Surfactants Monthly - December 2024

December 2024

So, I’ll start with my top 5 for 2024. These are the surfactant things I found most interesting and this is how I got to them. First I fed into Google’s Notebook LM all eleven of my blogs for the year to date (that’s January – November and excluding this one obviously) and asked it, what are the top 5 most interesting things to happen in surfactants this year. Four out of the five, I thought were good and so I switched out the fifth one and rewrote all of them to make them better. Hey I’m still feeling like I want to be the human in the loop. How about you? Then I fed this one page document back into Notebook LM and asked it to make a podcast out of it. It was as good as I had come to expect, having experimented a lot with this tool when it came out. It got a few things wrong but not a bad job. Then I asked Grok (X’s AI tool) to make a visual for this podcast. The whole thing is embedded below. BTW – if you can guess at the prompt I used to get the visual, you will be handsomely rewarded. (Yeah I’m still playing around a lot with AI, but it’s still more amusement than utility.) Also if: You can’t be bothered with this nonsense and “just list your top 5 and I’ll see if they’re the same as mine”. Here they are. They’ve all been written about in prior 2024 blog entries.

1) Explosion of Novel and Bio-based Surfactants:

There’s 26 companies that I wrote about in HPC Today involved in fermentation based biosurfactants, including Evonik, Holiferm , Ruby Bio. It’s a pretty good article, even if I say so myself. Check it out.
Plus non-fermentation players, like Integrity Biochem, who are doing commercially significant business.
Then there are companies working on really novel supply chains, like Kaffe Bueno. Look, I’ll be honest. I was a bit skeptical at first as I thought coffee was kind of a gimmick. This Danish company is one to watch however. I’m hugely impressed with what they’ve achieved in a short period of time.
Totally novel concepts like those from Spherelose and Econic. Spherelose is in a class of one at the moment as far as I’m aware. I like that.

2) The War on Ethylene Oxide:

The EPA is coming down hard on atmospheric concentrations of EO around handling, manufacturing and processing facilities, which include ethoxylators.
Of course continuing pressure on dioxane by NY, CA and Germany is causing folks to look at and revisit some alternatives to ethoxylated surfactants overall.

3) BASF's Restructuring and Big Bet on China:

BASF has reorganized its business into two segments: core and standalone
The Nutrition and Care segment, which houses most of their surfactants, is part of the core business.
BASF is making a substantial investment of €10 billion in a new site in China, which is expected to generate a historically high 25% EBITDA margin on 4 – 5 Billion Euros in sales, and includes a 215,000 tons of capacity for nonionic surfactants

4) New Building Blocks Development:

Unilever and Nufarm are collaborating to develop a crop that uses the entire plant, including leaves and stems, to produce biomass oil with the key C12 – 14 fatty acid chain lengths for surfactants feedstocks
BASF is collaborating with Acies Bio (pronounced Axius Beeo) to make detergent range alcohols via fermentation
Future Origins is a fairly new JV between Geno, Kao, Unilever and L’Oreal focused also on making detergent range alcohols via fermentation.

5) More Real Sustainability:

Product carbon footprint measurements are becoming more standardized and being used in marketing surfactants and intermediates.
Bio mass balance is becoming more accepted as a real solution to reaching sustainability targets.
Supply chain transparency becoming more important overall.
The above means, hopefully, less handwaving and assertions of moral (or ESG) superiority merely because something is made renewably or via fermentation or, most vacuously, “using green chemistry”. Gimme a break. Show me the PCF. Lay out the supply chain. And, most importantly show me it works well, at scale and at a realistic cost.

An honorable mention (you have to have one of those right?) for transformative use of AI in surfactant formula design and development goes to Potion AI for their powerful formulation platform – still free to use (not sure for how much longer..).

OK - Here’s the fancy AI podcast version..

And now, our promo: The 15th World Surfactants Conference runs May 7 – 8th in Jersey City (link here to the site so you can register https://events.icis.com/website/8544/ ). Registrations are already multiples of last year. Book soon. It will be the best yet.

