I PRODUCT REPORT f
PERSONAL CARE PRODUCTS
Susan J. Ainsworth, C&EN Houston
T
he huge personal care industry spends a lot of advertising dollars trying to convince consumers that they need the latest lotion, blush, or toothpaste to look their best. But despite all this marketing wizardry, it is the consumer who ultimately decides the fate and the direction of this $25.5 billion business. Not only must personal care companies respond to the whims of the increasingly savvy consumer, but also they must remain agile enough to turn out products to satisfy those demands faster than their competition. Coming up with the goods to compete in this market has probably never been more challenging. Reformulation is the name of the game. Marketers are having to develop products for a population mat on average is older and more ethnically diverse. And they must continually rethink the ingredients in existing products, making them more environmentally friendly and steering them out of regulation's way. But the biggest hurdle for personal care companies today is satisfying consumers' craving for value. The improvement in the economy over the past year really has not helped personal care companies; in general, their products are necessities that are purchased during good
notes. "Technology is still a critical criteria, but not at the expense of [cost-effectiveess]. All customers in the buying chain are looking for products that bring value. As a function of price and performance, value is the driving force in the marketplace now and probably through the remainder of the decade." At the same time, competition for shelf space is fierce. And the downsizing trend that has swept corporate America has not left personal care companies unscathed. With fewer resources, they are finding it increasingly difficult to focus on what they do best—developing, marketing, and packaging new product concepts at the consumer end of the chain. Thus, they are turning increasingly to chemical companies—their source of raw materials—for help. "Personal care companies are forming much closer working relationships or partnerships with raw material suppliers to leverage the expertise that each has, rather than duplicating efforts," says Janet Kosiek, director of worldwide hair care marketing at International Specialty Products (ISP), Wayne, N.J., "They are relying increasingly on their raw material partners to handle aspects of the business [for which] finished product manufacturers lack critical mass." It makes sense, personal care product manufacturers realize, to let the chemical
Suppliers target ingredients for a cost-conscious, increasingly global personal care market
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APRIL 17, 1995 C&EN
times and bad. Rather, the market is being molded by the high level of competition in personal care markets and by discount retailing chains' stubborn aversion to price increases. The success of new product introductions "all comes down to value," says Frank J. Freiler, director of marketing at Edison, N.J.-based Amerchol, a specialty chemical supplier to the personal care industry. "If a consumer goods company can provide products that deliver the functional benefits consumers want at the right price, then that company will be successful," he says. Some in the industry are labeling the 1990s as "the value decade," Freiler
ents. Although the personal care market is growing at only about 3 to 4% per year overall, certain hot niche markets—such as for multifunctional products and environmentally benign formulations—are growing faster and thus promise more lucrative returns. Suppliers that will come out on top will be those that can develop ingredients and services that are at once innovative, efficacious, and cost-effective.
Reorganizing for focus
Opposite page, Avedas Ko-tcht bhwzawa sniffs a natural essential oil at the "organ"—a U-shaped desk where vials of the ingredients are kept; left, processing of a Dow Corning formulation aid; above, Solvay Interox technician develops formulations for peroxygen-based personal care products; above right, a participant in Dow Coming's sensoni evaluation program
