Enzymes market heats up

Feed enzyme sales are hot, with all manufacturers reporting brisk demand over the past year, with 2009 and 2010 expected to usher in even stronger sales numbers. Enzymes have gone from being a feed additive only used occasionally in diets in the United States “to suddenly become mainstream,”

For the United States, enzymes reached important market penetration in 2008, Geuss states, several years later than in Europe. The reason for that, he says, is that European livestock producers use more wheat and barley, and vegetable proteins  in their rations, and had more to gain from enzymes historically than U.S. producers, the latter with their traditional corn, soybean mea and animal protein rich diets. But that all changed, he says, when corn (maize) went from $2 to $8 per bushel, and fat prices went from their long-term average of 13 cents per pound to in excess of 30 cents last year, even though prices have tapered off from that in recent months.