MicroCyto raises ~¥300M to scale methanol-based bio-manufacturing, solving feedstock bottleneck
Recently, MicroCyto announced the completion of a new round of equity financing raising nearly 300 million RMB. Previously, the company has successfully completed the R&D and industrialization of multiple products targeting both human and animal nutrition. The proceeds from this round will accelerate the development of its pipeline for producing bulk bio-based products via methanol-based bio-manufacturing.
Amidst the wave of carbon neutrality and sustainable development, bio-manufacturing is emerging as a crucial direction leading the transformation of future industries. McKinsey has predicted that up to 60% of the world's material production could potentially be synthesized biologically in the future. This suggests that bio-manufacturing has the potential to reshape the global industrial landscape of material production, offering humanity a greener and more sustainable mode of production.
Historically, the core feedstock for bio-based products has been starch-based sugars, primarily derived from food crops. Global chemical production already exceeds 2 billion tons. If produced entirely via bio-manufacturing, approximately 6 billion tons of grain would be required. However, the global total annual grain production potentially available as bio-manufacturing feedstock is only about 2.8 billion tons. Therefore, aggressively developing bio-manufacturing based on food crops would inevitably lead to a "competing with people for food" dilemma, which clearly contradicts the original intent of sustainable development.
Consequently, for bio-manufacturing to overcome its bottlenecks and become a mainstream production method, the transition to "non-food" feedstocks is undoubtedly an essential path. While industry focus has been on non-food carbon sources like straw and corncobs, despite decades of exploration in both academia and industry, significant challenges remain unresolved. These include the inherent high costs associated with the collection, storage, and transportation processes, as well as the complexities of subsequent processing. Viable solutions, both technologically and economically, are still lacking.
China's resource endowment, characterized by rich coal reserves but limited oil and natural gas, results in methanol production being predominantly coal-based, accounting for approximately 80% of its total output. Currently, China's coal-to-methanol capacity exceeds 100 million tons, representing about 67% of the global total. By December 2025, China has added roughly 80 million tons (including projects filed, under construction, or operational) of new coal-to-methanol capacity over the preceding five years, with about 30 million tons already built and operational, highlighting an urgent need to address the issue of overcapacity.
More notably, with the development of renewable energy sources like wind and solar, the technological pathway of reducing CO₂ to methanol using green hydrogen is maturing. This "liquid sunshine" approach enables low-cost, high-efficiency energy storage, driving the rapid deployment of green methanol production capacity. According to industry data, China's cumulative planned green methanol capacity reached approximately 60 million tons by the first half of 2025. Driven by policy support as well as economic and environmental benefits, green methanol is poised for sustained, rapid development. This will not only help achieve the "dual carbon" goals but also provide bio-manufacturing with a green and cost-effective non-food feedstock.
MicroCyto has successfully developed multiple microbial strains with high efficiency in methanol assimilation and is now accelerating the development of its pipeline for producing bulk bio-based products via methanol-based bio-manufacturing. This pipeline includes products like bulk amino acids and bio-based material monomers. This breakthrough has the potential to not only resolve the feedstock dilemma faced by bio-manufacturing but also help absorb China's excess methanol production capacity. Furthermore, the bulk amino acids it produces could help alleviate China's long-standing dependence on soybean meal imports, strengthening food security defenses, and providing novel technological pathways and solutions for the bio-manufacturing industry.