Wanhua Chemical’s entry into the citral market will ease my country’s reliance on imports in the future

In recent years, my country’s citral market demand has shown a steady growth trend. Since Xinhecheng’s citral production capacity is mainly for self-use, my country’s citral demand mainly relies on imports. In terms of domestically produced citral planned or under construction, Wanhua Chemical’s 48,000-ton citral project has attracted the most market attention. The project uses the isoprene production process. If the project is successfully put into production, it may change the global citral market. By then, my country’s reliance on citral imports will also be alleviated.

The chemical name of citral is 3,7-dimethyl-2,6-octadienal, which is composed of two isomers: geranal and neral. It is one of the most important representatives of open-chain monoterpenes. Citral appears as a colorless or light yellow liquid with a citrus aroma. It can be used as a flavoring agent and spice in food, cosmetics, medicine and other fields. At the same time, citral is also an important organic raw material used in the production of ionone, toluene and methane. Base ionone, damascenone, citronellol, nerolidol and other products.

According to different sources, citral can be divided into two categories: natural citral and synthetic citral. Natural citral mainly comes from litsea cubeba oil, lemongrass, maple grass oil, etc. Due to its high cost, low output, and expensive price, etc. Characteristics, natural citral can no longer meet the growing market demand, so synthetic citral is currently the mainstream product in the market. Synthetic citral production technology is relatively mature, and the main processes include dehydrogenalool method, isoprene method, acetone method, geraniol gas phase oxidation method, etc., among which dehydrogenolol method is the mainstream production process.

According to the “2021 Global Citral Industry Market Status Research Report released by the Industrial Research Center, in recent years, with the market demand Released, the global citral market is in a stable growth trend. In 2020, the global citral market will reach US$400 million, with sales of approximately 50,000 tons. In the global market, the main consumer markets of citral are concentrated in Europe, America, China and Southeast Asia.

From the production side, global citral production capacity is highly concentrated. Three companies, BASF of Germany, NHU of China, and Kuraray of Japan, monopolize the global citral market. Among them, BASF accounts for nearly 80% of the market and is the world’s largest citral producer. . From the perspective of application proportion, among many application fields, vitamins are the main application field of citral, with vitamin applications accounting for more than 50%, of which vitamin A is the main one; menthol is the second largest application field of citral, Applications account for more than 30%.

Industry analysts said that the downstream application fields of citral involve food, medicine, cosmetics, etc. In recent years, with the development of terminal industries With rapid development, the market demand for citral has grown steadily. The global citral market is highly concentrated, and citral in my country’s market is mainly imported. In the future, with the entry of Wanhua Chemical, my country’s dependence on imports of citral is expected to be alleviated, and global citral production capacity will also grow further.