China's sweetener and functional sugar ingredients industry is stable and good

Hosted by the China Food Additives and Ingredients Association and hosted by Zhejiang Huakang Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., the Food Sugar Reduction Summit Forum (2021) and the 2021 Industry Annual Meeting of the Sweetener Professional Committee and the Functional Sugar Ingredients Professional Committee were recently held in Kaihua County, Zhejiang Province. The meeting was strongly supported by the Kaihua County Party Committee and the county government, du Yazheng, chairman of the association, Sun Jin, vice chairman and secretary general, Xue Yi, vice chairman, Du Jian, deputy secretary general, and the staff of the association secretariat, Hu Guohua, secretary general of the Sweetener Professional Committee of the China Tian Association, Zhu Lujia and Zheng Jianxian, secretary general of the Functional Sugar Ingredients Professional Committee of the China Tian Association, and Zheng Yuguo, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, attended the meeting. More than 200 people attended the meeting, including the chairman unit and vice chairman unit of the sweetener professional committee and the functional sugar ingredient professional committee, as well as representatives of related enterprises, colleges and universities and scientific research units in the sweetener and functional sugar ingredients industry from all over the country.

The overall situation of the industry is improving

At the same time, the conference held a preparatory meeting attended by the directors of the two professional committees, the deputy director units and the secretary general of the professional committees, and exchanged views on the economic operation status and existing problems of the industry in the past year. From 2020 to 2021, affected by the new crown pneumonia epidemic and many uncertainties, the industry is facing fierce competition in product prices, rising raw material prices, rising power curtailment and steam prices, and soaring export transportation costs; in particular, the "double control and double limit" in some provinces and cities has a significant impact on industry enterprises. Completion of carbon neutrality goals. In the past year, the industry of sweeteners and functional sugar ingredients has been steadily developed in the continuous persistence of industry colleagues, and the output and profit of some enterprises have reached record highs.

In his opening speech at the meeting, Du Yazheng pointed out that since the "National Nutrition Plan (2017-2030)" issued by the State Council in 2017 put forward the "three minus three health" action plan, the whole society has paid more attention to sugar reduction. Especially in recent years, sugar reduction has become the consensus of the whole society. According to the State Council's plan, food sugar reduction is a long-term work of the whole people. The food additives and ingredients industry provides a solid and powerful guarantee for this work. However, sugar reduction in food requires a scientific understanding. The so-called food sugar reduction is to reduce the intake of excessive calories by reducing the intake of sugar, rather than not adding sugar in food, but to reduce the intake of excess sugar. At present, there is already a problem of too many calories in Food Consumption in China, so sugar reduction has become an important task. However, from the perspective of the sugar consumption pattern in China and even in the world, it is still dominated by sucrose, supplemented by starch sugar, and important supplements by sweeteners. Therefore, food sugar reduction is not blind, there must be scientific analysis and means, I hope that through the joint efforts of the whole industry, to further promote the positive development of food sugar reduction work.

Lu Xiaguang, secretary of the Kaihua County CPC Committee, delivered a speech on behalf of the county party committee and the county government, saying that he hoped that experts, scholars and entrepreneurs would take this forum as an opportunity to not only take the pulse and point out the confusion for Kaihua consultation, but also find the right direction and path for Kaihua, and jointly discuss investment and development in Kaihua, expand the market, hold hands in cooperation and development, mutual benefit and win-win results, and jointly create a better tomorrow for the high-quality development of the sugar alcohol industry. Chen Deshui, chairman of Zhejiang Huakang Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., delivered a speech on behalf of the organizer of the annual meeting.

　　The sweetener market continues to expand

Participating domestic and foreign experts, scholars and entrepreneurs focused on the hot topic of food sugar reduction, and made special reports and exchanges on the problems and opportunities facing industrial development, future development trends, as well as the production, application, market and related regulations of functional sugar.

