirely in China and stays below the US$32.2 billion level at which the 2025 Fortune Global 500 admitted members, so the business is excluded from that list and takes 89/100. The mark places it level with CPF and behind only JBS and Tyson Foods, the two members, on both the brand and the manufacturer tables.

Industry Position

Muyuan sold 77.981 million hogs in 2025 with 127,600 employees and more than 3.3 million breeding sows, producing RMB 15.812 billion of net profit on RMB 144.145 billion of revenue. The company reported a full production cost of about RMB 12 per kilogram by the end of the year, near the bottom of the industry range. Revenue depends on a price no seller in this market sets, so the working variable is cost, and the company has spent more than a decade compressing it with building design, air filtration, low-protein rations and automation.

China is 100 percent of the revenue base, and that is a choice rather than a stage of development. Wens Foodstuff, the closest domestic comparison, reaches a similar volume of pork through about 45,000 partner households that own the barns. Muyuan takes the opposite route: every rearing building, feed mill and slaughter plant sits on its own balance sheet. The difference decides where risk rests, with biological exposure dispersed across thousands of counterparties at Wens and concentrated inside owned complexes at Muyuan, while the capital burden runs the other way.

Competitive Advantages

Multi-storey rearing complexes are the operational signature. Pigs are kept in stacked buildings with filtered air, controlled temperature and automated feeding, which raises the animals a hectare can carry and cuts the labour needed per thousand head. Biosecurity improves as a by-product: fewer sites, fewer movements between them and a herd that behaves like a closed population. Low-protein feed formulations reduce soybean meal dependence, which matters most in years when imported meal is expensive.

Owning the whole chain is the second advantage, and 2025 demonstrated its value. Slaughter volume rose 128.9 percent to 28.663 million head, pork sales reached 3.23 million tonnes and capacity utilisation hit 98.8 percent, which lifted the meat business to its first full year of profit. Selling carcasses, cuts and frozen pork rather than live animals places the company on both sides of the hog price: when live prices fall, processing spread widens, and the animal that would have been sold at a loss still earns something at the plant.

Strategic Expansion

Capital is being directed downstream. Slaughter and meat revenue reached RMB 45.228 billion in 2025, and further processing of chilled and frozen pork is the next step, since a portioned, packaged cut earns more than a carcass and is less exposed to the daily hog quotation. A completed slaughter network also gives the company a destination for animals when live demand is weak, which is the practical form of cycle smoothing rather than a marketing claim.

International growth is starting from technology rather than from land. In 2025 the company agreed technology cooperation with Vietnam's BAF and with Thailand's CP Group, licensing building-style housing, air filtration and feed formulation to partners that already hold local land, permits and distribution. A Hong Kong listing in progress would supply offshore currency for whatever follows without moving owned farms outside China's disease-control and regulatory perimeter.

Risks & Outlook

Single-country exposure is the principal risk. Revenue, animals and regulation all sit in one market, so an outbreak of African swine fever, a jump in feed cost or a change in farming policy would reach the whole company rather than one region of it. Chinese hog prices slid through early 2026 and margins across the industry went with them, which is the ordinary condition of this business: the price received cannot be controlled, only the cost recorded.

The balance sheet carries the second risk. Hundreds of multi-storey complexes, feed mills and slaughter plants must be paid for before they produce anything, and buildings cannot be scaled back the way a contract herd can when prices fall. Muyuan's wager is not on calling the cycle but on being the lowest-cost producer in the world's largest pork market when the cycle turns. VerityRank Score of 89/100.