Surfactants Monthly - June 2025

Do you know much about isethionates and taurates (including how to pronounce them). Check out our recent YT 5 minute video and learn a bit more:

By way of illustration of i) The great people in our industry and ii) the slow pace of bureaucracy – I got some detailed feedback to the video from Innospec as follows: “Just wanted to mention that the whole class of major Isethionate surfactants were compliance checked by the EU regulatory authorities (ECHA) in 2020. They asked for extensive and in our view totally unnecessary animal testing to prove their safety to workers, consumers (non-cosmetic use) and environment. We (Innospec Inc.) worked closely with colleagues from Unilever and Nouryon to develop and execute a novel strategy which completely avoided all animal tests (we estimate we spared at least 10,000 animals!). We submitted the updated REACH dossiers in 2023 and are yet to receive feedback from ECHA. Fingers crossed the approach is accepted!”

We are next together, in person, as a surfactant group, at our eleventh (11th) Asian Surfactants Conference in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia on November 13 – 14th. https://events.icis.com/website/14105/home/. It’s the 11th conference and we are cranking it up to 11 !

More News:

I get a lot of my news from HAPPI and so if you don't subscribe, you should. It's free! They report that The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. has appointed Lisa Sequino as the new president, makeup brand cluster.makeup brand cluster. In her new role, she will be responsible for leading the strategic direction and global growth of makeup, and overseeing the company’s portfolio of makeup brands, including MAC, Bobbi Brown, Too Faced, Smashbox and GlamGlow. [So – for those looking to engage more in this sector for ingredients, this is a contact worth cultivating.

Speaking of Estee, I read in Yahoo Finance that, Michael Burry's Scion Asset Management has doubled its stake in Estee Lauder. The U.S. investor, whose bets against the U.S. housing market before the 2008 financial crisis were chronicled in the movie "The Big Short," now owns 200,000 shares of Estee valued at $13.2 million, according to a regulatory filing. That is double the number of shares it held at the end of December last year. "Burry's bet suggests belief in Estee Lauder's ability to reclaim its status as a beauty powerhouse in an increasingly competitive global market," said Angeli Gianchandani, a global brand marketing expert at New York University. [Well, OK, but I dunno about that. Isn’t 13.2 kind of a small amount? I think it works out at 0.05% of shares outstanding. Maybe that’s significant enough to be a big deal. ]

Cool things happen at my conferences, including this:

AmphiStar [that’s capital A and S] published in a press release in part: Belgian biotech innovator AmphiStar, a pioneer in 100% upcycled microbial biosurfactants and Kensing, a leading North American producer of high-purity surfactants, and the global leader in upcycled plant-based vitamin E and sterols, announced a strategic partnership to deliver sustainable, new-generation biosurfactants to the North American personal care market.

As part of this collaboration, AmphiStar’s next-generation biosurfactants, produced by microbial fermentation of repurposed agri-food side streams, will be launched into the North American market by Kensing in an exclusive partnership. Leveraging its deep surfactant expertise and established market access, Kensing will play a critical role in driving adoption across the Personal Care and HI&I Industries.

Kensing will work with AmphiStar to develop regionally sourced circular feedstocks from biobased waste and sidestreams, such as plant oils from Kensing’s production, with a near-term plan to fully onshore production in the US. This will not only reduce transport-related emissions but will also allow the partners to build a resilient, decentralised supply chain aligned with evolving customer expectations. The products offer performance for formulators seeking to develop mild and sustainable formulations. They can be used as emulsifiers and co-surfactants in body lotions, creams, shampoos, body wash, make-up remover and other products.

Kensing and AmphiStar will also co-develop AmphiStar’s recently launched library of 80+ sustainable and unique ‘designer’ biosurfactant platform technology, with the shared goal of further developing and commercializing high-potential innovations in the personal care, agrochemical and HI&I markets. [I think this is great for both companies and can only wish them much success]

Keeping up with biosurfactant news is tough these days as there’s so much of it. Evonik recently launched Rheance D50, which they describe as a “vegan and cruelty-free multifunctional biosurfactant made from renewable raw materials sourced in Europe. Manufactured using an environmentally-friendly fermentation process, it is suitable for certified natural cosmetics.” [So – I can’t really see the difference between this D50 and the original (since I think around 2018) Rheance One Rhamnolipid from Evonik. I did a bunch of searching. I also asked both Grok and Gemini 2.5 Pro (with Google Search). Both burbled on quite a bit but didn't really come up with anything. Can someone from Evonik, call the anonymous tip line and let me know?]

