FEATURE ARTICLES

Known for its scientific and technical excellence and home to cosmetic giants such as Beiersdorf, as well as many other beauty brands and suppliers, Hamburg is the perfect setting for the next edition of in-cosmetics which returns to Germany on 1-3 April 2014.

The history of skin whitening goes back a long way in Asia. It has been deeply ingrained in cultures that fairer skin denotes affluence and an elevated social status, while darker skins denote menial work.

The global market for skin whitening products (also called brighteners, according to the geographical areas) amounts to US$ 13 billion and is a rapidly growing segment in the personal care industry.

The 2013 in-cosmetics Asia show closed on 31 October with a palpable sense of success for exhibitors and attendees alike. The aisles seemed constantly busy with visitors eager to discover more about the latest ingredients and technology, while the educational programme also appeared to hit just the right note with formulators.

The new Product Trail concept featuring at in-cosmetics Asia 2013 gave visitors the ability to match ingredients to major trends and take them straight to the right stand.

Reed Sinopharm Exhibitions (RSE) has unveiled two conference segments and a new Product Sourcing Seminar for the annual Personal Care & Homecare Ingredients (PCHi) Conference.

A visit to any recent personal care ingredients exhibition would soon show you that marine ingredients are increasingly popular. This is unsurprising as the sea remains a seemingly limitless source of chemical compounds, many of which have potential applications in the personal care industry.

Colin Sanders has been a formulator of cosmetic and topical pharmaceuticals for 27 years. Over that time he has formulated nearly every category of product including shampoos, cosmetic skin creams, pharmaceutical skin creams, face masks, lip balms and so on.

Despite promotions on personal care products being at an all-time high, growth in sales across Europe is declining, and price increases have become difficult to justify.

UV filters are the workhorses of sun protection products. The rapidly growing markets for sunscreens and for beauty products that include sun protection mean that more and more formulators around the world are turning to UV filters.

One fundamental role of skin is to prevent water loss driven by unbalanced water contents between the inner body and the environment.

Traditional cationic compounds, referred to as quats, are used very commonly in the personal care industry as conditioners and softeners on the hair and skin. This is due to the fact that hair and skin have a net negative charge due in part to oxidation of sulfur containing amino acids.

Even though it is famous for its hydrating and skin-filling properties, hyaluronic acid is not as well known as it may appear. Although present to a higher degree in the extracellular matrix of the dermis, it is also found in the epidermis where its function presents an unused potential for hydration and overall skin restructuring strategies.

In our current technological era where information spreads easily and widely, the term genome is not unknown, being correctly understood as an extensivelyused natural storage system for the entire hereditary information of an organism.

Success in the personal care market is all about meeting the ever changing demands of consumers within a legislative and regulatory framework that affects every part of the manufacturing and supply chain.

Consumer expectations for today’s hair and skin care products are often led by fastpaced trends. As a result, personal care product development can be driven in part by visions of what might be – often before technology can catch up with solutions and products that turn imagination into reality.

Creating highly viscous or soft-solid oil phases without losing the sensorial profile is a task not easy to accomplish for cosmetic formulators. There are few possibilities and only a few ingredients that will have a viscosity-increasing effect on liquid oils without altering the sensorial profile.

The boom of the ‘male grooming’ market has long been touted as somewhat of a false dawn within the personal care industry. However, with the sector now valued at near £600 m, considerable growth achieved in each of the past four years and forecasts indicating that the upwards trend will continue through to 2017, has this prediction finally arrived?1

Consumers are increasingly aware of the damaging effects UV exposure can have on the skin. While people have used sun protection factor (SPF) as an indicator of protection against UVB radiation, and therefore burning for many years, the damaging potential of UVA radiation has come into the spotlight in recent years highlighting the importance of UVA protection.

The topic of preservation in personal care is heightening and is on the forefront of the minds of cosmetic companies, formulators, and consumers. There is an interesting divide in the way that certain consumers and companies are approaching preservation.