A small county in Zhejiang has spawned a listed company in just seven months.
The "Industrial Belt Initiative" is an in - depth special project initiated by 36Kr. Last year, we visited several cities such as Shenzhen, Changzhou, Hefei, and Chengdu. In 2025, we will continue to explore the first - tier industrial belts in China. Through on - site visits, dialogues with enterprises, and industry observation and research, we aim to record industrial changes, deeply connect innovative projects, leading enterprises in the industrial chain, institutions, and local governments, and jointly explore the future of industries.
Text | Zhang Bingbing
Editor | A Zhi
The high - speed train on the Shanghai - Hangzhou line departs from Shanghai Hongqiao Station and stops at the first station, Jiashan, after 23 minutes. Jiashan is a county under the jurisdiction of Jiaxing, Zhejiang. With high - speed rail transportation that is even faster than the commuting time in first - tier cities, a special geographical location, and favorable development policies, it has become the "first stop" for Zhejiang to connect with Shanghai.
Jiashan South High - Speed Railway Station is not very eye - catching, similar to most county - level stations in China. Newcomers may not be used to the gap in the urban landscape. After all, just 20 minutes ago, people were still asking the salesperson in the COACH store at Shanghai Hongqiao about the new styles of this season.
However, less than 5 minutes' drive from Jiashan South Station, the large characters "Shanghai Talent Entrepreneurship Park" and the glass building behind it come into view, presenting a different urban landscape: modern factories with facades comparable to hotels, supporting residential areas in the style of water - town villas, and a library and museum with a construction area of 30,000 square meters... The development path and connection effect of Jiashan gradually unfold.
Jiashan Museum
Jiashan's innate advantage lies in its "fast" connection with Shanghai. Jiashan actively undertakes the economic spill - over from developed regions and "fills the gap" in the development needs of Shanghai enterprises. Currently, about 90% of the introduced projects in Jiashan are related to Shanghai, gradually forming an industrial cooperation system of "headquarters in Shanghai, manufacturing and services in Jiashan" and "creativity in Shanghai, incubation and transformation in Jiashan".
In terms of development achievements, Jiashan ranked 53rd in the 2024 Sadi Top 100 Counties list, which is quite remarkable among the more than 1,800 county - level economies in the national research scope. However, when compared within the Yangtze River Delta region, there are 33 counties in Zhejiang with a GDP of over 100 billion yuan. Jiashan's GDP in 2024 was 95.83 billion yuan, which is not very prominent.
However, 12 years ago, Jiashan became the only national demonstration site for scientific development at the county level; 3 years ago, it became the only national demonstration site for high - quality development at the county level. This is obviously not simply measured by numbers and does not solely rely on the spill - over effect of economically developed regions.
The "fast" industrial transformation in Jiashan provides another perspective for observation. From relying on the "old three" industries such as wood - based furniture, hardware machinery, and textile and clothing industries to being led by three strategic emerging industries: digital economy, life - health, and new energy and new materials, Jiashan has achieved a rapid transformation from traditional industries to emerging industries.
In 2020, Jiashan introduced the Everest Medicines project in the biomedical industry, creating the "Jiashan Speed" of signing the contract in March, making the investment in May, going public in October, and starting construction in December. After its establishment in Jiashan, Everest Medicines has grown into a biopharmaceutical company with a market value of over HK$10 billion.
This is a well - known case, but we hope to dig deeper into what happened before and after this highlight moment to see more aspects of Jiashan's industrial development: With its geographical advantages, what did Jiashan do right? Beyond its innate resource advantages, what else did Jiashan do?
Launch a Listed Company in 7 Months
Everest Medicines was founded in 2017 through incubation and investment by Cormorant Asset Management. Initially, it adopted the "License in" business model, focusing on the R & D, clinical development, manufacturing, and commercialization of innovative drugs and vaccines.
In the Jiashan Economic and Technological Development Zone, where there are numerous enterprise factories, Everest Medicines is a representative business card. When entering the Everest Medicines park for the first time, the sail - shaped office and laboratory buildings don't look like the traditional "factories" but more like the "big companies" in first - tier cities. The laboratories are hidden inside, separated from the offices by a layer of glass. Outside, there are several pipeline production workshops and animal rooms connected by well - arranged pipeline equipment. The entire park covers an area of about 86 mu, equivalent to the size of 8 standard football fields.
Everest Medicines Office Area
Five years ago, this place was still a blank slate. Along with the construction of the factory from scratch, Everest Medicines has also gone through a tortuous but upward development process. Its cooperation with the Jiashan Economic and Technological Development Zone is the most important footnote. It all started in 2020.
