The market for cholesterol lowering Foods continues to decline from the high point in the mid-2000s.
Sterols were first introduced into foods by Raisio in 1997 (they used a hydrogenated form of sterols called Stanols) with the inclusion into fat based spreads called Benecol. Unilever followed a few years later with their sterol containing spread ProActiv and they too were followed in 2004 by Danone with Yogurts containing Sterols. The products were popular in Europe but the culture of pill taking in the US resulted in very low levels of acceptance of products containing Sterols or Stanols and volumes were minimal.
A major consumer trend of “natural” significantly affected sales of spreads and margarines with that of butter increasing. The functional spreads from Unilever and Raisio were then targeted by consumer groups who believed these foods which dealt with improving your health by lowering cholesterol were medicines and should not be sold in a supermarket but a pharmacy.
As a result of this there have been many structural changes in market.
Phytosource in Texas produced Tall Oil Sterols went out of business, bought by Cognis who were then bought by BASF who then closed the plant and demolished it.
BASF were producing Sterols from Rapeseed in France and from Vegetable Oil Distillate in the US (ex Cognis). They have closed the plant in France and sold the one in the US to Kensing.
Raisio sold their plant in South Carolina in 2013, a plant which had been build for their expected growth in the US market which never materialised.
Unilever, who were the major supplier of the spreads and margarine to the world, sold the business to Upfield in 2019
In Pharma the main part of the market is for steroid treatment using corticosteroids. These drugs were originally based on Diosgenin, extracted from the roots (tubers) of the Wild Yam (Dioscorea villosa) in Mexico and supplied to US drug companies. By the turn of the Millennium two major drug companies had switched to using Sterols rather than Diosgenin.
Aware of a booming population, in 1964 the Chinese government sought ways to increase the use of contraceptives and started using Diosgenin from the same family of plants and found in the mountainous areas of Central China. By the early 1990s the production was based on cultivated and not wild plants and therefore allowed significant expansion. With China opening to the international market in the late 90s, then Mexican production has almost disappeared, especially having lost their US market.
The issue with diosgenin is environmental impact in terms of water for crop growth but mainly the quantity of waste water from processing and the residual chemicals. By 2005 new regulations were introduced and these were then implemented by 2009 as the government closed many small sites which were unable to meet the environmental standards, leading to a shortage of material and a significant increase in prices. As a consequence, increasingly, Chinese pharmaceutical companies turned to sterols as their raw material to satisfy their demand.
The use of Steroid based products continues to expand as new products and new fields are identified based on Sterols.
The use in Cosmetics is relatively small in comparison to the total market. Many products do contain sterol based materials but the size of the pack is usually very small and the percentage of the ingredient is also very small.