A total of seven companies from Taizhou made the list of the top 100 Zhejiang private enterprises in 2020 released on Sept 3, according to local media reports.

The list, jointly released by the Zhejiang provincial market supervision bureau and Zhejiang provincial federation of industry and commerce, evaluated private enterprises across the province primarily based on their business income last year. Indicators such as net profits, net assets and taxes paid for the year as well as enterprise credit were also taken into account.

The seven Taizhou companies to make the list were Weixing Group Co Ltd (40th), Tengda Construction Group Co Ltd (41st), Zhejiang Fangyuan Holding Group Co Ltd (58th), STO Express Co Ltd (60th), Tiansong Construction Group Co Ltd (71st), Xingx Group Co Ltd (75th) and LEO Group Co Ltd (96th).

The threshold to enter the list increased from 10.967 billion yuan in 2019 to 11.94 billion yuan ($1.73 billion) in 2020, an increase of 8.8 percent year-on-year.

In 2019, the turnover of the top 100 private companies in Zhejiang grew 3.85 percent year-on-year to 4.39 trillion yuan, official data show.

Net assets and profits among the companies on the list both saw considerable growth. Last year, net assets totaled 1.2377 trillion yuan, up 5.56 percent, while net profits surged 10.43 percent year-on-year to 163.3 billion yuan. 

Nineteen companies are new to the list and are primarily engaged in emerging industries and the high-end manufacturing sector.

Notably, R&D spending among the top 100 enterprises reached 69.73 billion yuan in 2019, a jump of nearly 20 percent over previous years.

The number of invention patents and trademarks in the Madrid system held by companies on the list stood at 12,522 and 1,827 respectively, making up 7.8 percent and 31.5 percent of the total in the province.

In terms of geographical distribution, Hangzhou topped the list with 32 enterprises, followed by Ningbo (19) and Shaoxing (14).