MUYUAN Foods Co., China’s No. 2 pig farmer, said Wednesday that full-year profit for 2019 surged more than 1,000 percent to 6.1 billion yuan (US$869.84 million) thanks to record hog prices last year caused by a plunge in supplies.

The Shenzhen-listed company, which sold more than 10 million pigs last year, benefited from a 140 percent increase in hog prices during the year, after an epidemic of deadly African swine fever killed millions of pigs and left many breeding farms empty.

China said the hog herd had shrunk by 41 percent by the third quarter of 2019.

The huge profit far surpassed all previous annual earnings for the company. Most of it, 4.88 billion yuan, came in the final quarter of the year, when hog margins were as high as 3,500 yuan per hog in some parts of China.

Though hog prices have dropped slightly, margins remain well over 2,000 yuan across the country.

The high prices boosted Muyuan’s sales income by 51 percent to 20.2 billion yuan and also pushed its share price up by more than 200 percent.

The company also said it has started construction of three slaughterhouses in central Henan Province, with annual capacity of 6 million hogs to respond to the government’s drive for more integrated pork producers. (SD-Agencies)