---
title: "China's Second-Largest Pet Food OEM Trapped Between Branding and Manufacturing"
description: "Shanghai Fubei Pet Products Co., Ltd. recently filed for a Hong Kong IPO, with Guojin Securities (Hong Kong) as sole sponsor. As China's second-largest third-party pet food manufacturer by 2025 revenue, Fubei also owns brands like Bile, but its brand business is shrinking while ODM revenue grows, highlighting a strategic tension."
author: "田雨"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2026-06-06"
language: "en"
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# China's Second-Largest Pet Food OEM Trapped Between Branding and Manufacturing

> Shanghai Fubei Pet Products Co., Ltd. recently filed for a Hong Kong IPO, with Guojin Securities (Hong Kong) as sole sponsor. As China's second-largest third-party pet food manufacturer by 2025 revenue, Fubei also owns brands like Bile, but its brand business is shrinking while ODM revenue grows, highlighting a strategic tension.

Recently, Shanghai Fubei Pet Products Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Fubei) submitted an IPO application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with Guojin Securities (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. as the sole sponsor.
Similar to peers like Gambol Pet Group and Zhongchong Pet Products that have already listed on the capital market, Fubei operates both as an OEM and with its own consumer brands.
Founded in 2005, Fubei is one of China's major pet food manufacturers, covering categories such as pet staple food, freeze-dried food, baked food, and fresh food.
According to Frost & Sullivan data, by 2025 revenue, Fubei is China's second-largest third-party pet food manufacturer (market share 5.3%) and also ranks second in China's third-party pet staple food manufacturing market (market share 8.5%).
At the same time, Fubei owns self-owned brands including Bile, Aibei, and Pinzhuo. Among them, Bile has become China's tenth-largest local pet food brand and the fifth-largest local dog staple food brand. For most consumers, Bile may be more well-known than Fubei.
Returning to the capital market after three years, but has the industry changed?
In fact, this is not the first time Fubei has stood at the door of the capital market.
As early as 2021, Fubei attempted to list on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's main board but voluntarily withdrew its application two years later. During that period, regulators conducted multiple rounds of inquiries regarding the company's compliance, financial condition, and business operations.
Regarding the reason for withdrawal, the company explained in its prospectus that it mainly considered uncertainty in the listing timeline and adjustments to its future development strategy.
During this period, the capital landscape of the pet industry continued to expand. Lusi Shares and Tianyuan Pet Products listed successively, while Gambol Pet Group listed on the ChiNext and grew into an industry leader. As listed company samples emerged in the industry, Fubei also restarted its listing plan and turned its attention to the Hong Kong stock market.
After three years, Fubei faces not the same capital market nor the same pet industry.
More than a decade ago, China's pet food market experienced a period of rapid expansion. With the growth of pet-owning populations and the popularity of online channels, a large number of domestic pet brands began to emerge. However, for these brands, building their own factories meant high investment and long construction cycles, so outsourcing R&D and production to professional manufacturers became the mainstream choice in the industry. Fubei grew during this phase and gradually became one of the industry's leaders.
When the industry was in a high-growth period, the capital market was willing to pay a premium for the "pet economy." Both brand companies and supply chain companies had the opportunity to gain new financing channels through listing.
Therefore, when Fubei aimed for the A-share market in 2021, the pet industry was still in a high-growth phase. At that time, the capital market focused more on the growth potential of the track itself.
But in the past few years, the situation has begun to change.
On one hand, valuations in the domestic consumer industry have returned to rationality, and the capital market's requirements for growth have significantly increased. On the other hand, the pet industry has also shifted from a high-growth phase to a structural adjustment phase.
In this context, Fubei's return to the capital market cannot rely solely on industry dividends to tell a story; it must prove its ability for sustained growth.
Increasingly dependent on OEM business
For a pet food company sprinting towards an IPO, Fubei's performance over the past three years is not impressive.
From 2023 to 2025, the company's revenue was 1.046 billion yuan, 1.033 billion yuan, and 1.021 billion yuan respectively, remaining around the 1 billion yuan scale, with even a slight decline. During the same period, net profit was 164 million yuan, 164 million yuan, and 98 million yuan, with a year-on-year decline of over 40% in 2025.
From the business structure perspective, Fubei is still a typical manufacturing enterprise.
