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In the personal care space, emulsions (mixtures of two otherwise immiscible liquids, with one liquid dispersed as drops in a continuous liquid or dispersion medium) provide both advantages and challenges.
Benefits of emulsions include many of the features consumers are looking for in personal care products, such as light feel, easier and deeper moisturizing penetration, longer lasting hydration, and easier layering.
However, emulsions can suffer from one major drawback – namely, that they are inherently unstable and can separate over time. This is particularly the case when emulsified products are exposed to movement or heat, as they may be during transport or in storage, or – for example – on a customer’s bathroom windowsill or in their cars.
Choosing the right emulsions manufacturing partner
As a brand owner, you naturally want to offer your customers the benefits of emulsions through products such as suncreams and moisturisers. However, you also need to be conscious of the risks of separation in terms of loss of product functionality, consumer dissatisfaction and even reputational damage.
At Prime Product Manufacturing, we’ve been recognised as the market leader in contract manufacturing, and that stems in part from our reputation as a centre of excellence for emulsions.
Test, test and test again
Every emulsion we formulate is worked on by our eight-strong Research & Development team of chemists. Between them, our R&D scientists have over 135 years of industry experience when it comes to perfecting emulsions.
Prime was the first contract manufacturer in South Africa to achieve the global ISO 22716 certification standard for cosmetics Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), as certified by Intertek. That’s your guarantee of stringent stability.
Our combined knowledge of emulsions allows us to proactively identify potential stability issues in advance, simply by reviewing formulations for products. We can then recommend adjustments that will enhance stability before we subject each new product to an extensive battery of stability tests. These include both heat testing and agitation testing. With heat testing, we ‘cook’ product samples at high temperatures for several months, to simulate the effects of years of warehouse storage, and all conceivable consumer use cases.
We also check for the destabilising effects of UV light – because a quick check of any South African bathroom will reveal emulsified products sitting on windowsills in the hot, bright sun. Last but not least, we monitor closely for any signs of microbial growth, in order to ensure that preservative systems in emulsion formulations are functioning correctly.
As a result of our checks, we may recommend revisions to formulations, or even to packaging designs and materials. These can all contribute to the goal that all stakeholders are seeking, namely more stable emulsions.
Quality comes first
Our quality control and quality assurance teams leave no stone unturned in their quest for possible defects, contamination, or substandard performance. That’s another reason the market-leading South African personal care brand chooses Prime to manufacture their emulsion products.
We have long-standing links with independent testing laboratories and university research departments, and we have nurtured ties with global firms that have seen our team members given opportunities to learn from the very best in the world. Having access to a solid network of external industry experts and exposure to the latest innovations has helped us to build our reputation as an emulsions centre of excellence.
Integrity above all things
As a contract (third-party) manufacturer, we manufacture emulsions for multiple brands, all of whom rely on Prime to protect their intellectual property. Just as we value our own reputation, we take equally good care of the reputations of all the brands who entrust their manufacturing to us.
The wider benefits of emulsions
By selecting Prime as your emulsions centre of excellence, you’re not only gaining access to an elite R&D team and a company that’s more than a little obsessed with quality. All Prime manufacturing takes place here in South Africa, and the company currently employs over 230 people at its manufacturing plant. With each person having multiple dependents, a contract with Prime effectively helps to support well over 1 000 people locally.
As a company, we have consciously eschewed too great a degree of automation in our plant, because we believe that we have a responsibility to create meaningful economic opportunities for our most important stakeholders – people from our local communities.
We make products by people, for people. By manufacturing exclusively in South Africa, we’re helping to stimulate the local and national economy in the kind of impactful ways that only manufacturing can achieve.
Small enterprises, big results
Our unique approach to emulsions manufacturing doesn’t stop with the way we rigorously evaluate each product. Our team members have organised themselves into Small Enterprise Teams, each of which operates as a ‘business within a business’. We have found that this is a seriously effective way for team members to self-motivate in terms of productivity, quality and innovation.
Ultimately, it’s our people that make the difference. It’s a difference you’ll see reflected in world-class stability in every emulsion we make.
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