Hey! Trivia Question. Do you know what the letters EUDR stand for? No. It’s “Europe’s Dumbest Regulation”. Here’s why https://tks-hpc.h5mag.com/hpc_today_3_2025/surfactant_insights_-_eudr_-_europe_s_dumbest_regulation

The inexorable march of bio mass balance continues.. erm… inexorably. This is from May but I missed it (and look if that upsets then cancel your blog subscription and request a refund - good luck with that!). Eastman has introduced a bio DMAPA (which as you know is a raw material for betaines). They note, part: “Eastman now produces dimethylaminopropylamine with enhanced sustainability (DMAPA ES) at its manufacturing site in St. Gabriel, Louisiana [this in addition to existing production in Ghent, Belgium]. By using renewable raw materials, DMAPA ES helps improve the global warming potential (GWP) up to as much as 50%* for producers of cocamidopropyl betaine (CAPB) surfactants in consumer products. The certified renewable content is achieved by using a mass balance approach. [the asterisk leads to this footnote *This result is dependent on certain assumptions regarding raw material sourcing. Actual raw material sourcing could differ materially from these assumptions.]

I read in Beauty Independent (you might need a subscription) that we are already in the second wave of K-Beauty. Good to know. And tarrifs be darned, a new company, Muskat kicked off a four-day pop-up in the Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles, the curation platform is starting with South Korean beauty brands new to the United States, including smaller, founder-led makeup brands Amuse Entropy, Two Slash Four Unleashia, Whipped and skincare brands ShaiShaiShai and Nutexture. Seems like a lot of potential here. I wonder if some element of the long term is to bring some manufacturing to the US for these lines, so as to avoid tarrif worry and improve supply chains?

Unilever opened a new US headquarters in Hoboken, NJ. The town’s on a hot streak; Sinatra, baseball and now this. Apparently it has a full-service salon. Cool. Can someone from UL fix it so the spouse and daughter of your blog author can visit and get their hair done? Maybe I’ll write about it here.

Can you believe it? More dioxane news: I read in Bloomberg that, the EPA asked the Fifth Circuit to allow it to reconsider whether the Biden administration used the best available science as it examined the risks of another solvent, 1,4-dioxane. The court gave the EPA until June 30 to do that. I actually don’t know what this means. Can someone opine? I’m pretty sure it has no bearing on the already established NY and CA state regulations and I am certain it will do absolutely nothing to influence whatever happens in the EU regarding putative dioxane restrictions on surfactants. If you know more though, please get in touch.

Elliot Investment management, a so-called “activist” investor has a $5 Billion stake in Honeywell [BTW – did you ever get the sense that the word activist is used as a pejorative even by the WSJ, when referring to investors? Like, what are they supposed to do? Just sit back like an index-follower? I guess activist is only good if you’re racing round the streets waving any country’s flag but your own]. Anyway that's a stake! [not $13 million, that’s a erm.. toothpick]. Elliot wants the company to split and they just gave them a seat on the Honeywell board, so it may happen. Honeywell is the largest, by far, licensor of technology for production of the largest hydrophobe in the surfactant world, LAB.

I think we’ve written about Aarti, the Indian surfactants company less than a handful of times in blog. But look – they popped up in the WSJ this month as follows - Aarti Industries’ performance is likely to improve meaningfully, Axis Securities analysts say in a note. This performance is underpinned by the specialty chemicals manufacturer’s strategic focus on operational efficiency and cost optimization, the analysts say. The Indian company is also intensifying its focus on developing new products, especially within the ethylation value chain, the analysts say. This is supported by Aarti Industries’ recent production capacity expansions aimed at improving asset utilization and broadening its product portfolio. The brokerage has a buy rating and a target price of INR520.00 on the stock, which is up 0.7% at INR473.80. (ronnie.harui@wsj.com)

For the toxicology buffs among our readership, a paper entitled “Learning from experience: A retrospective analysis of read-across strategies for surfactants under REACH” has been authored by a veritable who’s who of, mainly European, surfactants including members of Evonik, Unilever, Innospec, Sasol, Nouryon, Dow, P&G and Shell. It’s available here https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yrtph.2025.105884 . You may have to pay but I can give you a snippet from the abstract: With the aim to improve future submissions and prevent unnecessary animal testing, read-across-related discussions of 72 ECHA Final Decisions on Compliance Checks and Testing Proposal Evaluations of 24 major surfactant groups were analysed in-depth, and causes for acceptance or rejection were identified. Key drivers of regulatory acceptance/rejection were presence or absence of composition information, considerations on structural similarity as well as availability and nature of bridging studies. Several elements were identified that may be easily improved in future REACH dossiers without the need for additional animal testing. Other cases revealed uncertainty of expectations by ECHA, highlighting the need for improved communication during the dossier preparation. Notably, no example for acceptance of read-across based on non-animal New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) was identified in this analysis. Owing to the benefits that non-animal NAMs may present as supporting information, all stakeholders are encouraged to contribute to an increase of regulatory acceptance.