At that time, Everest Medicines had a product pipeline of 8 clinical candidate drugs with good market prospects, covering oncology, immunology, cardio - renal diseases, and infectious diseases. To achieve further development, the R & D and commercialization of core products, the clinical trials and filing of candidate drugs, etc., all depend on funds, policies, and factory buildings. The key is to find a suitable location and successfully go public.
At the same time, Jiashan was also looking for suitable emerging industry projects. "The traditional industries have been developing for two or three decades and have reached a development bottleneck. Some of them have undergone several rounds of transformation and upgrading. It is actually very difficult to achieve further improvement through the old industries," said Li Weijun, the deputy director of the Management Committee of the Jiashan Economic and Technological Development Zone. Jiashan visited industrial parks in Shanghai, Suzhou and other places and found that high - value - added industries almost all involve high - tech industries such as the new generation of information technology, new energy, new materials, and biomedicine. Based on its own resource foundation, Jiashan set the direction of emerging industries as: digital economy, life - health, and new energy and new materials.
Among them, the life - health field has many sub - sectors and requires large R & D investments. Jiashan needs to find the right development focus. Traditional small - molecule drugs have been developed abroad for many years, involving patent monopolies, making it difficult to achieve innovative breakthroughs. Jiashan has already been involved in the medical device category, but the profit and transformation cycle still need to be improved. Innovative drugs, on the other hand, are a globally booming field. Foreign countries do not have an absolute lead, and the domestic market is still in its early stage. Targeted therapy also has more advantages than traditional methods such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
The introduction of innovative drug projects has become the top choice. Li Weijun frankly said, "The competition in traditional small - molecule drugs is very fierce, and most of the patents are concentrated in the hands of foreign giants. However, the foundation of both domestic and foreign in large - molecule drugs is similar, so we have a chance. Therefore, we have always wanted to find such projects, but to be honest, such projects are not easy to find."
On one side is a region in urgent need of industrial transformation, and on the other side is a potential project with products seeking a production location. Cormorant Asset Management has become the bridge in the middle. As the largest healthcare industry fund in Asia, Cormorant Asset Management is mainly engaged in incubation, operation, and merger - and - acquisition - type investment. It incubated Everest Medicines and also established extensive connections with regional governments across the country.
Driven by Cormorant Asset Management, the project of Everest Medicines' establishment in Jiashan was put on the negotiation table.
Everest Medicines' initial planned total investment was in the tens of billions. In 2020, Jiashan's GDP was 65.577 billion yuan, and its total fiscal revenue was 11.7 billion yuan. This was obviously not an easy thing to achieve. "For a biomedical enterprise of Everest Medicines' scale, it would be very difficult to negotiate the establishment of the project with traditional policies. So we changed our thinking," Li Weijun introduced.
The innovative model of "fund + equity + project" has become the breakthrough point: The government cooperates with fund investment institutions. By leveraging the industry funds' keen "sense" of the industry, it solves the capital needs of high - tech enterprises in the R & D stage through equity investment, and finally completes the project introduction, leveraging the regional industrial transformation and upgrading. In today's era dominated by state - owned capital and industrial investment, this model has released greater advantages.
Through equity investment, Jiashan and Cormorant Asset Management have become the major shareholders of Everest Medicines. From a traditional investment - attraction project, it has become a closer partnership, and new cooperation efficiency is brewing.
Those who participated in the project's establishment were deeply impressed by one aspect. The construction of a factory usually involves the approval and licensing of various departments such as water, electricity, environmental protection, and fire protection. One of the main business areas of Everest Medicines' factory is the mRNA platform, and its design and construction need to comply with China's GMP regulations, the WHO's PQ standards, and also meet high - standard aseptic and layout requirements. The complexity of the process increases the construction difficulty and time cost. The Jiashan Economic Development Zone established a special team for Everest Medicines, listened to the enterprise's demands, and jointly promoted the project construction with the enterprise. From the start of the factory construction at the end of 2020 to its official operation in 2022, it only took 2 years for the first - phase factory to start trial production.
The superior location is still an advantage. High - tech industries such as biomedicine are highly dependent on professional talents. In addition to being the first stop connecting with Shanghai, Jiashan is also located in the core area of the integrated development of Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Shanghai. Through relevant talent policies, it can attract talents from the surrounding areas to Jiashan. It is reported that some of Everest Medicines' employees are from Jiashan, and many professional talents have their families in Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, and even Wuxi. Jiashan has become a good location to help the enterprise retain talents in the Yangtze River Delta region.
