Later, people may find that oranges are too expensive, so they invented the method of producing vitamin C by fermentation and the method of decomposing organic matter into other compounds by microorganisms or enzymes.
From 1933, when the Germans invented "Reich's chemical method" to the 1980s, vitamin C giants all over the world have been using this method. However, this method is complicated, requires high procedures and production equipment, and is a great challenge to the safety control of the production line. At that time, there were only three manufacturers in the world who could master the production process of vitamin C and produce it through production lines: Roche of Switzerland, BASF of Germany and Takeda Pharmaceutical of Japan. Later, they formed a monopoly alliance of vitamin C, controlling the production and price of vitamin C all over the world.
1980, China couldn't bear the situation that the vitamin C industry was monopolized by overseas giants for a long time, and successfully improved the production technology of vitamin C. At that time, Yin Guanglin, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, invented the "two-stage fermentation method", which greatly reduced the complexity of vitamin C production and the requirements for the production environment. More importantly, it greatly reduced the production cost of vitamin C and greatly increased its output.
At that time, the vitamin C monopoly alliance keenly discovered China's "local pharmaceutical" and proposed to buy this patent. At that time, China people lacked global thinking and awareness of the value of these subversive patents. At that time, Roche bought the patent for $4 million. Fortunately, Zhongmin left himself a hand at that time, and only sold the right to use the patent outside China, which means that our own enterprises can also use this patent to produce vitamin C in China.
Roche's purchase of China's patent is only a defensive strategy. In order to prevent other European and American pharmaceutical companies from competing with them by producing vitamin C through this China patent, they are still using their own original Lai's chemical method, because they don't think China's method is an advanced method at all, and they don't believe in China's R&D ability and production capacity.
Later, with the development of reform and opening up, the kind of ignition reserved by China developed into a torch. With the advanced "two-stage fermentation method", China has gradually expanded the production of vitamin C, accounting for an increasing share in the global production of vitamin C. Because of its low cost and price, vitamin C made in China is even sold to Europe, America, Japan and other countries.
At this time, the vitamin C monopoly alliance couldn't sit still, boasting of its strong production capacity, trying to beat domestic manufacturers through price wars, so it began to take the initiative to reduce prices, from the highest 18 USD/kg to 4 USD/kg in more than a year.
As we all know, vitamin C manufacturers in China are not afraid of this price war, because our production cost is too low, and 4 USD/kg is still profitable. However, for the vitamin C monopoly alliance that adheres to the "Lai's chemical law", the price of 4 yuan is definitely a loss. They tried to hurt people at this cost, but they couldn't afford to steal rice, but they couldn't feed themselves first.
More dramatically, because of price manipulation, the Victoria C monopoly alliance was severely punished by their respective countries and never recovered. Later, Roche sold the vitamin C factory, and Takeda of Japan sold the vitamin C factory to BASF of Germany. Later, BASF could not bear the strong production capacity of China Pharmaceutical Factory and stopped production soon. Since then, only responsible for providing raw materials such as citral.
Today, more than 90% of the world's vitamin C is produced by four pharmaceutical factories in China-Northeast Pharmaceutical, North China Pharmaceutical, Wunakang Pharmaceutical and Jiangshan Pharmaceutical. China has the absolute production right and pricing right of vitamin C.