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Over 10 billion in earnings in half a year.
Author Lu Zhigao
Word count 3366
Manual input volume丨89% AI content丨11%
The largest dairy company in Hebei is heading towards the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
From giving up the "iron rice bowl" at the Hebei Provincial Department of Agriculture to start a business, to recently leading Junlebao to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange again, Wei Lihua has spent over 30 years building a well-known Chinese dairy company with brands such as Yuexianhuo, Jianchun, and Youcui.
Along the way, Junlebao has attracted numerous investors, and its valuation has reached 16 billion yuan.
Sequoia Capital China, Hillhouse, Junqian Capital, Jiantou Chuangfa, Zhongqin Xinglong, Chunhua Capital, Ping An Capital, Bojia Capital, Wumart Tongda, Housheng Investment, Guotou Chuangyi, Hongzhang Capital, Hebei Broadcasting, Shanghai Ruisheng Investment, Qingdao Beiqi, Jinding Investment, Jingshi Investment, and many others; this list is very long.
Giving up the "iron rice bowl" to start a business, creating Hebei's largest dairy company
The story of Junlebao starts with Wei Lihua.
Back to 1986, after graduating from Hebei Agricultural University, he entered the Hebei Provincial Department of Agriculture, securing the enviable "iron rice bowl". But less than three years later, Wei Lihua left the system and began selling agricultural machinery testing instruments, and the business was doing well.
After discovering that lactic acid bacteria drinks were very popular among children, Wei Lihua changed the direction of his entrepreneurship. In 1995, he took out 90,000 yuan in savings and, along with friends, established Junlebao in three bungalows in Shijiazhuang, starting with a yogurt machine and two human-powered tricycles, officially entering the dairy processing track.
With delicious products and thoughtful service, Junlebao achieved sales of 10 million yuan within two years. However, after the products sold well, the ceiling of the regional brand quickly became apparent — being confined to Hebei made it difficult to break into the national market.
So, in 1999, they introduced the leading dairy company Sanlu, also located in Shijiazhuang, which took a 34% stake in the company as a brand investment, becoming the largest shareholder. At the same time, Junlebao Dairy Company and Shijiazhuang Hongqi Dairy Factory held 33% each.
Leveraging Sanlu's brand influence and channel network, Junlebao quickly expanded while maintaining independent operations. In 2007, they launched red date yogurt. With the growth of this product, the company entered the top three in the national yogurt market the following year. Just as they were experiencing good development momentum, they faced a hurdle that nearly derailed them.
After the Sanlu incident broke out, although at the time Junlebao only made yogurt and its own products did not have issues, the company was still affected by the trust crisis due to being part of the Sanlu system. The advantages gained through Sanlu became a problem that Junlebao had to shed, leading Wei Lihua to finally decide to buy back the company.
After a series of equity adjustments, Wei Lihua's shareholding rose to 83.53%, regaining control of the company. However, regaining control did not resolve Junlebao's expansion issues. At that time, Junlebao was still a regional dairy company primarily focused on yogurt, and to continue expanding, it needed a larger industrial platform.
To gain greater development resources, in 2010 Junlebao brought in Mengniu as the controlling shareholder, which acquired 51% of the shares for 469 million yuan. The nine years in the Mengniu system were a key period for Junlebao's transition from a regional dairy company to a national brand. They not only achieved over 10 billion yuan in revenue but also found new business areas beyond yogurt — milk powder.
During an exhibtion abroad, Wei Lihua saw his peers scrambling to buy imported infant milk powder, even receiving strange looks from salespeople. After working in the dairy industry for over a decade, he was too embarrassed to even pull out his business card and ultimately made the decision to enter this challenging market.
To produce milk powder, he first needed to resolve production capacity. Wei Lihua acquired a milk powder processing plant and invested over 100 million yuan for renovations. Some suggested that he register the company overseas and create a "foreign brand." But he ultimately did not do so, insisting on producing in Shijiazhuang and retaining the Junlebao name.
