China’s only “third-generation degradable plastic” company secures two consecutive funding rounds amid 30,000-ton production line launch

Recently, Beijing Zhongke Kelan New Materials Technology Co., Ltd. (abbreviated as: Zhongke Kelan) has consecutively completed two rounds of angel+ financing. Following the state-owned capital platform Jin Qiao Fund and the industry leader Fengyuan Biology, emerging investment institutions such as Hangzhou Kaidao have also successively participated in the investment. The shareholder structure is gradually forming a diverse ecological combination of "state-owned capital + industrial capital + market-oriented capital."

Behind capital’s “voting with its feet” lies a core question: What technology does this company—founded by Dr. Junhui Ji, a researcher at the Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a foreign academician of the Russian Academy of Engineering—actually possess, enabling investors to confidently invest even amid a market downturn?

The answer lies in its core product — the fully natural domain degradable polyester material PDA.

Currently, mainstream degradable plastics—such as PLA, starch-based plastics, and PBAT—account for over 90% of the market share. However, these mainstream degradable materials generally degrade only under industrial composting conditions; once they enter natural environments such as soil, seawater, or freshwater, their degradation rate drops sharply, and they may take several years to visibly fragment.

PDA, full name "Polyesters Bio-Degradable in All Nature Environment", has revolutionized this situation. It can be completely degraded in all natural environments such as compost, soil, seawater, and freshwater, finally converting into CO₂ (or CH₄) and water, with degradation periods adjustable from a few days to several years.

The key technologies and industrial application research on fully naturally degradable plastics have been selected as one of the top ten scientific and technological advances of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Chemistry in 2025. Professor Ji Junhui's research team was the first in the world to propose the concept of "fully naturally degradable plastics." They established a copolymer structural design strategy combining non-enzymatic hydrolysis with biodegradation. By introducing hydrolyzable sites into the polymer chain, and simultaneously regulating the sequence structure and intermolecular forces, they successfully developed a series of novel fully naturally degradable plastics. This research solved the international challenge of slow and difficult degradation of existing plastics in seawater at the molecular level, and also overcame the technical bottleneck of incompatibility between degradability and mechanical properties and heat resistance.

The unique structure of PDA endows it with performance that "overwhelms" existing materials.

Let's look directly at the data:

Compared to PLA, PDA has better toughness, with a maximum elongation at break of up to 800%, completely solving the problem of PLA being "hard and brittle", making it more suitable for film bags, agricultural films and other products.

Compared to PBAT, PDA exhibits higher strength and better transparency. Although PBAT is flexible, it has relatively low strength and only moderate transparency, making it difficult to meet the dual demands of high-end packaging for both mechanical performance and visual appearance.

Simply put, PDA achieves the rare balance of “high strength, excellent toughness, superior transparency, and complete biodegradability across all environments”—exactly the ideal material long sought by downstream application markets, particularly in the electronics, daily chemical, and cosmetics industries.

Zhongke Kelan has now formed a product matrix of PDA raw materials with four categories (PDA-R, PDA-T, PDA-S, PDA-B) and dozens of grades, which can meet the application requirements of plastic packaging upgrade and replacement in the 3C, daily chemicals, cosmetics, and medical fields, as well as high-growth market areas such as ecological agriculture, marine farms, offshore operations, and 3D printing materials.

Source: Zhongke Kelan

Technical indicators are beautiful, but they ultimately need to be applied in real-world scenarios to have value.

A typical order secured by Zhongke Kelan clearly demonstrates the unique value of PDA.

A leading customer in the electronics information industry requires a degradable packaging protective film/bag. The requirements are extremely stringent.

Must pass the "85/85" reliability test (85°C, 85% relative humidity).

Performance should be close to or even reach the level of PE/PP protective film bags.

High transparency and high barrier properties simultaneously

Previously, products from multiple biodegradable plastic manufacturers failed in tests—either suffering severe performance degradation under high temperature and humidity, lacking sufficient strength and easily tearing, or failing to meet transparency requirements.

Ultimately, the PDA product from Zhongke Kelan was successfully selected. It maintained stable performance in high-temperature and high-humidity environments, and the related products have been launched on the market.

Zhongke Kelan is currently the only company in China that has mastered PDA technology and successfully achieved its industrialization. It's not hard to understand why capital is rushing to invest, given the "unique-to-me" technological barrier.

Behind the technology is people.

The core technology and team of Zhongke Kehulan were incubated from the National Engineering Research Center for Eco-Plastics and Engineering Plastics of the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Source: Zhongke Ke Lan

Founder Ji Junhui, researcher, is a renowned scientist in the field of ecological plastics worldwide.

Researcher at the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Engineering

Director of the National Engineering Research Center for Engineering and Environmental Plastics

This is an "engineer-type" scientist with both profound research capabilities and an industrial perspective.

Under his leadership, Zhongke Kelan has completed the delivery and verification of ton-scale products, and the sales revenue in the first quarter of this year has exceeded the total of the previous 25 years.

Currently, the 3,000-ton production line has entered the overall equipment production and installation phase, with plans to complete the trial run by mid-year.

The construction of a 30,000-ton production capacity has been initiated ahead of schedule, and over a hundred acres of construction land have been reserved in Wuhai City. Various preliminary works are gradually being carried out. This means that PDA technology has moved out of the laboratory and now has the foundation for large-scale, stable supply.

For downstream companies, this sends a key signal: PDA is not a "future contract," but a mature material that can truly enter the supply chain.