The strategic design of this study aims at fermentative succinate production with high volumetric productivity in engineered Escherichia coil. An E. coil YL106/pSCsfcA was engineered to produce succinate under aerobic, microaerobic and anaerobic conditions by derepressing the inhibition of low dissolved oxygen, eliminating the NADH competitive pathways, modulating the redistribution of metabolic flux, and increasing the transport rate of the sole carbon source glucose. Based on this strain, a novel "whole-phase" succinate production strategy was further developed, in which the engineered strain was first cultivated aerobically, then shifted to microaerobic phase at the end of exponential growth, and finally kept in anaerobic phase until the end of fermentation. Employing this strategy, the engineered E. coli YL106/pSCsfcA was able to produce 85.30 g l(-1) succinate with an overall volumetric productivity of 2.13 g l(-1) h(-1). This process offers an efficiently fermentative method for industrial succinate production in metabolically engineered E. coli. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.