The News:

Biosurfactants Economics: This is the question right? So I have to share this with you. The paper given by Allied Carbon Solutions on biosurfactants at my conference in KL in November was outstanding and the presenter, Makoto Hirota, referenced some work done by Intelligen Inc. on biosurfactant production economics. Wow! I’d never seen this before and it is incredibly interesting and useful. Go here: https://www.intelligen.com/products/superpro-examples/ and follow the instructions. You can then access, among many other things, a 24 page word document analyzing Rhamnolipid production. There’s a 12 page sophorolipid one also. As well as a bunch of other processes including levulinic acid, BDO, farnesene, itaconic acid and others.

Let’s stick with Rhamnolipids. Some interesting points from the paper. :

· Rhamnolipids are produced mainly by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. However, P aeruginosa is a gram negative pathogenic bacteria. For this reason, industrial production uses genetically modified Pseudomonas putida, which is not a pathogen and is a common microorganism in the biotech industries (Bettenhausen, 2020). Didn't know this. Is it correct?

· There’s a lot of art in the production methods: The rhamnolipids concentration in the production broth gradually increases, increasing in parallel the viscosity of the broth, and as such increasing the required agitation power for maintaining aerobic conditions with adequate dissolved oxygen in the broth. Different strains, media composition, fermentation conditions and culture age result in different mixtures of rhamnolipids. Slight differences in the rhamnolipids composition, can have significant consequences on the physical- chemical properties of the produced biosurfactant.

· There’s also a lot of art in separation and seemingly no clear accepted method of separation – yet – at least in the public domain.

· The process was divided into four key steps:

o Media Preparation

o Fermentation

o Product Purification

o Solvent Recovery and Reuse

· Media Prep: These units operate in continuous mode. THe recipe cycle time is 16 hours – that is they operate for 16 hours to produce material to feed the next step which is operating in batch mode.

· Fermentation: Batch mode. Consists of two steps

o Seed fermentation – 48 hours

o Production fermentation – 72 hours

o So that’s 5 days of fermentation per batch

· Purification. Continuous mode. 19 hour recipe time. This involves solvent use, centrifugation and reaction with enzymes in a plug flow reactor.

· Finally, solvent recovery using distillation.

· So we are still talking batch times in the 5 – day timeframe which is consistent with what I have read elsewhere.

The plant modelled in the paper has a capacity of 8,100 MT per year and has total installed capex cost of $88.4 Million. The largest equipment line item is the production fermenters (8 of them) at a total of $4.8 M. Engineering and construction come to $27.3 M. In the final model, they used Capex of $95.0 Million.

Operating costs look like this:

Raw Materials $14.4 M (Mainly glucose, vegetable oil, yeast extract, peptone)

Labor $ 8.4 M (seems very high. 69 operators. Can someone explain?)

Utilities $ 8.7 M (also seems high but maybe fermentation is like this. )

Depr. & Maint. $16.7 M (including non-cash depreciation)

Misc Variable $ 0.9 M (net of energy savings of $1.5 M)

TOTAL $49.1 M

They assume revenue of $8 per Kg of what they refer to as Rhamnolipid product mixture and refer to elsewhere as MP – which I assume is mixed product (Is that realistic? Does it mean $8 for the 46% active material, in which case the pricing assumption is $17.40/ kg active matter basis. I cannot fully determine from the paper. Anyone else know?)

Nonetheless, taking all these numbers as given we have for this plant:

Annual Revenue $65 M (8,100 MT at $8/Kg plus some misc. revenue)

Annual Cost $49 M

Margin $16 M

On a $95 M capex, that’s a 5.9 year simple payback, but there is depreciation in the cost numbers. If you take that out and assume it’s $9M, then you’ve got a $25 M cash margin and simple cash payback of 3.8 years. Not bad. The paper calculates a payback of 4.67 years which, I’m assuming is on a compounding basis including depreciation. But any way you look at it, the economics seem workable and ballpark consistent with what Evonik has said about their investment in the larger plant in Slovakia. My lingering question is regarding the pricing. Can someone please comment. Our anonymous tip line is, as always, open, 24/7.