In March 2020, the Everest Medicines project was signed and established in Jiashan. The project's planned total investment is 10 billion yuan, and the first - phase investment is 405 million US dollars. After full production, the annual sales are expected to exceed 10 billion yuan. In October of the same year, Everest Medicines was listed in Hong Kong.
Looking back, this is also a story of seizing the opportunity of the era. All parties said that it would be very difficult to replicate such a large - scale investment and fast - paced progress in today's market environment. The firmness and determination in timing selection allowed Everest Medicines to seize the development opportunity and also enabled Jiashan to make an important move in the biomedical industry.
Seize Certainty in Uncertainty
The characteristics of innovative drugs determine that this is an industry that seeks certainty in uncertainty, and the introduction and establishment of innovative drug projects have further magnified this characteristic.
The "License in" R & D method is full of uncertain challenges. The cost of introducing innovative drugs varies at different stages. The earlier the introduction, the less the upfront cost, but the greater the later - stage risks. This highly tests a company's professional capabilities, including business development (BD) capabilities and risk - control capabilities, as well as the ability to select targets, tracks, and treatment areas.
At the same time, start - up innovative drug enterprises need to spend a large amount of time and funds in the R & D stage. Many enterprises may fail in the clinical stage, making the development of early - stage projects after introduction full of uncertainties. Li Weijun recalled, "One of the reasons we selected the Everest Medicines project was that it had already conducted clinical trials overseas, had several important drugs, and also had strong capital support. Different from start - up enterprises, we could enter the industrialization stage faster." It can be said that the enterprise's professional strength and the government's policy support together provide a certain guarantee for the growth of innovative drugs.
However, in 2022, the biggest uncertainty emerged. The biomedical industry entered a "winter", and the Hong Kong stock market fluctuated overall.
In this environment, biopharmaceutical enterprises were struggling between expanding pipelines and recovering cash flow. Cormorant Asset Management made a tough decision. To preserve the basic market, Everest Medicines returned the exclusive rights of the important oncology drug Trodelvy, which it had spent a year acquiring, to the seller. This pipeline had been the core support of its market value.
This news was undoubtedly a bombshell, and Everest Medicines' stock price plummeted.
For Jiashan, the significant fluctuation in the stock price of the key introduced project should have been a "heart - stopping" moment. However, when recalling it, Li Weijun described it calmly: "Everest Medicines was like a person cutting off an arm to survive. Selling Trodelvy to recover some funds to preserve the pipeline process of the other two drugs."
From the experience of project introduction and investment, there are still certain risks even for the establishment of mature projects. However, Li Weijun said that Jiashan still has definite confidence: "The enterprise is located in our local area, and we communicate with it frequently. Most importantly, we are deeply involved in the operation and growth of Everest Medicines as an important partner. We know what's going on, so we won't panic."
Facts have proved that Everest Medicines' strategy has worked. Two important new drugs - "the world's first fluocycline antibacterial drug" Yijia® and "the world's first causal treatment drug for IgA nephropathy" Naifukang® - were approved for marketing in 2023. Everest Medicines' latest financial report shows that Naifukang® was commercially launched in the Chinese mainland in May 2024 and was included in the medical insurance in December 2024. Its sales revenue in 2024 reached 353 million yuan, a year - on - year increase of 1581%. Yijia® currently covers 300 core medical institutions, and its sales revenue in 2024 was 353 million yuan. The two drugs together contributed more than 700 million yuan in sales revenue, directly driving Everest Medicines' revenue in 2024 to increase by 461% year - on - year and achieving profitability at the commercial level.
Everest Medicines has won the opportunity to reverse the situation and further upgraded its development strategy of "introduction + self - R & D" with dual - wheel drive. Its self - R & D capabilities have made breakthrough progress.
Everest Medicines' self - built factory in Jiashan has the GMP production capacity for mRNA products of various scales. Since 2021, Everest Medicines' mRNA platform has successfully passed clinical verification and is committed to the independent R & D of oncology therapeutic vaccines.
In March 2025, Everest Medicines announced that its first new mRNA personalized oncology therapeutic vaccine, EVM16, completed the first patient dosing at the Peking University Cancer Hospital, marking a solid step from laboratory research to clinical application. It shows that Everest Medicines' tumor neo - antigen AI algorithm system and mRNA technology platform with independent intellectual property rights have successfully entered the human trial stage.
In the same month, Everest Medicines launched