OK so now I read this. The aforementioned EU puts out a press release here that says that they’ve struck a deal to a deal to “make detergents safer for the population and the environment” Fair enough, I guess. They go on to say “The provisional agreement empowers the commission to improve the biodegradability of surfactants in detergents (in particular in films covering capsules). It completes and makes more digitally available the information of labelling (for instance, including fragrance allergens and preservatives), and makes the information from manufacturers available to authorities and medical personnel, and notably to poison centres. It also asks the Commission to analyse the potential impacts of reducing the levels of phosphorus, and forbids animal testing” So that last bit. How do I reconcile it with what I just wrote above about the read-across and the animal testing and all that? Tox guys. I know you read this. Can you enlighten me? Whatever you write, I will include, verbatim, in next month’s blog, if you like.

Last month we were all agog at how agog the internet was about the sale of Haley Bieber’s Rode cosmetics at a valuation of 5X sales. Then we noted that Touchland sold to Church & Dwight at a much higher multiple and the founder wasn't even the supermodel spouse of a popstar. This month, Medik8 said “hold my beer” [actually I’m pretty sure they didn't say that. “hold my Veuve Cliquot”, maybe] and sold themselves to L'Oreal for 9X projected 2025 sales. And the founder is again not a supermodel nor married to a popstar [I didn't check that second bit]. Here’s what went down. L’Oréal acquired a majority stake in Medik8, a UK-based premium skincare brand founded by Elliot Isaacs in 2009, for 1 billion euros. The deal values Medik8 at approximately 9 times its projected 2025 sales of $115 million in the science-driven skincare market. Medik8 specializes in anti-aging skincare, particularly known for its vitamin A-based products and its CSA Philosophy, which combines vitamin C, sunscreen, and vitamin A for skin health. Do you now fully understand that, as a supplier of ingredients, especially a new one, you should be engaging heavily with the indie brands? Good. Wanna know which are among the coolest brands likely to be acquired – check out Fig 7 on page 10 of this AT Kearney report on the matter. https://www.kearney.com/industry/consumer-retail/article/2025-ma-in-beauty-and-personal-care-a-practitioners-view-on-a-unique-window-of-opportunity .

Here’s a chart compiled by IRIS that puts recent transactions in their proper context. Note these are multiples of sales.

Interestingly shortly before the deal was announced, Beauty Independent wrote a comprehensive article on the why science backed skincare is the most compelling category for investors. It’s worth read. They note in there that L’Oreal was rumored to be circling Medik8 but no more. Here’s a couple of informative charts.

We’ve had a bit of discussion on refills in the blog recently and it looks L’Oreal has taken up a position on this bandwagon. Cosmetic Business reports that the company has begun a new refill promotion campaign that includes brands such as Lancôme, La Roche-Posay and Kérastase. The global campaign across social media and with retail partners coincides with World Refill Day [16 June. You missed it] – a global day of action for accelerating the shift away from single-use plastics. Apparently L’Oréal claims to have increased the number of refillable options 17-fold over the past five years, including for fragrances for the likes of Prada, Yves Saint Laurent (YSL), Mugler and Armani. Emma Watson, the face of Prada’s Paradoxe fragrance has pushed this. I’m still not convinced but maybe I’m just not the demographic for it (clearly not).

Harry would just wave a wand and utter *refillus promptus* or something.

The ACI (of which you should be a member if you’re reading the blog) announced a new CEO, Jennifer Abril, formerly leader of SOCMA and before that, of IFRA North America. Congrats to Jennifer and the ACI!

Here’s something. People ask me regularly – what could totally replace surfactants in the future. And I answer, nothing that I can see at this point. Not even enzymes, which have lowered to some extent, surfactant loadings in detergents already. However, my talented, motivated and highly creative surfactant conference co-producer, Rochelle Ross of ICIS in London, found a fascinating article in Business Korea entitled. “LG Electronics Tests Glass Powder Detergent in Water Saving Project”. 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. We’re trying to get someone from LG to come and talk about this in KL in November at our 11th Asian Surfactants Conference. If anyone has any contacts at LG Electronics, please let me know.

