UnionTech, a leading industrial-grade 3D printing company from China, announced on December 21 that it has completed a $30 million Series D financing.
In 2021, China's 3D printing industry has maintained rapid development and has attracted the attention of capital markets. There have been dozens of financings throughout the year, and UnionTech’s D-round financing is one of the largest.
This round of financing is led by Dening Capital, followed by Cash Capital, Yingke PE and Dragonrise Capital Advisors. Evonik Venture Capital and Luhe Venture Capital, the investment shareholders of UnionTech in Series C round, also made an additional investment in this round.
About 3D printing
3D printing is a new digital manufacturing technology. It directly drives production by CAD digital model, which realizes the seamless connection of CAD/CAM and reflects the typical characteristics of digital production and intelligent manufacturing to the greatest extent. It is the inevitable result of the deep penetration of information technology and digital technology into the traditional manufacturing industry.
From the perspective of the development of 3D printing industry, it was in the industry introduction period from 2000 to 2010 and entered a rapid growth period around 2011. The size of global 3D printing market has reached USD 10 billion with a compound annual growth rate of 28%. The market size of China's 3D printing industry has a higher growth rate with a compound growth rate of 49.1% in the past five years, indicating great market potential.
The transformation from “prototype production” to “real-world manufacturing” is the overall development tone of the 3D printing industry and has become an irreversible development trend. At present, the industrial development has gradually entered the midsession. The industrial applications have been gradually deepened and the demand growth is accelerating. The accumulation and reserve of market and technology are close to the inflection point of rapid development, and the development trend of 3D printing to mass production is becoming clearer and clearer. It will enter the next decade from 2020, the market size is expected to show an explosive growth, and the whole industry is about to usher in the dawn of a great breakthrough.
About UnionTech
Founded in 2000, UnionTech is a leading enterprise in the field of industrial-grade non-metallic 3D printing in the world. In the field of industrial-grade 3D printing equipment, it has more than 20 product series, 68 niche products and 178 patents, and has invested more than CNY 100 million in R&D in recent three years. UnionTech has maintained rapid growth for nearly a decade with an average annual revenue growth rate of more than 50% and equipment of more than 80%. According to Contextworld, under the classification of industrial-grade 3D printing equipment, UnionTech has jumped to the first place in the world in Q1 and Q2 of 2021 by shipment.
While ensuring the leading advantages in the industry, UnionTech has also changed its operation structure and revenue structure significantly. At present, the product technology of UnionTech covers 3D printing equipment, materials and applications, which has formed a full closed loop in the upstream, midstream and downstream of the industry. UnionTech has significant ability to integrate the whole industrial chain in the industrial-grade non-metallic printing market.
At the same time, as the leader of industrial-grade 3D printing in China, UnionTech has further enhanced cross-industry cooperation.
With its independently developed data pre-processing software Polydevs, printing control software RSCON/DSCON, process algorithm software BP and digital production management collaboration system UnionFab, UnionTech has built a complete layout of 3D printing software system. In the third quarter of 2021, UnionTech and ZWSOFT jointly reached an overseas strategic cooperation agreement. The cooperation between the two parties represents the close coordination of CAD/CAM at both the technical level and the market level to a certain extent, which is an important exploration of cross-industry cooperation mode.
The development and breakthrough of material technology is one of the most critical factors to promote the progress of the industry. On July 19, 2021, UnionTech and Evonik jointly inaugurated the “Joint R&D Laboratory”, which means that the comprehensiveness and depth of cooperation between the two parties have been greatly enhanced. It also represents the attitude of more openness and mutual trust in industrial development between the two parties.
As an important strategic investor of UnionTech, Evonik made an additional investment again in this round of financing, expressing the consensus and determination of both parties on industrial development.
Jason Ma, General Manager of UnionTech, said:
We are in an exciting and great era. Many emerging technologies and innovation models are booming, but will be integrated eventually. There will be great changes in human development soon. This stage is full of pains of transformation, but it also contains vitality. In the next stage, UnionTech will be committed to the development and application of new materials, intelligent manufacturing, digital production management and the network collaboration of capacity, empowering with knowledge, breaking the market boundary, connecting partners, working collaboratively and developing in a win-win way.
“3D printing is certainly an indispensable key link in the future development blueprint of mankind. It carries the technical basis and infinite imagination for the great changes in all commercial forms in the future, such as the production mode, circulation mode and consumption mode. Fortunately, we are just on this track with a bright future. As a veteran in the industry, UnionTech is confident that it can continue to keep its leading position in the next development stage and become a road paving vanguard for the development of the industry,” said Jason Ma, General Manager of UnionTech.
