Caring Medical Completes Hundreds of Millions RMB Series C Financing to Accelerate Full-Scenario Membrane Solutions

Recently, Guanhuai Medical officially announced the completion of its C-round financing, amounting to hundreds of millions of yuan. The lead investor in this round was China Life Capital Investment Limited, with follow-on investment from the CICC Qide Fund under CICC Capital. Bairong Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor for this financing round.Following this round of financing, Care Medical will further consolidate its leadership position in the membrane industry, accelerate the enhancement of R&D capabilities across business segments such as biopharmaceuticals and blood purification based on diverse membrane/filter platforms, and continuously expand production capacity for a wide variety of membranes and related filters. Previously, the company secured Series A financing led by Sunshine Ronghui Capital, and Series B financing co-led by Boyuan Capital and Sherpa Investments.

Care Medical, established in 2019 and located in the Suzhou Wuzhong Comprehensive Bonded Zone, is dedicated to creating comprehensive membrane-based solutions. Its membrane products serve high-end biomedical sectors such as gene therapy, vaccine production, and antibody drugs; address the mature blood purification market and the highly promising ECMO market; and also cover the water treatment market as well as the filtration consumables market for food and medical applications.

In the research and development and manufacturing processes of biopharmaceuticals,Membranes and Filters for Biopharmaceuticals as Essential Consumables in the Separation and Purification Process,Applied in numerous scenarios including buffer filtration, initial separation and concentration, sterile filtration, ultrafiltration, virus removal filtration, cell culture, and harvest, corresponding to a vast market size.

Multi-scenario applications correspond to a wide variety of filter products with diverse types and specifications, requiring filter manufacturers to make substantial upfront investments of capital and time to build a comprehensive product portfolio. Moreover, high-quality filters involve the design and control of numerous precise parameters, including appropriate membrane material selection, hydrophilicity modification processes, molecular weight cutoff (MWCO) control, pore size uniformity, and flow channel design.However, there are no established suppliers of mature filter production lines in the market, and the barriers to research and development as well as manufacturing are extremely high.

Meanwhile, against the backdrop of China’s national centralized procurement policy (exchanging price for volume), warnings from pandemic-induced supply shortages, and escalating international trade disputes, downstream pharmaceutical companies are increasingly urgent in establishing domestic supply chains with controllable costs and stable quality. As a critical consumable—accounting for more than 15% of biopharmaceutical consumables costs—filters represent a substantial market size, making domestic substitution imperative.

Guanhuai Medical has consistently adhered to a full-industry-chain layout, achieving autonomous control over every stage from raw material selection and membrane production lines to membrane manufacturing, automated filter assembly lines, and final filter assembly.Break the monopoly of overseas manufacturers (Pall, 3M, Sartorius, Asahi Kasei, etc.), while delivering more pronounced cost-effectiveness advantages to help create greater commercial value. The full range of TFFNOVA tangential flow filtration products has now been launched.^®Hollow Fiber Filters, TFFnoah^®Flat Sheet Membrane Cassettes, TUFNOVA^®RET Terminal Ultrafilter.

In April this year, Guanhuai Medical’s flagship product line, TFFNOVA^®Hollow Fiber Microfiltration Cartridges (0.1 μm, 0.2 μm, 0.45 μm) Officially Launched at the 22nd Annual Conference on Biological Products (2023 CBioPC). Guanhui Medical’s hollow fiber filter products feature excellent chemical stability, uniform pore size distribution, thermal stability, biocompatibility, and antifouling properties, ensuring high-efficiency separation and filtration performance.Guanhuai Medical’s Tangential Flow Filtration (TFF) systems have successfully completed commercial testing and validation at multiple leading pharmaceutical companies and CDMOs, receiving positive market feedback.

Furthermore, Guanhuai Medical has successfully overcome critical bottlenecks in filter manufacturing, including flat-sheet membrane production lines, complex membrane pack assembly processes, and highly automated assembly lines, thereby establishing its own technological barriers in flat-sheet membranes and membrane packs. It is expected that this year, Guanhuai’s fully independent proprietary intellectual property products—flat-sheet membrane packs, terminal ultrafilters, and capsule filters—will be fully launched, covering the core filtration stages across the entire pharmaceutical production process.

Guanhuai Medical’s independently developed 1,536-head hollow fiber membrane spinning production line is globally leading in the field of hemodialysis in terms of spinning speed, stability, number of concurrent spinnerets, and pore size uniformity. Furthermore, Guanhuai Medical completed the expansion of its membrane spinning production line and dialyzer assembly line in 2022, thereby securing sufficient production capacity in advance to support future sales of dialyzers and dialysis membranes.Today, the production capacity of CareLife’s hemodialysis membrane spinning line has reached tens of millions of bundles per year, laying a solid foundation for subsequent rapid growth.

