Upsurge in the Inositol Market
                           By Hua Xin
Around 80% of inositol pro-duced in  China  is  for  export,   and  the
product falls far short of the market demand. China has advantages  of
raw material availability, production technology and product market in
inositol production. High and new technologies should be combined with
traditional technologies to reduce the production cost,  increase  the
product yield and enhance the  competitiveness  in  the  international
market. More and more inositol units have recently been constructed in
China, especially in Hunan, Zhejiang, Guangxi and  Anhui.   There  are
already several hundred producers in China, but the capacity  of  most
producers is only several dozen tons  a  year.   The  major  consuming
regions in the world include the United States, Europe  and  Southeast
Asia with an annual consumption of several thousand  tons.   With  the
economic recovery in advanced countries, the consumption  of  inositol
will continue to increase. Other factors for the consumption  increase
are the expansion of consumption fields, and the  application  as  raw
material in nutrition and health protection goods and cosmetics.   The
shortage of resources has led to a sharp price rise, and inositol  has
become a product extremely in short supply in the world market. It  is
expected that there will be a wider gap in inositol supply in the next
10 years and the price will go up further. Some years  ago,   inositol
was in short demand in the world  market  and  the  price  dropped  to
around 10 000 U.S. dollars per ton.  However,   the  output  in  major
producing countries such as Japan and  China  was  reduced  last  year
because of typhoon attacks, rice output reduction and rice bran output
reduction. The inositol resources in the international market are  not
easily available. Since the second half of last year, therefore,   the
inositol market has turned brisk and the price has kept going up.