China's Plant Extract Exports Exceed $2.7 Billion
Dec 29, 2021
China has gradually developed into the world's largest supplier of raw materials for plant extracts. From the perspective of export markets, China's plant extract export markets are concentrated in the United States, Europe and Asia, with the United States, Japan, India, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea, Spain, Germany and France being the top ten markets for China's plant extract exports.
China has not yet developed a directory of plant extracts as raw materials for food and health food, the regulatory approach is unclear, and only the Chinese medicine extracts included in the pharmacopoeia have corresponding standards. It is understood that the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development will study the development of regulations related to plant extracts feed additives, and put forward the technical requirements for feature mapping, plant extracts will make a substantial breakthrough in the raw materials of farming inputs.
It is understood that because there is no uniform national standards, some are implemented in accordance with the standards of food, some are implemented in accordance with the standards of drugs, some are implemented in accordance with the technical requirements approved during the registration review, and each health food in the registration review of raw materials used in the extract standards and processes are different, which caused the extract production enterprises to organize production in accordance with multiple processes, which seriously affects the production efficiency, while the frequent replacement of processes and replacement systems make it difficult to control the quality of the product, resulting in a great waste of production resources, but also to the compliance of the production enterprises caused great distress.
Plant extracts have been developed in China for only about 30 years and are an emerging industry. The scattered and small size of the industry has led to a lack of industrial agglomeration, and as a raw material industry, the imperfect regulations and standards make the end product development and market expansion lack of momentum. At the same time, China is the world's largest producer of plant extracts, with abundant plant resources and leading international extraction technology and equipment level. The challenges and opportunities of the plant extract industry coexist.
Relevant experts said that the lack of standards has led to the lagging standards of food raw materials, the plant extract industry should strengthen the basic research, food raw materials should establish rules and develop industry standards for grading and classification; standardization is the basis of the development of the plant extract industry, without standardization it is impossible to achieve scale and industrialization, solving the problem of standardization of raw materials will allow plant extracts as health food raw materials have the basis of regulations; plant extracts should establish a directory system in the relevant industries, establish a risk warning monitoring system, develop and introduce technical standards such as authenticity discrimination.
It is understood that the relevant departments are also planning to develop the national standards of "Terminology of Plant Extracts", "Classification of Plant Extracts" and "Standardized Production of Plant Extracts", and the China Medical Insurance Chamber of Commerce has organized the drafting of a series of group standards for plant extract export products.
Anhui Keynovo Biotech Co., Ltd, relying on the rich herbal and plant extract resources in Anhui Province, has become an important exporter in eastern China. The export quantity of ginkgo extract, menthol, marigold extract and other products ranks among the top in China.