Feedinfo Review Summer 2023 news bites: Production

Russian Feed Additives Plant Near Ukrainian Border Damaged

Premix Plant N°1, a subsidiary of poultry company ZAO Prioskolie, and a leading Russian amino acids manufacturer, was reportedly hit by a missile strike at the very end of May. The company’s site in Shebekino near Belgorod, 20 km northeast of the Ukrainian border, has sustained damage. Premix Plant N°1 has a production capacity of 80,000 tonnes/year of lysine sulphate.

OCP Group To Expand Capacity Of GlobalFeed

Upon completing the acquisition of a 50% stake in feed phosphates supplier GlobalFeed from Fertinagro Biotech in May, Morocco’s OCP Group announced its intention to roughly double GlobalFeed’s production capacity to 400,000 tonnes/year by 2027, and to add premium products beyond DCP and MCP.

Shandong Yinghe Bio Launches New Tryptophan Production

A new 3,000 tonne per year tryptophan production line was launched in Rizhao, Shandong this May. The entity behind the project, Shandong Yinghe Biotechnology, is understood to be a partnership between Yota Bio-engineering Co., Ltd. and China Pharmaceutical University

Cj Bio Completes Amino Acids Expansion In Brazil

In late May, CJ Bio officially inaugurated expansions at its amino acid production site in Piracicaba, Brazil. The project saw the site’s tryptophan capacity increase by 25% to reach 50,000 tonnes/ year, and saw 23,000 tonnes of threonine capacity added. However, the company has also decided to scale back total lysine production volumes by 20% during H2 of this year, amid high prices for raw sugar, a key component.

Daesang’s SK Plant Focuses On Arginine

Production of lysine at Daesang’s factory in Gunsan, South Korea has been suspended as the company focused on arginine production instead. It is understood that the company will not be switching back until July at the earliest, given weak demand in the lysine market.

Chinese Threonine Makers Investigating Switch To Valine

In mid-May, after months of meagre margins in threonine, Fufeng trialled a production change which would allow it to make valine on part of its threonine production line in Hulunbeir, Inner Mongolia; Feedinfo has been told that the final fate of the line is not yet decided.

Meanwhile, Meihua also reduced output of its own threonine production this quarter for maintenance. The company plans to launch 250,000 tonnes/year of new threonine capacity in July in Tongliao. However, there have also been reports, yet unconfirmed by the company, that it is also looking to switch some threonine capacity in Tongliao to valine production.

NHU's New Methionine Line Delayed; Taurine Production Now Online

Originally scheduled to come online in June, NHU’s new 150,000 tonne per year methionine line in Shandong has been postponed until August.

On the other hand, in May, the company put a new feed- and food-grade taurine production line into operation at its site in Shangyu district, Shaoxing, in Zhejiang province. The new unit has a designed production capacity of 30,000 tonnes/year. Taurine is a non-protein sulphur-containing amino acid.

Raw Materials Shortage Keeps Chinese Vitamin B3 Prices High

The supply of pyridine, a key ingredient for the production of vitamin B3, has become tight in recent months, largely because of dynamics in other markets (pyridine is deeply tied to the production of paraquat, an herbicide which has been losing market share to glyphosate). Most Chinese producers are understood to be operating at a very low utilization rate, while Anhui Redpont has stopped production entirely at its factory in Ma’anshan, Anhui, due to the shortage of raw materials.