L-Histidine Development

The aerial view of Daesang Corp.’s bio plant.
The aerial view of Daesang Corp.’s bio plant.

 

The aerial view of Daesang Corp.’s bio plant.
The aerial view of Daesang Corp.’s bio plant.

 

South Korea’s food making conglomerate Daesang Corp. announced on October 16 that its business unit (President Chung Hong-un) has successfully developed L-Histidine, a high value added amino acid, for the first time in the country.

L-Histidine is rich in red-flesh fish and external blue colored fish. It is widely used in medicines, food supplements and animal feed.

In particular, Daesang already signed contracts with some global feed making companies to supply its L-Histidine during the research and development period. Accordingly, the company is about to push into the global market in earnest.

The global L-Histidine market, currently worth 3,000 tons or 100 billion won (US$88.46 million) a year, is growing rapidly by more than 20 percent every year. Since the market is monopolized by Japan’s Kyowa Hakko Bio and Ajinomoto, the price of L-Histidine is relatively higher than any other amino acids.

In addition, the demand of L-Histidine is expected to continue to rise as global companies started scrambling to acquire salmon farmers from 2014. In 2014, Japan’s Mitsubishi bought Norway's CermaQ, the world's third-largest salmon farming and processing company. In 2015, the U.S.-based Cargill acquired Norway’s EWOS, a supplier of feed for salmon and trout farms, while the Netherlands-based SHV Holdings took over the Netherland’s Skretting.

Daesang is aimed to achieve a 30 percent share in the global L-Histidine market by 2020. The company will make best use of the features and strengths of its material business which has an organically well-constructed structures between starch sugar and bio sectors as well as between material and competed product businesses.

 

 

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