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I have a lot of experience in nutraceutical formulations - anything from tablets and softgels to spray dried powders. I’m happy to give you a hand.

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Dr Catherine Pratt said:

Use Leucidal 2% and Amp cide 2%

hope this helps

@”Dr Catherine Pratt” Who supplies this in Aus?

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You can go as much as 50% water/glycerol and still have a low Aw and at that level it shouldn’t degrade the vitamins too much (add 100% overage) and have good shelf life stability too. Adding the acacia/Xanthan/guar or other water soluble rheology agent should help with your gel.

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Belassi said:

Dammit - I want to visit

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@mikethair @Perry Thanks you for your advice. 

You have been very helpful. It seems also the Chinese GB standard for cosmetics follows the EU standards too - but with certain parts omitted that are not relevant to China.

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ozgirl said:

Just be careful with colorants because the US only allows a small number of approved colorants to be used in cosmetics.

That’s easy - we are not using any colourants.

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Did you try the beeswax-oil suggestion when you posted this last time?

With a 40% powder loading it is hard to prevent separation over time. I can’t see that glycerol will be any better. I don’t know of any viscosity modifiers that would work in glycerol alone.

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Dr Catherine Pratt said:

Beet powder inevitably turns poo brown….

Delicately stated

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mehrzadkia said:

Perry said:

@mehrzadkia - very good question. The unsatisfying answer is because that’s what the regulations are. 

The FDA even specifically says “Approval of a color additive for one intended use does not mean approval for other uses.”  Therefore, even if a colorant is approved for food, that does not mean it is approved for cosmetics.

The cosmetic industry in the US is not highly regulated except in a couple areas. Colorants is one of those areas. Formulators (who follow the law) are limited to the colors listed in the FDA approved colorants. The safety or origin the ingredient does not matter. If it’s not on the list, it’s illegal to use as a colorant. 

Thank you Dr. Perry for the clarification.

I guess it has something to do with the stability and subsequent changes of natural colorants in the formulas. As far as I’m concerned, beetroot powder and all other food/fruit/vegetable powders do not work in color cosmetics as they are. They either don’t work at all (they color the product but not the skin) or they stain the skin irreversibly (like turmeric or henna).

Natural colours are really unstable. Most change colour with pH and have been used as pH indicator solutions, those that don’t tend to have high light instability anyway.

In one formulation (this was naturally coloured fish oil softgels) the turmeric produced a beautiful shade of yellow - then bleached in barely 48 hours to white (the base colour of the softgel is titanium dioxide).
Anthocyanin colours are often used as pH indicators too. Hibiscus for example is yellow at neutral pH, green in alkalis and only red in acidic solutions. 
Blue pea is blue in neutral solutions but turns pink in acidic solutions.

Beet powder is a little more stable compared with others, but it does go more pink in an acid and redder in alkali.

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I have been on the receiving end of documents not intended for me. I usually just reply to advise that these have been sent to me in error and the emails have been deleted and the attachments have been unread.

One occasion the supplier sent me docs and included the managing director of a competitor company in the email. I can only assume extremely apologetic emails were sent to the MD and others in the team.

Another instance a govt agency sent the results of an audit to the wrong person (a friend of mine) in the wrong company - news got out very quickly about the failed audit… 

Mistakes happen, I guess it is better to admit the mistakes and apologise profusely; but if you are on the receiving end of those emails, discretion is better.

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@Perry Thanks. I thought this was the case, but it is great to get confirmation.

Now it just seems Korea and Japan have their own curious regs to work through

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LuisJavier said:

wondering how thick an acacia gum ‘firm-hold’ product would feel and in what medium it would be stored in. 

In a word “Crispy” when dry and in your beard/moustach. As a liquid it is viscous. 

The product I used is an Indian “Fixer” and it really is just acacia gum, water, preservatives & perfume. It does give a very firm hold and washes out easily.

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OMYA, I believe is a global company, but they may have distribution agents in some countries. https://www.omya.com/

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My favourite moustache firm hold product is just a mixture of acacia gum, water and perfume. It really does give a very firm, if somewhat crispy feel to your whiskers - but doesn’t droop in the tropical sun.

Whether you feel like adding some water and acacia gum along with emulsifiers, is up to you.

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I develop supplements as my main role. Sometimes things can be really unpredictable.

1. Check that the materials you are using for your trials are the same materials you are using in the scale-up/batch. It seems obvious but the amount of times I have heard of people using one material for trials thinking it is the same material in production only to get confused afterwards never fails to astound me. Do a side by side taste comparison of the raw materials. Someone I know was accidentally given a sample of sucrose rather than inulin. The scale up product was not what he intended. 

