Increase in price of Vitamin E50

The Glowlit platform is showing an increase in the price of Vitamin E50, up 5.8% since last week. Interestingly, this price increase followed an increase in user interest on the Glowlit platform from the previous week. Several factors may be at play. The market is cautiously awaiting the opening of the Yimante Vitamin E production facility, a joint venture between DSM and Nenter, at the end of December. At the same time, Vitamin E producers in China are experiencing increased costs following the anti-dumping ruling of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on m-cresol (one of the main raw materials for the production of Vitamin E).

In a rare return for in-person industry conferences, the 15th China Vitamin Industry Forum was held this past weekend in Zhejiang Province. With most of the world’s vitamin production centered in China, this particular conference has the power to reshuffle the cards. Meetings held in Zhejiang may alter the strategic direction of producers heading into 2021.

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Very little information is currently available on the demand of by-products such as DDGS. Most of the available information focuses on the supply of feedstocks or proxy measurements believed to be correlated in some way.

In a typical year, U.S. ethanol plants have the capacity to produce more than 15 billion gallons of ethanol and 44 million metric tonnes of DDGS. 2020 was an anomaly with lower fuel consumption following Covid-19. In the absence of direct information, buyers and sellers also evaluate the import of sugarcane ethanol and in the U.S. and regulatory changes such as exemptions from blending renewable fuels into the US fuel supply.

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