Oof that section went on longer than I’d planned. Hope it was useful.

Speaking of Evonik, they’re reorganizing - leaner. The press release is here. It’s not winning any plain speech awards but as far as I can make out, there’ll be two divisions: Custom Solutions and Advanced Technologies with sales of 6 Billion Euros each. Custom seems like the specialties businesses and Advanced, the cash cow types. [my words not Evonik’s]. Anyway, we only care about surfactants in the blog right? This is how the structure is and looks like surfactants are all in the Custom division. Good. No-one could accuse specialty surfactants of being a cash cow.

Assuming surfactants are in Health & Care.

And speaking of lean. Unilever is folding together its sustainability and external communications departments, months after scaling back its environmental targets, reports the FT. In April the company scaled back various sustainability targets and or extended the timelines (More Unilever news further down).

More on Fermentation: The University of Wageningen and InvestNL have produced a useful guide to fermentation. It’s focused on food, but I think it’s generally quite informative for anyone looking to understand terms of art and some of the tradeoffs involved in commercialization of the technology. Download it here.

Croda – more analysis: After last months deep dive into Croda and my puzzlement at the stock price collapse, our great readers came through with some good comments. I summarise and anonymize as follows: The price decline seems to correlate with the drop off in COVID vaccinations. Croda likely got a chunk of revenue from their proprietary manufactured lipid vesicle carrier technology sold to vaccine makers. There was a press release about their work in this regard here . It looks like technology from their Avanti Polar Liquids subsidiary. Bioavailability is key to vaccine success and vesicle construction is key to that. And apparently, it is PEG-ylation that can be a key part of that – a core competence at Croda. This publication elaborates: When combined with mRNA (and then subjected to even more complex processing operations), in the correct proportions, and of the correct types - LNPs (lipid nanoparticles) can be formed. LNPs are in essence, miniature shuttles which help get genetic / vaccine information, more successfully into a biological cell where it can have an effect.

As one reader succinctly put it: “Who says PEG can’t get a date these days? Only the Clean Beauty crowd, that’s who.” Alright!

Unilever was the subject of an interesting pair of articles this month. Yes, yes, I know, we’ll get to the UL board after the articles. It is year-end after all. Anyway - the first article, in New York Magazine, deals with The Laundress, a company acquired by Unilever inn 2019 for around $100 Million from the founder. The products are described as “upscale, plant-derived, low-preservative ecoconscious”. After Unilever bought the company, they got hit with two product recalls. One for bacterial contamination (for low preservative products? No way!) and the other for ethylene oxide contamination (ouch). One interesting quote is from when the founder talked to a UL HR person in New Jersey who told her that “the company “always” messes up acquisitions and fixes them later. But the mess continued.”. The founder plays the gender card a couple of times in the interview and is back in the Laundry business with The Fill, now that her post-sale non-compete is up. No doubt those recalls must have hurt though. I wish her more success.

I was surprised, however, as I always got the impression, UL did quite well with brand acquisitions. I think of Living Proof and, of course, Seventh Generation, the proto-typical eco-conscious laundry brand. Interestingly, HAPPI interviewed a Seventh Gen product development executive at the end of November here. It’s a bit of a puff piece, but worth a read. My conversations with Seventh Gen people, including OG’s from pre – 2016 acquisition give me a positive impression of the new ownership structure. Maybe I’m naïve and the anonymously quoted UL HR person is right. Thoughts? Comments? (Anon tip line if you must). In the meantime..

One wonders what impact, if any, the Unilever board and their family members might have on the company’s laundry strategy. Well, according to a December 22nd article in the venerable UK Daily Express, Brooklyn Beckham, son-in-law of UL board member, Nelson Peltz dropped a “bombshell revelation about his jeans-washing habits that really dropped jaws; as the young celebrity shockingly confessed: "I never wash them."” The article goes on to note that “a University of Alberta study found infrequent laundering doesn't significantly heighten bacterial load in jeans, even after extended wear.” Oh dear. I find it hard to believe that his considerably more photogenic and photographed wife adopts the same strategy for her jeans. Perhaps a public statement regarding the virtues of laundry, particularly involving UL brands, would help. I expect she’s a blog reader so..

