China's Taurine production capacity status 2023: mainly used in food and beverage

Taurine is an amino acid converted from sulfur containing amino acids, also called Taurine, taurocholic acid, bovine choline, and bovine bilirubin. As a sulfur-containing amino acid in animals, Taurine is widely distributed in the brain, heart, liver, kidney and ovary, uterus, skeletal muscle, blood, saliva of humans and animals in the form of free amino acids, especially in marine animals. With the increasing demand for taurine, the output of Taurine extracted from marine animals can no longer meet the market demand. Therefore, the industry began to use chemical synthesis to prepare Taurine.

At present, the processes for producing Taurine in China are mainly divided into ethylene oxide process and Ethanolamine process. The ethylene oxide process is frequently used in the market due to low use cost, low energy consumption, high yield of finished products, high return on investment, low environmental pollution and other factors. From the perspective of the industrial chain, upstream raw materials mainly refer to raw materials such as ethylene oxide, sulfuric acid, and sodium bisulfite. The midstream link mainly refers to the production of taurine, while the downstream link refers to the application fields of taurine, including beverages, pet food, medicine, and many other fields.

Ethylene oxide process is a commonly used method to produce Taurine. It takes ethylene oxide, sulfuric acid and Sodium bisulfite as the main raw materials, and finally synthesizes the finished product of Taurine through addition, neutralization, crystallization and other reactions. According to the research, 0.5 ton of ethylene oxide is required to produce 1 ton of Taurine products. It can be seen that ethylene oxide plays an extremely important role in the production of Taurine.

From its price trend, from January 2022 to January 2023, the overall price of ethylene oxide in China was on a downward trend, mainly due to the expected downward demand for downstream polycarboxylate water reducing agent monomers. In addition, the inventory of polycarboxylate water reducing agent monomers has accumulated to a medium to high level, and the operating rate of the enterprise has decreased, resulting in a weak purchasing atmosphere for ethylene oxide. By February 2023, due to the improvement in downstream demand and the rise in raw material ethylene prices, the price of ethylene oxide has reached 6800 yuan(appropriately $950 US dollar)/ton, an increase of 7.94% compared to 6300 yuan(appropriately $880 US dollar)/ton at the beginning of the month.

Taurine is an organic osmotic regulator, which not only participates in regulating cell volume, but also provides a basis for the formation of bile salts. It also plays an important role in the modulation method of intracellular free calcium concentration. It has a wide range of biological functions, such as anti-inflammatory, analgesic, maintaining the balance of Osmotic pressure of the body, maintaining normal visual function, and so on. Therefore, it has been widely concerned and applied in various fields.

According to statistics, the downstream market of Taurine mainly includes food and beverage, Pet food, health food, feed, medicine and others, of which food and beverage accounts for the largest proportion, 45%, followed by Pet food accounting for 30%, health food accounting for 14%, feed accounting for 8%, and medicine and others accounting for 3%.

Taurine, also known as amino Ethanesulfonic acid, is the main effective ingredient of many functional drinks to resist fatigue. From the perspective of Taurine content of various brands, red bull (Austria) has the highest Taurine content with 394mg/100ml, while red bull (China) has a low Taurine content with 48 mg/100ml. The required cost also remains low, and the overall industrial profit level is high.

With the continuous expansion of market demand, the market scale of functional drinks continues to increase, which drives the development of Taurine industry. According to statistics, the functional drinks will increase from 71.1 billion yuan in 2016 to 124.4 billion yuan in 2020. In 2021, the market scale of functional drinks in China will reach 140.27 billion yuan, 12.8% higher than that in 2020.

Since Taurine itself cannot be synthesized and needs to be ingested by pets through external food, Taurine has also been used in Pet food to protect pets' eyesight, enhance neural stability and enhance immunity.