companies do more of the R&D and manufacturing legwork—fine-tuning the chemical ingredients upon which manufacturers can build specific formulations. "A company like Procter & Gamble, Helene Curtis, or Unilever should not have to invest its resources on figuring out how to extend the carbon chain length of a specialty surfactant/' says William (Skip) Huisking, vice president and general manager of the performance products group of Lonza, Fair Lawn,
N.J., which supplies preservatives and specialty surfactants to the personal care market. 'They should be free to focus on consumers so that they can keep their laboratories on track to develop the formulations that meet [the buying public's] needs." Solving the personal care industry's quandaries has created new sales opportunities for suppliers of surfactants, preservatives, silicones, peroxygens, specialty polymers, and other ingredi-
With this in mind, some raw material suppliers have made changes to their businesses to bring them more in sync with their personal care customers. On Jan. 1, Rhône-Poulenc formed a group dedicated to the detergent and personal care markets as part of an overall reorganization of the company's specialty chemical and basic chemical divisions. Antoine Baule, general manager of Rhône-Poulenc's Detergents & Personal Care North America unit, says the new framework is intended to allow the company to "deepen the scope of our partnerships with customers." He expects it will also enable Rhône-Poulenc to respond more quickly and more innovatively to the demands of the marketplace by "offering an array of research and product development capabilities to customers. We expect to provide a broader range of solutions, including new formulated compounds and performance systems." Dow Coming, too, has also organized multifunctional teams to speed up product development, getting new technology to customers faster. "We have specific marketing and technical service personnel targeted at hair care, skin care, and the antiperspirant and deodorant segments of the market, and we take this approach around the world," says Stuart Bush, Dow Coming's market manager for hair care products. APRIL 17, 1995 C&EN
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To better screen new products for Γ its customers, Dow Corning is plac ing special emphasis on the develop ment of new methods to test for the sensory benefits of formulas. The company also continues to invest in a full health and environmental safe ty department to respond to increas ing customer requests for safety and environmental fate information on all of its products worldwide. "Pro viding these kinds of data allows our customers to stay ahead of increasing regulatory requirements," Bush says. Amerchol, too, has beefed up its regulatory department, devoting more resources to tracking legislative trends that may affect how products are formulated, says Freiler. The move is one step in a "renewed ef- L fort to focus even more on our cus tomers" that includes reorganization off its resources to put Amerchol in "a bet ter position to achieve our growth tar gets." Toward that end, he explains, the2 company has "removed layers of man agement to keep the entire organization\ in close touch with the customer." By working more closely with theirr customers, raw material suppliers cani get an earlier look at what products cus tomers are trying to formulate, givingI suppliers an opportunity to satisfy theirr needs ahead of a competitor. And gain ing that edge may be more importantt than ever. Over the past year, observes3 Neil Burns, vice president of marketing att Pilot Chemical, Santa Fe Springs, Calif.,, ''buyers of raw materials are even more? interested in something new becausei new things sell." Procter & Gamble, forr instance, has demonstrated how it can\ boost market share merely by introduc ing a product with a new marketing; claim, he says. "In the branded goods5 area, people like to be able to make newj claims and point to something new thatt the consumer can latch on to." However, suppliers have to do moreι than just present a new ingredient to aί potential customer. "We are increasing; our efforts to provide our customers5 with products that are further up the development ladder," says Christian Siem-er, personal care market manager at ICI[ Surfactants. "Increasingly, our custom ers do not have the creative time to experiment with potential uses for newr molecules. We have to do as much of the? predevelopment work as possible— demonstrating our product's effects andI how to formulate to achieve them." 36
