High demand for food-grade phosphates and good industry development prospects

Phosphates are classified according to different anions and cations. The cations can be divided into sodium phosphate, potassium salt, ammonium salt, calcium salt and other types. In the food industry, the application demand of sodium phosphate is high; anions can be divided into orthophosphate, Condensation phosphates, among which condensation phosphates are more widely used, and products with higher market demand include sodium tripolyphosphate, sodium pyrophosphate, and sodium hexametaphosphate.

The application of phosphate in food originated in Germany. After a century of development, it has gradually become popular in Europe and the United States, and the production and application technology is relatively mature. At present, foreign companies engaged in phosphate production include Budenheim, Tianfu International, Yinglefu, Israel Chemicals, Purinian Group, etc. Phosphates are widely used in the food field. Currently, the United States allows more than 30 types of phosphates to be used in food; Japan allows more than 25 types of phosphates to be used in food. According to my country’s regulations, 20 kinds of phosphates are currently used in food processing.

Food-grade phosphates can mainly play a role in improving product quality and enhancing nutrition. They mainly include sodium phosphate, potassium phosphate, calcium phosphate, etc. Among them, sodium phosphate has high application demand in fields such as brewing and fermentation, dairy processing, and food insurance. Sodium phosphate is mainly used in meat and seafood processing, followed by baked goods, such as refrigerated dough and frozen pre-baked pastries, where it is mainly used as a leavening agent.

There are two main methods for producing food-grade phosphate: thermal phosphoric acid or wet phosphoric acid. The thermal phosphoric acid method has high production costs and high energy consumption, and has few practical applications; the wet phosphoric acid method has higher requirements for phosphate rock, and at the same time, it is in production A large amount of phosphogypsum will be produced during the process, which is difficult to recycle and is not conducive to environmental protection and resource reuse.

According to the “China Food Grade Phosphate Industry Application Market Demand and Development Opportunities Research Report 2022-2027” released by the Industrial Research Center , currently there are 204 types of food-grade phosphates in the world, with rich product types and a wide range of applications. Benefiting from the development of terminal industries, the demand for food-grade phosphate applications has increased. The global food-grade phosphate market has shown a continuous growth trend in the past five years. The market size was US$1.68 billion in 2017 and will grow to US$2.06 billion by 2021. The types of domestic food-grade phosphate products are gradually becoming richer, and the scale of the industry is also growing. In the future, driven by the high-end development of terminal industries, the quality of food-grade phosphates will continue to rise.

Industry analysts people said that food-grade phosphate plays an important role in food processing, has high application demand, and is affected by the development of terminal industries. Driven by this, the industry has certain room for development. There are many types of food-grade phosphates with a wide range of applications. Market competition is also fragmented, and the current market is relatively fragmented. Compared with the United States and Japan, my country has fewer types of food-grade phosphates approved for use in the food field, and there is still potential for development in the future.