According to the prospectus, from 2023 to 2025, the company's ODM revenue was 613 million yuan, 624 million yuan, and 630 million yuan, with the proportion of total revenue increasing from 58.6% to 61.7%; during the same period, OBM revenue decreased from 432 million yuan to 350 million yuan, with the proportion dropping from 41.3% to 34.3%.
As the core brand, Bile's revenue declined from 409 million yuan to 386 million yuan, and then to 333 million yuan, declining for three consecutive years. At the same time, Bile contributed about 95% of OBM revenue.
In other words, Fubei is becoming increasingly dependent on its OEM business, while its brand business is highly reliant on a single brand.
This forms a certain contrast with the company's long-emphasized "ODM+OBM dual-wheel drive" strategy.
According to the company's vision, the ODM business provides stable cash flow and scale manufacturing capabilities, while the OBM business bears brand premium and growth space, with mutual synergy. However, from the financial data of the past three years, it is the ODM business that truly supports the company's revenue, while the brand business is shrinking.
What is more noteworthy is the profit structure. In 2025, the gross margin of Fubei's ODM business decreased from 30.4% in 2024 to 23.1%; while the OBM business gross margin remained at around 49%.
Although the brand business accounts for only 34.3% of revenue, it contributed approximately 172 million yuan in gross profit in 2025, even higher than the ODM business's 145 million yuan. This means that Fubei's most profitable business is not OEM but its own brands.
On one hand, ODM business revenue only increased by about 17 million yuan over three years, showing relative stability; on the other hand, OBM business revenue decreased by more than 82 million yuan during the same period, and the brand business, which occupies higher profit margins, continues to shrink.
According to data disclosed in the prospectus, the profit decline in 2025 is also related to this change. That year, the company's gross margin fell from 37.9% to 31.6%, and gross profit decreased from 392 million yuan to 323 million yuan.
Fubei explained that the main reasons include increased depreciation, labor, and operating costs after the new production base was put into operation, as well as increased raw material investment during new product development. At the same time, sales and marketing expenses continued to grow, from 119 million yuan to 133 million yuan.
It is worth noting that while the company continues to emphasize its R&D-driven strategy, R&D investment has shown a shrinking trend. Over the past three years, Fubei's R&D expenses have cumulatively decreased by more than 50%, and the R&D expense ratio has also dropped from 2.30% to 1.13%, which forms a certain contrast with the R&D label repeatedly emphasized in the prospectus.
In the past, Fubei might have achieved decent growth by expanding capacity and taking orders. But against the backdrop of slowing industry growth, relying solely on manufacturing capabilities is no longer sufficient to support higher valuation expectations.
Why has the brand business stalled?
For the capital market, Fubei's biggest contradiction currently is that the ODM business, which accounts for the highest proportion of revenue, has limited growth, while the brand business, which contributes higher profits, continues to shrink.
Over the past three years, Fubei's brand business revenue has continued to decline, and Bile, as the core brand, almost determines the performance of the entire OBM segment.
In fact, Bile is not a latecomer in the industry. Public information shows that Bile was launched in 2007, even earlier than many domestic pet food brands that have risen in recent years. Backed by Fubei's R&D, production, and supply chain systems, Bile has had resource advantages from its inception that many new brands find hard to match.
But brand competition is not the same as manufacturing competition.
For ODM enterprises, the core capabilities are R&D, production, and delivery; for consumer brands, what matters more is brand building, channel operations, and user communication.
In the brand competition stage, many domestic brands have broken through through different paths. For example, Myfoodie has grown into a leading domestic pet food brand through long-term brand building and channel operations; Xianlang quickly opened up the market with freeze-dried products; and Lancy leveraged high-meat-content staple food to enter the young pet-owning group.
In contrast, although Bile has strong manufacturing system support, it has never been able to establish consumer awareness of the same scale.
From the prospectus, Fubei is not unaware of this. Over the past few years, the company has continued to promote brand upgrades, launched product systems such as "Oriental Nutrition" and "Staged Nutrition," and increased marketing investment, enhancing brand exposure through KOL cooperation, Douyin live streaming, and Xiaohongshu content marketing. At the same time, the company clearly stated in the prospectus that it will continue to increase advertising, promotional activities, and brand building investment in the future.
But from the current results, these investments have not yet translated into brand growth.
For the capital market, the current issue is that when industry value gradually concentrates on the brand side, can this pet food "super factory" still cultivate a truly national brand?


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