APRIL 17,1995 C&EN
1
Shampoos were one-fourth of oersonal care market in 1993 Other 30%
Shampoos 25%
Bath preparations 2% Hair styling aids 3% Shaving preparations Toothpaste QO/ 4%
Skin care products S
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Hair nditioners 11%
1993 U.S. consumption = 3.4 billion lb Source: Colin A. Houston & Associates, Mamaroneck, N.Y.
Silicone producers, for example, have been repackaging some of their products so that they are easier for personal care companies to put into finished products. "It is very difficult to blend silicone oils (particularly very viscous, high molecu lar weight silicone oils that are desirable for hair conditioning) into surfactantbased systems like shampoos," says Alan Zombeck, Dow Coming's global technical manager for personal care. "So we've incorporated our silicones into water-based emulsions that can be stirred in very easily." Recognizing this customer need, another silicone producer, Danbury, Conn.-based OSi Specialties, has just introduced Silsoft MSC, a water-insilicone-oil microemulsion concentrate that can be simply diluted with selected cosmetic ingredients to form a wide range of water-based personal care formulations, according to Anthony M. Lanchak, business manager for silicone fluids. It provides high emolliency, emulsion stability, lubricity, and moisturization—as well as improved spreading and wetting—in gels and setting Ιο tions, hair conditioners, antiperspirants, and blushes, the company says. OSi also offers high molecular weight, very viscous silicone polyalkylene oxide block copolymers, such as its new (AB)n line, in several diluents to make them easy for the formulator to use, says Anna Czech, the company's technology manager for personal care. Meanwhile, ISP has developed two microencapsulated silicone products— contained either by a polyvinyl pyrrolidone capsule or a polyquaternium cap-
sule—that simplify the formulation of silicone-enriched personal care products. "For example," says Kosiek, "a shampoo that contains one of these encapsulated products will be able to deliver silicone to the hair without sacrificing the finished products' performance." Silicone de livery technologies for hair care are becoming increasingly important, she says, "as the trend right now is toward shiny, healthy hair—a look that silicone supports." Silicone producers say they recog nize the importance of making their raw materials as user-friendly as possible. OSi, for example, will often take an offering one step further, an ticipating what characteristics a cusJ tomer wants in the ultimate finished product and formulating that prod uct using OSi ingredients. "We might formulate a clear antiperspirant gel, lo tion, or conditioning shampoo for a cus tomer," Lanchak says, "take it in, and let them play with it. Then we can better understand what that customer wants and go back to our skill center and make the necessary adjustments."
Convenience of blends • Not only do resource-limited personal care companies want materials that are convenient to use, but they also are in creasingly interested in buying packages of ingredients that they need only mini mally manipulate to achieve a finished product. As a result, demand is soaring for performance concentrates that typi cally pull together eight to 10 surfactants and other ingredients. The beauty of these concoctions is that personal care companies need only to dilute them with water in a simple cold-mix opera tion and add a few ingredients such as color or fragrance before bottling their products and putting them on a retail shelf, says Pilot's Burns. "For the cus tomer, a premixed concentrate is a lot more appealing than buying drums and bags of a number of raw materials, stor ing and testing them, and mixing them all. It's a big time saver." Companies are providing proprietary blends tailored to a particular customer's needs as well as standard concentrates that anyone can buy off the shelf. Both parts of the business are growing very rapidly, Burns reports. "It can make sense for larger companies that have fairly large bulk requirements to pur chase a proprietary concentrate. Smaller
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companies that can't benefit from econo mies of scale usually choose something off the shelf/' As blends catch on in the marketplace, the technology behind producing them is becoming more sophisticated. "There's some new chemistry involved in the production of these performance con centrates," says Mark Hungarland, per sonal care business manager at Stepan, Northfield, 111. "You have to be aware of stability issues and the physical charac teristic of the blend. For example, how easily can it be diluted, handled, and ul timately dispensed through a pump? We are continuing to develop that tech nology so that we can stay ahead of our competition." Lonza, too, has been fine-tuning its blends. In particular, it is developing more products with preservative sys tems tailored to the end-use product application. For the most part, personal care marketers have allowed their sup plier to choose the preservative pack age for their blends, but that's chang ing as blends become more sophisticat ed, says Huisking. "Some companies have been burned, having to recall product because it was not preserved properly. So they are working with the suppliers of the active ingredient, such as a Lonza, to be sure the surfactant and the preservative are compatible." A company that makes preservatives is better able to determine the right for mulation for a particular application, Huisking reasons. Shampoos, for exam ple, which are based on water and other organic materials, need to be formulated with a strong bactericide; creams and lo tions that stay on the body need a broadspectrum preservative that acts as a bac tericide as well as a fungicide, he adds. Lonza has been experiencing strong de mand for one of its newer preservatives, Glydant-plus, which brings together the company's hydantoin and iodopropargyl technologies for a wide range of both fungicidal and bacteriocidal properties, he says. "With this product, formulators don't have to add several preservatives and then worry about potential interac tions between them. Once they have es tablished that the blend is stable, they feel more comfortable using it in their finished product." Reliable blends not only save time, but also are economically attractive to many personal care companies. Private personal care labelers or contract pack ers—who by nature tend to be very
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APRIL 17,1995 C&EN
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cost conscious—were probably the first to realize the economic benefits of using blends. But now the branded goods manufacturers have jumped on the bandwagon, too, Burns says. Many of these companies have opted for blends when they have begun to run short of capacity at their own facilities. Because a blend brings together a number of different ingredients that otherwise would have to be added separately, it often allows the manufacturer of the finished product to reduce manufacturing processes from two or three steps to one step. "As a result/' Burns says, blends offer a way to increase the throughput of a facility without building new vessels or expanding existing plants. In this competitive business, many companies today are anxious to consider alternatives to capital expenditures/7 Although blends are a boon to the industry, they are not the only solution to personal care companies' cost concerns. In those product categories where manufacturers still do the bulk
of the formulating, companies are looking harder for less expensive substitutes for ingrédients they now use. Mary T. Clarke, market supervisor for the pharmaceutical and personal care industries at the Aqualon Division of Hercules, Wilmington, Del., says: "If a supplier can provide a raw material that costs less to use than a traditional ingredient, personal care companies will be inclined to reformulate their product using the new ingredient." For example, some Aqualon customers have opted to reformulate with its NHance guar-derivative products, which are about one-third the price of traditionally used cationic polymers such as poly qua ternium-10, she says.
