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Science and Technology Daily: world leading has highlighted advantages; competition intensifying requires powerful policies

News (Reporter Yan Yan), benefiting to biological medicine, food, agriculture and other fields, amino acid industry is becoming one of the only few of industries of our country that can take the lead in the whole world. From China Fermentation Industry Association, the reporter of Science and Technology Daily learned that: at present, there are more than 2000 kinds of amino acid categories and derivatives in worldwide; the categories that our country can produce has covered more than half of them; in these categories, for the 22 kinds of amino acids essential to human, the Meihua Group of our country can produce the 13 kinds which is the enterprise that can produce the most kinds of amino acids.

Amino acids is the important constitutional unit of human essential substance——protein. Since it is with characters of wide industry related degree, high product consumption, its annual global sales value has reached to 20 billion of dollars. At present world amino acids production bases mainly concentrate on China, Japan, Europe and America. The large market demand leads to increasingly severe market competition. Up to the start of this century, since small enterprise scale, lacking of core technology and other development bottlenecks, in the international competition of this fields, our country is still at the middle and lower reaches levels.

Industry insiders think generally, the favorable turn of our country in amino acid field is the appearing of Meihua Group. This company is established in 2002 which is a company dedicated in biological fermentation. It has worked out a new development route by simultaneously establishing relative complete industry chain and lay emphasis on technological innovation. The practice for the recent 10 years has proved that this route is very effective for improving enterprise competitiveness: since the company not only owns complete industry chain, but also has established self-prepared power plant, chemical plant, sewage treatment works and other supporting enterprises, they can effectively improve production efficiency and simultaneously reduce production cost markedly. According to the statistics, the enterprise’s average coal, water and electricity consumption per ton of product is only 70% of domestic enterprises in same industry. Focusing on the exploration of innovative research and development makes the business of the enterprise getting better: the company invested 100 million Yuan a year on average for technology research and development, to undertake and complete the national 863 project. In recent years, the Group declared and won more than 20 national invention patents, established 3 research and Development Centers; have achieved scale production for 9 of 22 amino acids necessary for human, and equipped with technical equipment for 4 kinds of product. It is one of the enterprises able to produce most amino acids necessary for human over the world. Experts pointed out that reality of leading technology marks the amino acid industry in China is entering a period of transition of amino acid industry from big country to powerful country.

However, many industry experts say that some potential hazards risk make the development of amino acids industry in our country facing more challenges than opportunities.

First is of varying size and strength in this area, a direct result of disorder resource consumption, the overall development costs are too high. About more than more than 100 existing amino acid production enterprises in China, with an annual output of 400,000 tons of Meihua Group family only. Increasingly tense in raw materials, coal, water, electricity, means of production, such as the growing shortage of today, it is urgent to integrate this area with a view to achieving China's overall competitiveness in this area.

Second is to support technological innovation in this area should be strengthened. Amino acid industry is an important part of bio-fermentation industry. Its products are widely used in bio-medicine and many other fields. Although the biotechnology industry as the country has been one of the seven emerging industries of strategic importance, but the lack of amino acid industry leading the international support. In the country relevant major projects, has a strong research and development strength of Meihua group business to gain support, to some extent, affect the development potential of the enterprise.

Thirdly, the Department concerned should as soon as possible, including enterprises ' participation in industry standards development and implementation. Due to the characteristics of amino acid has a high correlation, since entering the 21st century, China's demand for amino acids is 15% a year of rapid growth. Huge market demand is attracting foreign companies pouring in, resulting in a period of rising domestic enterprises-bashing, and disorderly competition in the market. At present, China still lacks a complete set of national standards in the field of amino acids, this pattern does not change in time, it will make healthy adjustment of industrial structure in the field of amino acids is blocked in China.