"Fusha Technology" has completed its angel round of financing, focusing on the precise ceramic grinding technology for coffee.
36Kr has learned that "Fusha Technology" has completed its angel round of financing. The investors in this round are CAYE Coffee Technology and Yongqi Ceramics.
Fusha Technology was established in December 2024. It is a precision ceramic technology manufacturer specializing in coffee grinding. Its core product is the precision ceramic parts for coffee machines, suitable for commercial fully automatic coffee machines, household coffee machines, coffee grinders and other coffee grinding components.
The investors in this round come from the upstream and downstream of the coffee industry. Among them, CAYE Coffee Technology is a domestic fully automatic coffee machine brand. Based on its self-developed Bionic Barista system, it innovatively designs the coffee machine control system and specializes in high-quality fully automatic coffee machines. Suzhou Yongqi Ceramics has been deeply involved in the ceramics industry for more than 30 years, focusing on the field of high-performance structural ceramics. It is a professional structural ceramics application solution provider integrating the research and development of ceramic raw materials, the design and production of precision ceramics, mold manufacturing and technical support.
Just as Apple has ignited the mobile phone industry chain and Tesla has ignited the new energy vehicle industry chain, the Chinese coffee market is in a period of rapid growth. The acceleration of chain expansion and the increase in user penetration rate have led to a strong demand for commercial and household fully automatic coffee machines. And the coffee grinder components, especially the coffee grinder burrs, are one of the key components to measure the performance of a coffee machine.
The founder of Fusha Technology, Han Lin, has a mechanical engineering background. From 2000 to 2007, he participated in the design of semiconductor application solutions at Hua Hong Group. Since then, he has continued to deeply cultivate the field of precision ceramics. Han Lin told 36Kr, China is the largest exporter of coffee machines in the world, but "big but not strong." In the past, the exported coffee machines were mainly mid-to-low-end products. Fusha Technology hopes to help the domestic coffee machine industry embark on the path of high-end development, so that China's coffee machines can also be the best in the global mid-to-high-end market.
The authoritative coffee industry expert Scott Rao clearly mentioned in "The Science of Espresso Extraction": An excellent coffee grinder should produce coffee particles of the appropriate size and form a bimodal curve (biomodel) particle size distribution, so as to provide the right water flow resistance when extracting espresso. At the same time, the grinding process should minimize the generation and accumulation of heat to avoid adverse effects on the coffee flavor. And these variable factors are mainly related to the process structure of the burrs and the cutting force.
At present, the mainstream coffee grinder burrs in the industry are traditional metal burrs. With the increase in the number of uses, it is difficult to avoid wear and blunting, which will directly lead to a decrease in the cutting force and affect the extraction effect. In addition, metal burrs are prone to heat up during grinding, resulting in the loss of coffee flavor and the seepage of oil, affecting the uniformity and extraction quality of the coffee powder, and making the coffee quality unstable.
In contrast, ceramic burrs have significant advantages such as high hardness, low wear resistance, and low thermal expansion coefficient. They can better adapt to the commercial coffee scene with a high cup output, maintain efficient grinding, stable temperature, and reduce the frequency of later replacement and maintenance costs.
The first-generation ceramic burrs appeared in the 1980s. Starting from the European market, the leading fully automatic coffee machine brands in Switzerland have applied them. However, due to the industrial level and technological capabilities at that time, the structural design of this generation of ceramic burrs has obvious limitations. The ceramic burrs for coffee machines in China began to form a scale around 2016.
Fusha Technology found in the test that when the first-generation ceramic burrs in the market are used for continuous grinding of coffee powder, the particle size deviation will increase. After continuous grinding of 300 cups, the particle size deviation exceeds ±300μm. In addition, the first-generation ceramic burrs are relatively brittle and have a relatively low lifespan, which is also the reason why the industry has concerns about the use of ceramic burrs in the past.
Through the development of new materials and structural design, Fusha Technology's second-generation ceramic burrs are based on the first-generation ceramic burrs and undergo extensive technical optimization. The particle size deviation can be controlled to ±40μm, and the accuracy is improved by approximately 10 times. It is also more durable, and the grinding life can reach about 3000kg, while the traditional metal burrs are only 500 - 1000kg.
