India imports $106 million of lysine a year and its unit price fell 18.7% in FY26. Mills and distilleries have the sugar, but a lysine fermenter is aerobic and sterile, and the world price is set by very large Chinese plants.
India’s Lysine Deficit Is $102 Million and China Holds About Three-Quarters of World Capacity. Molasses Is the Cheap Part. The Fermenter Is the Hard Part
Lysine is the amino acid that cereal-based feed lacks, so poultry and pig feed makers add it by the tonne. It is made by fermentation, from sugar. India is a large sugar producer and has just built a large ethanol industry on the same sugar and molasses. So the question is a fair one: could the mills and distilleries make lysine, and the other amino acids, rather than import them?
This piece sets out what India imports, how the amino acids are made, who supplies the world, and what a mill or distillery would be getting into. The short answer is that the sugar is the easy part. The process is aerobic and sterile, which is not what a distillery runs, and the world price is set by a few very large Chinese plants, whose oversupply has pushed prices to record lows.
What India imports
The registry on this blog holds 827 import lines that qualified on deficit and other tests. Eight of them are amino acids. Methionine is the largest, at $171 million, and lysine is next at $106 million with a deficit of $102 million. Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is $68 million and is the only large line still growing, up 17% in value and 34% in volume. Glycine is the exception: $19 million of imports against a deficit of $0.6 million, which means India sells almost as much as it buys.
| HS-8 | Amino acid | FY26 imports, $ mn | Deficit, $ mn | Value change, % | Price change, % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29304000 | Methionine | 171.3 | 170.8 | −1.8 | −7.0 |
| 29224100 | Lysine and its salts | 106.1 | 102.4 | −21.7 | −18.7 |
| 29224220 | Monosodium glutamate | 67.9 | 67.3 | +17.1 | −12.8 |
| 29224910 | Glycine | 19.0 | 0.6 | −25.9 | −13.2 |
| 29224290 | Other glutamic acid and salts | 11.8 | 2.1 | −14.2 | −22.2 |
| 29309014 | L-cystine | 10.7 | 6.4 | — | — |
| 29225015 | L-tyrosine | 3.5 | 3.5 | +19.7 | −16.4 |
| 29224210 | Glutamic acid | 1.0 | 0.8 | +44.3 | +2.7 |
Lysine’s year is a price story. Volume fell 4%, but the unit price fell 18.7% and the value of the imports fell 21.7%. That fits what industry reports say about the world market, where Chinese oversupply pushed prices to record lows in 2025. Threonine, tryptophan and valine are not in the registry, so they fell below its threshold or are entered under other lines.
How the amino acids are made
There are four routes, and they suit different amino acids. Extraction hydrolyses protein, for example L-cystine from keratin, and is limited by the raw material. Chemical synthesis gives a mixture of the D and L forms, so it is used for glycine, which has no mirror image, and for amino acids that are useful in either form, such as DL-methionine. Enzymatic routes use one or two enzymes on a cheap precursor; aspartic acid, which goes into aspartame, is made from fumarate and ammonia this way. Fermentation by engineered microbes is how lysine, glutamic acid and threonine are made at scale. Ajinomoto says glutamate manufacture moved from extraction to fermentation in the 1960s and other amino acids followed.
For lysine the organism is Corynebacterium glutamicum, sometimes Brevibacterium flavum. Its strains have been developed so that the feedback that normally stops lysine building up is switched off. The sugar can be molasses, starch hydrolysate or sucrose, with ammonia as the nitrogen source, and under good conditions the yield is 40 to 50 g of lysine hydrochloride per 100 g of carbon source. The broth then has the cells removed and goes either to a liquid of about 50% lysine or, through ion exchange, evaporation and crystallisation, to a 98–99% crystal. Both grades suit feed.
The world supply
China makes most of the world’s lysine. One industry report puts its share of global production at 76% in 2023, another puts its operating capacity at 4.31 million tonnes, over 78.9% of the world. Meihua alone is reported at 1 million tonnes of capacity, 26% of the market, and early-2025 coverage described the market as stable but at very low prices, with more Chinese capacity coming. One India lysine report puts Chinese suppliers at 89% of India’s import value, though that report is a vendor product and its method is not stated. Early 2026 coverage describes a firmer trend. In Europe, definitive anti-dumping duties on Chinese lysine took effect on 12 July 2025, 47.7% for Meihua, 58.2% for Eppen and 53.1% for other cooperating companies in one summary of the regulation. In 2026 the Commission re-opened an inquiry into whether they have worked, and on 29 July it began registering Chinese lysine imports, which allows duties to be applied retroactively. Chinese exporters were reported to have shipped heavily to non-EU markets ahead of the duties, and Fufeng has a Kazakhstan base that is described as a way round them. An aggregator quotes China FOB lysine at $870 a tonne in July 2026, down from $930 in June, with Germany at $1,827. A smaller maker is therefore competing with plants of a scale that India does not have.
What a mill or distillery would be getting into
A consultancy estimate puts a typical amino-acid plant at 10,000 to 50,000 tonnes a year and the investment at ₹50 crore to more than ₹1,500 crore. A student design for lysine hydrochloride from molasses in Indonesia was sized at 25,000 tonnes a year. At the yield above, 25,000 tonnes of lysine needs about 50,000 to 62,500 tonnes of sugar or sugar-equivalent a year, on this blog’s arithmetic. That is a big plant for one mill, and about 0.2% of the sugar India eats. On the July 2026 price, a 25,000-tonne plant would sell about $22 million of lysine a year, against a build cost of ₹50 crore to more than ₹1,500 crore. And if India’s FY26 import price was near $870 to $930 a tonne, which is not known, its $106 million of lysine imports is on the order of 115,000 to 120,000 tonnes, about 9% of Meihua’s reported 1.3 million tonnes of capacity. Those are this blog’s inferences from one indicative price.
