Synthetic biology enterprise "Element Drive" secures nearly 200 million yuan in Series A financing, and the new biodegradable material can be mass-produced | Exclusive from 36Kr.
36Kr exclusively learned that Element Drive, a synthetic biology enterprise, has recently completed a nearly 200 million yuan Series A financing. The investors in this round include Hangzhou Chengtou Industrial Fund, China Merchants Venture Capital, West Lake Photon, and Cloud 9 Capital. Among them, West Lake Photon and Cloud 9 Capital have made additional investments. The raised funds will be mainly used for technology research and development and market promotion.
Element Drive was established in 2021. It is a key incubation project of the New Productivity Cultivation Platform of the Future Industry Research Center of West Lake University. It focuses on the development and industrialization of biodegradable materials and soybean meal-free diet technology. The company's founder and chief scientist, Dr. Zhang Kechun, graduated from the California Institute of Technology, studied under synthetic biology leader scientists such as David A. Tirrell, and was a tenured professor at the University of Minnesota before returning to China. He has more than 20 years of research experience in the field of synthetic biology; the co-founder and chairman, Liu Minhao, also serves as a special advisor to the president of West Lake University and the deputy director of the Future Industry Research Center. She also participated in the "0 - 1" construction of West Lake University and the West Lake Education Foundation. After participating in the incubation of Element Drive, she and the team explored the "0 - 1" transformation of scientific research results together.
It is reported that Element Drive has built its own R & D platform, MiNT X Platform, to achieve predictable design through enzyme engineering and metabolic pathways. Currently, driven by this platform, Element Drive has opened up the entire chain of biological intelligent manufacturing, including R & D, production, and downstream product transformation, and has collaborated with multiple downstream enterprises to carry out product research and development.
Among them, the soybean meal-free diet based on synthetic amino acids is one of the core application scenarios of Element Drive. Zhang Kechun introduced that Element Drive has successfully increased the synthesis speed and reduced carbon source waste and carbon emissions in the synthesis process by designing the synthesis path of some small-variety amino acids from scratch. At present, the relevant synthetic amino acid products have achieved a production capacity of ten thousand tons.
Currently, in the downstream product transformation process of this technology, it is mainly carried out by cooperating with Muyuan Co., Ltd. to produce soybean meal-free diets, reducing the production and use costs of feed protein by replacing soybean imports.
The risks and costs of developing bulk products using synthetic biological pathways are relatively high. Therefore, many synthetic biology enterprises that are strong in technology are now entering this track by establishing joint ventures with large industrial groups.
"Muyuan Co., Ltd. spent more than half a year conducting a detailed investigation of domestic synthetic biology enterprises and research institutes, and finally chose to cooperate with Element Drive because we keenly discovered that the feed cost accounts for up to 60% of the breeding process, and the production cost of the synthetic amino acid product combination of Element Drive will not fluctuate like the soybean price and can be lower. The cooperation between the two parties in this application scenario can be said to be a perfect match," Liu Minhao said.
Currently, the Muyuan Anliang Synthetic Biotechnology Factory, established by the two parties, has been under construction in Henan. The planned construction area is nearly 126 mu, and it is expected to achieve an annual output of "30,000 tons of synthetic biological products" after reaching full production capacity.
In addition, biodegradable materials are another major product category of the company. Based on the technical accumulation of Zhang Kechun's team, Element Drive has developed a new type of biodegradable material with a chemical structure, PiX, which has high strength, high heat resistance, high toughness, and other properties, and can "be comparable to the price of materials with lower costs such as petroleum-based materials."
"The high added value and low cost of biodegradable materials are not contradictory. Under the condition of controllable costs, the application scenarios that can be developed will be very diverse, thus becoming a big single product. For example, our PiX material can achieve the strength comparable to that of steel, but its density is only 1/4. In the future, it can be applied in fields such as automobiles and small household appliances," Zhang Kechun introduced.
Currently, the biodegradable materials of Element Drive have explored various application scenarios such as injection-molded catering utensils, express packaging, and agricultural film.
Taking the application of agricultural film in cotton planting as an example, currently, Xinjiang cotton accounts for more than 90% of the total national cotton output value. Due to the arid and rainless climate in Xinjiang, the irrigation method of film mulching + drip irrigation is often used in actual planting. However, the common traditional agricultural films on the market are not degradable, which not only may cause pollution to the land but also increase the cost of film recovery. Moreover, the existing other biodegradable agricultural films have problems such as fast degradation that cannot cover the entire growth cycle of cotton and high costs, which all affect the promotion of biodegradable agricultural films.
In response to this, the agricultural film produced by Element Drive using PiX material can achieve a degradation cycle that can be adjusted according to factors such as the crop growth cycle and geographical environment. At the same time, the ultra-thin design also reduces the use cost of the agricultural film. In the relevant control experiments, the number of cotton bolls produced by each cotton plant covered with the biodegradable agricultural film of Element Drive is about 1.5 more than that of the traditional PE/other biodegradable agricultural films. Through the combination of high performance, low cost, and high yield, it achieves cost reduction and efficiency increase for customers. It is understood that this is also the most concerned issue for downstream customers when making purchasing decisions.
Recently, the 150,000-ton biodegradable material project newly built by Element Drive has been settled in Jiande. The first phase of the project will be completed by the end of 2025, with a planned production capacity of 30,000 tons. According to 36Kr's understanding, Vipshop is the investor of this project. After the project recovers the cost, the relevant earnings will be donated to West Lake University in the future to support its long-term development.
"The products of Element Drive have now reached the mass production level, crossing the 'valley of death' of scientific research. In the next year, from industrialization to commercialization, it will be our most important development goal. We will continue to explore the pain points and needs of the industry, and develop new materials and new products with lower costs and better effects," Liu Minhao said.