By Kate Mei Lam Lai, Editor
China’s feed enzyme market is fast-growing as the application of feed enzymes in the country is becoming more and more popular. To get some insight into the country’s feed enzyme sector, Feedinfo spoke to Vega Pharma, a leading Chinese feed additive producer. Established in 1989, Vega Group is headquartered in Zhejiang, China. The company currently operates eight production sites. Vega Pharma also shared its development ideas for this market segment.
Feed enzymes were introduced in the 1980s to China’s feed industry, and their large-scale application started in the 1990s, when the products used were mainly imported from other countries.
Mr Davi Liu, Vice President of Vega Pharma, said that the high-end feed enzyme market was occupied by foreign companies for a long time, and China’s domestic feed enzyme sector emerged relatively late. To name a few overseas competitors in feed enzymes, Liu listed companies such as AB Enzymes, BASF, and DSM/Novozymes. As for Vega Pharma’s main Chinese competitors in the field of feed enzymes, they include Beijing Challenge Group, Sunhy, Sunson, VTR BioTech, etc.
According to Liu, in the past two decades, Chinese feed enzyme production companies have developed rapidly because of the improvement of the Chinese enzyme fermentation know-how and the continuous reduction in production costs. In a 2019 interview, China’s CRVAB Bio-technology Co., Ltd., based in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia, also told Feedinfo that in recent years, with the progress of biotechnology, the production cost for feed enzymes in China has decreased, while the market penetration rate has increased rapidly.
Domestically produced feed enzymes now account for most of the Chinese market share, with their export volume increasing year-on-year, said the Vice President of Vega Pharma.
“There are more than 20 kinds of commercial feed enzyme preparations made in China, which are widely used in the feed industry. The [Chinese] feed enzyme market has gradually matured,” Liu commented.
Asked about the factors that are driving the growth of the feed enzyme sector in China, Liu answered that drivers include the advancement of the Chinese breeding industry (driven by the rising living standards, bringing the national demand for meat products to increase), enzyme products’ improvement in a technical level, continuous innovation which helps expand the scope of applications in the enzyme industry, and the national policy that actively promotes the development of the enzyme sector.
He added that after China implemented the ban on in-feed antibiotics as growth promoters in 2020, feed enzymes replaced a variety of antibiotic markets and brought in new opportunities, “Vega Pharma is seizing this opportunity to actively expand the global market,” Liu commented.
Vega Pharma itself has a feed enzyme production site in the Zhejiang province, China. According to Liu, the site mainly manufactures lipase, protease, glucose oxidase, phytase, cellulase, xylanase, mannanase, glucanase, alpha-galactosidase, amylase, catalase, and multi-enzymes, which are mainly supplied to broilers, laying hens, pigs, piglets, ruminants, ducks, and other animal species.
He added that Vega Pharma’s own feed enzyme factory has an annual fermentation capacity of 15,000 tonnes and a production capacity of 50,000 tonnes/year of finished products in powdered, granulated, coated, liquid, and other forms.
“In the past two years, our factory has been continuously undergoing plant expansion and production technology upgrades,” said Liu.
“Our fermentation workshop, post-process production workshop, and raw material and finished product warehouse have recently been upgraded. It is expected that the factory expansion will be completed at the end of 2023,” he added.
Liu stressed that Vega Pharma is not only selling enzyme products in China; the company has successfully exported enzyme products to Turkey, Russia, Ukraine, Pakistan, and other countries.
“We believe that Vega Pharma will be able to sell enzyme products all over the world in the future,” said the Vice President of Vega Pharma.
As for the future of Vega Pharma’s focus on its feed enzyme business, Liu said that “Vega’s major investment and efforts in feed enzymes will be devoted to the research and development of the application effect of enzyme products.”
“Be it in China or anywhere else in the world, the feed enzyme industry has maintained rapid growth, and the industry has great potential for more development,” Liu concluded.