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Food Industry IPO Creates Latest China Billionaire Couple

This article is more than 4 years old.

China, home to the world’s second-largest number of billionaires after the United States, added a new billionaire couple from the food industry this week.

Another 10% gain, to 25.80 yuan, in the share price on Friday of Sichuan Teway Food Group left the 79% stake held by its chairman Deng Wen and his wife, vice chairman Tang Lu, worth $1.3 billion. Teway is a supplier of condiments for Chinese-style hotpot and other dishes.

Teway raised 560 million yuan, or $83.6 million, in a recent IPO priced at 13.46 per share to support manufacturing and marketing expansion. The company’s shares started trading at the Shanghai Stock Exchange on Tuesday.

Teway’s predecessor company was a collective food factory owned by a district government in the central Chinese city of Chengdu. In 1999, the then 31-year-old Deng paid 140,000 yuan for three company brands. Teway’s revenue and net profit rose by 32.6% and 44.7% last year to 1.4 billion yuan and 270 million yuan. Teway’s products are sold in 58,600 supermarkets and exported to the U.S., Canada and other markets.

China consumes more than 300 billion yuan—or $44.8 billion—of condiments annually, according to industry figures. Benefitting from huge local demand, favoring companies such as Foshan Haitian Flavouring have also enjoyed brisk growth in the country. Haitian’s chairman Pang Kang and four others associated with the company were members of 2018 Forbes China Rich List. (See related story here.)

Teway is headquartered in Chengdu, which ranked No. 6 on the Forbes China Best Cities for Business list in 2018.

--Maggie Chen

-- Click here for an earlier Chinese-language version of this story

--Follow me @rflannerychina