Diabetes is pulling intense sweeteners into India’s drinks and tabletop market, and sucralose imports are rising on a falling price. Sugar mills make the sucrose it starts from, but the tonnage is trivial and no Indian factory could be verified.
India Imported $28 Million of Sucralose in FY26, Up 49%. Sugar Mills Make the Raw Material. Making the Sweetener Is a Chlorination Problem, Not a Sugar One
India has about 101 million people with diabetes, by one estimate, and it also eats about 28 million tonnes of sugar a year. The two facts meet in the sweetener aisle. Sugar-free tablets, drops and drinks are sold on the promise that they spare a sugar bill that people with diabetes cannot afford. One intense sweetener, sucralose, shows up in this blog’s trade registry as a growing import, and it is made from sugar. That raises a question sugar mills are entitled to ask: could they make it?
This piece sets out the demand, the evidence on health, the trade figures, the chemistry and the options for a mill. The conclusion is that sucralose is a chemicals business that happens to start from sugar, and the sugar tonnage is too small to matter. The mill options that look more natural use the assets a mill already has.
The pull: diabetes
The ICMR-INDIAB study, published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology in 2023, estimated that 11.4% of Indians, about 101 million people, have diabetes, and 15.3% have prediabetes, about 136 million. The spread between states is wide: Goa at 26.4% and Uttar Pradesh at 4.8%. The 101 million is a projection; the survey ran from 2008 to 2020 across 31 states and union territories and was extrapolated to 2021 with census-type data. Reports note that the rise is levelling in richer states and still continuing elsewhere. The International Diabetes Federation’s 2024 estimate is lower, 89.8 million adults aged 20–79 (10.5% age-standardised), rising to about 157 million by 2050, with 43% undiagnosed. A national survey of people aged 45 and over, published in The Lancet Global Health in February 2026 from 2017–19 fieldwork, found about one in five with diabetes (50.4 million), and urban prevalence about double rural.
For sweeteners, the point is demand that is not going away. Industry commentary has long said that most intense-sweetener use was by people with diabetes. That older claim was not verified here.
Where the sugar goes
Domestic sugar use was about 28 million tonnes in 2024-25 by the sugar industry’s estimate, and a record 29 million in 2023-24; ISMA’s first advance estimate for 2025-26 put the domestic requirement at 28.5 million. That is about 20 kg a head, on this blog’s arithmetic. The Indian Sugar and Bio-Energy Manufacturers Association (ISMA) found institutional buyers took 60–65% of demand in 2023-24, up from 50–55% in 2018-19; drinks were the biggest category and confectionery next. Households took the remaining 35–40%, and the study said affluent households were reducing refined sugar and moving to alternatives. So the sweetener question is as much about drinks makers and sweet shops as about the tabletop tablet.
What is permitted, and what is being said
FSSAI permits five artificial sweeteners: saccharin sodium, aspartame, acesulfame potassium, sucralose and neotame, each with a maximum in parts per million by food category. Aspartame, for example, is capped at 700 ppm in soft drinks. A 2020 draft would have required packaged foods with these sweeteners to say so on the label, with warnings for some groups; that draft was not confirmed as finalised, and in late September 2026 FSSAI instead proposed a single-phase front-of-pack regime that would move the sweetener declaration to the front of the pack (see the update note above).
The safety debate is in three parts, and they should not be run together. In May 2023 the World Health Organization advised against using non-sugar sweeteners to control weight or reduce the risk of non-communicable disease, on the basis of 283 studies that showed no long-term benefit in body fat and possible harms, with low or very low certainty. The advice excludes people who already have diabetes. In July 2023 the cancer agency IARC classed aspartame as “possibly carcinogenic”, while the joint expert committee JECFA kept its limit of 40 mg per kg of body weight a day; the release said an adult of 70 kg would need more than 9 to 14 cans of diet drink a day to exceed it. For sucralose, a 2023 laboratory study from North Carolina found that sucralose-6-acetate, a compound reported both as a manufacturing impurity and as a metabolite, damaged DNA in human blood cells. Those were test-tube experiments, and the authors’ comparison with a European intake threshold has not been confirmed by a regulator. No human trial of sucralose and blood sugar turned up in the searches.