I talked last week to the founder of a new company called Haus of Innovation and forgot to ask her where the cool name came from. Anyway, I like their marketing and was intrigued by their recent launch of a product – Vegan Tallow. Now, you may know that tallow is becoming cool again and not just for frying your chips (French fries). It’s a cosmetic ingredient. But for those for whom shoving beef fat up your nose, in your eyes and on your lips seems a bit much, vegan tallow should be just the ticket. The product is said to be biomimetic in terms of fatty acid profile with beef tallow and the sensorial elements track very closely in a double blind consumer test. Get in touch with the company to learn more.

Quick quiz: Who makes biobased ethylene oxide? (not bio mass balance but bio-based). OK – Croda, India Glycols and Greencol (Taiwanese co which I think is a JV involving Toyota Tsusho). Anyone else right now? Maybe in China, but I don't know. So, I read in the unfortunately named Packaging Dive magazine that Braskem has 260,000 ton/yr bioethylene capacity in Triunfo Brazil and that they recently started up an innovation center in Lexington, MA to develop further various bio products. How long before Braskem or one of their customers gets into Bio-EO (not MEG but purified EO for ethoxylation)? Indovinya; please check in and let me know your thoughts.

Real Braskem chemists doing work, not a cheesy stock photo with folks looking at colored test tubes

Procter and Gamble on an investor call noted a 7,000 employee reduction which is 15% of the US non-manufacturing workforce. Tariffs and volatility around geopolitics were blamed for reduced consumer demand. More next month. There may be some brand divestitures also, which could represent opportunity for the more entrepreneurial among our readers. Stay tuned.

It seems like everyone’s falling in love again with AOS (Alpha Olefin Sulfonate). Stepan just announced 25% increase in production capacity for AOS. The company notes that the expansion is a result of strategic capital investments and process improvements at the company’s facilities in Millsdale, Illinois; Anaheim, California; and Winder, Georgia. The company, which claims the broadest network of AOS production sites in North America, has implemented targeted investments and enhancements to improve operational efficiency and flexibility. [OK so I take this to mean more debottlenecking rather than the installation of new reactor capacity. It could mean some retrofitting of existing sulfonation reaction plants with additional digestion capability. Anyway, taken at face value, it’s a significant move. In the press release, they mention AOS’s sulfate free bona fides].

And finally, in our company news section: Galaxy Surfactants, a company I’ve liked for a long time, went on TV recently and announced a 2030 goal of $1 Billion in revenue. They’re looking for strong growth in surfactants in Africa, the Middle East, Turkey, and India. Initial demand is likely to come from the mass and masstige segments. The specialty chemicals segment will mainly be driven by the US and Latin America, especially Brazil. The full interview with our friend K. Natarajan is in the link below. It’s worth watching. I love to hear this.

https://www.cnbctv18.com/business/companies/galaxy-surfactants-aims-for-billion-dollar-revenue-by-fy30-with-aggressive-global-push-19622763.htm

Market News:

In detergent range alcohols volatility and a downward trend in feedstock palm kernel oil costs are weighing on global fatty alcohol markets, prompting downward revisions in Asian offers for mid-cuts and some long chains as buyers wait for lower prices. Demand in Asia is weak, with trades on a need-to-basis, while supply is expected to ease due to new plant start-ups, though one facility has a planned maintenance shutdown. In the US, third-quarter contract negotiations largely concluded with an increase over the previous quarter, but the subsequent drop in feedstock costs is now causing buyers to hold back. Market participants in both the US and Asia are monitoring the tariff situation, which has curbed spot appetite. European spot prices held steady amid tight domestic availability and stabilized feedstock costs, with an expectation that supply will improve later in the year, potentially influenced by increased Asian capacity and the outcome of US tariffs.

The Asian fatty alcohol ethoxylates market remains lackluster, with weak consumer confidence leading to limited spot trades, while most business is settled on a term-contract basis. A persistent downward trend in feedstock fatty alcohol mid-cut prices has curbed spot appetite, as buyers are hesitant to build stocks amid market uncertainty. The key market driver is US trade policy, with a 90-day tariff pause ending and a new trade agreement set to impose tariffs on imports from Vietnam, while talks with Malaysia and Indonesia continue. In Southeast Asia, spot prices were stable as a weaker US dollar prompted suppliers to maintain offers, while in China, domestic prices were stable to firm, and a private manufacturing survey indicated an expansion. The outlook suggests feedstock prices may be nearing a bottom, and further US tariff agreements are likely.

