China’s Hunan Omnisun Information Material has secured 740 million yuan ($101.6 million) in a Series B round of financing to invest in new facilities producing materials essential in semiconductor manufacturing.
Omnisun, which counts Hunan Energy Group, a government-backed energy conglomerate in central China, as its biggest shareholder, raised the new financing to invest in “the transformation and upgrading of the photomask manufacturing industry in China”, said Omnisun in its latest WeChat post.
Founded in August 2003, Omnisun is involved in the R&D, production, and sales of substrate materials used for photomasks — which play an important role in the semiconductor manufacturing process and are the master plates used to transfer circuits onto semiconductor wafers.
The firm closed its Series A round at 560 million yuan ($76.9 million) in Jan 2024.
Hunan Energy Group invested in the Series B round along with existing shareholder Shenzhen Venture Capital Manufacturing Transformation and Upgrading Advance Materials Fund, a fund managed by a unit of the state-owned Shenzhen Capital Group subsidiary.
Comprehensive Reform Experiment (Shenzhen) Fund, a 70-billion-yuan ($9.6 billion) fund primarily investing in the reform of state-owned enterprises, backed the deal as the lead investor.
Upon completing the Series B round, Hunan Energy Group remains the biggest shareholder with a 40% stake. The Shenzhen Capital Group-managed fund holds a 27% stake, while the Comprehensive Reform Experiment (Shenzhen) Fund owns 9.5%, according to the post.
Omnisun, located in Changsha City in Hunan, plans to invest the funding in constructing new facilities producing high-precision photomasks using synthetic quartz in the central Chinese province.
With an expected overall investment of 1.8 billion yuan ($247.1 million), Omnisun is building the new production facilities through two phases.
The firm officially broke ground for phase I in December 2024 to focus on facilities producing 8.5-generation photomasks used in display panel products. The phase I project is estimated to be operational by December this year.
The construction of its phase II project, targeting photomasks at a trailing edge node of 28 nanometres, is scheduled to start in 2025 and be completed in 2026.