Who buys these sweeteners is not the same as who is advised to. The WHO advice excludes people with diabetes, and Zydus Wellness’s Sugar Free, launched in 1988, says its share of the Indian tabletop market is above 90%, with aspartame, sucralose and stevia variants. That share is a company claim from Nielsen figures it cites.
The trade: a small and growing import
Sucralose is the one intense sweetener this blog’s trade registry singles out. Under tariff line 29321400, India imported $28.4 million in FY26 and exported about $0.7 million, a deficit of $27.7 million. Value rose 49.3%, volume 71.0% and the unit price fell 12.4%. A third-party aggregation of customs data puts FY25 imports at ₹161.79 crore, consistent with that growth. Basic customs duty is shown as 7.5% on two tariff sites, which was not checked against the official schedule.
On the supply side, China holds more than 85–90% of world capacity by two market reports, and global output was above 23,000 tonnes in 2024 at an average price near $22 a kilogram. At that price, $28.4 million is on the order of 1,300 tonnes, about 5–6% of world output; this is this blog’s arithmetic, since the FY26 price is not known. Sucralose is about 600 times as sweet as sugar, a commonly quoted figure. So 1,300 tonnes does the sweetening work of roughly 775,000 tonnes of sugar, about 2.7% of consumption. That is what the import displaces if it replaces sugar one for one.
The tariff lines to watch
Sucralose has its own eight-digit line, which is why it can be tracked. The other intense sweeteners are harder: the registry holds only the 827 codes that qualified on deficit and other tests, and the lines for saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame potassium and steviol glycosides are not among them. Their import values are therefore not in this blog’s data. The table gives each line with how firmly it is known. Treat the unconfirmed codes as leads, and check them against the Customs Tariff and ITC-HS schedules before filing or quoting them.
| HS-8 line | What it covers | FY26 imports in this blog’s registry | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 29321400 | Sucralose | $28.4 mn imports, deficit $27.7 mn; value +49.3%, volume +71.0%, price −12.4% | In this blog’s registry. Basic duty 7.5% on tariff sites (unverified) |
| 29251100 | Saccharin and its salts | Not in the registry | Code and 7.5% basic duty from tariff sites. Duties on Chinese and Indonesian saccharin have been notified; whether they are in force was not confirmed |
| 29242990 | Aspartame (expected line) | Not in the registry | Code not confirmed in the sources seen; check the customs tariff before use |
| 29349990 | Acesulfame potassium (expected line) | Not in the registry | Code not confirmed in the sources seen; check the customs tariff before use |
| 29389090 | Glycosides, other: steviol glycosides (stevia extract) are usually entered here | Not in the registry | Tariff sites give 7.5% basic duty; stevia may sit in another sub-item depending on form |
| 29054900 | Other polyhydric alcohols: xylitol and erythritol are expected here | $9.8 mn imports, deficit $8.4 mn; value −25.6% | In the registry, but the line mixes several polyols, so the sweeteners cannot be separated |
| 38246010, 38246090 | Sorbitol, in aqueous solution and other | $2.5 mn and $1.6 mn | In the registry; pure sorbitol (29054400) is not |
| 21069099 | Sweetener tablets and powders sold at retail usually enter under food preparations | Not in the registry | A basket line that hides the sweeteners in it; not verified here |
How sucralose is made
Sucralose is sugar with three of its hydroxyl groups swapped for chlorine. The route in the patents is three steps. Sugar is first acetylated at one position to give sucrose-6-acetate, at reported yields of about 88–91%. That is chlorinated with a Vilsmeier reagent, made from thionyl chloride, or phosphorus pentachloride, and dimethylformamide (DMF), which swaps the three groups; patents describe temperatures from −20 to 120°C over 5 to 15 hours, and the crude product in the examples was only 68–73% pure. Last, the acetate is removed and the sucralose crystallised: one patent reports 99% purity at 79.9% yield, another over 98% purity at above 95% yield, and a crystallisation patent reports 99.6% by HPLC. Between 80% and 90% of the DMF can be recovered.