Fusha Technology's coffee ceramic burr product, provided by the interviewee
The durability gap is also an important difference in the overall cost of the burrs. Han Lin told 36Kr that the cost of imported metal burrs is not low. Although there are domestic technical providers of metal burrs, the grinding life can only be up to 300 kg at most, and the later maintenance cost is high.
In addition to the incremental market, there is also a lot of development space for the replacement of burrs in the existing coffee machine market. "The burr is a wearing part, which can be understood as the aftermarket of the car," Han Lin told 36Kr. Fusha Technology will on the one hand launch new components for the coffee machines newly developed by manufacturers, and on the other hand, launch corresponding ceramic burr component products for the existing coffee machine market.
Although the company has just been established, Fusha Technology has completed the basic staffing of the production and operation ends, and in terms of materials, production structure, and system integration, it has completed the selection of raw materials, the formulation of SOP, and the certification and analysis of the product structure, forming a clear responsibility standard system.
The reason for the rapid product launch is on the one hand related to the development of the overall ceramic burr industry. The coffee precision ceramic burr is not a 0 - 1 technical process. In the past, there have been mature technical application foundations in the fields of chemical fiber manufacturing, textile manufacturing, and transmission manufacturing.
In addition, it is also due to the industrial layout foundation of Fusha Technology's two investors. According to Han Lin, Yongqi Ceramics focuses on precision ceramics and currently occupies 90% of the global mid-to-high-end knitting machinery market and is positioned in the high-end textile machinery application field, with a prominent market position and has accumulated a large number of underlying technologies of precision ceramics; on the other hand, CAYE Coffee Technology has professional knowledge in the application end of fully automatic coffee machines. The joint investment of the two is also a complementary advantage in the细分 field of coffee precision ceramics.
Han Lin told 36Kr that the reason why Yongqi Ceramics, which already has a coffee machine ceramic burr product business, invested in Fusha Technology is mainly because Yongqi Ceramics' business is more focused on the knitting and textile field and is focusing on the development of the new energy vehicle market. Participating in the form of investment is to develop the coffee precision ceramics market more flexibly and targeted.
The founder of CAYE Coffee Technology, Wu Peng, told 36Kr that the reason why CAYE Coffee Technology will jointly invest in Fusha Technology with Yongqi Ceramics is that CAYE Coffee Technology hopes to deeply cultivate the core components of the coffee machine, vertically penetrate the upstream supply chain, rather than make a horizontal expansion. Next, it will also continue to deeply cultivate the core components. "We are not only transforming the domestic coffee machine, but also hope to build the entire Chinese coffee machine industry chain."
Han Lin told 36Kr that the core component of the ceramic burr is just the beginning. Fusha Technology plans to make the whole machine application of the coffee machine grinding technology based on the self-developed coffee core components, including the development of brand coffee grinder components and coffee grinder products. Han Lin said that only by mastering the core technology from the source can the subsequent production maximize the cost control.
Fusha Technology is not only concerned about the domesticization opportunity of the domestic coffee parts market, but also is simultaneously developing international business. Before Fusha Technology, the high-end ceramic burrs in the international coffee machine market were dominated by European brands. Among them, the Swiss coffee grinder brand Ditting, which has the title of "Grinding King" in the industry, has developed the brand's coffee grinder products.
International coffee professional parts companies similar to Ditting are also the direction that Fusha Technology benchmarks against. Han Lin said that under the same conditions, thanks to the technical foundation of the precision ceramics industry and the professional support of the two investors, the precision ceramics of Fusha Technology can directly achieve higher cost performance and high quality levels compared to similar companies in Europe and Japan, and the feedback from the professional evaluation is that the relevant parameters are not inferior to or even exceed the industry level.
Because of this, Fusha Technology already has orders in hand, and is simultaneously conducting in-depth cooperation negotiations with leading coffee machine manufacturers. At the same time, it is also actively developing the international market and plans to compete with coffee core component companies on the international stage. Han Lin said that in terms of core spare parts and the whole machine system, Fusha Technology's technical reserves in the fully automatic coffee machine industry already have the ability to enter the 2.0 plan.