Ingredients player IMCD moves towards a formulation approach
The ingredients company is launching the Personal Care Academy, which will involve in depth training sessions with both technical and sales staff on formulation issues.
According to the company, it is an attempt to move towards a formulation-based approach rather than an ingredients approach. This will allow the company to evaluate which raw materials, and in what combination, will contribute to successful finished products.
“Not only will this help create synergies within the available portfolio, it will also allow us to develop new or alternative applications,” IMCD personal care marketing manager Elena Secchi explained.
“It is important to offer a real technical service to customers - we are training our sales representatives about how cosmetic formulators work and think so that they can speak the same language and provide them real formulating assistance while introducing our product portfolio,” she told CosmeticsDesign-Europe.com.
Formulation advice
The Personal Care Academy is an extension of the personal care laboratory that the company started operating in January 2005.
One of the primary focuses of the laboratory was to provide better in-field application data as well as support customers in formulation. The formulation aspect will be driven further by these recent developments.
Although, today a number of distributors have application laboratories, Secchi claimed that IMCD Group was one of the first big distribution groups to build a lab dedicated to personal care.
The first of the Academy’s sessions is taking place this week in the company’s laboratory near Milan. Taking place over three days, this first session will focus on skin care, with other product groups such as hair care and toiletries being the focus in the future.
“We are confident that this programme will add strategic skills to our sales force and will, most importantly, add value to our customers,” Secchi added.