This meant that Junlebao did not shy away from the trust issues faced by domestic milk powder at the time, but rather confronted them directly.
In 2014, the first Junlebao infant formula milk powder was launched, and on Double Eleven, sales exceeded 20 million yuan, achieving the highest sales in the milk powder category across the network. This created a record for domestic milk powder sales exceeding imported milk powder for the first time on Double Eleven. The milk powder venture also became an important milestone for Junlebao's transformation from a regional yogurt enterprise to a comprehensive dairy company.
Afterwards, the company began continuously expanding its product boundaries. From launching Jianchun in 2017, to launching Yuexianhuo in 2019, and then introducing organic infant formula Youcui in 2020, its business gradually covered various categories such as yogurt, fresh milk, milk powder, and ambient dairy products.
In 31 years, Wei Lihua has nearly experienced all the crucial choices that a private dairy company might encounter: from resigning from the system to seeking industrial shareholders; from regaining control after the Sanlu incident to reintroducing Mengniu; from yogurt to milk powder, and then expanding from a single category to a comprehensive dairy company.
It is under his leadership that Junlebao has repeatedly searched for growth opportunities, ultimately growing into the largest dairy company in Hebei.
Achieving first place in low-temperature liquid milk, over 10 billion in earnings in half a year
If milk powder allowed Junlebao to move beyond yogurt, the rapid growth achieved by the company in recent years has been driven by low-temperature liquid milk.
Looking at the prospectus, from 2023 to 2025, their revenue increased from 17.546 billion yuan to 20.382 billion yuan, while the adjusted net profit rose from 603 million yuan to 1.262 billion yuan. By the first half of 2026, Junlebao achieved revenue of 10.609 billion yuan with an adjusted net profit of 745 million yuan.
As the scale grew, the company's revenue structure also began to change. From 6.287 billion yuan in 2023 to 8.648 billion yuan in 2025, the proportion of low-temperature liquid milk in Junlebao's overall revenue continued to climb. In the first half of 2026, this segment achieved revenue of 4.93 billion yuan, already accounting for 46.5% of the company's total revenue.
In other words, low-temperature liquid milk represented by Yuexianhuo and Jianchun has already supported almost half of Junlebao's business, and in 2025, it ranked first in the Chinese low-temperature liquid milk market with a market share of 15.6%.
However, succeeding in this business is not easy. Low-temperature products have higher requirements for shelf life, cold chain, and distribution radius. If the factory is too far from consumers, both distribution efficiency and product freshness will be affected. This also means that a dairy company, even if it can produce fresh milk, may not be able to sell it on a large scale nationwide.
The launching of Yuexianhuo in 2019 was Junlebao's successful attempt to solve this problem. They utilized ultra-pasteurization and low-temperature aseptic filling technology to extend product shelf life while maintaining the characteristics of low-temperature products, leading to continuous growth in the consumer market and entry into the supply chains of tea and coffee brands.
Therefore, we can observe that their Yuexianhuo series has seen revenue increase from 1.363 billion yuan in 2023 to 2.617 billion yuan in 2025, reaching 1.772 billion yuan in the first half of 2026. Data shows that this product became the number one brand in China for fresh milk in 2025 with an 11% market share.
In addition to relying on low-temperature liquid milk, milk powder remains an important segment for Junlebao. Since entering the infant formula milk powder market in 2014, they have continuously invested in breast milk research and formula development. From 2020 to 2025, Junlebao has been among the top three domestic brands in the infant formula milk powder market for six consecutive years, with a market share of 4.1% in 2025.
Supporting these products is the entire industry chain system that Junlebao built by investing over a decade. Wei Lihua has always believed that the foundation of the dairy industry lies in milk sources, and quality cannot be in the hands of others. By 2025, the company's self-sufficiency rate for milk sources reached 63%, ensuring product quality from the source and guarding against risks from raw material price fluctuations.
