Why Creatine Supply is Essential For American Industrialization

Ive been talking about Creatine a lot on the X timeline, and hinted at how the supply chain for creatine is essential for industrialization, and national security.

That merits an explanation. Its certainly a bold claim to make.

Ive been telling this story to interested supporters of the project, and its continuously shocked people. Once you see it, you understand why vertically integrated American Creatine is a necessity.

Let us start with a Timeline.

America 1995-The American Cyanamid corporation, one of the largest chemical manufacturers in the USA, merges with Wyeth Corporation in a $9.5 billion deal. Despite the name, it has ceased production of the chemical called “cyanamide”, a nitrogen intermediate that supports multiple industries. The US becomes 100% import dependent.

China 1995-China builds a factory ecosystem for cyanamide in Ningxia, taking advantage of the region’s abundant coal, limestone, and newly cheap electricity. These plants produce calcium carbide, calcium cyanamide, and downstream derivatives including DCD, guanidine salts, and creatine.

1997–1999: China begins exporting creatine abroad. Prices collapse. U.S. domestic producer Pfanstiehl Laboratories files an antidumping petition.

February 1999: The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) institutes antidumping Investigation Inv. No. 731-TA-814 on creatine monohydrate from China. imports from the PRC were sold at less than fair value with dumping margins ranging from 120-150%

January 2000: The ITC reaches an affirmative injury determination. Commerce Department imposes antidumping duties. But the damage is done. U.S. domestic creatine production. European production as well, except for Alzchem, the manufacturers of Creapure

2000s–present: Chinese producers continue to expand cyanamide and creatine capacity. U.S. domestic production never returns. China reaches 90%+ of global cyanamide capacity and 90%+ of global creatine production. AlzChem in Germany becomes the sole Western producer of both cyanamide and creatine (Creapure®).

The Creatine Supply Chain Problem is an Industrialization Supply Chain Problem

Have you considered WHY China decided to take over the creatine market?

Was it just for creatine? In 1996 creatine was far from mainstream, not what it is today. What was the motivation for flooding the market?

It goes deeper than anyone realizes

China started mass producing creatine because it was an anchor product for their Industrialization mission.

Today we think of China as an industrial dragon. People talk about the Shenzen zone with awe. People will doompill how China is beating us at making things.

Go back to the 1990s. Chinese products are considered bottom tier. No one is predicting they will be a peer to the USA in 30 years.

What changed?

China committed to Nitrogen and Carbide

To what????

I will explain.

There are only three true “root chemistries” that built modern industry:

1. Petrochemistry (oil and gas)-The USA is the world leader in this

2. Nitrogen chemistry (ammonia, cyanamide, guanidines)

3. Carbide / acetylene chemistry

At one time the United States did all three, but we largely abandoned 2 and 3 over the last 50 years.

China picked up the slack and started building its Nitrogen and Carbide capacity. Nitrogen especially is the chemical foundation of the modern world. You need nitrogen to unlock carbide production.

When scientists learned to pull nitrogen from the air and convert it into ammonia through the Haber–Bosch process, they unlocked the ability to manufacture fertilizer, dramatically increasing global food production and allowing the human population to grow from under two billion in 1900 to over eight billion today.

From that same nitrogen chemistry tree come explosives, pharmaceuticals, plastics, synthetic fibers, electronics materials, and countless industrial intermediates that power agriculture, medicine, manufacturing, and energy systems.

In simple terms, without nitrogen, you are stuck as a civilization. China wanted to unstick itself. And they DID.

For a country to go from rural and lacking education and institutional knowledge to first world, manufacturing is how you educate your population, create jobs, and build a real economy.

To do that required building the necessary ecosystem for production. Making things requires raw materials, intermediate materials, then fabrication. Then putting the parts together.

This is Layer 1 to Layer 5 pyramid of supply chains I wrote about in my past article

China used its natural resources to create their chemical economy

What China lacked in oil and gas, they made up for in Coal and limestone.

Carbide is made in massive furnaces, burning limestone together with coal. China now produces the majority of the world’s calcium carbide, which in turn supports large portions of the global chemical supply chain.

You’ve likely never heard of it until reading this. Carbide carbide is important because it is a bridge between mineral chemistry and organic chemistry. Its the chemical “root” that enables thousands of others chemical formulations to be created.

That takes us to another chemicals

Cyanamide

Great, another chemical youve never heard of. But this is how all manufacturing works. Go deep enough, and you get into the world of molecules

Cyanamide is a “nitrogen intermediate”. Its made from heating Carbide again in an arc furnace.

It sits at the border of Layer 2-3 in the Supply Chain pyramid.

