The Past and Present of Feed-Grade Silica: An “Invisible” Industry and a Growing Divide

The Past and Present of Feed-Grade Silica: An “Invisible” Industry and a Growing Divide

There is a counterintuitive fact about the feed industry: the least “nutritional” part of what you feed an animal often determines whether an entire production line runs smoothly. Silica sits in exactly that position. Its inclusion rate in compound feed usually ranges from 0.2% to 3%. It provides no energy and takes no part in metabolism. On the label, it is often dismissed in a few words as an “anti-caking agent” or “carrier.” But without it, powdered vitamin premixes cake, high-fat formulas bridge in silos, and automated feeding systems stop frequently because material will not flow. This industry is rarely discussed, yet it is one of the underlying conditions that keep modern feed production running.

To understand today’s competitive landscape, it helps to look at where it came from.

Silica entered the feed sector not primarily to prevent caking, but to turn liquids into powders. Vitamin E is widely used in feed, but pure vitamin E acetate is an oil, which is almost impossible to handle directly in feed production. As early as the 1970s and 1980s, patents appeared for precipitated silica as an inert carrier, using its porous structure to adsorb vitamin E oil and convert it into a free-flowing powder. In China, research on vitamin E powder dates back to 1988, with records explicitly describing “the use of silica’s adsorptive properties to adsorb vitamin E oil and produce a powder.” That technical route established the first identity of feed-grade silica: a carrier. It does not change the chemical nature of the active ingredient, but it turns an unhandleable liquid into a solid that can be weighed, mixed and conveyed.

The 1990s marked a turning point. Rhodia, later part of Solvay, brought high-performance precipitated silica technology into the feed nutrition sector. Its Tixosil® Micropearl form—spherical agglomerates—opened new application space. The point of spheronisation was not appearance, but flow: ordinary powders tend to bridge in silos and pipes, while microbead forms significantly reduce that risk. Around the same period, Evonik’s SIPERNAT® series began building a position in feed carriers and free-flow agents, and its hydrophobically modified products later became a reference standard in high-fat systems. From the 2000s onward, the main line of technical iteration shifted toward nano-scale and surface modification: the specific surface area of precipitated and fumed silica was pushed from the conventional 100–200 m²/g to 300–400 m²/g, while dosage dropped from 0.5%–2% to 0.05%–0.3%. In other words, the amount of functional silica used per ton of feed is falling, but the performance demanded per unit is rising sharply.

Market size figures need to be read with care, because different statistical boundaries produce very different numbers. QYResearch puts global sales of “silica for animal feed” at USD 213 million in 2025, rising to USD 322 million by 2032, a CAGR of 6.2%. If the broader boundary of “feed additive silica” is used, the global market was USD 1.753 billion in 2025 and is expected to reach USD 2.422 billion by 2032, growing at 4.6%. GEP Research estimates the global feed-grade silica market at USD 1.87 billion in 2026, with China at USD 420 million, or 22.5%. The differences come from whether fumed silica, silica gel-type porous materials and non-carrier applications are included. But the common trend is clear: this is not a high-speed风口 industry, but a mature track with steady growth and a rapidly shifting internal structure.

What matters more is the structure. Traditional anti-caking agents still account for about 65% of the market, but nutritional carriers and toxin-binding functions are growing at around 12% a year, well above the industry average. In aquaculture feed, silica’s use as a mineral carrier and free-flow agent is expected to rise from 18% in 2024 to 26% by 2030. In livestock feed, its role in improving pellet hardness and durability is being reassessed, with annual demand growth above 8%. At the same time, the world’s top five producers—Evonik, PQ, Grace, Solvay and China Bluestar—together hold about 63.8% of the market, a highly concentrated structure. The position of Chinese companies is interesting: in 2025, China’s exports of feed-grade silica reached 46,000 metric tons, up 12.4% year on year, mainly to Southeast Asia, South America and Europe. But the export mix remains concentrated in mid- and low-end products, with limited share in high-end carriers and specialty functional products.

