Differentiated core technologies support MoonBiotech’s rapid growth in promising biological market: Interview with Dr. Jiang Xianzhi (Founder and CEO)

Launched only eight years ago, MoonBiotech has become a leading international microbiome technology company. It has built one of the world's largest and most biodiverse commercial microbe library, which contains over 220,000 proprietary microbial strains. The company has been listed in "the 50 Most Valuable Companies to Invest in China" for three consecutive years, and was awarded the "First Prize of Science and Technology Progress″ by the Ministry of Education of China in 2020, and named as a "Top 50 Deloitte Chinese Companies with High-Tech and Rapid Growth" in 2022. MoonBiotech has collaborated with leading companies, such as Syngenta, FMC and ADAMA, as well as research institutes, such as the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University and the National Microbial Resource Center. It undertakes national R&D projects under the 14th Five-Year R&D Plans. MoonBiotech achieved sales at CAGR of 300% over the past three years, and its business has expanded to the US and Latin America.

How has MoonBiotech achieved rapid development within such a short period of time? What are the highlights of its new products? What are the company’s future plans? Dr. Jiang Xianzhi, Founder and CEO of MoonBiotech, will answer these questions below.

Biologicals account for a relatively low market share in the crop protection and nutrition sectors, but the market is growing fast and many excellent companies have achieved good sales. In your opinion, what commonalities exist among these companies?

Biologicals are an emerging niche and its market is growing fast. The agrochemical giants have also entered this field. In my view, companies with good sales have the following commonalities:

Firstly, whether they are a biological or biochemical company, the first factor is having a good core product or portfolio, especially for biological companies, as good products are still scarce in China. Currently, there are many substandard products in the market, while problem-solving products with core technologies are not many in number. Good bio-products are innovative and different from their peer products, and can effectively address challenges in crop production, offering high cost-effectiveness.

The second is having an excellent R&D and technical sales team. Biologicals are different from chemical products. Many chemical pesticides in China are proven generic formulations that require minimal training for growers, while growers lack knowledge of biologicals and need a great technical sales team to promote adoption.

The third is possessing outstanding core technologies that highlight innovation capabilities. Taking the R&D of biologicals as an example, apart from Bacillus products, making fungi or Gram-negative-bacteria-based formulations more stable with longer shelf life is extremely challenging for biological companies. Taking the lead in developing advanced or unique new strains, new processes, new applications and new products in China reflects a company's core technological capability.

The fourth is having a renowned brand. There are not many renowned and outstanding biological brands in the Chinese market, unlike the chemical market where stand Syngenta, Bayer, FMC, BASF and others. Biological companies can establish a renowned brand in this niche market through remarkable innovation and brand marketing.

Achieving these four points will naturally lead to business growth.

After the establishment of the company, what accomplishments are you most proud of?

This is the eighth anniversary of MoonBiotech’s foundation. I am most proud of the following achievements over the past years:

Firstly, in a tough environment and with industry competition over the past eight years, we have survived and achieved healthy, rapid growth. We are in a highly competitive agri-input industry. Our products just entered the market in 2020 when the three-year pandemic hit. Surviving and thriving under such a market environment has been extremely valuable to us.

Secondly, our products are receiving recognition from more and more customers, markets and partners, which is what we are proud of. Giants, such as Syngenta, FMC and ADAMA, treat us as a priority partner in the Chinese agricultural microbial industry. Our distribution partners are also growing rapidly. Our sales maintain a two to three-fold annual growth rate. At the beginning, our distributors sold only tens of thousands of yuan, but now, dozens of distributors sold over one million yuan, and some distributors even sold more than ten million yuan. Our products truly help growers solve problems, and our customers grow and benefit from their collaborations with us.

Thirdly, what I am most proud of is MoonBiotech’s team. MoonBiotech has the most professional team in the microbial industry. On one hand, our R&D team has great R&D and innovation capabilities, as well as rich industrialization experience. Our researchers with Ph.D and master degrees are willing to roll up their sleeves and conduct research in the field, which is rare for many scientists. On the other hand, we send our sales teams to the lab and teach them about the R&D and production of our products. Therefore, MoonBiotech has nurtured industry-leading professional R&D and sales teams.

The Culture-To-Product is MoonBiotech's core technology platform. Could you tell us more about the platform's advanced nature and uniqueness? How do your products benefit from this platform?

The Culture-To-Product is an industrialization platform for microbial formulations. This proprietary intellectual property was developed by MoonBiotech after years of work, covering microbial strain discovery, high throughput screening, fermentation optimization and formulation development. Its advanced nature and uniqueness include:

World-class strain resource library: We have been developing this library for eight years and collected over 220,000 proprietary microbial strains, offering the great advantages of quantity and biodiversity to the whole world. This is MoonBiotech's most important biological asset and the source of our R&D of microbial products and innovation.

Leading industrialization platform: China has been very successful in microbial research, publishing many leading papers annually, but industrialization is rare, mainly due to the lack of suitable technologies. The Culture-To-Product platform has overcome bottlenecks from strain to product, such as scaling up production, formulation optimization, and longer shelf life. This is an integrated industrialization platform for both biomedical and bioagriculture applications.