From Cyanamide, you can produce chemicals for

1. Fertilizers & Agriculture

• Nitrogen fertilizers (calcium cyanamide)

• Soil nitrification inhibitors

• Crop protection chemicals

• Plant growth regulators

2. Pharmaceuticals

• Drug intermediates

• Biguanides and guanidines used in medicines

• Diabetes drugs derived from guanidine chemistry

• Various heterocyclic pharmaceutical building blocks

3. Nutritional Supplements

• Creatine

• Guanidinoacetic acid (GAA)

• Sarcosine derivatives

• Other nitrogen performance molecules

4. Industrial Resins & Plastics

• Melamine resins

• Epoxy curing agents

• Adhesives and laminates

• Specialty polymer additives

5. Electronics & Advanced Materials

• Epoxy encapsulants

• Semiconductor resins

• High-performance coatings

• Flame retardant additives

6. Agrochemicals & Crop Protection

• Herbicide intermediates

• Fungicide intermediates

• Pesticide precursors

• Soil treatment chemicals

7. Explosives & Energetics

• Nitrogen-rich compounds used in propellants

• Explosive intermediates

• Military energetic materials

8. Water Treatment & Industrial Chemicals

• Scale inhibitors

• Corrosion inhibitors

• Industrial cleaning agents

• Wastewater treatment chemicals

9. Textile & Leather Processing

• Dye intermediates

• Textile finishing chemicals

• Leather tanning agents

10. Specialty Chemical Manufacturing

• Dicyandiamide

• Guanidines

• Biguanides

• Other nitrogen specialty intermediates used across dozens of downstream products

“Thats a lot of things!”

Yes, exactly. While not on the scale of oil, Cyanamide is an essential precursor that is mandatory for upwards of some 50 different chemical products.

Its what you call a Platform Molecule, a chemical that feeds supply chains across multiple industries; agriculture, pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, plastics, electronics, defense, and specialty chemicals.

If you want to “industrialize” you need to make it

Now, you might be wondering...How the heck does this involve Creatine?!

I will tell you

Creatine is a volumetric Anchor for Cyanamide production

Lets circle back to our 1990s story about China making so much creatine.

The ssurface level assumption is that China produces cheap creatine because it has low labor costs and weak environmental standards.

But why did China care about Creatine at all? Was it BROS running the CCP?

No.

China made so much Creatine because it supported their Infrastructure buildout of Cyanamide

-->When you build a Chemical factory, you encounter a fundamental economics problem:

Chemical plants are EXPENSIVE, they can require hundreds of millions to billions of dollars, they need volume to justify capital expenditure, and they need sustained utilization to remain cost-competitive.

Chemical factories are not built to only make a few hundred pounds. They function on economies of scale. A true “industrial” level factory is going to produce thousands of metric tons of product.

What does that mean in simple terms?

To keep your factory running, you need some kind of chemical that you can sell A LOT of, and sell it constantly, and sell at a high margin.

The question for any producer is: what is that product?

For Cyanamide, it was Creatine

Creatine!?!?!

Yes, creatine.

Because creatine, by pure physical volume, it requires enormous amounts of Cyanamide.

At that time the global creatine market was about 3000 metric tons a year.

Creatine is made of only two chemicals, cyanamide, and sarcosine,

To make a kilogram of creatine, you need about a half kilo of cyanamide.

To give a simple numerical example.

If your factory produces say 5,000 metric tons of cyanamide, 1500 of that can go to creatine. The other 3500 can go to everything else.

China was building HUGE factories, they were producing tens of thousands of metric tons of Cyanamide.

They had to convert some of that into a reliable, recurrent product.

Creatine is unusually awesome because its chemically simple to make, and sells at a high margin in comparison to other commodity chemicals. And its a consumer product, not an industrial one.

This is why China was able to capture 85-90% of the global creatine market within 2 years

For China this worked out perfect. They could make enormous amounts of cyanamide, make dozens of products, and they had a consumer supplement the West bought that helped anchor the whole ecosystem.

With a cost-competitive cyanamide base supported by creatine volume, China simultaneously became the dominant global producer of DCD (used in printed circuit boards, flame retardants, and metformin), guanidine salts (used in airbags and propellants), and the full range of nitrogen-rich intermediates that defense, electronics, and pharmaceutical sectors require.

We Made it Once, We Can Make it Again, and BETTER than Before

The irony of the American supply chain is we have everything we need to vertically integrate, be cost competitive, and serve our domestic and international markets.

America has all the feedstocks for nitrogen chemistry. We have cheap electricity. We have limestone. We have coal. We have natural gas. We have next generation processes to make chemicals with greater efficiency, purity, and output. We have the best scientists and engineers in the world.

This is not a rewind to the past. We can build modernized, automated, high throughput factories that are platforms for massive GDP growth for the rest of the century.

This requires capital, chemistry, and the will to build.

This is a solvable problem. This is what my company, Athanor Inc is doing.

Domestic creatine production is not simply a supplement play. It is the first step in rebuilding the nitrogen precursor stack that American industry abandoned forty years ago.

Creatine can be made in America. Cyanamide can be made in America. The supply chain that feeds medicine, food, defense, and electronics can be sovereign again.

If you want to be part of rebuilding it, as a partner, a customer, or even a team member, reach out.

Alexander@athanor.inc