India’s deficit across eight amino-acid lines is $354 million, and methionine alone is 48% of it. It is made from acrolein, methyl mercaptan and hydrogen cyanide, not sugar, while MSG imports grow and glycine trade is balanced but under a DGTR case.
Methionine, Not Lysine, Is India’s Biggest Amino-Acid Gap. It Is Made From Petrochemicals, Not Sugar, and Glycine Is Now an Anti-Dumping Case
The first piece in this series put India’s lysine deficit at $102 million and concluded that lysine is a fermentation business won on scale. Lysine is not the biggest amino-acid gap, though. Methionine is, and it is made in a completely different way, from petrochemicals, with no sugar in it. Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is the third, and it is still growing. Glycine, the smallest, is the only one where India appears to make a lot, and it has just become the subject of an anti-dumping case.
This piece sets out the whole set from the same trade registry, how each is made, and what that means for who could make it in India. The answer differs for each, and for two of them it is not what the sugar-mill pitch assumes.
The whole set, and how each is made
Eight amino-acid lines sit in the registry, which holds the 827 import lines that qualified on deficit and other tests. Together they imported $391 million in FY26 and ran a deficit of $354 million. Three of them make up 96% of the deficit: methionine, lysine and MSG. The colour in the chart is the route. Methionine and glycine are made by chemical synthesis, which gives a mixture of the D and L forms; that suits glycine, which has no mirror image, and DL-methionine, which poultry can use in either form. Lysine and the glutamates are made by fermentation. L-cystine comes from hydrolysing protein, and one regulatory review describes it being made from keratin, including human hair, with hydrochloric acid.
| HS-8 | Amino acid | How it is made | FY26 imports, $ mn | Deficit, $ mn | Volume change, % | Price change, % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29304000 | Methionine | Chemical synthesis | 171.3 | 170.8 | +6.0 | −7.0 |
| 29224100 | Lysine and its salts | Fermentation | 106.1 | 102.4 | −4.0 | −18.7 |
| 29224220 | Monosodium glutamate | Fermentation | 67.9 | 67.3 | +34.0 | −12.8 |
| 29224910 | Glycine | Chemical synthesis | 19.0 | 0.6 | −15.0 | −13.2 |
| 29224290 | Other glutamic acid, salts | Fermentation | 11.8 | 2.1 | +10.0 | −22.2 |
| 29309014 | L-cystine | Extraction (protein hydrolysis) | 10.7 | 6.4 | — | — |
| 29225015 | L-tyrosine | Not established here | 3.5 | 3.5 | +43.0 | −16.4 |
| 29224210 | Glutamic acid | Fermentation | 1.0 | 0.8 | +40.0 | +2.7 |
Threonine, tryptophan, valine and phenylalanine are not in the registry, so they fell below its threshold or are entered under lines that mix other products. They are the next amino acids a feed maker would buy after lysine and methionine, and India’s trade in them is invisible in this data.
Methionine: the biggest gap is not a sugar story
India imported $171.3 million of methionine in FY26, a deficit of $170.8 million. Volume rose 6% and the unit price fell 7%, so it is a steady, large and slowly cheapening import. The reason it is not a sugar product is in the process. Industrial DL-methionine is made by the carbonate-hydantoin route, a descendant of a process developed at Degussa in the 1940s. Methylmercaptopropionaldehyde is turned into a hydantoin with ammonia, carbon dioxide and hydrogen cyanide, which is then hydrolysed with potassium carbonate and freed by carbonation. Patents describe one-stage versions from acrolein, methyl mercaptan, hydrogen cyanide and ammonium carbonate at about 85% yield, and hydrolysis at up to 95% on acrolein. The older conditions are harsh, up to over 200°C, and the carbonate loop moves a lot of salty liquor, which is why newer routes from methionine nitrile aim to be salt-free.
To make it, a plant has to be integrated back to acrolein, methyl mercaptan and hydrogen cyanide, which are the hazardous raw materials. That is petrochemistry and sulfur chemistry. A sugar mill brings nothing to it. The producers are few and large: Evonik’s Singapore complex was expanded by 40,000 tonnes to about 340,000 tonnes a year and is reported to hold over 40% of the market, on a single market-research claim. Adisseo built a 150,000-tonne powder plant in China and announced a ¥4.9 billion plant at Quanzhou, whose status was not confirmed. One outlook says two Chinese plants add 380,000 tonnes in 2025–26, which could not be checked. Sources disagree on who the top four are.
For scale, one report puts Indian methionine at $2.68 a kilogram in the first quarter of 2026. At that unverified price, $171 million is on the order of 60,000 tonnes, which would be about a fifth of the Singapore complex’s output. That is this blog’s arithmetic, since the FY26 price is not known. No domestic methionine plant and no DGTR case on methionine was found.
MSG: the growing one nobody here seems to make
MSG is made by fermentation. The seven-amino-acid study extract gives the textbook figures: Brevibacterium divaricatum on 12% glucose, 30 to 35 hours, 100 g of glutamic acid per litre, and a glucose conversion of about 70%. Ajinomoto says glutamate was the first amino acid to move from extraction to fermentation, in the 1960s.
India imported $67.9 million of MSG in FY26. Volume grew 34% and value 17%, with the unit price down 12.8%. That is the one large amino-acid line that is accelerating. No Indian MSG producer, and no Indian trade case, turned up in the searches. MSG trade is contested elsewhere: the US imposed duties on Chinese and Indonesian MSG (8.3% and 6.19% in the final determination), the EU did so in 2008 after a complaint from its only producer, and Vietnam opened a case in 2019. India has not, as far as was found.
