Erythritol is a kind of sugar alcohol sweetener substance that is widely found in plants and organisms in nature. It is generally white crystalline in nature, slightly sweet and cool, and is suitable for many kinds of food. Usually, erythritol has low calories, high taste, anti-cavity, low hygroscopicity, etc.
Main advantages and properties of erythritol
Compared with sorbitol, xylitol, maltitol, and mannitol, erythritol has the advantages of high tolerance, high safety, cold sweetening effect, low hygroscopicity, and zero calorific value.
Erythritol is an internationally recognized safe sugar substitute. In recent years, with the improvement of people’s health awareness and the increasing prominence of obesity, diabetes, and other modern diseases, the global trend of sugar control and reduction is increasingly obvious, which directly drives the further expansion of the market scale of erythritol, and the market demand also maintains a continuous growth trend.
Production process
The production methods of erythritol mainly include the biological extraction method, chemical synthesis method, and microbial fermentation method, and the current industrial large-scale production of erythritol uses the microbial fermentation method. Microbial fermentation for the production of erythritol is a mode of production using glucose as raw material and hypertonic-resistant yeast as fermenting strain using the fermentation process.
Global Erythritol Production Analysis
With the improvement of the industry boom, global erythritol production has seen explosive growth since 2017. Global production rose from 51,000 tons in 2017 to about 85,000 tons in 2019, an increase of 25.0% year-on-year, or 66.7%. erythritol’s share of total global sweetener production in 2020 reached 24%.
Global erythritol production capacity is mainly concentrated in a few head enterprises in China. If we add foreign manufacturers and some small manufacturers, the global erythritol existing capacity is expected to be around 220,000 tons in 2022, while in the next 3-5 years, the new capacity of about 260,000 tons. With an 80% capacity utilization rate, the production in 2022 can reach 176,000 tons, which matches the demand.
Erythritol production in China
During 2015-2017, the total production of erythritol in China was stable at about 19,000 tons, and in 2018, the total production of erythritol in China rose almost exponentially to 51,000 tons in 2019, with a compound growth rate of 53.1% from 2015-2019, becoming the sweetener with the highest production growth rate, accounting for 24% of the national share of non-sucrose sweetener production. In 2020, China’s erythritol production will go up again, with an output of about 80,000 tons, up 73% year-on-year.
Erythritol demand analysis
Erythritol downstream mainly includes food and beverage industries such as sugar-free beverages, candy, chocolate, flavored sugar, table sugar, etc. In addition, it can also be used in the production of some cosmetic products and chemical products. From the perspective of incremental market demand, erythritol consumption is rising rapidly. China’s erythritol consumption in the future space is huge, up nearly 100% in 2019, erythritol share of China’s non-sucrose sweeteners market share of the total output value from 4.0% in 2015 to 6.4% in 2019, the share of the share is expected to increase further.
However, more developed countries such as Europe and the United States are the main markets, and the overall domestic erythritol consumption is still lower than that in Europe and the United States. If we use the total erythritol consumption of China and the United States in 2019 divided by the total population of the country in that year to get the per capita erythritol consumption of both countries in 2019 respectively, if it is estimated that the per capita erythritol consumption in China in 2025 reaches the level of the United States in 2019, the CAGR should be about 27%, then we can budget the market space of erythritol in China in 2025 as 130,820,000 tons. 317,200 tons in 2025.
