China sustainability start-up Bluepha raises $235m

The latest tranche of CNY 800m was led by Genesis Capital and China State-Owned Enterprise Mixed Ownership Reform Fund.

Beijing-based Zhongping Capital, Jiangsu Huanghai Financial Holding Group, and Zhongzhou Lanhai Investment Management – the private equity arm of Central China Securities - participated in the round. There were also re-ups from FreesFund, Country Garden Venture Capital, GL Ventures, and Trinity Innovation Fund.

The first tranche of Series B, which came in at CNY 200m, was led by GL Ventures and Lightspeed China Partners in February 2021. This was followed by a CNY 430m tranche six months later led by Country Garden Venture Capital.

Founded in 2016, Bluepha specializes in polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), a polyester produced through mechanisms such as bacterial fermentation. It is biodegradable and mainly used to produce bioplastics – a sustainable single-use alternative to petroleum-derived plastics.

Bluepha began construction this month on a factory with a production capacity of 25,000 tons. It claims to have received orders from large enterprises and has signed partnership agreements with overseas partners.

The company also has an in-house developed PHA research platform, which expects to identify ways to shorten the product development cycle by 70% within three years. In addition to PHA, Bluepha is expanding into areas such as new medical materials, skincare ingredients, and food additives.

“The underlying technology in the biological industry is undergoing rapid iteration. Under the global trend of carbon neutrality, we strongly support enterprises committed to solving global problems such as resource shortage and environmental pollution," said Zhijian Peng, a founding partner at Genesis.

"Bluepha is a leading domestic synthetic biology company and its large-scale production of degradable plastics has made significant progress. Its high throughput screening automation platform can create multiple product pipelines expanding into healthcare, skincare and consumer goods."

FreesFund was Bluepha's first institutional investor, committing CNY 5m in angel funding in 2017. A pre-Series A led by Leaguer Venture Capital came in 2018 and then a CNY 40m Series A - backed by several government-related investors - in 2019. Shenzhen Green Pine Capital Partners made a solo investment in 2020.

Private equity investment in China cleantech and renewables is at a record high. At the same time, the likes of Sequoia Capital China and CICC Capital have launched carbon neutrality funds, while Lightspeed China Partners has made carbon neutrality the core investment strategy for its latest vehicle.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Expansion
• Cleantech
• China
• GL Ventures
• Cleantech