2. Check the quantities used in the trial are the same - I have seen stated that 0.01 g to be used in say a 30 g mix, but screw up the batch amount by adding 0.01 % in the final formula (especially where you are using high intensity sweeteners or flavours).

3. Check accuracy. Making a 30 g sample in the lab means you need a greater degree of accuracy than making 300 kg. Your 0.1 g in the lab could be up to 0.15 g (or your 0.2 g could only be 0.16 g)

4. Scale up your samples in the lab before going to production. Making a 100 g sample is different to making a 5 kg sample. It can iron out other problems

5. Check your calculations - Seriously, this gets overlooked. (both lab and production calculations). Transposition errors are common - ie 18-81, 17-71 etc. Check your material calculations too - Thiamine to Thiamine hydrochloride for example - You may be adding 100 mg of thiamine hydrochloride but the compounders may assume that to mean 100 mg of thiamine = 112 mg of Thiamine Hydrochloride.

6. Check units - have you mixed up metric and imperial measurements? It happens.

7. Hand blending and production blending are not the same. Hand blending usually means putting the samples in a bag and shaking, or stirring in a beaker. Machine blending, especially ribbon blenders generate heat.

Feel free to message me if you need any further assistance. 

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Our validation  for menthol is extremely simple (and SGS were happy to approve it)

Once cleaning has been complete, we collect the final rinse water and take it to the lab- and smell it.

Menthol is so strong it is detectable in quite small quantities and any residual menthol is detectable.

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I was involved with a similar fish attracting product; and after many iterations, the brand owner’s indecision, etc, after 10+ years it is still not commercial though we had something working.

One way would be to use a base of gelatin, glycerol & water to get something that is plastic and add your tuna oil into that. Once the gekatin mass has dried to about 10% moisture, you can cut into strips and bait your hook with that. The gelatin will swell in cold water and may only last an hour or so until you need to re-bait.

Another way, would be to melt beeswax into the oil - about 8-12% to get a viscous waxy-oily mass. There are other viscosity modifiers you could use too.

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@ozgirl I agree, the legal teams are overly cautious, but with a company the size of ours, the legal team feel that we would be unfairly targeted by any government agency wanting to make an example and cited a similar case where the company was fined millions.

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You can mix it in, but it is insoluble in oil and will precipitate over time. The best you can do is suspend it in oil using some viscosity modifiers.

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I was looking for a non-TiO2 opacifier recently. Talking with a colour chemist ultimately I was told we can reduce the TiO2 but it cannot be replaces easily. Kaolin nor calcium carbonate will do what we require of it.

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Just checked the material we buy for toothpaste - ours material is a grade designed for toothpaste and has a mean particle size of µm and is of agglomerated scalenohedral calcite crystals and is more of a toothpolish.

We use another grade also for toothpaste, this one is more abrasive, particle size is 90%  in 5-10 µm range.

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abrasiveness isn’t necessarily related to particle size, but more to the hardness of those particles. Calcium carbonate is a common ingredient in toothpaste and there are grades designed for toothpaste - check with your chemical supplier if your grade is suitable (Omya have some great grades for toothpaste).

The abrasiveness of the toothpaste will need to be tested separately. Ther eare a number of labs who offer this service. Though what surprised me, is that one testing lab reported results half the abrasiveness as reported by a different lab.

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sarahrobbins7 said:

It’s too soo it’s a little soon to tell, but it looks like the powdered ingredients might be starting to settle to the bottom while the oils are staying on top. It could be the ratios of liquid at room temp oil to hydrogenated oil I’m using. 

Powdered ingredients will settle if they are heavy enough, but it sounds like you need your powders milled finely as you possibly can. We used to use 200 mesh minerals or finer.

Possibly a bit more coconut/beeswax/hydrogenated vegetable oils/GMS. We used to use a beeswax/hydrogenated vegetable oil blend. The more viscous, the more it will hold the powders, the more oily it is, the quicker the powders will drop out.

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I have done these kinds of pet products many times and you are on the right track.

Take a soya oil and increase the viscosity melting glyceryl monostearate, beeswax, hydrogenated vegetable oil or coconut oil until you have a nice gel like consistency (10% GMS generally does this). Make sure the viscosity modifier has melted into it and mixed thoroughly, and cool slowly. Once cooled then you can suspend all your dry ingredients into this. 

However, as @EVchem says, you may need to mill this. The finer the dry ingredients, the better the dispersion and soy lecithin will help this. I’ve never used that amount of lecithin in this kind of formula 0.5% is sufficient unless you do require that amount of lecithin.

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@crillz this is totally what it is. This can be avoided by stirring and cooling at the same time. My guess is the melted oil has been poured into the jar and left to cool.