Only one of these people washes their jeans!

Massive and very exciting news from Holiferm. Just this month, the company and Indorama Ventures announced a market partnership for sophorolipids in South America. The press release went on to note that the biosurfactants produced by Holiferm will be marketed by Indovinya under the brand SURFONIC BIO. The product has already been sold successfully in South America, receiving positive feedback from the market and initiating the first commercial launches from customers. The partnership aims to accelerate market uptake following this success. Excellent partnership for the lads from Manchester, complementing other deals, including with Sasol and CoastSouthwest to name a couple.

The war on EO Continued: In a December 7th article in the Daily Dot, a doctor, who turns out to be a chiropractor, so, you know, I mean is that really a doctor or more like a Dr. Jill type doctor? Anyway this “doctor” says “Dishwashers are considered the most dangerous appliance in your home. Did you know that?” Dr. (I’ll use the honorific, fine.) Pompa (is that the female form of pompous? Figures..) goes on to assert that the culprit is ethoxylate and does, to his credit, I suppose, cite an article in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. He also shills for a company called Blueland, professional plastics scolds, who I’ve written about in February and April and their nakedly transparent attempts at regulatory capture to enrich their shareholders. All this is covered in a Tiktok video from Pompa which has racked up over 1.4 Million views. Now, to be fair to Dr. Pompa, among the other recent videos on his Tiktok is one entitled “Why Urine is Actually the Safest Thing to Consume” Not clear if this refers to one’s own or other people’s - I didn't watch the video. So erm.. well – perhaps now that urine imbibing practitioners of the manipulative arts are piling on, we have reached peak-war-on-EO? Let’s see what 2025 brings.

Don’t even get me started on sulfates. Cheers!

The war on Palm: Continues, but the battle is far from one-sided. A recent article in Bernama cites as statement from two US professors entitled “A heroic role for palm oil”. The full statement is here. It’s worth a read. My favorite bit is “We advocate for balanced, science-based perspectives that consider palm oil’s nutritional value, its evolving environmental practices, and its socio-economic contributions.” Right on.

I really don't like holier than thou, really and so, lest we get all morally superior about products fermented from sugarcane being so much better than palm derivatives because, you know, orangutangs and monoculture, consider this recent article in Biofuels Digest “Reporter Brasil calls out continued slavery used in Brazilian sugarcane industry”. In Brazil, Reporter Brasil reports LanzaJet will use mainly Brazilian raw materials and will require its suppliers to obtain sustainability certification. However, among the companies that have been awarded the seal, there are at least two plants involved in recent scandals involving the use of slave labor. The cases are covered in the report “Enslaved by Ethanol”, published Thursday by Repórter Brasil , which also shows other unprecedented connections between multinationals and ethanol suppliers implicated in serious human rights violations (Yeah er.. that would probably be one of the more serious violations.) Here’s the full report (in Portuguese).

We’ve written a lot about the frustrating TSCA process for new products. Last month the EPA finally issued a final rule (we note redundantly) updating the process. The American Chemistry Council doesn't like it, however. Here’s their statement. In particular they not ““EPA missed an opportunity to improve the predictability and timeliness of the TSCA New Chemicals program. EPA has not been able to make meaningful progress towards meeting its 90-day statutory timeline to clear Premanufacture Notices (PMNs) and unacceptable delays are ongoing. Investments in domestic production depend on being able to source critical chemistries made here in the United States.

“Delays aren’t just ongoing with respect to PMN reviews, either; the entire process continues to be bogged down. We therefore urge EPA to immediately begin tracking and releasing data publicly to show total “time to market” for PMN substances, which includes any time needed to complete a consent order or significant new use rule (SNUR).” Ouch! That seems pretty bad. Interested to hear from some companies with real-life recent experience with TSCA. And really keen to hear from inside the EPA. Anonymous tipline, with end to end encryption, is open.