In the field of dialyzers, Care Medical ZOE (^®) series hemodialyzers successively obtained three Class III medical device registration certificates in July, October, and December 2022,Product quality directly competes with leading international brands. The medical hollow fiber membranes are made of polyethersulfone (PES), and the product housing is constructed from bisphenol A-free polypropylene (PP), effectively clearing β2-microglobulin (β2-MG) and serum phosphorus. The product features a more scientific and safer design. Currently, the Guanhuai hemodialyzer has been listed on provincial procurement platforms in multiple provinces.In the future, Care Medical will continue to launch innovative blood purification products, including ultra-pure dialyzers and adsorptive dialyzers.

Furthermore, as a member of the key national R&D project team on “High-End Functional and Intelligent Materials” under the Ministry of Science and Technology’s 14th Five-Year Plan, Guanhuai Medical has successfully entered the fields of water treatment, ECMO, and food processing, leveraging its deep know-how in new materials, membranes, and automated manufacturing. This expansion will open up broader market opportunities for Guanhuai Medical, and we look forward to its continued outstanding performance in China’s membrane industry.

Regarding the success of this financing round, Li Xiaofeng, Chairman of Guanhuai Medical, stated, Guanhuai Medical is committed to building membrane-based, full-scenario solutions. Over the past year-plus, the company has maintained rapid growth and achieved significant progress in both biopharmaceuticals and hemodialysis filtration products. Amid the current capital winter, we extend our sincere gratitude to China Life Capital Investment Limited and CICC Qide Fund under CICC Capital for their strong recognition, as well as to our existing shareholders—Boyuan Capital, Sherpa Partners, Sunshine Ronghui, Keytone Capital, and Wuzhong Biomedical Industry Investment—for their steadfast support. Guided by our mission of “Caring for Life, Focusing on Innovation,” we will continue to contribute to the development of China’s healthcare industry!

China Life Capital Investment Limited stated: In recent years, we have systematically laid out our strategy across multiple core segments of the upstream life sciences and biopharmaceutical sectors, gaining a deeper appreciation for the urgency of securing industrial and supply chains and the critical importance of achieving technological self-reliance. As a leading domestic platform in membrane science, Guanhuai Medical possesses the capability for independent research and development across the entire spectrum—from membrane production lines to filters—achieving breakthroughs in foundational innovation. We hope to work alongside Guanhuai Medical and new partners to actively cultivate local industrial chains, effectively address critical bottlenecks, and support the innovative development of China’s biopharmaceutical industry.

Liang Ying, Managing Director of CICC Capital, statedAchieving self-sufficiency and controllability in core upstream raw materials for the biopharmaceutical industry is a key area of our focus. Among these, filtration membrane materials directly impact drug costs and quality, representing a critical domain where domestic breakthroughs are urgently needed. Leveraging years of accumulated expertise, the Guanhuai Medical team has tackled challenges at the source of membrane production lines, overcoming numerous key technical barriers. They have achieved fundamental breakthroughs in spinning technology and raw material science, paving the way for extensive future product applications. We believe that under the leadership of its founding team, Guanhuai Medical will spearhead the development of core membrane materials for China’s biopharmaceutical sector, making significant strides and emerging as a dominant force in the upstream consumables market.

Guided by the philosophy of investing in the future, innovation, and value, China Life Capital Investment Limited leverages the professional advantages of insurance funds and upholds China Life’s sense of responsibility to serve national strategies, support the real economy, and demonstrate China Life’s commitment.

Upholding the principle of technological self-reliance and self-strengthening, China Life Capital Investment Limited focuses on core technologies and has invested in multiple innovative high-tech enterprises that have broken foreign monopolies on technology and products and are dedicated to resolving critical “chokehold” challenges. The portfolio companies are distributed across key fields and pivotal segments of the medical health and technological innovation industries, empowering a cohort of leading enterprises with significant voice and influence in industrial development, and striving to enhance the security and competitiveness of industrial and supply chains.

CICC Capital is the private equity fund management platform of China International Capital Corporation Limited (“CICC”), overseeing CICC’s onshore and offshore private equity fund businesses. It has grown into one of China’s leading private investment management institutions. The funds under its management currently encompass RMB-denominated corporate equity investment funds, funds of funds (FOFs), real estate funds, infrastructure funds, and USD-denominated corporate equity investment funds.

Bairong Capital is a research-driven financial advisory firm focused on the healthcare and medical sector. It aims to accelerate the growth of medical enterprises through extensive transaction experience and provide investment institutions with insights into valuable investment opportunities through rigorous, in-depth research. Bairong Capital’s areas of focus cover multiple healthcare sub-sectors, including medical services, medical devices and consumables, IVD and precision medicine, biopharmaceuticals, and healthcare informatics. The core team of Bairong Capital comprises professionals from top-tier consulting firms, renowned investment banks, and accounting firms.