The sugar itself is the easy input. Sucralose weighs about 1.16 times a molecule of sucrose, so each kilogram needs at least about 0.86 kg of sugar, and in practice more. For India’s imports that is a minimum of roughly 1,100 tonnes, a few thousand under any plausible yield, against 28 million tonnes eaten. The hard parts are the chlorination, the reagents and the solvent and effluent handling.
Options for a sugar mill
No Indian sugar mill was found making sucralose. Online trade directories list a dozen or so Indian sellers of sucralose powder in Ahmedabad, Mumbai and Hyderabad, and a few describe themselves as manufacturers, but others name Chinese-made, branded product, and none gave a plant, capacity or licence that could be checked. So whether any of them makes it, rather than repacks it, is unverified; confirming it would take a factory registration, an FSSAI licence and a certificate of analysis. The table lists the options, with what was seen for each. Nothing here is investment advice, and no costs were found for any of them.
| Option | What the mill supplies or needs | Evidence seen | Main obstacle |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sell high-grade sugar to a sucralose maker | Refined sugar of a stated grade | Process starts from sucrose (patents). Tonnage is tiny: roughly 1,100 t of sugar at least for India’s imports, under 0.05% of consumption (this blog’s arithmetic) | Almost no sugar volume; the margin is in the chemistry |
| Make sucralose in the mill complex | Chlorination plant, solvent recovery, effluent treatment, technology licence | No Indian factory verified; China holds about 85–90% of capacity; a 2014 trade report expected smaller makers to exit as prices fell | Hazardous reagents, capital, and a price set by Chinese scale |
| Joint venture with a specialty-chemicals firm | Sugar, site, steam and power; the partner brings chlorination know-how | No Indian example found | Who carries the technology and the price risk |
| Xylitol from bagasse xylose | Bagasse already at the gate; hydrolysis and hydrogenation or fermentation | Xylose yield 82% then 100% selectivity to xylitol in one study; fermentation route 54.4% | Lab-scale; competes with the boiler for the bagasse; a sugar alcohol, not an intense sweetener |
| Stevia through the cane-farmer network | Contract growers, extraction plant | One stevia processing plant in Himachal Pradesh (not a mill); extraction ventures under discussion | Different crop; no mill example found |
| Allulose or isomaltulose from mill syrups | Enzymatic plant; sugar or invert syrup as feed | Allulose approved for sale in India (a trading approval); isomaltulose not seen in Indian sources | Enzyme supply and cost; unproven for Indian mills |
Three things follow. First, supplying sugar to a sucralose maker is real but trivial: the tonnage is a rounding error for a mill. Second, making sucralose is a different industry. It needs chlorination chemistry, a licence for it and a price set by Chinese producers; a 2014 trade report said smaller makers were expected to exit when the price fell. A mill’s strengths are cane, steam, power and, for those with distilleries, effluent handling, and none of those is chlorination. Third, the options that use what a mill already has are the ones with evidence in the table: bagasse already sits at the gate, and its xylose can become xylitol, which, as a sugar alcohol, falls outside the WHO’s sweetener advice. But the bagasse studies are laboratory ones, and bagasse has a buyer in the mill’s own boiler, as this blog’s piece on liquefying it noted.
What would fix this
- The Department of Commerce should publish sucralose, aspartame, saccharin and acesulfame imports by origin and tonnage at the eight-digit tariff line, including 29251100, 29242990, 29349990 and 29389090, which sit below this blog’s registry threshold, so it is known who supplies India and at what price rather than inferred from a value figure.
- FSSAI should publish its non-sugar sweetener intake estimates against the acceptable daily intake and state whether the 2020 labelling draft was notified, since the draft’s status could not be confirmed.
