Soypean
Soypean appears in trade listings as a variant spelling of soybean, the seed of Glycine max, a legume grown principally for its oil and its protein and sold to the food industry either as whole beans or as the defatted meal that remains after crushing.
The bean itself carries roughly 36 to 40 percent protein and 18 to 20 percent oil on a dry basis, a combination that no other commodity crop matches at scale, which is why it dominates the plant protein trade. Its protein is dominated by the storage globulins glycinin and beta conglycinin, complete in the indispensable amino acids and comparatively high in lysine, with methionine the limiting residue. The oil is largely linoleic and oleic acid.
Two natural components decide how the bean must be handled. Trypsin inhibitors reduce protein digestibility and must be destroyed by adequate heat treatment before the bean or its meal enters food or feed use, and lipoxygenase generates the green beany aldehydes within minutes of a wetted bean being broken, so the enzyme is inactivated at the moment of grinding rather than later. Food grade beans ship cleaned, graded and dried to a storage moisture near 13 percent, in colours from pale yellow through green to black according to variety.
We source bulk Soypean from top China manufacturers for our partners. The manufacturer is in Shandong. A smaller requirement can ship in a combined container with other ingredients.
Please send the grade you need, the volume and your destination port, and we will come back with a solution and a price.
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- Function
- Protein
Specifications
| Item | Specification |
|---|---|
| Appearance | Whole dried beans of uniform size and colour, free from mould and insect damage |
| Odour | Characteristic, free from musty, sour or foreign odour |
| Protein (dry basis) | Minimum 36.0% |
| Oil (dry basis) | Minimum 18.0% |
| Moisture | Maximum 13.0% |
| Foreign Matter | Maximum 1.0% |
| Damaged and Split Beans | Maximum 2.0% for food grade |
| Ash | Maximum 5.5% |
| Aflatoxin B1 | Complies with the applicable maximum level of the destination market |
| Lead | Maximum 0.2 mg/kg |
| Arsenic | Maximum 0.5 mg/kg |
| Total Plate Count | Maximum 50,000 cfu/g |
| Yeast and Mould | Maximum 1,000 cfu/g |
| Salmonella | Absent in 25 g |
Common Markets Grades
Beans are traded first by end use. Crushing grade goes to oil mills and is priced on oil and protein content, while food grade beans, used for soya milk, tofu and fermented products, carry tighter requirements on size uniformity, hilum colour, damaged and split bean count and foreign matter, and are priced above crushing grade. Within food grade, large seeded varieties are selected for whole bean uses and smaller high protein varieties for tofu and soya milk, where yield per tonne of bean is the buying criterion.
The second axis is provenance. Identity preserved non genetically modified beans and organic certified beans are sold against segregation records and polymerase chain reaction testing, which is a routine requirement in European, Japanese and Korean trade. Speciality types include black soybean, green kernel varieties and vegetable soybean harvested immature as edamame. Processed forms derived from the same bean, defatted meal, full fat and defatted flour, protein concentrate and isolate, are traded as separate products at their own specifications.
Applications
- Oil crushing, the largest single outlet, yielding crude soybean oil and defatted meal
- Soya milk and tofu manufacture, where food grade beans are wet ground and coagulated
- Fermented foods including soy sauce, miso, tempeh and fermented bean curd
- Soy protein manufacture, where defatted flakes are the feedstock for concentrate, isolate and textured protein
- Full fat and defatted soy flour for bakery and prepared foods
- Roasted and seasoned snack beans, and soy nut butter
- Bean sprout production, using small seeded varieties
- Edamame, harvested immature and sold frozen in the pod
- Animal feed, where defatted meal is the reference protein source for poultry, swine and aquaculture
- Industrial applications including lecithin recovery from the oil degumming stream
China Manufacturers of Soypean
Top Soypean manufacturers in China.
Company names and logos are the property of the manufacturers themselves. They are listed here because our own directory records them as producing this ingredient. A listing is not an endorsement by them, and we do not represent them or speak on their behalf.
Regulatory Status
In the United States soybeans and soybean products are conventional foods used under good manufacturing practice. Soybeans are one of the major food allergens named in the Food Allergen Labelling and Consumer Protection Act, so soy must be declared in any food containing them. Genetically modified varieties dominate United States production, and disclosure is governed by the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard administered by the Department of Agriculture, with voluntary non genetically modified claims resting on segregation and private certification. Grading and inspection of the commodity itself are handled through the federal grain inspection system, and hexane used in crushing is a processing aid subject to residue conditions.
In the European Union soybeans are a food and feed material, with genetically modified varieties authorised individually under Regulation (EC) No 1829/2003 and traceability required under Regulation (EC) No 1830/2003, which together mandate labelling above a low adventitious presence threshold. Soybeans appear in Annex II of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 and must be emphasised in the ingredient list. Extraction solvents are governed by the extraction solvents directive, and contaminant limits are set in the general contaminants legislation. Codex maintains a standard for named vegetable oils covering soybean oil, a standard for vegetable protein products covering the protein fractions, and general standards for contaminants applying to the bean.
Manufacturing Process
Beans arriving from the field are cleaned to remove pods, stones, dust and foreign seed, then dried to a storage moisture of around 13 percent and stored in aerated silos, since higher moisture allows mould growth and the development of off flavours in the oil. Food grade lots are graded by size on screens, sorted optically to remove discoloured, split and insect damaged beans, and tested for foreign matter and mycotoxins before shipment.
The main industrial route is crushing. Beans are cracked into pieces, the hulls are aspirated away, and the meats are conditioned with heat and moisture and flaked between smooth rolls into thin flakes that allow solvent to reach the oil. The flakes are extracted countercurrent with hexane, which is then evaporated and recovered, and the marc is desolventised and toasted with steam, a step that both strips residual solvent and applies the heat needed to destroy trypsin inhibitors. That toasted meal goes to feed or, in a milder desolventising regime that preserves nitrogen solubility, becomes the white flake feedstock for protein concentrate and isolate. Beans destined for soya milk and tofu bypass crushing entirely, being dehulled, blanched to inactivate lipoxygenase, wet ground with hot water and cooked before the okara is separated.
