Market Trends of Asia-Pacific Stevia Industry
This section covers the major market trends shaping the APAC Stevia Market according to our research experts:
Increased Utilization in Beverages
Stevia is a natural choice for sweetening a wide variety of beverages, such as teas, coffees, soft drinks, flavored waters, juices, and alcoholic beverages. The stevia solutions formulated for specific beverage applications can provide a superior, clean, sugar-like taste with reduced linger. Stevia's rapid growth in the beverages market is a testament to its many benefits, including zero calories, 100% natural origin, and being non-caloric, tooth-friendly, non-fermenting, highly soluble, and pH, heat, photo (light), and shelf-stable. It is also an excellent sweetener choice for CSDs (carbonated soft drinks), which typically have a low pH, especially considering the wide range of temperatures that the CSDs experience during their shelf life in some markets.
China Dominates the Market
China, as the world's production base for stevia sweeteners, has been becoming an important end-user market, aided by the huge and fast-growing end-user industries. This dramatic growth has been driven by the fast development of the end-user industries, especially functional beverages and foods, glazed fruits, tea and juice beverage, medicines, and other end-user industries, which are the major application fields for stevia in China. The Chinese consumers, who are greatly influenced by Chinese traditional medicine and natural products, have a higher preference for stevia sweeteners, compared to other HIS. Strict restrictions on the application and production of some artificial HIS, especially saccharin and cyclamate, also largely contribute to the growth of the stevia market.