- The Indian Council of Medical Research should report non-sugar sweetener use among people with diabetes and prediabetes, by sweetener, in its next INDIAB round, because the WHO advice excludes this group and India has no figures of its own.
- The Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals should publish a costed route for sucralose within its import-substitution screening, with the technology licence, capital and effluent cost, so a mill or chemical firm can decide on numbers.
- The Central Pollution Control Board should state the solvent-recovery and effluent norms that would apply to a sucralose plant, covering DMF, thionyl chloride off-gases and chlorinated waste, so compliance cost is known before a plant is planned.
These are proposals from this blog, not recommendations any agency has adopted.
Sources and caveats
Diabetes: press reports of the ICMR-INDIAB study in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology (2023): 11.4% prevalence, 101 million, 15.3% prediabetes, 136 million, Goa 26.4%, Uttar Pradesh 4.8%; the 101 million is an extrapolation from a 2008–2020 survey. Sugar use: ISMA estimates for 2024-25 (about 28 million tonnes) and 2023-24 (29 million), and the ISMA institutional-consumption study (60–65% institutional, 35–40% retail; the 20 kg a head is this blog’s division, not a sourced figure). Rules and safety: an FSSAI-focused summary of the five approved sweeteners and their ppm limits; the FSSAI draft labelling notification of 16 September 2020 (final status not confirmed); the WHO guideline on non-sugar sweeteners (May 2023, 283 studies); press reports of the FSSAI single-phase front-of-pack proposal (23–28 September 2026; a proposal, not a final rule); the IDF Diabetes Atlas country page (2024) and The Lancet Global Health survey of adults aged 45 and over (February 2026); ISMA’s first advance estimate for 2025-26; the WHO and IARC release of 14 July 2023 on aspartame; press reports of the 2023 North Carolina study of sucralose-6-acetate (in vitro). Market: Zydus Wellness investor releases (Nielsen share in the low to mid 90s, a company claim). Trade: this blog’s chemical import-substitution registry (HS 29321400, FY26: imports $28.4 million, deficit $27.7 million, value +49.3%, volume +71.0%, price −12.4%); tariff-site listings for 29251100 (saccharin; 7.5% basic duty; a countervailing duty on Chinese saccharin has been notified and its status was not confirmed) and 29389090 (7.5% basic duty); the codes 29242990 (aspartame) and 29349990 (acesulfame potassium) are expected lines that the sources did not confirm; registry rows for 29054900, 38246010 and 38246090; a third-party customs aggregation (FY25 imports ₹161.79 crore); tariff sites (7.5% basic duty, unverified); two market reports on Chinese capacity share and 2024 output and price. The 1,300 tonne, 775,000 tonne and 1,100 tonne figures are this blog’s arithmetic from the import value, a $22 a kilogram price and a sweetness ratio of about 600 times sugar, which is the commonly quoted figure and was not taken from the sources searched. Chemistry: US patents 8283464, 7884203, 5498709, 4617269 and a Chinese patent summary on sucrose-6-acetate; yields are as reported in patent examples. Options: a 2023 CICEQ study and a 2022 Frontiers in Nutrition study on xylitol (see this blog’s bagasse piece); a Himachal Pradesh stevia plant report; a report of FSSAI approval for allulose trading; a GLG and Katra stevia memorandum. Most sources were abstracts, patents or search summaries, not full texts. No Indian sucralose factory or mill project could be verified; trade-directory listings of Indian sellers, some self-described as manufacturers and some selling Chinese-made branded powder, were seen but not checked, and one listing quoted ₹4,800 a kilogram at a 100 kg minimum. That is a limit of the search, not proof there is none. No process or investment advice is given.
About this article: Researched, written and edited by Umashankar Triplicane Dwarakanathan, with AI research assistance; every figure is meant to trace to the primary source cited. See the Editorial Policy for how sourcing, AI use and corrections work.