Meanwhile in Europe, things are even worse, if you can imagine it. CEFIC released statement urging the EU to take urgent and bold action. A key part “The situation is critical. At two to four times higher than its competitors, energy prices in Europe are unsustainably high, and the EU’s regulatory system is too complex, slow, and often contradictory.…. Investments and jobs are being driven away, while regions with simpler, faster, and more supportive frameworks eagerly take Europe’s place. This is not just a warning—it’s already happening.” Ugh. For me though the title of the statement encapsulates the whole problem. The title is “CEFIC Calls on New College of Commissioners to take Urgent and Bold Action to Secure Europe’s Industrial Future” I mean, come on - College of Commissioners?! Sounds like the Vatican – College of Cardinals. What? Who are these people, and perhaps more importantly, who do they think they are. I think Europe needs more than urgent and bold action. It needs an enema. There I said it.

41 cents a kilowatt hour seems more than fair, don’t you think, your excellency?

Even more regulatory. I’ve been keeping an eye on the Cosmetics Ingredients Review, and I make use of some of their information in a recent Youtube on sulfate free. You should read it too (if you’re in regulatory. It can be dense for the lay reader). They did some very comprehensive work recently on amphoacetates which you can easily find on the site directly or via Google. Check it out.

I have been hearing about a company, Terra Mater, recently. There as a recent announcement here about jet fuel. But the company is also targeting higher alcohols (ie read – detergent range, among others), according to the website. Check it out.

Amphistar, Belgian biosurfactants, sent out a year end roundup, which was interesting, but we’ve reported pretty much all of it in the blog already. However their CEO was interviewed on French TV in 2024. Check out the link and the video. Pretty cool.

Another consumer brand inspired by a celebrity’s incredible run of health misfortune (stay with me on this. There’s a super-relevant surfactant pay-off). Ashley Tisdale, pictured below and appearing to be in rude health, has taken her wellness brand, Frenshe, into haircare, according to Cosmetics Business.

CB notes “The actress’s personal experience with alopecia areata, an autoimmune condition she was diagnosed with in her twenties, played a significant role in inspiring Frenshe’s hair care expansion.” OK fine. So let’s take a look at one of the existing products in Target. It’s a body wash. It proudly touts “sulfate free” alongside cruelty free, vegan and some others. So let’s take a look at the ingredients, and I quote - water (aqua/eau), sodium c14-16 olefin sulfonate, decyl glucoside, polysorbate 20, peg-150 distearate, cocamidopropyl betaine, etc. etc. Gold old AOS. And ethoxylates! (Who says PEG can’t get a date these days?). Ah Ashley… perhaps you are working toward a regular role in the blog? Let’s talk. A recent album was called symptoms by the way. Nothing to do with alopecia areata, though.

Oh.. the music you ask? Ah well, it’s the pretty much bog standard auto-tuned, thirst trap fare that you’d expect. OK, if you insist. Love me & Let me go

Galaxy Surfactants, a firm blog favorite, reported to NDTV, an upbeat outlook for 6- 8 % volume grown 25 vs 24. Shares closed up 4.6%. You can see an interview with our friend Natarajan, here:

Note – he mentions the US, specifically, saying “"Destocking in America is getting revived," and expressed confidence in the company's expansion plans there: "We have interesting plans to expand in America, but the way our business is positioned there, we are positive on it."

Market Notes:

In detergent range alcohols, Asia prices decreased in line with demand and lower PKO. In the US, some supply worries due to production issues and long import lead times. Europe saw an increase in mid- prices because of short supply. The implementation of EUDR has now officially been delayed to the end of 2025.

LAB in Asia is weak, with stable spot prices and weak demand. The market in India is also steady. The supply of LAB in Asia is expected to increase as plants come back online after maintenance, and in India, production is ramping up. The downstream LAB sulfonate (LAS) market remains unchanged, but some contracts for 2025 were reportedly settled at higher margins compared to 2024.

