North America
New Personal Care Applications Lab
Brenntag Specialties Inc. (BSI) is pleased to announce the opening of the new personal care applications lab at its headquarters in South Plainfield, New Jersey.
In the new personal care applications laboratory (from left to right): Kailas Patel (chemist), Michele Margherita (Personal Care Marketing Director), Karl Gordon (Manager Technical Services) and Christina Morgan (Research and Development, Formulations)
Photo: Brenntag
"Personal Care is a focus market for us, as more and more customers are reducing in-house lab capabilities," says Michele Margherita, Brenntag North America Personal Care Marketing Director. "We believe we can grow profitably by investing resources of value to our customers." Future projects for the new applications lab will include improving customer formulations and creating additional prototypes for specific customers. The lab will also test new formulas, including lip balms, sunscreens, foundations and pressed powders. New ingredients will be incorporated as BSI’s product line expands. Exceptional Formulation Skills Karl Gordon, Manager Technical Services, will oversee this new facility in addition to the existing color and analytical laboratories, also on site. New chemist Christina Morgan, Personal Care Applications Specialist, brings with her more than ten years of hair and skin care formulation experience and has exceptional skills and knowledge in creating prototype formulas and customer formulation solutions. BSI has been supplying the cosmetics industry with high-quality inorganic pigments and minerals for more than 30 years. The services of the company include modifying material characteristics through different types of surface treatment. "This allows us to enhance the reactivity and adhesion of the treated pigments and materials or to provide other important characteristics from the domain of surface chemistry," explains Thomas Grunstra, BSI Director Marketing Personal Care. Pigments and minerals most frequently used in the cosmetics industry include iron oxides, ultramarine blues, manganese violets, chrome hydrate, chrome oxide greens, talc, colloidal kaolin, sericite, mica, bentonite, titanium dioxide and zinc oxide. These raw substrates are further enhanced to improve skin feel, texture, adhesion, dispersibility and water repellency. BSI Technical Services operates a total of three labs focused on quality control and applications chemistry, and performing services such as quality assurance, product inspection, testing, identification, traceability and recommendations for correcting and improving processes. The 8-member team consists of two managers, three chemists, two sample room clerks and one administrative secretary . The analytical laboratory is the most extensive of the three labs and performs the broadest range of tasks. It is responsible for the quantitative and qualitative analysis of all incoming materials. This lab also provides product support for sales and marketing and ensures that product quality meets specifications. The analytical lab also performs testing and certification procedures on selected USP/FCC products that are marketed under the BSI private labeling program. The color lab has been utilized for many years to support the industrial pigments business, including, but not limited to ultramarine blue and iron oxides. The recent addition of Sun Chemical’s organic and pearlescent pigments for the Industrial Market, and BASF’s pearlescent pigments for the Personal Care Market, will generate significant activity in this area. The color lab has also been expanded to include the evaluation and development of new and competitive colors for cosmetics applications, enabling us to develop lab blends to match existing customer’s shades. Contact: Michele Margherita, Thomas Grunstra, mmargherita@brenntag.com, tgrunstra@brenntag.com Further information:www.brenntagspecialties.com
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