Xinwanxing Composite Materials, a Chinese producer of composite materials, has secured nearly 1 billion yuan ($140.6 million) in equity financing from domestic investors Eastern Bell Capital and Goldstone Investment.
Xinwanxing, founded in 2009, mainly manufactures products such as aerospace-grade carbon fibre prepregs and composite materials used in aerospace and other industries, including aviation, rail transportation, electric vehicles (EVs), and the production of wind turbine blades.
The firm operates from its headquarters in southwestern China’s Sichuan Province, where it has invested 1.2 billion yuan ($168.7 million) to build R&D labs, production facilities, and offices spanning a gross floor area of 536 acres, or 2.17 million square metres (23.4 million square feet).
This equity financing deal saw the 15-year-old company rope in its first external investors. Goldstone Investment, the private investment fund management subsidiary of China’s CITIC Securities, infused the capital into Xinwanxing as early as July, according to the investee’s business registration records.
The deal is expected to fund Xinwanxing’s plan to scale the production of aerospace-grade composite materials and facilitate its long-term business growth through improvement of corporate governance and production management, said Eastern Bell Capital in a Thursday post on its official WeChat account.
An early investor of EV brand Xpeng and JD Digits, the supply-chain management subsidiary of e-commerce giant JD.com, Shanghai-based Eastern Bell Capital operates as a dual-currency venture capital (VC) firm with 27 billion yuan ($3.8 billion) in assets under management (AUM).
Eastern Bell Capital “remains bullish” on the long-term development of China’s advanced manufacturing industry, said Zhu Yingchun, a partner of Eastern Bell Capital. He said that the novelty of Xinwanxing’s new material technology makes it “a rare supply chain company” in the aerospace industry.
“We firmly believe that new productivity is the key to opening a new growth cycle,” said Zhu.
