This week, the U.S. Grains Council (USGC) hosted a starch conference in Seoul, South Korea. focusing on the fundamentals of corn wet milling, processing and considerations of starch into glucose, fructose and other sugars using enzymes and other products.
This conference is a part of a series of conferences the Council has hosted to highlight the findings of its industrial corn starch study, which examined and compared the extractable starch of U.S., Brazilian, Argentinean and Black Sea corn. Conducted over a three-year period, the results showed that U.S. corn has three to four percent more extractable starch than other origins, leading to the potential for increased profits by wet millers switching to U. S. corn.
“For every one percent increase in starch yield, a plant can increase its annual profitability by one million dollars, so this study clearly shows that the industry has a financial incentive to use only 100 percent U.S corn all year long,” said Kurt Shultz, USGC senior director of global strategies.
“Any plant using other origin corn is clearly at a competitive disadvantage to those plants relying on U.S. corn.”
With participants in attendance from Korea, China, Japan, Taiwan and the Latin America, Southeast Asia and Middle East and Africa regions, the conference acted as a great opportunity for networking and knowledge-sharing, helping to build a strong community within the industry.
The Council hopes wet milling customers from the countries in attendance will network with counterparts from around the world while learning how to increase production and efficiency in their work, which will in turn lead to further advancement in their own operations.
USGC Global Update
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