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In 2005, the consumer goods giant Colgate-Palmolive left the North American laundry detergent business by selling products such as Fab and Dynamo to Phoenix Brands. Three years later, another consumer goods giant, Unilever, sold its American detergent product line including All and Wisk to Sun Products.
The sale of its business to two smaller private companies has made P&G’s high-end market in the US laundry detergent almost unchallenged. Interestingly, Procter & Gamble did not declare victory.
Indeed, in 2014, Alan G. Lafley, then CEO of Procter & Gamble (P&G), regretted Unilever’s withdrawal. He said that it defeated the middle market of the detergent market, making P&G’s products mainly concentrated in the high-end market, while providing low-end products with three competitors. Procter & Gamble is a marketer of well-known brands such as Tide and Gain. It accounts for nearly 60% of the US laundry detergent business, but this is a stagnant business, and there is a huge price gap between the company’s products and its competitors.
A year later, one of its competitors, the German company Henkel, shaken things up. The company introduced its high-quality European detergent Persil to the United States, first sold exclusively through Wal-Mart, and then launched at retailers such as Target. In 2016, Henkel further confused things by acquiring Sun Products.
The launch of Persil has revitalized the laundry detergent business, but it may be faster than Lafley expected. Last May, when “Consumer Report” magazine named one of Henkel’s new products, Persil ProClean Power-Liquid 2in1, the best-performing American detergent, he and other P&G executives must be shocked. The coronation ceremony pushed Tide into second place for the first time in years.
Procter & Gamble (Chastened), Procter & Gamble (P&G) re-formulated its first big-name product Tide Ultra Stain Release in 2016. The company said it added surfactants and removed some water, resulting in a denser and more concentrated formula that can improve stain removal. The magazine stated that the product topped the list in subsequent Consumer Reports analysis, although it is not statistically important.
Consumer Reports recently listed Tide Plus Ultra stain release agent and Persil ProClean Power-Liquid 2-in-1 as the two best laundry detergents in the United States. C&EN will check the ingredients that cause this state, as well as their uses and manufacturers.
Consumer Reports recently listed Tide Plus Ultra stain release agent and Persil ProClean Power-Liquid 2-in-1 as the two best laundry detergents in the United States. C&EN will check the ingredients that cause this state, as well as their uses and manufacturers.
It is too early to say whether Henkel will seriously challenge P&G to American consumers buying high-end laundry detergent. But if P&G’s formulation chemists feel complacent due to lack of competition, they will definitely be eliminated.
Shoaib Arif, application and technical service manager at Surfactant Supplier Pilot Chemical, explained that in the United States, Tide and Persil are high-quality products for the business and can be divided into four performance levels. Over the years, Arif and other Pilot scientists have helped many houseware companies formulate new detergents and other cleaning products.
In the low-end market, it is a super economical detergent. According to Arif, it may only contain a cheap surfactant, such as linear alkyl benzene sulfonate (LABS) as well as flavors and colors. The next stage of the product may add surfactant adjuvants or builders, such as sodium citrate, tackifier and a second surfactant.
LABS is an anionic surfactant, which is good at removing particles from fabrics and works well on cotton cloth. The second common surfactant is ethanol ethoxylate, a non-ionic surfactant, which is more effective than LABS, especially for removing grease and dirt from synthetic fibers.
In the third layer, formulators may add optical brighteners at a slightly lower price. These optical brighteners absorb ultraviolet light and release it into the blue area to make clothes appear brighter. Better surfactants, chelating agents, other builders and anti-redeposition polymers are often found in such formulations, which can trap dirt from the wash water to prevent it from being deposited on the fabric again.
The most expensive detergents are characterized by high surfactant loading and a variety of other surfactants, such as alcohol sulfates, alcohol ethoxy sulfates, amine oxides, fatty acid soaps and cations. Exotic soil capture polymers (some tailored for companies such as Procter & Gamble and Henkel) and enzymes also fall into this category.
However, Arif warns that the accumulation of ingredients brings its own challenges. To a certain extent, detergent formulation is a science, and chemists know the quality of chemical components, such as the surface activity of surfactants.
He explained: “However, once the formula is developed, all these things will affect each other, and you cannot predict exactly what the final formula will do.” “You still have to test to make sure it works in real life.”
For example, surfactants and builders can inhibit enzyme activity, Arif said. Detergent formulators can use enzyme stabilizers (such as sodium borate and calcium formate) to solve this problem.
Franco Pala, principal research scientist of Battelle’s World Detergent Project, pointed out that the high surfactant content found in premium detergent brands can also cause problems. “It is not easy to add so many surfactants at such a high concentration,” Pala explained. Solubility becomes a problem, and bad interactions between surfactants also become a problem.
The multi-client Battelle program led by Pala began in the early 1990s by analyzing the composition of major global cleaning product brands. Battelle uses a series of scientific instruments to help brand owners and raw material suppliers go beyond the ingredient list to understand, for example, the degree of ethoxylation of surfactants or whether the surfactant backbone is linear or branched.
Para said that today, polymers are an important source of innovation in detergent ingredients. For example, both Tide and Persil products contain polyethyleneimine ethoxylate, which is a dirt-absorbing polymer developed by BASF for Procter & Gamble, but is now more widely available to detergent manufacturers.
Pala pointed out that terephthalic acid copolymers are also found in some high-quality detergents, which will cover the fabric during the washing process, making it easy to remove stains and dirt during the subsequent washing process. Battelle uses tools such as gel permeation chromatography to separate polymers and then uses infrared spectroscopy to determine their structure.
The Battelle program also pays close attention to enzymes, which are biotech products that manufacturers continue to improve every year. To assess the activity of the enzyme, Pala’s team exposed the enzyme to a substrate containing a chromophore. When the enzyme degrades the substrate, the chromophore is released and measured by absorption or fluorescence spectroscopy.
Proteases that attack proteins were the first enzymes added to detergents in the late 1960s. Later enzymes added to the arsenal included amylase, which decomposes starch, and mannanase, which degrades thickeners for guar gum. When guar-containing foods (such as ice cream and barbecue sauce) are spilled on clothes, chewing gum will remain on the clothes even after washing. It is embedded in the fabric and is used like glue for granular dirt, creating stains that are difficult to remove.
Both Persil ProClean Power-Liquid 2in1 and Tide Ultra Stain Release contain protease, amylase and mannanase.
Persil also contains lipase (which can decompose fat) and cellulase (which can be cleaned indirectly by hydrolyzing certain glycosidic bonds in cotton fiber) to remove dirt attached to the fiber. Cellulase can also soften cotton and improve its color brightness. At the same time, according to patent documents, the unique feature of tidal detergent is glucanase, which can decompose polysaccharides that amylase cannot degrade.
Novozymes and DuPont have long been major producers of enzymes, but BASF has recently entered the business in the form of proteases. At the Cleaning Products Conference held in Germany last fall, BASF promoted the combination of its new protease and polyethyleneimine ethoxylate, saying that the mixture provides enhanced performance for customers who wish to formulate detergents for low-temperature washing.
In fact, Arif and other market observers say that allowing detergent manufacturers to make ingredients that require low energy consumption or environmental protection from natural sources is the next frontier in the industry. In May last year, P&G launched Tide Purclean, a version of its iconic brand, in which 65% of the ingredients come from plants. Then, in October, Unilever acquired Seventh Generation, a manufacturer of plant detergents and other cleaning products, to re-enter the US detergent market.
Although turning the best ingredients into award-winning detergents is always a challenge, “the trend today is more natural,” Arif said. “Customers are asking,’How do we make natural-derived products that are less toxic to humans and the environment, but still perform well?”