Idle fermentation capacity looks like a reason to try. This blog has covered the overcapacity in ethanol, where distilleries built on interest subvention now sell into a buyers’ market. But a distillery’s fermenter is not a lysine fermenter. Yeast makes ethanol without air. C. glutamicum needs oxygen, a sterile feed, a continuous sugar supply and tight control of temperature and pH. A vendor’s scale-up table lists oxygen transfer, mixing, heat removal and contamination as the issues, and claims that contamination can cost up to half of a batch’s yield; that is a sales page and the figure is unsourced, but the reasons are standard. Downstream, a plant also needs centrifuges, ion-exchange columns, crystallisers and dryers that a distillery does not have.
| Option for a mill or distillery | What it supplies or needs | Evidence seen | Main obstacle |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sell molasses to an amino-acid maker | Molasses at a stated grade | Molasses, starch hydrolysate or sucrose are the usual carbon sources (a study extract); Ajinomoto names molasses as a medium ingredient | Molasses is also the ethanol feedstock; a maker must exist first |
| Joint venture with an established fermenter | Site, steam, power, sugar stream | Plants run 10,000–50,000 t a year at ₹50–1,500+ crore (a consultancy estimate); no Indian example found | The partner carries strain, process and market risk |
| Build a lysine plant in the mill or distillery complex | Aerated fermenters, sterile feed, ion exchange, drying | Student design for 25,000 t a year of lysine HCl from molasses in Indonesia; none found in India | The distillery’s anaerobic fermenters are the wrong vessel; strain licences; price set by Chinese scale |
The contrast with this blog’s piece on sucralose is worth stating. Sucralose is a tiny-volume, high-value product that starts from a small amount of sugar and fails on chemistry. Lysine is a big-volume, low-value product that uses a lot of sugar and fails on scale and price. A mill that wants to move up the value chain from sugar will find that the amino acids it can make most easily are the ones the Chinese make most cheaply.
Where the data stop
- No Indian production figure. The searches found no domestic lysine capacity and no plant announcement. The trade deficit is known; the home supply is not.
- Only one indicative price. An aggregator’s $870 a tonne FOB China for July 2026 is the only per-tonne figure found; the FY26 import price, and the grade mix behind the import value, are not known.
- Capacity numbers disagree. The 76% and 78.9% figures are for different years and definitions, and neither source is primary.
- Other amino acids are thin. Threonine, tryptophan and valine are below the registry’s threshold, so their import values are not known here.
What would fix this
- The Department of Commerce should publish amino-acid imports by origin, tonnage and unit price at the eight-digit line, including threonine, tryptophan and valine, so India’s dependence on Chinese supply is measured and not inferred from a vendor report.
- The Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying should publish feed-additive amino-acid use by acid, so demand for lysine is a measured number and not an estimate built from imports.
- The Department of Biotechnology should fund an independent techno-economic study of a molasses-based lysine plant in India, with yield, oxygen-transfer and downstream costs stated, and publish it with the strain-licence question answered.
- The Department of Food and Public Distribution should publish molasses output and allocation by state after ethanol diversion, so a feedstock claim for any amino-acid plant can be checked against what is actually left.
- The Directorate General of Trade Remedies should publish landed unit prices of lysine imports by origin, so a domestic investor can see whether import prices cover the cost of the plants that supply them.
These are proposals from this blog, not recommendations any agency has adopted.
Sources and caveats
India trade: this blog’s chemical import-substitution registry (HS-8 lines 29304000, 29224100, 29224220, 29224910, 29224290, 29309014, 29225015, 29224210; FY26 imports, deficit, value and price change from DGCI&S data; 827 qualifying lines). Processes: a study extract on the microbial production of seven amino acids (C. glutamicum for lysine, molasses, starch hydrolysate or sucrose as carbon source, 40–50 g lysine HCl per 100 g, 50% liquid and 98–99% crystal grades, enzymatic aspartate from fumarate, chemical routes for glycine and DL-amino acids); Ajinomoto’s page on how amino acids are made (four routes, molasses in the medium, the 1960s shift of glutamate to fermentation); a vendor blog from a Dubai equipment trader (scale-up issues; its unsourced figures were not relied on, and the claim of up to 50% yield loss from contamination is reported as a vendor claim); a US organic-standards review of L-cysteine (keratin hydrolysis route). Market: an industry report on feed amino acids (China 76% of lysine and 93% of threonine production in 2023), a second report (China operating capacity 4.31 million tonnes, over 78.9%), reports on Meihua (1 million tonnes, 26%); an India lysine market report (89% Chinese share of import value; vendor product, method not stated); a 2026 Asia feed-ingredients market update; Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/1330 of 10 July 2025 as summarised in trade press (the rates differ slightly between summaries); an MLex report of 29 July 2026 on registration of Chinese lysine imports; a procurement-data aggregator’s July 2026 price page (indicative, unverified) and a 2026 China amino-acids report (Fufeng’s Kazakhstan base). Plant scale: an IMARC plant-setup estimate (10,000–50,000 t a year; ₹50–1,500+ crore; prices at historic lows in 2025) and a 2017 Universitas Gadjah Mada thesis design (25,000 t a year of lysine HCl from molasses). The 50,000–62,500 t sugar figure and the 0.2% share are this blog’s arithmetic from the 40–50 g per 100 g yield and 28 million tonnes of sugar eaten; molasses carbon and white sugar are not the same thing, so the share is an order of magnitude. Most sources were abstracts, vendor pages or search summaries, not full texts. No Indian lysine plant or announcement was found, which is a limit of the search. 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.
