Why is tocotrienol much more expensive than tocopherol?
In nature, the level of tocotrienols is at such a low level (part per million level) that is it takes a huge amount of the raw material to extract out 1kg of tocotrienols. For example, for every 1000kg of soy fatty acid distillate, one can extract out about 70kg of the tocopherols. In comparison, every 1000kg of palm oil, one can only theoretically extract out 0.5kg of tocotrienols. In addition, the process to extract tocotrienols by molecular distillation is an expensive process compared to the convention distillation processes.
