Supplier Locus Performance Ingredients doubles production capacity to meet growing interest for cleaner product formulations
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Consumers are becoming more knowledgeable about which ingredients to avoid in cosmetics and personal care formulations.
But there’s a hidden catch…toxic chemicals can exist in a product formulation without being listed on the ingredient list. Some of the most harmful toxins are trace impurities that come from essential ingredients.1,4-Dioxane is one such culprit.
Consumers are becoming much more conscious of the ingredients in everyday products that they use on themselves and for their families. This has motivated cosmetic and personal care formulators to reevaluate product formulations to provide simpler, shorter ingredient lists.
A technology breakthrough is making it possible to cost-effectively reduce worldwide chemical surfactant reliance for the first time. Production methods developed by Locus Fermentation Solutions (Locus FS) are driving a global shift to the use of high-performing biosurfactants customized to directly replace surfactants in key global industries—with a 37% lower carbon footprint.
Personal care formulators use surfactants, and now biosurfactants, as emulsifiers, solubilizers, cleansers, wetters and foamers, but how exactly do they work? Formulation success can be amplified by understanding the action of these ingredients and these key terms…
Several biotechnology and specialty chemical companies are ramping up marketing and commercialisation of microbial-based surfactants especially glycolipids like rhamnolipid and sophorolipids as fermentation, extraction and purification processes for these surfactants have vastly improved compared to even a few years back.
Locus Performance Ingredients launched on July 21, 2020 amid the pandemic. Company executives note that it has had an impact on laboratory uptime to a modest degree, as Locus adheres to rigorous cleaning and laboratory management practices, but there’s been no dislocations in our supply chain from vendors.
What is most interesting is how the forces in each of the 3 spheres of influence have gotten stronger over the past ten years. Further, over time the “niche of success” is getting harder to hit. However, just like hitting the bullseye awards the dart thrower more points, hitting the “niche of success” rewards the ingredient supplier, formulator, personal care brand and consumer.
On August 4, 2020, startup company Locus Performance Ingredients (Locus PI) launched Ferma (INCI: Glycolipids), a sophorolipid series of biosurfactants to replace toxic surfactants and eliminate health and palm oil concerns in personal care products.
Biosurfactants have been recognized as the best alternative to surfactants due to their superior performance, versatility and lower usage rates. The problem? There wasn’t a production method that could make them commercially viable at the costs and scale needed for use in personal care products…until now.