Glycine: balanced trade and a live case
Glycine is the odd one. India imported $19.0 million in FY26 against a deficit of only $0.6 million, which means it exported almost as much, about $18 million. Volume fell 15% and the unit price 13.2%. The DGTR opened an anti-dumping investigation into glycine from China on 22 September 2026 (reported under case AD/OI/045/2026, a number seen in one notice), on a complaint from Avid Organics, covering 2022 to 2025. This is not the first such case: an earlier DGTR investigation, on an application from Paras Intermediates and Avid Organics covering April 2020 to March 2021, recommended duties, and the Finance Ministry decided not to accept the recommendation. The company describes itself as India’s largest glycine maker, with capacity above 4,200 tonnes a year at a zero-discharge plant in Vadodara; those figures are self-reported and were not independently confirmed.
Why would an exporter ask for protection? The registry cannot say. Glycine is sold in technical, food and pharmaceutical grades at different prices, and a line that nets to zero can hide Indian exports of one grade and Chinese imports of another. The US took a view on Indian glycine in 2019, when its Commission found that imports from India and Japan injured its industry and orders followed. The Indian case will turn on grade and price data that is not public.
The ones nobody is counting
Threonine, tryptophan and valine are the feed amino acids after lysine and methionine, and China makes most of them: 76% of lysine and 93% of threonine capacity in 2023, by one industry report. Chinese threonine was about 10 yuan a kilogram in April 2025, about 10% below a year earlier, and tryptophan about 45 to 47 yuan, both on oversupply. The EU put definitive duties on Chinese lysine from 12 July 2025 for five years, 47.7% for Meihua and 58.2% for Eppen in one summary of the regulation, and in 2026 re-opened an inquiry into whether they have worked, registering Chinese imports from 29 July. Chinese exporters were reported to have shipped heavily to non-EU markets ahead of the duties, and China FOB lysine was quoted at $870 a tonne in July 2026. How much of it reaches India is not in the data found here.
Where the data stop
- No import tonnage or origin. The registry gives value, volume change and price change, not tonnes or country. The 60,000-tonne methionine figure rests on one unverified price.
- Threonine, tryptophan, valine and phenylalanine are missing. They fall below the registry’s threshold.
- No Indian capacity figures for methionine or MSG, and the glycine capacity is the complainant’s own claim.
- Glycine grades. Nothing separates technical from food or pharmaceutical glycine in the trade data.
- Vendor and trade-press sources. The methionine producer shares, the Chinese capacity additions and the Indian price all come from market-research or trade summaries that could not be checked against primary sources.
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 methionine, threonine, tryptophan, valine and phenylalanine, so India’s dependence is measured.
- The Directorate General of Trade Remedies should publish, in the glycine case, the non-confidential split of Indian exports and Chinese imports by grade, so it is clear what is being protected from what.
- The Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals should publish a costed route for backward integration into methionine, covering acrolein, methyl mercaptan and hydrogen cyanide, with the sulfur and cyanide supply that it would require.
- The Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation and the Central Pollution Control Board should state the licensing and effluent norms for a plant handling hydrogen cyanide and methyl mercaptan, so the compliance cost is known before a plant is planned.
- The Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying should publish feed-additive use by amino acid, so demand for methionine, lysine and the next acids is a measured number and not a market-research estimate.
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, volume and price change from DGCI&S data; 827 qualifying lines). The $391 million, $354 million, 96% and 48% figures are sums and ratios of those rows. Methionine process: US patents 5990349, 5770769 and 12195422, a process-summary page and a cost-report listing (carbonate-hydantoin route, hydantoin from methylmercaptopropionaldehyde, ammonia, carbon dioxide and hydrogen cyanide; one-stage yield about 85%, hydrolysis up to 95%, temperatures to over 200°C, salty carbonate loop; origin at Degussa in the 1940s). Methionine market: a Feedstuffs report on Evonik’s Singapore expansion (40,000 t to about 340,000 t; a market-research claim of over 40% share), reports on Adisseo’s 150,000 t China plant and the ¥4.9 billion Quanzhou plant (2024 announcement; status not confirmed), an unverified outlook of 380,000 t of new Chinese capacity, and an India methionine market page quoting $2.68 a kilogram for Q1 2026 (unverified; the roughly 60,000 t is this blog’s arithmetic). Fermentation figures: a study extract on the microbial production of seven amino acids (B. divaricatum, 12% glucose, 30–35 h, 100 g/l, about 70% conversion) and Ajinomoto’s page on how amino acids are made (glutamate shifted to fermentation in the 1960s; chemical synthesis kept for glycine and DL-forms). MSG trade cases: US final determinations (8.3% China, 6.19% Indonesia), the EU measures of 2008 and a Vietnamese case opened in 2019; no Indian MSG producer or case was found. Glycine: a report of the DGTR initiation of 22 September 2026 (AD/OI/045/2026, complainant Avid Organics, period 2022–2025), the complainant’s own profile (4,200+ t a year, Vadodara; self-reported), a trade-data profile listing a Delhi address, and US Commission findings of June 2019 on glycine from India and Japan. Cystine: a US organic-standards review describing production from keratin with hydrochloric acid. Feed amino acids: a CCM report on China’s share (76% of lysine, 93% of threonine capacity in 2023), April 2025 Chinese threonine and tryptophan prices from trade press, and reports of the EU duties on Chinese lysine from 12 July 2025 (47.7% to 58.2%, the rates differing slightly between summaries), the 2026 re-opened inquiry and the 29 July 2026 registration of imports, and an aggregator’s July 2026 China FOB lysine price ($870 a tonne; indicative). The earlier DGTR glycine case and the 22–23 September 2026 initiation come from trade-press reports. Most sources were abstracts, patents, vendor pages or search summaries, not full texts. No Indian methionine, MSG or threonine plant 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.
