Ethnic Care
Beauty of versatility
Croda South Africa’ s personal care technical team is now ideally equipped to support product claims for the African skin and hair care markets. The company recently installed state-of-the-art equipment to assess hair breakage and has a new salon for panel testing.
It’ s been 18 months since Croda South Africa offi cially opened its Centre of Excellence. Since the original opening, the company has continued to invest in the centre.
‘ Most consumers desire strong, healthy hair that is full of shine. Regardless of this desire, consumers do not want to give up damaging regimes such as relaxing and styling. Constant grooming and combing can also damage the hair cuticle. We were looking for a way to not only measure the tensile properties of hair, but also analyse hair as it degrades over its lifetime,’ says Croda South Africa’ s technical manager, Christien Gordon.
Understanding local consumers’ needs
To further identify the key hair care needs of African consumers, the company’ s marketing team recently undertook extensive studies on consumer focus groups.
‘ The main reason for our focus group studies was to confi rm our observations of the African hair care market, to identify gaps and use the information gathered as a basis for testing the right products on the right hair types,’ adds Croda South Africa’ s marketing manager, Chantel McCallum.
Croda South Africa’ s personal care team
After a week of interviewing consumers both with natural and with relaxed hair, the company now has a solid base to work from and panel tests are already underway. The testing is taking place within the newest area at the Centre of Excllence – the hair salon. These studies will involve African consumers to ensure relevant data is generated, which the company’ s local customers can then access for new product development.
A closer look at the facility
The hair salon is located adjacent to the effi cacy laboratory, which is equipped with temperature and humidity controlled climatic chambers for hair testing. The salon facility will focus primarily on supporting claims for Type VI to VIII Black African hair. All studies will be conducted by trained hairdressers, led by Croda’ s application scientists.
A new Dia-Stron Tensile Tester has been installed in the Centre of Excellence to measure the tensile( strength) properties of hair fi bres at different humidities. The Dia-Stron Cyclic Tester is designed to simulate the repeated tensile stress hair fi bres experience during brushing and combing. A repeated force is applied to single hair fi bres and the number of
DID YOU KNOW? Aeysha Jakoet and Dineo Modisaesi from Croda South Africa recently successfully completed the Coschem Diploma in Cosmetic Science.
ABOVE The new hair salon within Croda South Africa’ s Centre of Excellence
BELOW Croda South Africa’ s new Dia-Stron Tensile Tester
cycles required for failure( also known as‘ fatigue testing’) is evaluated at different humidities.
Skin and sun care
The local team also has expertise in formulation and claim substantiation for skin and sun care applications. Testing protocols are conducted using state-of-the-art equipment to generate consumer-appealing claims such as moisturisation, oil control, barrier repair, barrier integrity / disruption, skin fl aking / dryness, shine reduction, counter-irritancy, and even skin tone. All testing is carried out in a humidity and temperature controlled room to remove any environmental infl uences on product effi cacy. Croda also offers expertise in formulating with its extensive portfolio of metal oxides. Sun care studies are conducted using the Labsphere UV-2000S and Suntest CPS + for in vitro SPF measurements. ·
Croda South Africa – www. croda. com
P C Review | MAY 2017 | 31