In line with China’s economic development, the consumption of sugar has increased. China grows sugar cane but does not produce enough sugar to supply its domestic consumption, which was 11.5 million tons in 2005. Two million tons of sugar needed to be imported in 2005.
Agricultural land for growing sugar cane in China is limited due to the climate and urbanisation. One crop that is more abundant in China is maize (corn), and China is the second largest producer in the world. Maize is hardly renowned for its sweet taste but it is rich in starch. Using enzymes, the starch can be converted into a wide range of sweeteners, including glucose, maltose and fructose. In fact, 6 million tons of maize were converted by the Chinese sweetener industry in 2005.
Sugar substitute
High fructose corn syrup can be used as a substitute for sugar. It matches sugar in almost every respect, including quality, degree of sweetness and caloric value. But unlike sugar, HFCS is always supplied as a liquid. HFCS cannot therefore be used where a dry sweetener is required. Apart from this one exception, HFCS can replace sugar to a greater or lesser extent in a wide range of food and beverage applications.
The USA is the most significant producer of high fructose corn syrups and consumes about 75% of world production. Japan, the world’s second largest importer of sugar, is another significant producer of HFCS.
Rising demand
Historically, HFCS production has been very small in China due to high production costs and old technology.
With the recent changes in the demand and supply situation for sugar in China, HFCS has become an economical alternative to sugar and Chinese producers of sweeteners from maize have started up or expanded production of HFCS. Production almost doubled in 2005 to 0.25 million tons from 0.14 million tons in 2004. The official estimate from the Starch Sugar Branch of the Chinese Fermentation Industry Association is that HFCS production will reach 0.6 million tons in 2006. China has 20 plants for producing HFCS and several new plants are under construction. In China it takes about one year to take an isomerisation plant from the design stage to commissioning. Most of these new plants are being installed by local Chinese starch processors that have no previous experience of high fructose production.
Strong support
“We have been very active in this market and have worked closely with the industry association to explain the technology and educate customers in how to use enzymes,” says Jianbin Lu, industry sales manager for Grain Processing at Novozymes in China. “Our sales team has made a lot of effort to introduce this new application while our Customer Solutions team has worked hand in hand with new customers unfamiliar with fructose production. They give training seminars for the operators and production manager, and they are there when a new plant is commissioned. They have even helped to design some plants by making suggestions. We provide a lot of added value.”
The local Customer Solutions experts for the starch industry in China are Jianming Hao, Zhong Pan and Xiangguo Zhao. When required, Customer Solutions colleagues from Europe and the USA have visited China to advise customers or give seminars. This means that Chinese customers can benefit from Novozymes’ many years of experience of HFCS from other countries where the application is well established.
Sweetzyme® IT from Novozymes is sold worldwide for this application and sales are growing in China. This immobilised glucose isomerase is packed into columns, where it converts glucose into fructose in a continuous process.
A typical isomerisation column in China is filled with 300-500 kg of Sweetzyme IT, which will last about 300 days before the enzyme activity is exhausted and the packed bed needs to be changed.
The enzyme is sensitive to both temperature and pH, so these parameters must be carefully controlled to preserve the activity of the enzyme.
Soft drinks
So far the high fructose corn syrup produced in China has been primarily used as a sweetener for soft drinks. It is made in two grades: HFCS 42 (42% fructose) and HFCS 55 (55% fructose). However, there are other potential markets yet to be explored. Here too Novozymes can help by making customers aware of the opportun-ities for HFCS in other applications such as baking and confectionery.
“The production of fructose is a new thing for local starch processors in China,” comments Novozymes’ Chunshun Fang, regional marketing manager for the starch industry in Asia Pacific. “Our industry sales manager, account managers and Customer Solutions people have contributed a lot to the development of this application in China. When a new plant starts up, we are there.”
