甜味剂中国新闻

Welcome to the December issue of Sweeteners China News published by CCM, a professional consulting company which has been extensively and intensively focusing on the dynamics of China's sweetener industry.

In the December issue, CCM reported that domestic functional oligosaccharide industry would enjoy more opportunities thanks to some positive factors. For example, China announced that it would allow couples to have a second child if either parent is an only child, which may become an opportunity for the development of domestic FOS and GOS industries in the future. In addition, research results released by Shandong Longlive shows that XOS stimulates the growth of bifidobacterium, and that it may be good for treatment of some diseases, which also provides an opportunity for the company to explore overseas markets.

On the contrary, some industries in China, especially industries involved in corn deep processing, faced more challenges than opportunities in the same period. For instance, gross profit of domestic HFCS producers decreased sharply in Sept. -Oct. 2013, and it is predicted to continue to be low in the next several months. Meanwhile, due to the weak demand from domestic downstream industries and gross loss of corn starch products in China, the operating rate of domestic corn starch industry decreased a little in Nov. 2013. In view of high corn prices in China, and strict management of the Chinese government on the domestic corn deep processing industry, some enterprises tend to make investments in overseas markets, for example BBCA, who will establish a corn processing plant with a total corn processing capacity of 600,000t/a in Brazil.

The supply of raw materials to some sweetener industries was varing in China. At present, more and more domestic glycyrrhizin producers have begun to expand the use of imported wild liquorice. Though the import price of liquorice continued to increase in the first three quarter of 2013, there were limited negative effects on profits of domestic glycyrrhizin producers, because of the strong demand of China's glycyrrhizin from overseas markets. At the same time, the import volume of L-phe in China witnessed an obvious decrease in Q1-Q3 2013, which means the dependence on imported L-phe in China weakened.

To be noticed, the RMB/USD exchange rate is 6.14 in this issue (source: The People's Bank of China), and all the prices mentioned in this newsletter include the VAT unless otherwise specified. If there are any specific topics you would like us to cover or any subjects you would like us to investigate in more details, please contact us by +86-20-3761 6606, or econtact@cnchemicals.com.