The Asian linear alkylbenzene (LAB) market showed a firming trend, driven by tightening availability. A regional plant shutdown for maintenance and limited Chinese exports prompted some buyers to stock up, allowing sellers to achieve higher priced sales. In India, suppliers raised domestic offers due to the persistent supply crunch, which outweighed the effect of easing demand from the monsoon season. The downstream LAB sulphonate (LAS) market was also firm, with sellers seeking higher prices in line with the LAB sector, despite little improvement in demand. This upward market movement is occurring even as upstream benzene prices have weakened, indicating the tightness is due to LAB-specific fundamentals. Tight supply is expected to persist, while uncertainty is heightened by the upcoming expiry of the US-China tariff pause.

AI Corner

There’s a new company called Albert Invent and it deploys AI (Albert Invent = AI geddit?!?!?!? These guys are clever) to help chemists with research. The website’s here and it’s pretty informative. There’s a surfactant angle, of course there is. They've partnered with Nouryon. In an interview with Business Insider, one of the founders elaborates: Albert is trained on more than 15 million molecular structures. When chemists use the platform, they can look up which permutations of molecules will work best to achieve a specific goal. The platform was designed to capture the kind of information that chemists typically track in notebooks or on spreadsheets, such as the materials and substances they might use, their compositions, and processing steps.

When a chemist asks Albert for input on which other substances work well with a particular ingredient, the system offers feedback on possible substance combinations and predicts the physical, toxicological, and visual properties of new compounds before they are synthesized in a lab. Albert Invent partnered with Nouryon, which owns a collection of formulation strategies for the personal care industry. The result is a digital platform for developing new cosmetics formulations, called BeautyCreations. David Freidinger, the vice president of personal care and pharma at Nouryon, says in the article that this technology has enabled the company's chemists to develop new products from almost anywhere in the world. It's also improved the speed and quality of Nouryon's internal product development, as the company can look at BeautyCreations data to better understand market trends and prioritize development initiatives accordingly. [OK so I’m kind of into this but need to know a lot more. Stay tuned].

Next Section:

OK – so again if you only read the blog solely for the business and markets news, you should stop reading here.

Imagine your blog author’s delight in reading more news from Dr. Squatch this month. The company announced the re-launch of its SpongeBob SquarePants soap collection. The limited-edition range, originally launched in 2023, returns for summer 2025 with the addition of Sea Star Shenanigans, a fruit-scented bar formulated with skin-friendly exfoliants and tropical extracts. The collection also includes the returning Nautical Nonsense bar, developed to evoke a refreshing, beachside cleansing experience. This news, fast on the heels of last month’s Sydney Sweeney bathwater bar soap launch would prompt a lesser man to let loose an additional torrent of double-entendres (it’s French, OK?) and puerile puns barely worthy of an adolescent. Not this blogger though, who now considers himself above that sort of thing. He waited patiently for the other shoe to drop. And drop it did, mere hours later. Unilever announced the acquisition of Dr. Squatch! They apparently agreed to pay $1.5 Billion which is around 3.75 X sales. Nice. Not Medik8 levels, but nice. I love this news for so many reasons on so many levels. Social – first marketing is all I heard about in London at the UL event and this acquisition is built, well-built, in fact, for that. I’ll say here, that if the UL marketing folks are up for a bit of envelope pushing in this regard, I’ll be happy to offer my input, free of charge. But as far as the blog goes, you know what this means, don't you?

Did someone mention Unilever? (Grok was the only LLM to give me an image remotely like this)

Music Section

This isn’t music, but we here at the blog are obsessed by Top Boy on Netflix. It’s a series with a Shakespearean focus on power and greed in which the characters prove the Solzhenitsyn maxim that the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man. Unless you run on the mean streets of Saarf London, you’ll need the subtitles on.

For music this month, the Spotify algorithm has been teasing me with Soft Machine, so I went deep into the back catalogue. Man, were they super influential on the whole progressive scene. I never saw them live. Too bad. Here are some of their “greatest hits”.

First up, Tale of Taliesen. Progenitors of jazz-prog-rock no?

Nice long one. Hazard profile off the 1975 album Bundles. Canonical? Not sure, but I like it.

Let’s go back and deep into the 1968 first album with hope for happiness. It can be enjoyed sober but probably rarely was.

By the time they got to the third album they were pushing things out, way out. Here’s out bloody rageous. Proggier than most, I would say.

That’s it in music for now. I have study these guys more. Part 2 next month.

That’s it. See you very soon for Asian Surfactants XI (that’s Eleven) https://events.icis.com/website/14105/home/

Surfactants Monthly - June 2025

Surfactants Monthly - May 2025