AI Corner:

This is not specifically surfactant related, but still super-cool. Have you read about Googles’ new quantum chip, Willow? One mind-blowing statement from the blog post “Willow performed a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion (that is, 10exp25) years — a number that vastly exceeds the age of the Universe.” Oh man. I love things that vastly exceed the age of the Universe, don't you? And things that do those things in under five minutes. And yes, I know it’s hyperbolic and there’s a long ways to go and all that. But think for a minute. It you could turn this Willow to one problem, one time. What would it be?

Music Section

Reminder: The combination of a private window and Adblock Plus should enable you to avoid most Youtube ads. It’s not so great outside of a private window. If you have other solutions, let me know.

After last month’s Zappa songs, it was recommended I listen to “Shut and Play yer Guitar” by Frank Zappa. I did and you should too.

There’s a long playlist attached to the video, not just the one song. You’ll find it on YouTube.

My close blog advisor told me I should feature new heavy rock that I like for 2025. OK so – I thought – nope - nothing new. So I searched – deep into YouTube - and got various thrash and death metal recommendations which really didn't appeal to me. I was left with two groups which, well, here we go. And these were both called out by folks that looked like they followed new heavy rock, if not for a living, then for a good part of their free time.

Lovebites is an all-female Japanese rock band. Here’s Soldier Stands Solitarily – live, from the album Memorial for the Warrior Souls (getting the picture already?)

The Warning are three sisters from Mexico. Here is Evolve – live.

So, I have to be honest, here. My initial gut reaction was – are these bands a gimmick? That is all-female heavy rock. I remember the Runaways and they were OK. I actually bought an album (second hand). But still the gimmick question. Sorry, that was my reaction. You can’t help your reactions. I’m just reporting mine.

Well, let’s take each band in turn. First, ahem, Lovebites. I mean, come on, the name itself is somewhat suggestive right? You can’t imagine a male rock band toying with such imagery -could you? :

Er.. OK fine. Well let’s consider appearance. I mean they seem to pay an awful lot of attention to their appearance. It seems to be a key feature does it not, perhaps meant to appeal to the male of the rock-fan species? Luckily we have a benchmark we can use here. The sound of the band is very reminiscent of Dragonforce – remember them. Clearly a big influence. Let’s listen to Through the Fire and Flames by the lads.

OK then. It’s clear that any one member of Dragonforce spends more on his hair than the entire cast of Lovebites spends on hair, makeup and wardrobe. Indeed, just eyeballing the data, here I’d estimate Dragonforce’s hair budget exceeds the entire federal budget of the nation of Japan. By the way, I love the YouTube comments, don't you? There’s often some gems in there. Under this Dragonforce video, one CountOxymagomedovMMA notes “This is the most intense shampoo commercial I've ever seen.” So, anyway, let’s pause here while I update my priors. OK – so Lovebites is not a gimmick. No more than Dragonforce. For me, maybe a little too choreographed (you think?). And I have some concerns about that drummer. I could see one of their concerts being an interesting cultural experience though. But look – make up your own minds.

Right then, The Warning. So, I think they're legit. Apparently they got their start in their early teens playing Metallica covers on Youtube and some of those vides are still up there. They’ve clearly spent their formative years, listening to the rock canon. Many of the songs reminded me of Billy Talent. Yes, they are comely young lasses, but that doesn't, for me, detract from the music. Even the bassist with that throwback Joan Jettesque hairdo. And, again by way of comparison, have they spent as much time looking in the mirror as, say, David Coverdale (Google him yourself)? And, I have a thing for power-trios and this certainly is one. And I could see one of their concerts being kinda good fun. And not any particular cultural experience other than a heavy rock one. So, I like them. There I said it. Are they the next Iron Maiden, Led Zeppelin? – No nothing like that. But I’m listening to their recent concert in Mexico City, right now. Check it out. By the way, for an interesting homage to one of their undoubted heroes, see 42:32 in this video.

Do you have some new music for 2025? Let me know and we’ll publish in the next blog.

Well, that’s it . A long blog. Hope you found it useful. Happy New Year!

See you in May (7 – 8th) at World Surfactants XV ! https://events.icis.com/website/8544/

Surfactants Monthly - December 2024

Surfactants Monthly - November 2024