The Enact Fund, under the management of the private equity firm Endless, has recently acquired GEO Specialty Chemicals UK Ltd. ("GEO"), a manufacturer of specialty chemicals based in Southampton.  GEO operates on a 53-acre site and features two distinct business units that possess global-scale capabilities and advanced expertise in alkoxylation, methacrylate chemistry, and specialty silicones. The company caters to premium markets, such as coatings, lubricants, and medical devices, achieving annual revenues of approximately £68 million. [I’m just wondering where they get the EO (or maybe it’s all PO) as the last I knew, no-one was making it in the UK] Get thee to the tipline, please!

Huge news from the world of process tecnnolgy. Ballestra has agreed to be acquired by NextChem (Maire) an Italian engineering company with many complementary capabilities. Here is most of the press release:

Founded in 1960 and headquartered in Milan, Ballestra S.p.A. is the holding of a group of companies comprising BUSS ChemTech AG (Switzerland) and Ballestra Engineering and Projects Pvt. Ltd (India). Ballestra Group operates in over 120 countries with approximately 450 employees and offices in Europe and Asia, serving a well-established base of blue-chip clients supported by a proven track record of over 6,400 plants installed worldwide. It relies on a strong intellectual property and R&D expertise, continuously sustained by proprietary pilot plants in Italy and Switzerland, which serve as innovation hubs for testing and scaling new technological processes.

The CESIO committee produced, in November, updated recommendations for the classification and labeling of surfactants. It is a huge, densely packed document which they’ve helpfully also made available in a spreadsheet format downloadable from this page.  The guide recommends labelling and UN GHS classifications, including those all-important pictograms, for what looks like over 800 commercial surfactants. Wow!  I took a look and here are some interesting snippets. I’ll focus just on pictograms for brevity..

In October 28^th, WSJ, an article caught my attention entitled “The Lengths Americans Are Willing to Go to Make Every Penny Count” with a sub-head “From buying half a cow to watering down soap, people are experimenting with frugality—and it is affecting sales at consumer companies”  Here it is but it’s beind a paywall. So, I’ll summarise (un-AI-aided, I might add). It’s a canary in the coalmine type article about what consumers are doing in response to rising prices and concerns about their financial status. Some are shopping at less expensive shop, so Aldi vs Wegmans (good move in my opinion). More telling though, P&G reported volume declined 2% in the latest quarter in its home and fabric-care division, which includes Tide, Dawn and Swiffer. Meantime, private-label brands that make cheaper generics haven’t seen a corresponding increase, the company said last week, suggesting consumers are using up their inventory and making their existing stock last longer, rather than trading down. At least so far. Here’s the bit that got me; Julie Simpson (a consumer) is diluting, with water, her Dawn dish detergent and Clorox floor cleaner. Some of this has first-world problem vibes about it though. One consumer has apparently had to pause her dog Zane’s monthly toy subscription. Oh no!  

For my money, Integrity Biochem, along with maybe Evonik, is the commercial leader in the new bio-based surfactant field. How so? They are a solid revenue and earnings generating, well established company, not a startup, built on new technology (Not fermentation BTW). The company has been around since 2017 and they are growing at a blistering pace. Now, full disclosure, I am an advisor to their board and so you have to apply a Blog Shameless Bias (BSB) factor, but even then, they are worth a real good look. The company recently a launched a new venture in Australia. with ICD BioChem, a newly formed company in the ICD Group of companies. Through this partnership, ICD BioChem will bring Integrity BioChem’s mining technology platform to the rapidly growing Australian mining market and build local manufacturing capacity to meet strong demand for sustainable industrial chemistries. ICD BioChem, with operational and technical support from Integrity BioChem, is currently developing a state-of-the-art bio-based chemical manufacturing facility in Perth. The facility will produce the company’s patented, market-first bio-based surfactant platform in addition to other bio-based chemistry at commercial scale to supply Australia’s mining, industrial, HI&I, and personal care sectors with high-performance, lower-environmental impact alternatives.  

And then there’s this patent from P&G US12,338,412 B2 . It covers a detergent built on alcohol ether sulfates where the alcohol chain length is C14 plus (no C12!). Hmm. The patent says linear and branched alcohols can be used but they spend a heck of a lot of time talking about branched. Also a lot of focus on alkoxylated polyamines as antiredeposition agents. So… C14 branched – interesting. Tipline remains open.

More bottle-free, water-free innovation from P&G in the form of Gemz shampoo and conditioners. Check it out here https://www.shopgemz.com/  THe products are available at Target here . More cool innovation in the footsteps of EC-30 and Evo.  OK , but what about the ingredients. Well first up is :

Hydration lock shampoo: sodium laureth sulfate, polyvinyl alcohol*, sodium c10-16 alkyl sulfate, cetyl/lauryl/myristyl hydroxysultaine, citric acid, sodium bicarbonate, fragrance, bis-aminopropyl dimethicone, water, guar hydroxypropyltrimonium chloride, acacia senegal gum, sodium benzoate, monosodium citrate, polyquaternium-76, yellow 5, red 33 *water soluble, biodegradable polyvinyl alcohol.

