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Text | Chang Zeyu

Editor | Hai Ruojing

36Kr learned that Bona Biotech has recently completed a nearly 100 million yuan Series A financing. This round of financing was led by Luxin Venture Capital, followed by Jigao Financial, and Life Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor. This round of financing will be used for technology research and development in the field of membrane separation and purification, new plant construction and capacity expansion, and further laying of national sales channels.

Founded in 2012, Bona Biotech is a high-tech enterprise focusing on membrane separation and purification, committed to providing membrane technology solutions while producing membrane products. At present, the company's business is mainly carried out in the fields of pharmaceutical industry and synthetic biology, and it also has layouts in the fields of food and beverage, new energy, etc.

It is reported that its product line covers various levels of precision such as microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration, and reverse osmosis. Specific products include independently developed membrane elements such as ceramic membranes, organic membranes, and hollow fiber membranes, as well as membrane assemblies manufactured based on various membrane elements.

Membrane separation technology is particularly suitable for separation processes without phase change and chemical change, and has been widely used in the fields of pharmaceutical industry, biochemical industry, food and beverage, energy, water treatment, etc. According to the "2023-2024 China Membrane Industry Development Report" released recently, the total output value of my country's membrane industry will exceed 430 billion yuan in 2023. Among them, the output value of medical membranes exceeds 20 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth rate of more than 15%.

In terms of function, the role of membrane in the medical industry can be simply understood as gauze, which is a material with selective separation function. However, compared with gauze, membrane has higher precision, which can reach micron and nanometer levels; as an indispensable consumable in the separation and purification of biopharmaceuticals, membrane participates in buffer filtration, preliminary separation and concentration, sterilization filtration, cell culture and harvesting, etc., so the requirements for biocompatibility and stability are also higher.

Kong Weiming, technical director of Bona Biotech, told 36Kr that the company continues to innovate in many core technical aspects of the membrane industry, including membrane formulation, film formation mechanism, membrane manufacturing process, and membrane making equipment.

For example, in the preparation of ceramic membranes, Bona Biotechnology has avoided the influence of particle agglomeration in traditional processes on material properties by developing "micro-nano dispersion + sol-gel process", making the nano-powder dispersion performance of the ceramic membrane more uniform, and the filtration performance is improved by about 30%, with better performance in terms of hydrophobicity and permeability.

Due to the high barriers to preparation technology and long-term reliance on imported brands, the research and production of hollow fiber membranes has long been regarded as a "bottleneck" problem. Through independent research and development, Bona Biotechnology has achieved the preparation of polysulfone hollow fiber ultrafiltration membranes, and the finished product has both the pressure resistance of the sponge-like pore structure and the high-flux performance of the finger-like pore structure. Kong Weiming told 36Kr that the product line construction of this product has been completed and is expected to be put into production at the end of the year. At that time, another self-developed flat ultrafiltration membrane package will also be put into production.

In addition to membrane products, Bona Biotech also includes the research and production of membrane equipment in its business scope, and has developed a series of membrane equipment including continuous separation filtration equipment, dynamic cross-flow filtration equipment, hollow fiber membrane distillation equipment, etc. In addition, in view of the fact that the biopharmaceutical industry has many application points and strong personalized requirements for membrane performance, Bona Biotech has also made arrangements in membrane application development.

Kong Weiming told 36Kr that membrane application development reflects the company's ability in process exploration, which is directly related to whether it can better connect the upstream and downstream industries: "On the one hand, new demands in the market can only be met with process development capabilities; on the other hand, for existing fields, if membrane application development capabilities are lacking, then once the production process of customer products changes, the company will not be able to adjust the membrane equipment in time, and the output capacity will be greatly reduced."

To date, Bona Biotech has developed more than 500 membrane applications and accumulated a number of product data in multiple fields such as natural products and traditional Chinese medicine, synthetic biologics, oligonucleotides and DNA, complex small molecules, antibodies, peptides, enzymes, etc., and has more than 70 applications under development, including liposome deethanol membrane selection and membrane filtration process development, yolk antibody concentration membrane process and equipment development.

In terms of production capacity, the annual production capacity of each membrane element of Bona Biotechnology is 100,000 units, which has basically reached saturation, and plans to expand production are underway. In terms of business model, it mainly uses membrane applications as a "starter" to achieve packaged sales that integrate products, equipment, and processes, but also provides single product sales services. In addition, based on the closed-loop sales strategy of "full life cycle management", the company also provides customers with after-sales services such as regular equipment maintenance.

It is reported that Bona Biotech's current customers include many pharmaceutical companies, synthetic biology companies, and universities. At the same time, its products have been exported to more than 60 countries. Kong Weiming said that in the next few years, Bona Biotech will focus on the field of synthetic biology and further develop more cost-effective high-end membrane products, membrane equipment and membrane application development.