Recently, the National Standardization Administration officially released the national standard GB/T 46671-2025 "Technical Specification for Plant Extract Production Process". As the first technical specification in the field of plant extracts in China that focuses on the entire production process, the introduction of this standard fills the gap in the industry's production process without unified standards. It will lay a solid technical foundation for the high-quality development of the industry and help China further enhance its core competitiveness in the global plant extract market.
China is an important global exporter of plant extracts, with a stable industry scale and market share among the top in the world. Data shows that in 2023, China's export value of plant extracts will reach 23.88 billion yuan, with a global market share of over 20%, continuing to lead the global market. Plant extracts, as natural green raw materials, have been widely used in various fields such as food, medicine, health food, daily chemical products, cosmetics, and aquaculture inputs, becoming an important link connecting the agricultural, industrial, and consumer goods markets.
However, the industry has long faced many bottlenecks in its development. Due to the vast differences in production processes, the coexistence of traditional extraction techniques and high-tech, and the competition between small workshop production and large-scale enterprises, the stability of product quality is poor and the content of active ingredients fluctuates greatly. At the same time, the lack of unified process specifications makes it difficult for different enterprises to compare their products horizontally, which not only poses challenges to the quality control of downstream applications, but also to some extent restricts the recognition of China's plant extracts in the international market, becoming a prominent obstacle to the industry's development towards higher quality.
The GB/T 46671-2025 national standard released this time has built a complete framework of "basic requirements process flow technical parameters verification methods" around the key links of plant extract production. The standard specifies the technical requirements and operating specifications for each process from raw material acceptance, solvent selection for extraction to concentration, purification, drying, etc. At the same time, it strengthens the traceability management of the entire production process, providing a scientific and unified technical basis for the production of various plant extracts such as polyphenols and flavonoids.
The core goal of the standard is to solve the long-standing pain points in the industry, such as inconsistent processes and large quality fluctuations. The main drafter of the standard, Associate Researcher Lan Tao from the Agricultural Food Standardization Research Institute of the China National Institute of Standardization, stated that by establishing a unified process baseline, it can effectively regulate market order, solve the problem of product homogenization, and promote the industry's transformation from "extensive development" to "standardization and quality improvement".
Industry insiders point out that the formulation and implementation of this standard have significant practical significance. At the domestic level, we will guide enterprises to optimize production processes, improve technological levels, and force small workshop style enterprises to transform and upgrade, promoting the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure; On the downstream application end, it will provide reliable guarantees for quality control in fields such as food and medicine, and reduce supply chain risks; At the international level, standards will promote the integration of China's plant extract industry with the international market, support mutual recognition of product quality in import and export trade, and help "Chinese extracts" gain more say in the global market.
With the continuous improvement of the standardization system, China's plant extract industry will gradually break away from the current situation of "leading scale but uneven quality" and enter a new stage of high-quality development. In the future, under the guidance of standards, the industry is expected to further consolidate its development efforts, strengthen technological innovation and quality control, continue to consolidate its global market advantage, and enable more high-quality Chinese plant extract products to go global.