As of June 2026, the company has operated 33 modernized farms and 20 dairy product production factories, with a cattle stock reaching 198,000 heads. Meanwhile, they have about 5,200 distributors, covering over 460,000 terminals.
These efforts have not been in vain; the ultimate effect is: the farms resolve the milk source, factories determine the production radius, technology continuously upgrades the products, and the cold chain and distribution network deliver the products to the terminals. These parts together form the foundation for Junlebao to become a well-known dairy product company in China.
From an industry perspective, Junlebao still has ample growth space. According to Frost & Sullivan data, by 2025, the overall dairy product market in China will reach 653.8 billion yuan. Among them, low-temperature liquid milk is the fastest-growing sub-sector, with a market size of 94.6 billion yuan in 2025, expected to grow to 123 billion yuan by 2030.
This is precisely Junlebao's core competitive track, and it represents their largest growth opportunity for the future.
Backed by Sequoia and Hillhouse, valuation reaches16billion yuan
Junlebao's more than thirty years of development has always been accompanied by capital support.
The earliest Sanlu and Mengniu were representatives of industrial capital. Sanlu helped Junlebao break through regional bottlenecks, while Mengniu provided the resources and confidence for national expansion. When Mengniu exited in 2019, JL Capital and Jiantou Chuangfa, under the Hebei Provincial State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, decisively stepped in to stabilize the situation for the company's transition.
At that time, Junqian Capital and Jiantou Chuangfa spent a total of 4.011 billion yuan to acquire 51% of Junlebao from Mengniu. At the same time, Wei Lihua replaced Mengniu as the largest shareholder of the company.
After nearly ten years of equity cooperation with Mengniu ended, Junlebao became an independent dairy company held jointly by the founding team and external investors, also gaining the conditions to list independently in the capital market.
From 2020 onward, a number of investors gradually became shareholders of the company. Sequoia China, Hillhouse, Hebei Jiantou Fund, Zhongqin Xinglong, Chunhua Capital, Ping An Capital, Bojia Capital, Wumart Tongda, Housheng Investment, Guotou Chuangyi, Hongzhang Capital, Hebei Broadcasting, Shanghai Ruisheng Investment, Qingdao Beiqi, among others, all invested real money, casting their trust votes in them.
The phase of capital entry was also the densest period of Junlebao's expansion. They built farms and factories while simultaneously developing businesses such as milk powder and low-temperature liquid milk, and entered more regional markets through acquisitions of Yinqiao and Laisier, constantly expanding asset and business boundaries.
In this process, shareholders from different backgrounds brought different resources to the company. Industrial stakeholders brought supply chain and channel synergies, financial stakeholders provided governance and capital operation experience, and state-owned entities brought policy support and expanded financing channels, ultimately paving the way for Junlebao's nationwide expansion and IPO preparations.
Before listing in Hong Kong, the company's shareholder structure underwent a final round of adjustments. In December 2025, Sequoia China, Chunhua Capital, Hillhouse, and other old shareholders transferred some shares to 25 investors including Jinding Investment, Jingshi Investment, and Housheng Investment for a transaction price of about 1.073 billion yuan.
According to the Hurun Research Institute's "2026 Global Unicorn List," Junlebao's valuation reached 16 billion yuan, making it a star unicorn in Hebei.
Before the IPO, Sequoia China held 8.59%, remaining the largest external institutional shareholder. Meanwhile, Chunhua Capital held a total of 7.68%. Based on a rough valuation of 16 billion yuan, the value of these two investment institutions' shares exceeded 1.3 billion yuan and 1.2 billion yuan respectively.
From preparing for an IPO years ago, to formally starting A-share listing guidance in December 2023, to submitting a second IPO prospectus in Hong Kong in August 2026, this leading enterprise that has developed for over 30 years is still striving toward an IPO.
Author Lu Zhigao — Editor Wang Qingwu
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