Citric acid is the most important organic acid which widely used in the food industry. The discovery of citric acid is attributed to the Arab alchemist Abu Musa Jabir ibn Hayyan (721–815). The Swedish pharmacist Scheele was able to isolate citric acid for the first time in 1784. The production of citric acid was started by John & Edmund Sturge in 1826 in the UK. In 1894, the first industrial fermentation was built using an open tray system.

The aim of the study is to highlight the main milestones in the formation of the citric acid market in terms of the development of the global citric acid industry and individual countries. One of the objectives of the study was to periodize the history of citric acid production from the first industrial fermentation to the recognized world industry.

This paper reviews the path that citric acid went from the first industrial plant to the global industry with an annual production of 1.5 million tons, what problems the industry faced and how it found solutions to reach new altitude. Problems of the citric acid production industry and methods to solve them have been identified.

The importance of establishing a specialized Association for the proper functioning of the citric acid industry in Ukraine, which will include all its producers in the country, has been substantiated.

The research is based on the use of general scientific principles of systematization, complexity, multifactoriality and comprehensiveness, which provide a comprehensive coverage of the chosen problem. General scientific, interdisciplinary and special historical methods, as well as methods of source analysis are used.

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