The Chinese Billionaire Whose Company Owns Troubled Pork Processor Smithfield Foods

Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork processor and hog producer, has been making headlines for shutting down plants in three states after a rash of coronavirus cases hit its Sioux Falls, South Dakota operation. Less well known: its Chinese billionaire owner Wan Long, who took a small state-owned meat processing plant and expanded it into a multinational company with more than $24 billion in annual sales. Now, the owner of Nathan’s Famous hot dogs and Cook’s ham is scrambling to contain one of the largest coronavirus hot spots in the U.S.

As of Thursday, 598 Smithfield employees in South Dakota’s Minnehaha County have tested positive for COVID-19, as have 135 people who were not employed by Smithfield but were in close contact with its employees. The total cluster of 733 cases makes up more than half of the state’s total coronavirus cases, which stands at 1,311, according to the South Dakota Department of Health. 

Founded in Smithfield, Virginia in 1936, Smithfield Foods boasts more than 40,000 U.S. employees in nearly 50 facilities across the country. In 2013, WH Group (formerly known as Shuanghui International Holdings) purchased Smithfield for $4.7 billion; including debt, the deal valued the firm at $7.1 billion, then the largest acquisition of a U.S. company by a Chinese business. WH Group went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange a year later, and furthered its American presence by buying Clougherty Packing, California’s largest pork processor, in 2017. 

Wan Long, who at age 80 is chairman and CEO of WH Group, is the firm’s largest individual shareholder with a roughly 16% stake; Forbes estimates his net worth at $1.9 billion. Wan joined Henan Luohe Meat Products Processing United Factory — then a state-owned entity — in 1968, and eventually grew the business into WH Group. His son, Wan Hongjian, is now the deputy chairman and vice president of the group.  

The first signs of trouble emerged at Smithfield Food on April 9, when it announced that it would suspend operations at its Sioux Falls facility for three days. The plant, which employs 3,700 people, produces nearly 130 million servings of food per week and accounts for as much as 5% of total U.S. pork production. On April 12, the company shuttered the facility indefinitely; as reports of coronavirus cases at the plant continued to rise, the company also announced the closure of two facilities in Wisconsin and Missouri on April 15. 

South Dakota is one of the few states that has not instituted a shelter-in-place order, a decision that Governor Kristi Noem defended. “Let’s be perfectly clear: a shelter-in-place order would NOT have prevented Smithfield from happening. They are a critical infrastructure business. They are part of the nation’s food supply chain and contribute to South Dakota’s role feeding the country and the world,” Noem tweeted on April 15. The Republican governor added that she has been in communication with Vice President Mike Pence and Smithfield’s CEO, and a team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has arrived to help assess the situation.

A spokesperson for WH Group has not yet responded to a request for comment.