Microbial discovery driven by digitalization with bioinformatics: This makes us different from other microbial companies in China. We have planned to sequence the complete genomes of 50,000 strains every year since 2022. We digitize all strain information and are developing future artificial intelligence (AI) to precisely predict microbial functions through genomic information, which will improve the efficiency of microbial discovery and product development. Very few companies in China digitizes all information of strains, as this takes up time and financial and human resource. Therefore, our platform is highly competitive in China.

Benefits from leading biomedical technologies: MoonBiotech also develops biomedical products. Its proven biomedical technologies can be utilized and contribute to the Culture-To-Product platform, promoting the development of bio-solutions for agriculture.

The PPFM product line was launched at the end of 2022 as the first of its kind in China. What is your view on its innovation and market potential?

MoonBiotech started working on pink-pigmented facultatively methylotrophic (PPFM) bacteria when the company was established. It takes seven to eight years to progress from strain discovery to product launch. There are only two companies in the world who develop and industrialize PPFM bacteria, NewLeaf Symbiotics in the US and MoonBiotech in China, demonstrating the innovation of such products.

The PPFM product line utilizes Gram-negative bacterial strains. Through metagenomic sequencing, we have found that they have symbiotic relationships with most crops. After in-depth research on the interactions between PPFM and crops, we discovered that PPFM plays critical roles in plant immunity, growth and development. PPFM can regulate crop immunity, improve resistance to pests and diseases, promote crop growth and enhance flowering and fruit set. Based on the functions of PPFM, this competitive product line has extensive application and market potential.

The majority of bacterial formulations in the market are based on Gram-positive bacteria, such as Bacillus. In fact, Gram-negative bacteria have more functional advantages. However, they also have thin cell walls, and it is hard to ferment with them, leading to a difficult industrialization. For example, scaling up PPFM fermentation from millions to above ten billion CFUs/mL is very challenging. Bacteria are not active, and the formulation is not stable after fermentation and drying them to formulate. But we have overcome these challenges.

PPFM product line applied in the field

The construction of your microbial formulation plant in Changde has been completed. Would you like to tell us more about the new plant? How does it contribute to the stable supply of good quality formulations?

This microbial formulation plant is located in Green Novel Materials Industry Park, with an area of 3.3 ha for Phase I. It has received an investment of around RMB150 million to RMB200 million, and started production this year. We call it ″the second generation fermentation and formulation plant,″ because its facilities and design concepts are very innovative. The plant has a number of 10 to 30-ton fermenters and several 100-ton fermenters, with overall agricultural microbial fermentation capacity and scale exceeding most peers in China. It has both high solid and liquid fermentation capabilities, which is rare in the country. Moreover, our plant produces products in various formulations and categories, enabling us to meet various customers’ needs in the future. And we have a quality testing building equipped with first-class inspection technologies, to ensure product stability and qualified rate.

The completion of the Changde plant will ensure more sufficient product supplies with higher stability and diversity.

MoonBiotech has collaborated with agrochemical giants, such as Syngenta, FMC and ADAMA. Are you looking for more partnerships?

Since its establishment, MoonBiotech has been developing the philosophy of open innovation and embracing more collaboration opportunities.

We hope to work with more leading domestic and overseas agrochemical or biological companies, to jointly expand the biological market rather than take part in vicious competition. The current biological market is still a small slice of the cake but growing fast. We wish to work with leading companies to make the cake slice bigger, which is the major motivation for our partnerships.

In addition, we hope that our partners can complement our capabilities. Our advantages lie in technology and R&D. We hope to better apply products in the field together with our partners, and promote more ″biologicals + chemicals″ integrated solutions with agrochemical companies. Growers are hoping to obtain better solutions to meet their cultivation needs, whether they are biologicals or chemicals. Prospective integrated crop protection solutions must be combinations of biologicals and chemicals in the future, and we hope to jointly promote the adoption of such solutions with our partners.

And we are cooperating with companies, such as Pagoda, Sinochem MAP, large UAV companies and others, and hope to collaborate with large farms, to jointly study microbial product applications, providing suitable solutions for farmers and making the application of our biologicals as convenient as chemicals.

The company expects a third of its bioagriculture revenue to come from international markets by 2025. What progress has your overseas business development achieved in the past year? Have you obtained product registrations abroad?

Going to the international markets is a necessary process for us, and an inevitable path for the globalization of biologicals. Our technologies are at the same level as overseas microbial companies. And we, as a Chinese company, offer advantages in manufacturing, biological resources and R&D costs, so I believe Chinese biological companies have the capacity to operate in international markets.

MoonBiotech is rapidly developing in overseas markets. We are firstly focusing on the US and Latin American markets. We have applied for registrations for our biofertilizers and microbial formulations in these markets. Several of our microbial formulations have been approved in thirteen states in the US, and we are expediting our product registrations in Brazil. Moreover, we have started applying for patents in these markets and looking for partnerships.

For more information about MoonBiotech, please contact the author Joyce Wang (joyce@agropages.com)