Billionaire Pig Farmer’s Fortune is Fastest Growing in World

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – In China, the pork crisis is worrying consumers and has pushed inflation to its highest level in years last month, but is behind a number of achievements. Qin Yinglin is the greatest of them.

The net worth of the Chairman of the Board of Muyuan Foodstuff has more than quadrupled this year to US$8.6 billion (R$34.4 billion) and his fortune is the fastest growing in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a ranking of the 500 wealthiest people in the world.

According to data from China‘s Ministry of Commerce, wholesale pork prices more than doubled in 2019 and are behind the highest annual consumer inflation rate in seven years.

The African swine fever epidemic has led to the deaths of millions of pigs.

Muyuan’s profits, on the other hand, increased by 260 percent in the third quarter in relation to the same period in 2018, driven by the rise in the price of pork.

The company and other large producers have probably increased their market share, while smaller-scale companies have not withstood the losses, according to Fitch Ratings.

“Some companies are in great trouble because they can’t reproduce their pig herd,” said Li Chen, a Fitch analyst. “But some are showing great profitability.”

Pork Kings

Qin is not the only one to profit from the crisis. The WH Group, the world’s largest producer of pork listed in Hong Kong, and the New Hope Group, which raises pigs and produces animal feed, also stand out.

New Hope chairman Liu Yonghao now has a net worth of US$11 billion, almost twice as much as he had at the end of 2018.

Most of Qin’s fortune stems from a 60 percent stake in Muyuan. He holds the shares directly and with his wife through Muyuan Industrial Group, according to the third-quarter earnings report.

Born in the Henan province in 1965, Qin graduated in animal husbandry from Henan Agricultural University, according to his company’s website.

After graduating, he worked for a state-owned enterprise but left three years later to start a pig farming business in his hometown of Nanyang.

He started out with only 22 pigs and today his company slaughters approximately 5 million animals a year.

The company disinfects trucks, sterilizes feed with heat and filters the air on farms to prevent the spread of African swine fever, Qin told the South China Morning Post in an interview published in March.

There is no approved vaccine against the disease, which can be fatal to pigs but does not affect human health.

“Swine fever has both benefits and disadvantages,” Qin said in an interview. “We need to tackle this violent storm and make it an excellent opportunity for our development”.

Source: InfoMoney, Bloomberg Brasil