September 21, 2005
Tight biotin supply felt in China; higher prices for imports
An eFeedLink exclusive report
Prices of biotin in China continued to remain firm in recent days. Recent market prices were as follows:
Offer and transacted prices of locally produced biotin registered RMB120/kg and RMB115/kg respectively, generally unchanged from the previous week. Market prices in southern regions were slightly higher.
Recent offer and transacted prices by DSM were in the range of RMB135-140/kg and RMB130-135/kg respectively. Offer prices by Sumitomo registered RMB150/kg, while its transacted prices were RMB140/kg or higher. Transacted prices for small quantity buyers in regions including eastern and southern China even reached as high as RMB145-150/kg, up by about RMB2-3/kg from the previous week. This is the result of insufficient supplies of imported biotin in the market.
With biotin prices in China generally at high levels in recent days, some major biotin producers in the country have started to resume limited production. Meanwhile, several major foreign producers were expected to release some of their biotin products into the Chinese market during end-September. Analysts expected this would slightly ease the current tight supply situation of imported products.
With the weather getting cooler, and biotin consumption for aquaculture declining, biotin demand has weakened slightly in recent days. Thus, analysts expected any rise in Biotin prices to be limited in the near term.
However, in the longer term, analysts expected biotin released by DSM into the domestic market during this year's second half to be limited. Biotin supplies by Sumitomo were also expected to be tight and their prices generally high. Thus, biotin prices in China over the next few months were expected to generally hover at high levels. Analysts also saw the importance of closely monitoring price movements of locally produced biotin.
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