CJ Challenges Evonik In Feed Amino Acids

A U.S. subsidiary of South Korea’s CJ CheilJedang will build a $320 million facility in Fort Dodge, Iowa, for the animal feed amino acid lysine. To be constructed adjacent to a Cargill corn-milling facility that will provide raw material corn sugar, the plant will have annual capacity of more than 100,000 metric tons and start up in 2014, CJ says. The plant will be the first U.S. facility for the company, which claims to command close to 25% of the global lysine market. One of CJ’s main competitors is Germany’s Evonik Industries, which is expanding its lysine facility in Blair, Neb., to 280,000 metric tons. CJ will also become an Evonik competitor in the amino acid methionine when it completes a plant in Malaysia next year in cooperation with French chemical maker Arkema. Evonik is building its own new methionine plant in Singapore, and just announced an expansion of feed-grade threonine at its site in Kaba, Hungary. A 50% expansion will bring capacity to 30,000 metric tons by the third quarter of 2013.