Performance concentrates In addition to helping consumer product companies reduce the costs of their formulations, raw material suppliers are also helping them cut costs throughout the supply chain—from their suppliers and carriers on into their own plants. To help minimize
freight and handling costs, for instance, ingredient suppliers have begun to introduce more concentrated surfactant formulations. The newer formulations increase the active ingredient concentration from 30% by weight—traditionally shipped in the U.S.—to 70%. In January, Pilot Chemical entered into an agreement with Albright & Wilson Americas to manufacture and market 70% high-active alcohol sulfates and ether sulfates, which are used in shampoos, shower and bath gels, and liquid soaps, as well as in products for the household and industrial and institutional cleaning markets. Part of the agreement is the construction of a facility, which is expected to begin production during the second quarter, at Pilot's site in Middletown, Ohio, near Cincinnati. The venture allows Albright & Wilson Americas to establish a North American production base for its surfactants business; until now, the firm has supplied these products from its plants in Europe and Asia. For its part, Pilot gains access to Albright & WUson's high-active surfactants technology. "There are a lot of economies associated with not shipping around so much water—savings in transportation costs and storage," says Burns. 'These more concentrated products bring certain quality control benefits and give more flexibility to formulate more concentrated end-use products." Burns expects to see the market as a whole move toward 70% products over the next three to four years as personal care companies begin to appreciate their benefits. Even though raw material suppliers are already doing much to contain costs, personal care companies are not satisfied. As long as discount retailers are able to depress finished product prices, raw material prices will be under pressure, too. This has been problematic for a great number of suppliers, particularly those that are dependent on feedstocks whose prices have risen dramatically over the past year. For example, says Stepan's Hungarland, the situation has been troublesome for consumers of lauryl alcohol, a key raw material in the production of lauryl sulfates and ether sulfates used in liquid personal care products such as shampoos, hand soaps, and bubble baths. Lauryl alcohol prices have risen dramatically in the past 12 months because of an overall tightness in supply and increasing prices for ethylene, coconut oil,
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and palm kernel oil—the three feedstocks from which lauryl alcohol can be made. But consumer product manufacturers are resisting a corresponding increase in the selling price because they simply are not in a position to pass it on to consumers, he adds. "Margins have been squeezed/' says ICI's Siemer. Any price increases that raw material suppliers were able to pass through over the past year were little more than "a highly negotiated transfer of costs," he acknowledges. And raw material suppliers are not overly optimistic about near-term improvement. In the petrochemical market at least, prices are not expected to begin to level out until at least midyear, and, Hungarland says, "[Raw material suppliers] may even have to endure yet another increase before that happens." Because raw material suppliers can't fully recover feedstock cost increases by raising prices, they are forced to work smarter, Siemer says. "We have to find cost savings—for example, by improving manufacturing and logistic efficiencies—to balance out the cost increases we are being hit with." The pricing stalemate at the consumer level has also sent marketers and their suppliers back to the laboratory "to try to come up with new value-added products that retailers might be willing to pay more for," says Hungarland. As a result, says Dow Coming's Zombeck, "global manufacturers are transforming the art of formulating personal care products into the science of creating new product benefits. The market is being driven more by the need to deliver true customer benefit via new technology than in the past. Our customers are seeking more application information from us, putting higher demands on our R&D capabilities." In response, Dow Corning has formed an applications center and is coordinating performance testing around the world. Houston-based Solvay Interox, too, has been working closely with personal care product manufacturers to develop novel solid peroxygens suitable for use in new value-added oral care products. Moving beyond the traditional use of solid peroxygens in the denturecleaning market, peroxygen-containing toothpaste sales have skyrocketed over the past few years. Typically, these toothpastes contain baking soda paste and hydrogen peroxide gel. When mixed, they generate small oxygen
