Sucralose Market Status And Trend In 2018

What is Sucralose

Sucralose is a new kind of sweetener. Its appearance is white and its state is crystalline powder. Its sweetness is about 600 times that of sucrose.It is the only sweetener with sucrose as raw material, with pure taste, no calories and no participation in human metabolism. It can be used for diabetic patients, patients with cardiovascular and Cerebrovascular diseases and the elderly. It has advantages of high stability, acid and alkali resistance, high temperature resistance, long shelf life and high safety. At present, Sucralose has been approved by more than 120 countries and widely used in food, beverage, health care products, daily chemical, medicine and other fields.

Analysis of the current situation of Sucralose market

Sucralose products are the most advantageous high sweetener in the world. Its market demand has maintained steady growth, and its capacity has expanded rapidly with the growth of market demand. Overall global demand for Sucralose was 2, 500 tonnes in 2009, according to BoboChem's analysis of historical data. The demand for Sucralose is expected to reach 10,000-11,000 tons by 2018, with the demand increasing by more than four times. In 2011, China exported about 1,000 tons of Sucralose. In 2017, China's total export volume was about 5,300 tons, and the export volume increased by more than five times. It can be seen that the international market of Sucralose has maintained rapid growth.

China's Sucralose market started to enter into market development in 2008, and by 2018, the total market demand has exceeded 2,000 tons, accounting for about 25% of the total global market demand, and is the fastest growing market area in recent years. Its annual growth rate in the global market is about 15%, and its development trend is positive.

Table1. The export quantity of Sucralose in 2011-2018.5 (from the analysis of customs data)

Table2. Global market demand/output/capacity trend in 2009-2018

Capacity scale analysis of Sucralose

Technically, the British company Telly was the inventor of Sucralose. Its research on Sucralose has a history of 40 years, and it is always the first in the market of Sucralose. Tailai uses phosgene chlorination process, and its waste disposal is more difficult. Therefore, environmental protection restrictions and incomplete upstream facilities lead to high production cost and great difficulty in expanding production. It is difficult to further expand the production scale. At present, the annual capacity is about 3,000 tons.

China's Sucralose industry started late and its foundation is weak, with a history of only a dozen years. However, there has been a breakthrough in the single group chemical protection technology, and the designed capacity of a single production line with an annual output of 2000 tons has been achieved. By 2018, the total production capacity of Sucralose in the world is about 13,000-15,000 tons, among which, the production capacity of international competitor Tailai is about 3,000 tons, while the total production capacity of China's Sucralose manufacturing enterprises is more than 10,000 tons. China is a major producer and exporter of Sucralose products, of which 80% are exported and about 20% are sold in China.

The above is only the analysis of the objective capacity of Sucralose, the actual production of some differences. Because as China's environmental inspections become more stringent, many factories will be forced to shut down intermittently because of environmental problems.

Analysis of market potential of Sucralose

1. Consumer demand

With the rapid development of the global economy, people's living standards have been greatly improved. The consumption of high sugar and high energy far exceeds the human body load, which leads to the increase of diabetes, obesity and other patients all over the world. More and more consumers are aware of the unhealthy effects of a high-sugar diet. Therefore, the demand for low-sugar/sugar-free products is increasing day by day, and the sales of low-sugar/sugar-free products in the market are increasing year by year. However, at present, it is still difficult to find sugar-free products, which indicates that the market demand for sugar reduction is imminent.

2. Government sugar reduction initiative

The WHO says reducing consumption of sugary drinks can reduce the risk of obesity, type 2 Diabetes and tooth decay. It is also recommended that adults should not consume more than 50g of added sugar per day, preferably about 25g. Currently, more than 40 countries and regions around the world have enacted tax policies on high sugar food/beverage. Controlling sugar and lowering sugar has become an important direction for enterprises to develop actively under the guidance of policies and at the same time guide people to pay attention to and pay attention to healthy life.

According to BoboChem, the implementation of sugar tax policies in more and more countries around the world will accelerate the reform of the global sugar-containing food and beverage industry. Manufacturers must take steps to reduce the amount of sugar in beverages and other foods. For example, two heavyweights in the global soft drinks industry, Coca Cola and Pepsi cola have had to make changes in recent years. They have launched many low-sugar sweeteners with no calories or very low calories, including Sucralose. The global promotion and policy advocacy of low-sugar/sugar-free health products further drives the rapid growth of high-sweetener market. The overall share of high sweeteners in the global sweet market is less than 10 percent, so the market growth potential is strong.

3. Advantages of highly artificial sweeteners

Consumers have a strong desire for safety and low calories, and the new sweeteners are in line with consumption trends. The new generation of sweeteners with better safety has been valued by consumers, and the demand for functional artificial sweeteners without calories or metabolism has become increasingly strong. From the first generation of saccharin, the artificial high sweetener has been updated five times, such as sweetness, aspartame, aspartame and Sucralose. Sucralose, with high safety and stable performance, is a new type of high quality, non-nutritive and efficient sweetener, and an ideal sweet substitute for food for patients with obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

4. Market development in new areas

The pharmaceutical industry is an emerging market sector for Sucralose products. In this field, sucrose is often used as flavor correction agent. Due to the taste problem of drugs, the amount of added sugar is usually high, which is totally unsuitable for people with diabetes and obesity. Therefore, it is urgently needed to support various low-sugar/sugar-free medical products to meet the needs of patients.

The market promotion in this field has just started, and still needs more efforts to promote and develop, and let more pharmaceutical customers recognize the new generation of pharmaceutical excipients high-power sweetener Sucralose, and step up the development of Sucralose in the pharmaceutical market and promote the expansion of the market capacity of Sucralose. In the future, Sucralose products will have greater development space in the field of medicine.

In addition, there is no GMP certificate in China's Sucralose factories, which makes it difficult to enter the pharmaceutical market. As the market develops, I believe this problem will be solved in the near future.

The global impact of Sucralose

Currently, more than 120 countries have approved Sucralose for use in food, health care and daily chemical products. The FAO/WHO joint expert committee on food additives (JECFA) has identified Sucralose as "generally accepted safe level (GRAS)" of A food additive. According to the European food safety authority (EFSA), Sucralose sweeteners are safe and can be incorporated into children's special medical foods. Internationally, Sucralose has already been recognized by many multinational and international companies, and become the quality raw material supplier of these giants, including Coca Cola, Pepsi cola, Danone, Mondelez, P&G, Unilever, Bayer and so on. So Sucralose will be further developed in the global market.

Future market forecast for Sucralose

Based on the above comprehensive analysis, it is predicted that the Sucralose market will maintain a long-term steady growth with an annual growth rate of about 15% in the next five years.

Table 3 Analysis of demand for Sucralose from 2021 to 2025

China's Sucralose production plants

In China, there are mainly 8 enterprises producing Sucralose, which produce and sell stably for a long time. The quality of Sucralose produced by these factories is similar. They have passed ISO9001, ISO14001, OHSAS18000, ISO22000, BRC and other certifications, as well as KOSHER, HALAL and other international product certifications. The quality of its products fully conforms to FCC10, USP40-NF35, EP9.0, EU231/2012 （2008/60/EC), GB25531, Sucralose industry standards, and has obtained the global supplier qualification certification of many international well-known food enterprises.