LG has developed a product they call Mineral Wash and they claim it  is a functional new material made of glass powder that can replace surfactants as a laundry detergent ingredient. Not only that but using Mineral Wash can reduce the number of rinse cycles as it does not produce foam, potentially decreasing water and electricity usage. But here’s the kicker (for me). To date, LG has filed 420 patents related to the glass powder and has established production facilities with an annual capacity of 4,500 tons/yr at the Smart Park in Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province. This sounds serious. Is this the biggest news we’ve ever reported in the blog? It may well turn out to be.

I know you’re inordinately busy this month, so I’ll make this blog brief, but there are eleven (11) things you need to know right now in order to consider yourself reasonably well informed in our field of surfactants. Six of those things are companies. They are Dot Ingredients, Nor-Falk, Terra Mater, Integrity Biochem, Future Origins and Acies Bio. I’ve a (less than) 3 minute video about them on Youtube.

The other five of those eleven things are takeaways from our 15^th World Surfactants Conference in Jersey City. They are :

1.    The value of a balanced surfactant and feedstock portfolio (Shell, Sasol, P&G etc..)

2.    Massive changes in the surfactants supply chain in Asia and the Americas (Unilever, Unilever!)

3.    Sustainability still a megatrend but forget the Field of Dreams (BASF)

4.    Frustration and Uncertainty (Tarrifs, TSCA and Trade)

5.    Innovation still happening like crazy. (Too many companies to mention)

I’ve a (slightly more than) 5 minute video about them on YT. So, look, if you haven’t committed these to memory, ready to deploy when your boss asks you – “hey what’s going on in surfactants these days?” – well I’m not sure what else I can do for you.

I’ve been hearing about Hero Ingredients for a few years now, since I got heavily involved in the cosmetic ingredients scene. I never thought the term would apply to surfactants until this year. What happened? RhamnoClean did. From Unilever. Adorning, prominently, a number of their homecare product packages and marketing.  It’s obviously referring to the Rhamnolipid surfactants, made by Evonik and used in Sunlight dishwash in markets including Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand so far. I think this is the coolest thing I’ve heard in a long time in our business and I love it. I talk about hero ingredients and this marketing master-stroke in the recent YouTube video..

Tremendous news from BioReNuva (the B and R and N are capitalized – don't forget), who (yes, you guessed it) will be  onstage at my conference in May: The recently formed venture arm of The Hallstar Company, announced a minority investment in BioReNuva. This is a good step forward for both companies in my view. Best of luck!

I’m fascinated and a little horrified by black soldier flies. But apparently they are all the rage in surfactants these days. Not exactly true but I know Sasol (yep – also at my conference ) is working on them and my well-thumbed copy of Food Navigator magazine had an article entitled “Palm oil replacement: Black soldier fly larvae could be the answer”. Apparently, Black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) offer a sustainable alternative to convert waste products into oils within built up industrial areas. The study profiled explores the potential of BSFL oil to replace palm oil as a representative vegetable oil.

More on the bio front. Dispersa, a great company who attracted a lot of buzz at the last World Surfactants Conference in NJ, has raised a chunk of new equity to fuel their growth.  They closed a $5.8 million CAD round of seed funding. The round was led by Nàdarra Ventures and backed by a consortium of all-Canadian investors, eh, including new investors BDC Thrive Lab, Cycle Momentum, The 51 Food & AgTech Fund and Fonds d'investissement Eurêka, through Hidden Layers Capital. This round also saw participation from existing investors, including Good & Well, Dragonfly Ventures, BoxOne Ventures, and Front Row Ventures. So that’s cool. The PR goes on to say that

Dispersa's proprietary technology, BioEterna^®, combines synthetic biology and precision fermentation to create surfactants from waste oils and sugars. And they claim that PuraSurf^® M is the world's first fully waste-derived biosurfactant. Kudos to them and much success.

Many consumers globally have an average of 3-5 detergent bottles in their household [Western world most likely], and more than half are unsure of how much to dose [I dunno – just fill the cap right?]. Henkel aims to take the guesswork out of the equation with smart dosing. As a first step, Henkel is announcing two new smart detergent dosing devices that can be used in existing laundry and dishwashing appliances.

• Somat Smartwash: The world's first smart detergent dosing device that automatically senses dishwasher parameters to determine the right dose of detergent and additives at the right time needed to deliver all-in-one optimal results over months.

• Persil Smartwash: A groundbreaking laundry solution that autonomously senses washing machine parameters and automatically doses the right amount of detergent at the right time in the wash cycle for the best stain removal and fabric freshness.