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Home > News > Food Industry News > Product diversification will explode the sugar substitute market

Product diversification will explode the sugar substitute market

cnfoodnet 2022-10-18

China is the world's third largest sugar market, sugar reduction, sugar control has been written into the policy advocacy. China's sugar consumption has slowed down in the past five years, with an average annual compound growth rate of less than 1%, while the average compound growth rate of low-sugar or sugar-free products has exceeded 20%, according to data released by China Business Data Center (CBNData). With the popularization of the concept of sugar control and the promotion of new consumer brands, the sugar substitute industry is ushering in an outbreak window period. But on the "concept hype" concerns so that the market is still more cautious about the expectations of sugar substitutes. In addition, the current production and demand of sugar substitute products are relatively single. In the future, the diversification of sugar substitute products and deeper consumer education will effectively expand its application scenarios.

Erythritol is oversupplied

Suppliers should "walk on multiple legs"

China is the world's largest producer of sweeteners, global head of sweeteners producer in China, including the world's largest erythritol, three yuan biological, the world's largest sugar alcohol suppliers sucralose and Ann honey JHJ supplier industry, the world's second biggest xylitol producers huakang co, the world's top two arhat fructose supplier HuaCheng creatures, such as sweeteners to cover every classification.

It's worth noting that, in contrast to the current view of splenda as a "healthier sweet alternative," splenda has a long history of being demonized, with academic and public debates over the safety of saccharin, cyclamate, acesulfameae, aspartame, and others. However, with the development of chemical technology, the sugar substitute industry is constantly iterating. For example, xylitol, erythritol, and grosvenoside are relatively safer types of sugar substitutes extracted from plants. Therefore, from a historical perspective, the current sugar substitute trend is just a new wave in the iterative process of the sugar substitute industry.

There is no doubt that the domestic sugar substitution trend is caused by Yuansheng Forest zero sugar bubble water, which uses erythritol as the main source of sweetness. Erythritol is also the "star" sugar substitute in the zero sugar tea drinking circle at present. Erythritol is the main sugar substitute used in almost every hot sparkling water single product on the market.

There are many kinds of sugar substitutes, and the reason why the market has a special liking for erythritol is that it is the most suitable type of sugar substitutes for current consumption under comprehensive consideration of taste and safety. So, despite the erythritol, sugar alcohol sweet price than the price/(sweetness) is low, the production cost is higher, but some consumers are still willing to buy related products at a higher price - 480 - ml bottle from forest market price 5.5 yuan, is a coke zero (500 milliliter specifications, using for sweetener aspartame, sucralose) of 1.6 times.

Because erythritol is so dominant among the new sugar substitutes, manufacturers are announcing capacity expansions. In May this year, Huakang Biological announced that the company's annual production of 30,000 tons of high purity crystal erythritol project began mass production; In August, Sanyuan Bio-based production capacity of 50,000 tons erythritol expanded on the basis of the original 85,000 tons capacity has also entered the trial production stage. The total erythritol production capacity of just six head producers will reach 445,000 tons/year, which is already 20 times the total erythritol consumption in China in 2021, according to the statistics of Guan 'an World.

But on the demand side, Frost Sullivan predicts that the total global demand for erythritol in 2022 will be 173,000 tons. According to the forecast of Tianfeng Securities, by 2025, the market demand for erythritol will be close to 300,000 tons. Clearly, erythritol has entered the stage of oversupply.

 

At the same time, the price of raw materials such as corn and wheat needed for erythritol production rises and falls rapidly due to multiple factors such as international situation and climate, which adversely affects the gross profit margin of producers. In the lower reaches of the industry, due to the impact of the pandemic in the first half of this year, the shipments of the beverage industry, the most important downstream market of erythritol, suffered heavy losses, which further aggravated the overcapacity of erythritol.

 

The sugar substitute industry seems to be caught in an awkward situation between the rising calls for sugar control and reduction and the oversupply of erythritol. But it's easy to find out that the reason for the awkwardness lies in the fact that the sugar substitute is simple, and the demand side is relatively simple -- the current sugar-free trend is most popular in the beverage industry. In other words, the market space of substitute sugar still needs to be further explored.

 

Therefore, sugar enterprises on the one hand, should develop a more diverse generation sugar business, on multiple legs walk returns and risk of effective dispersion at the same time, such as bowling treasure in determining the expansion of erythritol, sugar alcohol at the same time, also announced the expansion of the same capacity, ketone sugar, the latter product stability is better, it is closer to the sugar, is not currently approved as food additives in the domestic market. Huakang Biological announced on September 5 that it intends to issue 990 million convertible bonds plus functional sugar alcohols, including starch sugar/sugar alcohols series, aloxone and other types. On the other hand, sugar substitute enterprises should also actively participate in the market education team to effectively promote the expansion and diversification of the demand side.

Disclaimer: ECHEMI reserves the right of final explanation and revision for all the information.

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