Within this landscape, Zhongqi (Guangdong) Silicon Materials Co., Ltd. and Shandong Zhonglian Chemical Co., Ltd. have taken a somewhat different path. They did not climb from the low end of the feed-grade market upward. Instead, they transferred the quality control system of food-grade silica into feed applications. The path began in 2006, when Zhongqi’s powder plant started operations. In 2013, the company obtained its first food additive production licence. In 2015 and 2016, it secured HALAL and OU Kosher certifications, and in 2017 it was recognised as a high-tech enterprise. In 2024, the company obtained a feed additive production licence and FAMI-QS certification, formally extending from food into feed. It currently has an annual capacity of 30,000 metric tons of food- and pharma-grade silica, holds 16 core patents, and exports to more than 20 countries and regions.

Placed in this context, the meaning of “core competitive advantage” becomes more specific. In the feed-grade direction, Zhongqi and Shandong Zhonglian do not focus on competing head-on with companies such as Quechen Silicon Chemical, which has already reached global scale in traditional animal feed carriers—Quechen ranks third in the world in total precipitated silica capacity, and its C-series feed additives cover carriers, free-flow agents and anti-caking agents, with customers including major global animal nutrition leaders. Zhongqi’s entry point is two more specialised directions: ordinary ultra-fine silica and ultra-fine aluminium hydroxide. The value of ultra-fine silica is not “fine” itself, but the narrower particle size distribution, which means more particles per unit mass and a larger specific surface area. At low dosage, this allows a more uniform coating layer to form on the surface of host powders. Evonik’s technical literature explicitly notes that particles that are too large relative to the host powder cannot attach effectively and instead create dust. The point of ultra-fining is to improve free-flow and anti-caking efficiency in the 0.1%–0.5% dosage range. Zhongqi’s food-grade purity foundation provides a hidden advantage here: heavy metal limits and batch consistency are already basic requirements in its food-grade lines, so this data system does not need to be built from scratch when transferred to feed carriers.

Ultra-fine aluminium hydroxide is a more specialised option. Public application records for aluminium hydroxide in feed are far less extensive than those for silica. Its conventional roles are flame retardant filler, catalyst carrier and toothpaste base material. After surface treatment with stearic acid or silane coupling agents, its dispersibility and compatibility can be adjusted. But after ultra-fining, its specific surface area and surface activity increase significantly, and its potential as an adsorptive functional material exists—the hydroxyl groups on the aluminium hydroxide surface have an affinity for certain polar substances, creating room for exploration in anti-mould, adsorption or specialty carrier applications. Putting it in the same product matrix as ultra-fine silica is not about “selling two products.” It is about serving the same customer need: achieving a specific interfacial function at very low dosage, rather than making up volume with bulk fillers.

Looking back from the market data, this path choice is in step with where the industry is heading. The EU’s 2025 revision of feed additive regulations further tightened limits on cadmium and mercury, and high specific surface area with low heavy metal content is moving from a “bonus” to an “entry threshold.” China’s new national standard for feed additives, implemented in 2025, for the first time specifies testing methods for nano-scale silica, and regulation is moving toward greater precision. When standards begin to distinguish “ordinary precipitated” from “nano-scale/functional” products, the room for volume-driven ordinary products will narrow. Companies that have already built data and process capability in ultra-fine and specialty directions will gain not a short-term price advantage, but a longer access window.

Feed-grade silica has never been a “big” industry. The global end market for silica in animal feed is only a few hundred million US dollars, and even on the broader feed additive basis it is far from comparable with bulk chemicals. But it is a “deep” industry: seven decades of carrier application history, three decades of morphology innovation, and more than a decade of nano-scale iteration. Each layer of accumulation corresponds to specific process parameters and customer audit records. Zhongqi and Shandong Zhonglian’s extension from food grade to feed grade is essentially about using a stricter quality control logic to serve a relatively “more tolerant” market—ordinary ultra-fine silica stabilising the basic functions of carrier and free-flow, and ultra-fine aluminium hydroxide pushing the boundary of specialty functions one step further. Whether this path works will not be decided by capacity figures, but by whether the invisible batch data and particle size distribution curves can consistently line up. The feed industry does not care about supplier stories. It only cares about whether material flows, whether caking is low, and whether every batch is the same. Companies that can answer those three questions well will, in this “invisible” industry, naturally be seen.