Hu Guohua, Secretary General of the Sweeteners Professional Committee, made a "2020-2021 Annual Work and Industry Development Report of the Sweeteners Professional Committee". The report pointed out that in recent years, the overall development trend of China's high-power sweetener industry is good, the development of traditional high-power sweeteners and compound sweeteners has risen steadily, and the development of new high-power sweeteners is promising, which has made great contributions to China's export earnings, economic development and employment increase. In 2020, the total output of high-power sweetener single products is about 125,000 tons, accounting for about 75%-80% of the total global production, and the export volume exceeds 50,000 tons, and 7 varieties such as cyclamate, saccharin, acesulfame, stevia, aspartame, sucralose, and glycyrrhizin continue to maintain a large-scale production trend.

Zhu Lujia, Secretary General of the Functional Sugar Ingredients Professional Committee, made a "2020-2021 Annual Sugar Sweeteners, Functional Sugar Ingredients Industry Development and Professional Committee Work Report". The report pointed out that since 2021, most of the functional sugar products have continued to maintain a stable upward trend, and the industry has continued to maintain steady growth. All relevant enterprises pay close attention to internal management, increase investment in research and development, adopt new processes and new equipment, attach importance to energy conservation and environmental protection investment, and most enterprises have achieved good economic benefits. In the past two years, the rapid growth of sugar-free beverages has led to the popularity of sweeteners such as erythritol and sucralose. It is expected that sugar-free beverages will maintain double-digit growth rates in the next 5 years, providing room for further development of sweeteners such as functional sugars.

During the meeting, the China Food Additives and Ingredients Association and the China Food Fermentation Research Institute jointly organized the "Seminar on the Formulation of Standard Table SweetEners of the China Food Association". The participants exchanged views on the quality and safety of raw materials, functionality, and product technical requirements involved in the study of table sweeteners. Everyone said that according to the results of the seminar and the follow-up plan, they will actively cooperate with the project team to jointly support the formulation of the association's table sweetener group standards, and promote the introduction of the standard as soon as possible to serve the industry. In addition, the conference deliberated and approved the addition of Shandong Bailong Chuangyuan Biotechnology Co., Ltd. to the deputy director of the Functional Sugar Ingredients Professional Committee of the China Food Additives and Ingredients Association.

The future needs to be cautious

Through the forum, the preparatory meeting of the annual meeting, the work report of the special committee and the exchange and discussion, the delegates formed the following consensus on the current situation of the industry:

The first is to cautiously predict the growth rate of the sugar-free products market and prevent blind expansion. Driven by the global trend of low sugar and sugar reduction, as well as the impact of the hot sales of sugar-free and low-sugar drinks represented by the Yuanqi Forest in China, in the past two years, erythritol has been highly concerned by the market with the characteristics of natural, zero calorific value, non-participation in sugar metabolism, high tolerance and stable acid and heat performance, and the scale of production and marketing has grown rapidly. With the continuous improvement of the erythritol industry boom, it has promoted the expansion of existing manufacturers' production capacity and the entry of new investors, the current production capacity of more than 400,000 tons, oversupply will make the market competition in the erythritol industry tend to be fierce. Increased competition in the market will eventually lead to a decline in the price of erythritol products, and companies looking to expand production and build new ones should be treated with caution.

The second is to actively respond to the recent "power outage and production limitation" to achieve transformation and upgrading and technological transformation. The state implements the policy of power outage and production limitation, on the one hand, to ensure the completion of the annual energy consumption double control target (energy consumption intensity and total amount are controlled), especially the energy intensity reduction target task. Therefore, in order to complete the energy consumption reduction target, the first-level and second-level early warning provinces and cities have implemented and continuously increased from the top to the bottom, so that the suspension of power rationing has become a reality. On the other hand, power rationing can also accelerate the elimination of backward production capacity and accelerate the upgrading of industrial structure.

The third is to maintain strategic focus in the critical period of serious inflation in other countries, and enterprises with high energy consumption must improve their technical level, reduce energy consumption, and avoid being affected by the double control of energy consumption, and the double control of energy consumption may become the norm. (Bao Xiaotie)

Source: China Food News