Cosmetics manufacturers face a unique set of challenges when designing and manufacturing their products.
Cosmetics and personal care products must meet the highest standards of quality and maintain a strict level of consistency throughout the shelf life, all without sacrificing health, safety, and environmental standards.
To achieve these goals, the cosmetics manufacturing process must be precise. It starts with sourcing the highest quality ingredients.
Below we’ll go over some common cosmetics products and how sourcing the right specialty oil product from the right supplier can improve their performance.
Suzanne Kingsbury, Director of Quality
Use Cases for Shell GTL Isoparaffins: Cosmetics Manufacturing and Personal Care Products
Let’s take a look at three popular consumer products: conditioners, lotions and creams, and mascara.
1. Conditioners
Consumers value hair conditioners that have a smooth texture. As the final step in a hair-care routine, a conditioner can’t leave hair feeling oily or greasy.
Additionally, because conditioners are generally scented, it’s also important that the compounds that go into them don’t have an overpowering smell that distracts from or corrupts the intended scent.
Shell GTL for Cosmetics Manufacturing: Hair Products
Shell GTL isoparaffins make this aspect of the cosmetic manufacturing process less of a headache. Their silky-smooth texture is ideal for products like hair conditioners, which are designed to soften hair and maintain a light and clean feel.
And as they are odorless, these specialty isoparaffins do not interfere with fragrance, making them excellent solvents for scented products.
2. Lotions
Hand and body lotions often require many of the same qualities as conditioners: a smooth feel and the ability to carry a distinctive scent without dilution or corruption. They also must remain stable to resist drying out or coagulating.
They are also color-sensitive products. A lotion that yellows over time will appear low-quality and dirty, the very opposite of what consumers want to apply to their skin.
Shell GTL for Cosmetics Manufacturing: Lotions and Creams
Because of their paraffinic nature, Shell GTL isoparaffins are remarkably stable and have very low foaming and evaporation rates. This keeps them from denaturing the lotion or making it lose its characteristic, rejuvenating feel.
Shell GTL oils also have a clear and bright, water-white color that makes them excellent carriers for products like cosmetics where color often translates to quality. Their stability helps them maintain that color throughout the life of the product.
3. Mascara
While any cosmetic must be safe for human contact, makeup products like mascara that users apply near their eyes require especially high standards for health and safety.
The perception of safety is extremely important in the marketplace to combat public awareness of ingredients like per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) found in some mascaras, which can cause irritation and redness to the eyes and the area surrounding them.
Shell GTL for Cosmetics Manufacturing: Make-Up Products
Distinctively safe, Shell GTL oils don’t have this problem. Highly purified, they are BTX-free, containing no benzene, toluene, or xylene aromatics. They do not irritate sensitive skin, making them a great choice for personal care products used on the face and around the eyes.
The Cosmetics Manufacturing Supply Chain
The pursuit of quality doesn’t stop with sourcing exceptional ingredients. It’s also important to ensure product quality is built into your manufacturing process, all the way through your supply chain.
One way to do this is by adopting a strong quality management system (QMS) to help organize and structure your protocols and minimize quality control issues, and working with vendors with a strong QMS. These systems help manufacturers:
- Design efficient processes
- Manage document control
- Implement review and testing protocols
- Monitor and prove successful quality control
- Train employees
- Prevent quality problems
Widely recognized and adopted systems like the ISO-9001 family of standards help manufacturers protect themselves from inefficiency and waste while meeting FDA requirements, providing a benchmark by which a company can judge their production process.
Renkert Oil is certified by Safe Quality Foods (SQF), a Global Food Safety Initiative recognized, ISO-9001 based QMS.
Cosmetics Manufacturing and Renkert Oil: A Perfect Fit
When creating products with such stringent quality requirements, it’s important to know that your suppliers have the same standards of quality as your company.
Efficient and safe processes are a crucial part of Renkert Oil’s foundational values and are part of what has driven us to nearly four decades of success in the specialty oil supply industry.
Renkert Oil Staircase of Quality: Our Certifications
As a proud supplier of Shell-GTL isoparaffins, we understand how important it is to pass that quality along to our clients in personal care products and cosmetics manufacturing.
Our distributed storage and supply network combined with decades of logistics experience mean you can trust us to keep you consistently supplied.
To learn more about Renkert Oil’s dedication to quality management and our selection of specialty oils, contact us today.