Views from Institutions
HE Jianwen, Co-founder of Dening Capital, said:
We believe that 3D printing is one of the most important forms of intelligent manufacturing in the future. UnionTech is a leading enterprise in the field of SLA 3D printing in China. At present, its application scenarios have gradually penetrated from the product R&D stage to the mass production stage of some products, and its market space has been greatly expanded. In additional, we highly recognize the management team of UnionTech. After more than ten years of refinement, it has become one of the most professional and mature teams in the field of 3D printing in China. We expect UnionTech to set sail and ride the wind and waves in the era of great development of intelligent manufacturing.
CHEN Hongwu, Managing Partner of Cash Capital, said:
Additive manufacturing technology and equipment, as the field encouraged by the 14th Five-year Blueprint for Intelligent Manufacturing, is currently in a period of rapid development. On the one hand, its downstream application scenarios are expanding. On the other hand, with the continuous improvement and breakthrough of material technology, it will gradually enter the manufacturing process of small batch production and final products from design verification and appearance verification. With move of such digital technologies as industrial software and industrial Internet from being independent and controllable toward innovation-driven development, the ecological environment of 3D printing is also expanding and improving, and there will be more disruptive innovations in the flexible transformation and the improvement of operation efficiency of the manufacturing industry. As a global well-known enterprise in the area of industrial 3D printing in the light-curing field, UnionTech will also make greater achievements under this general trend.
CAO Erning, Head of Evonik Venture Capital, said:
The close cooperation between material manufacturers and equipment manufacturers is conducive to opening up a new field of 3D printing applications, which is essential for promoting the scale development of 3D printing technology. UnionTech has accumulated many years of technology and experience in 3D printing in the light-curing industry, and has a deep understanding of customer requirements. Evonik Venture Capital's continuous investment in UnionTech is based on high expectations for the potential of cooperation between the two parties. Evonik Venture Capital also hopes to help promote further long-term strategic cooperation between the two parties. By deepening cooperation with UnionTech, we will jointly promote new product development and provide an example for the cooperation mode of 3D printing industrial chain.
QIAN Mingfei, Chairman of Yingke PE, said:
3D printing is an indispensable key link in the future development blueprint of mankind. It is a new technology bred by the accumulation of hardcore technology into certain limit in the digital age. It carries the infinite imagination of great changes in the production mode and commercial form in the future. With the rapid development of the manufacturing industry to industry 4.0 intelligent manufacturing, our biggest challenge today is not in quantity but in quality, mass customization, open innovation and intelligent plant. These changes will also be the most immediate presentation of 3D printing intelligent manufacturing. In the industrial 3D printing field in China, UnionTech, as one of the first batch of enterprises entering China's 3D printing field, has participated in and witnessed the main development process of China's additive manufacturing industry, accumulated profound industry experience and foundation in various areas, and has a deep understanding of the development application of 3D printing industry and the essential needs of the market. UnionTech has notable leading advantages in brand recognition, customer base, technology and process, industrial chain resources and other aspects.
YANG Xiaowen, Founder of Dragonrise Capital, said:
UnionTech has an absolute leading position in the equipment production, service and market share of industrial 3D printing SLA technology in China. Moreover, through in-depth cooperation with Evonik, the leading German special chemical group in the world, it also has leading technology and R&D strength in printing materials. The accumulation and advantages of equipment and materials have laid a solid foundation for UnionTech to become an industrial 3D printing service platform enterprise with sustainable growth and scale effect. In addition, we think very highly of the innovation ability of the excellent management team of UnionTech to continue to build the largest 3D industrial printing cloud factory platform in China on the basis of its existing market position, and believe that UnionTech can continue to give play to its advantages of 3D printing in the field of highly flexible production and lead the general trend of decentralized flat production.
FEI Binjie, Founder of Luhe Venture Capital, said:
Additive manufacturing is a key support field of national strategic emerging industries. After more than 30 years of development, the additive manufacturing industry is moving from the initial stage to the growth stage, showing a trend of accelerated growth. UnionTech has been engaged in the industry for 20 years, and the high stability, high efficiency and consistency of its products have reached the leading level in the industry. In particular, the equipment process capacity and experience data accumulated by UnionTech have laid a solid foundation for its subsequent development. The team led by Jason Ma, General Manager of UnionTech, is deeply ploughing the industry and has constantly made technological breakthroughs. We firmly think highly of the development of UnionTech in the field of additive manufacturing in the future.
About the Institutions
About Dening Capital
Dening Capital is an investment management platform jointly founded by three senior equity investment professionals with broker, investment banking/direct investment background.
All the three founding partners of Dening Capital have more than 10 years of working experience in the field of private equity investment. They have accumulated rich investment experience and have many successful investment cases.