bubbles that destroy harmful bacteria and help lift food particles out of hardto-reach places. Consumers believe that these products really do get the mouth and teeth cleaner, and they are willing to pay a premium for them. To further support this trend, Solvay Interox is compiling a database of common formulation ingredients that can be successfully mixed with hydrogen peroxide. Alastair McNeillie, industry manager for consumer products at Solvay Interox, says: "The database should ensure
that new hydrogen-peroxide-based products can be formulated with a greater confidence that the product will be stable over a long period of time." McNeillie expects to see continued growth for peroxygens in the oral care sector in 1995 as new products are launched. "Of particular interest will be the response to peroxide-containing mouthwashes." Chesebrough Pond's USA launched the first such product, Mentadent, in early 1995, he notes. Suppliers are also working to develop
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raw materials that serve as a springboard to multifunctional products, for which marketers are also able to collect a premium. "The trend toward delivering multiple properties is still in vogue and has expanded from two-in-one shampoos to all-in-one hair and skin products that simultaneously condition, clean, and moisturize/' says Aqualon's Clarke. The latest product category to tap into this trend, body shampoo, continues to gather market share. Dow Corning has developed an emulsion of high molecular weight silicones that can be readily added to surfactant-based body-shampoo formulations to impart a silkier afterfeel, says Zombeck. The silicones make the formulations more aesthetically pleasing, which lately has become a common denominator among successful products, he adds. In their quest to come up with ingredients that add value to finished products, raw material suppliers also continue to look at technologies that can be touted as more environmentally friendly. Spurred by an increasingly environ-
mentally conscious public, Clarke says, "the trend has been to kinder, gentler products, in terms of consumer use and the environment."
Natural products craze continues In particular, the appeal of products labeled as natural continues to remain strong. "The natural segment has broadened from niche to mainstream products," Clarke observes. A flurry of new products based on botanical ingredients continue to accumulate on retail shelves. And products with natural-ingredient claims are no longer coming only from marketers of exclusively natural products, such as Aveda and the Body Shop; more mass marketers are augmenting their product portfolios with natural-theme products and lines. For example, Clairol has just reintroduced its Herbal Essences shampoo line that boasts "the refreshing difference of 99% natural and plantderived shampoos and conditioners." Undercutting this trend is the debate over what constitutes a truly natural product. Some companies use one or
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two herbal extracts in a product and then label their products as natural, laments Prakash C. Purohit, Blaine, Minn.based Aveda's vice president for technical affairs. And many personal care marketers rely on synthetic reproductions of floral scents to give the impression that a product is based on something derived from nature. 'Most companies would rather synthesize an essential oil than pay for the natural essential oil." However, Aveda, he says is after more than just aromas: It also wants to harness the functional benefits of natural ingredients that are often overlooked. For example, the company has a patent on the use of natural essential oils as preservatives. To help keep costs in line, Aveda buys direct wherever possible, even if it means traveling to a remote region of the world or training indigenous people in developing countries to harvest the precious raw materials that are needed. And the firm avoids purchasing ingredients that are very costly or some that occur naturally only in animals by seeking some that have been produced using biotechnology. For example, it buys bioengineered hyaluronic acid, a highly effective moisturizer that in nature can be found in the comb of a rooster. The popularity of natural products has sparked a continuing debate about whether petrochemical-based surfactants are any more environmentally friendly than their oleochemical-based counterparts. Some companies consider ingredients that are derived from petroleum to be natural, but purists like Aveda take the opposite stance, opting for ingredients based only on renewable resources. 'What's more/' says Purohit, "we try to get ingredients that come from organically grown flowers, plants, and herbs. And that means we have to go the extra mile to find out whether ingredients were derived without the use of pesticides, insecticides, or synthetic fertilizers/' However, many raw material suppliers take issue with claims that ingredients derived from petrochemicals are environmentally inferior to those derived from renewable resources. Considering the entire life cycle of the products, some petrochemical producers contend that synthetics are actually safer, purer, and kinder to the environment. "From this debate, I have concluded that, functionally, there's really little difference between oleochemical
