“What preservatives do you use?”…. this question arises
fairly regularly from customers, and this is often bandied around in online
forums. The online commentary usually divides into two camps of
“experts,”……..those who insist that preservatives are absolutely necessary for
all body care products, and then the other group who do not use preservatives. There is not a lot in between.
For those who do not use preservatives the defense is
usually “I have never had a customer complaint, or a product go bad.” However I
think most of us have come across handmade body care products that look like an
accident waiting to happen, and vendors who really do not have a good
understanding of basic organic chemistry and microbiology. But somehow they
manage to blunder on without too many problems of product contamination.
What I find surprising among the “no presrvatives” group is
that not many have heard of Cosmetic Challenge Testing (aka Preservative
Efficacy Testing), and very few, if any, have had their no-preservative
products tested. In my personal opinion this approach does nothing to help build
consumer confidence in the handmade natural cosmetics industry.
At Indochine Natural we fall somewhere between the two
groups described above…..we do not use preservatives in our products, and at
the same time hold the view that not all products can be produced without preservatives.
Therefore, we selectively produce products that can be safely made without
preservatives, and at the same time have Challenge Tests done on these to
ensure product safety.
The liquid products we produce include shampoo, body wash
and face wash, and these are all made from various saponified vegetable oils
with added essential oils, and nothing else. Our Challenge testing has shown
that these products are “self-preserving.” I should also mention that we hand
make our products in a purpose built production facility operated under GMP
guidelines, and we believe that this also helps.
A critical question then is how well do our no-preservative
products perform under Challenge Testing (Preservative Efficacy Testing)? Our
results to date have shown good results. The photo below shows an extract of the
recent testing of one of our body washes with kill rates of 99.99% across five
microorganisms (bacteria, & yeast/mold) after 28 days. The photo only shows
the result at day 14.
We are fairly confident then that our Indochine Natural products
are adequately protected without the addition of extra preservatives. However,
I must emphasize again that we do not advocate this approach for all types of
products. For example, with our stance
against using preservatives, we will never produce creams and lotions, as we
believe that this category of product recipes needs to include preservatives.
Dr. Mike Thair
Managing Director
Indochine Natural Sdn Bhd
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