Dening Capital focuses on the equity investment of science and technology enterprises in the middle and late growth stage in the field of new generation information technology (“digitization”) and clean technology (“low-carbon”).
About Cash Capital
Founded in 2011, Cash Capital (Beijing) Investment Management Co., Ltd. is an equity investment fund manager initiated by Chinese Academy of Sciences Holdings Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as CAS Holdings) as a cornerstone investor and jointly founded by a number of large enterprise groups in China. It is a first-class enterprise directly managed by CAS Holdings, and is also the only full-cycle professional science and technology investment institution covered by Angel Investment, VC and PE at the same time directly under CAS Holdings.
At present, Cash Capital manages a total of ten funds, including one CNY Angel Fund, three CNY growth funds, two CNY PE funds, one USD venture capital fund, one national network security special fund and two government special funds, with a total management amount of tens of billions of yuan.
In the past ten years since its establishment, Cash Capital has been playing the leading role of “technology capital” in investment in hard science and technology. Relying on the first-class technical capability of CAS system, a large number of high-tech transformation achievements and government and industry resources, it has accumulated in-depth industry understanding ability and rich practical investment experience in hard science and technology. In addition, it has invested more than 100 high-tech innovation projects with technical barriers in the fields of big data, cloud computing, intelligent manufacturing and high-end equipment, network security and enterprise services, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, medical services, innovative medicine and medical devices.
About Evonik
Evonik is a leading special chemicals company in the world. Its business covers more than 100 countries and regions. As a market leader in the field of high-performance polymer and additive manufacturing, Evonik has developed a variety of materials suitable for industrial additive manufacturing for several years, such as INFINAM nylon 12 series products for powder bed platform printing, which can quickly and efficiently realize small batch, customized and non-molded nylon parts. More than 1000 manufacturers around the world are using INFINAM additive manufacturing materials, and have brought the process to a new development stage in terms of efficiency, capacity and the quality of print details.
INFINAM new high-performance photosensitive resin is an excellent example of Evonik Industrial Group entering new markets through industry. Innovation, being close to customers and creativity are all key driving forces for Evonik to achieve profitable growth. We plan to invest a total of 4 billion Euros in innovation by 2025. In the last fiscal year, our R&D expenditure reached at least 438 million Euros, and our investment was yielding.
Light-curing resin is one of the fields in which Evonik Industry Group is growing. Our INFINAM series includes a series of high-performance photosensitive resins for different industrial application scenarios. Each product in this series is specially designed for special applications. INFINAM photosensitive resin series materials are suitable for common VAT polymerization such as stereo lithography apparatus (SLA), digital light processing (DLP).
About Yingke PE
Yingke PE is a mixed ownership asset management company with 30% of its equity held by state-owned capital. With the mission of “discovering the power of economy moving forward”, it ranks among the top 6 Chinese venture capital institutions with an asset under management of nearly CNY 50 billion. 90% of the entrusted funds come from financial institutions, state-owned enterprises and other large institutions LP.
Yingke PE focuses on the track of core assets such as biomedicine and hard science and technology, focuses on scientific and technological innovation enterprises that meet the national development strategy and have key core technologies, and adheres to the dual strategy of “biomedical industry investment + life science industry holding”. It has invested in nearly 300 high-quality projects, of which nearly 60% are in the biomedicine industry. It is known as the entrance level and platform investment institution for capital to enter the track of biomedicine.
About Dragonrise Capital Advisors
For nearly 20 years, Dragonrise Capital Advisors has focused on venture capital business at home and abroad, including venture capital for high-tech enterprises in the start-up and growth stages. Its management team has managed total assets of about USD 4 billion. It is composed of international employees who have been engaged in asset management and venture capital business in New York, Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai for a long time. Its key members have worked in top international investment banks such as JPMorgan and have educational backgrounds in famous universities at home and abroad, such as Yale University. Its main founder is one of the earliest and most successful venture capital experts in China's Internet industry, who has successfully invested and exited the cases of Tencent Technology Series A round, Sohu, Sina, Focus Media, GCL-Poly, Seeyon, Capital Online, etc.
About Luhe Venture Capital
Founded in 2018, Luhe Venture Capital is a professional technology VC in the field of scientific and technological manufacturing, and focuses on new materials, advanced manufacturing, high-end testing and other technical fields. After more than three years of rapid development, it has successfully invested in high-quality projects in many niche fields, such as Gaozheng New Material, UnionTech, Hanhai Testing, Wafertest, Easyclean and so on. Based on the Yangtze River Delta, Luhe Venture Capital takes the responsibility of serving small and medium-sized science and technology enterprises and helping to cultivate new regional industrial energy, and strives to become an influential science and technology venture capital in China.