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and petrochemical feedstocks/' says Burns of Pilot, which produces raw materials made from both oleochemical and petrochemical feedstocks. Whether they are derived from a pet rochemical or an oleochemical source, feedstocks must undergo the same elab orate chemical processing to achieve a finished ingredient product, he points out. It's not as though a plant extract is going to function unprocessed in a fin ished product formulation. "However, we would not treat one [market] seg ment more favorably than the other," Burns says. "We recognize that there's a segment that thinks [oleochemical-based ingredients] are important." Indeed, raw material suppliers cannot afford to ignore this lucrative market niche. Recognizing the market's vora cious appetite for natural raw materials, paper and chemical manufacturer Union Camp, Wayne, N.J., recently formed an oleochemicals group to focus on serving the personal care market as part of a chemical division strategy to become more focused on key industries, accord ing to Michael J. Ellis, the unit's market ing manager. Many of the company's products are based on oil derived from southeastern pine trees and on castor oil, both renewable raw materials. For ex ample, "Union Camp's stearic and isostearic acids result from our substan tial investment in growing and process ing the pine tree." He adds, "These C18 fatty acids, which are derived from both pine trees and tall oil, provide the formulator the advantages of high purity and oxidation resistance combined with excellent low color and odor properties." ICI Surfactants, too, is making every effort to ride the naturals wave. In No vember, for example, the company signed on as the exclusive distributor of Florasun 90, a cosmetic-quality high-oleic sunflower oil; ICI's territory covers most of the Americas. With an oleic acid content greater than 85%, the oxidative stability of the product is more than twice that of high-oleic safflower oil and several times that of vegetable oils such as sesame oil, almond oil, and others typically used in cosmetic formulations, according to International Flora Technol ogies, Apache Junction, Ariz., the pro ducer of Horasun 90. Although raw material suppliers agree that demand for natural products is creating market opportunities, they are divided on whether it is a peaking fad or a sustainable factor in the market.
Burns, for example, senses that "the nat ural trend is beginning to stabilize. I don't think I see the clamoring for natu rals that I did a year or two ago, al though I think natural products will al ways have a place in the market." ICI's Siemer is among those who think natural products demand is "still very strong" and likely will remain that way. "Consumers are connecting with the natural concept and [we] will have to continue to respond to that connection."
Developing ingredients for natural personal care products is not the only way raw material supplies are satisfy ing the public's environmental crav ings. In addition, suppliers see oppor tunities for developing ingredients that might help their customers sidestep growing environmental and toxicological pressures. One major opportunity is in the devel opment of new and better replacements for volatile organic compounds (VOCs),
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POPE WIPED-FILM STILLS GREAT VERSATILITY
SEPARATIONS OF HEAT SENSITIVE MATERIALS The process utilizes the thin-film wiping action of feed liquid through a heated cylindrical vacuum chamber. Exposure to vacuum-lowered temperature is brief (seconds), a marked advantage over conventional still columns, falling film stills, rotary evaporators, and other equipment. Results lowest degradation, highest yield. In labs, pilot plants, and processes worldwide. Pope wiped-film stills have demonstrated superiority in fields such as: pharmaceutical and cosmetics/ edible and essential fats and oils/petroleum products/foods, flavors, and fragrances/plastics and adhesives/solvent recovery, many others. Sizes from bench-top or pilot models to complex multistage process systems. New, larger glass and stainless steel models.
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UNEXCELUD F M DISTILLATION. CONCENTRATION, EVAPORATION, ANO STRIPPING
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