CP Kelco Reports Extensive Progress in Expansion of Biogums Production Capacity at U.S., China Facilities

ATLANTA, July 26, 2022 – CP Kelco, a global leader of nature-based ingredient solutions, announced today that it has made extensive progress in expanding biogums production capacity at two of its plant facilities:  Okmulgee, Oklahoma, USA and Wulian, China.

These expansion initiatives are integral pieces of the company’s significant, multi-year investment program focused on advancing both its biogums production capacity and capabilities. Alongside its biogums production facility in San Diego, California, USA, CP Kelco provides its customers with critical supply security through centralized coordination of three geographically distinct production sites for gellan gum, xanthan gum, diutan gum and fermentation-derived cellulose.

In 2020, the first phase of this expansion was completed at our site in Wulian, China, adding the capability to produce high acyl (HA) gellan gum and increasing overall plant production capacity by 30%. We plan to add low acyl (LA) gellan gum production capability at this facility in 2023.

CP Kelco is also scheduled to complete an expansion of 40% in production capacity in 2023 at our plant in Okmulgee, Oklahoma.  Individually and collectively, these initiatives reflect CP Kelco’s commitment to providing world-class customer support and innovation despite the unprecedented challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic and exacerbated by rampant inflation and supply chain disruptions.

“We remain committed to serving our customers worldwide and supporting their growth plans, particularly as the market trends and consumer demands continue to evolve and point toward formulating with nature-based, clean label-friendly and sustainably produced ingredients,” said Didier Viala, President of CP Kelco. “The expansion of our biogums capacity enables us to more effectively collaborate with our customers in developing innovative food, beverage, personal care, home care and other products for consumers.”

About CP Kelco

CP Kelco is a nature-based ingredient solutions company with approximately 90 years of experience working with food, beverage, consumer and industrial product manufacturers worldwide. We apply ingredient innovation and problem-solving to develop customized solutions that leverage our regional insights, meet manufacturers’ goals and address consumer needs and preferences.

  • Unique Portfolio. Produces extensive range of high-quality, plant-based and fermentation-derived ingredients to formulate tailored solutions.
  • Technical Excellence. Offers strong collaboration with a global team of scientists and applications experts, leveraging our regional state-of-the art R&D facilities.
  • Sustainability. Committed to providing responsibly sourced and produced ingredients.
  • Market Insights. Understands market and consumer trends to help customers create relevant and innovative products.

Our key product lines include pectin, gellan gum, xanthan gum, carrageenan, diutan gum, refined locust bean gum, microparticulated whey protein concentrate, fermentation-derived cellulose and our latest innovation, NUTRAVA® Citrus Fiber.

 

INGREDIENT INNOVATION

for a

SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

INGREDIENT INNOVATION for a

SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

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3 Ways to Clean Up with Bio-Based Ingredients

1. Sustainable is the new clean.

Consumers are developing a better understanding of how their personal care habits can impact the environment – especially our waterways. Biodegradable ingredients break down to water, CO2 and organic matter within six months.

2. Help maintain skin health.

Another cleansing trend going mainstream is a better appreciation for managing stress and skin health. Goodbye harsh surfactants that can dry out skin. Say hello to gentler, calming ingredients that keep moisture in without upsetting skin’s pH and acid mantle.

3. Have fun with innovative textures.

Suspend exfoliating scrubbers or beads. Go luxuriously thick or water-thin or even waterless. New powders, bars, gels and jellies add life to the daily routine.

Nature-Powered Ingredients to Help

ARBALON® Cellulose Liquid

Our biodegradable, fermentation-derived stabilizer has a unique cellulose structure that forms an invisible 3D net to evenly suspend scrubbers, decorative or fragrance beads and more. Effective in high-surfactant or low/no water formulations. Ready to use and fully activated.

KELTROL® Xanthan Gum

This versatile, fermentation-derived ingredient is known for its unique smooth flow behavior, silky feel and even texture. It provides high viscosity at low shear rates for foams, suspensions and emulsion stability. It also provides low viscosity at high shear for pumpability. Plus, you get exceptional stability and thickening characteristics for a wide range of products.

GENU® Carrageenan

A multifunctional water-binding agent, this ingredient provides a creamy texture to emulsions and a honey-like flow as it locks in moisture to increase hydration. It can be used to replace synthetics in shampoos and other products.

Our Nature-Powered Ingredient Portfolio

Carrageenan

Extracted from red seaweed

Pectin

Upcycled from citrus peels, a byproduct of the juice industry

Gellan Gum

Bio-fermentation of Sphingomonas elodea, found on lily pond plants

Fermentation-Derived Cellulose

Bio-fermentation of Komagataeibacter xylinus, similar to nata de coco

Diutan Gum

Discovered in a marsh of redwood trees in California - instead of harvesting, we use bio-fermentation of Sphingomonas
sp. ATCC 51539

Xanthan Gum

Bio-fermentation of Xanthomonas campestris, found on cabbage

Recipe Cards: Innovating for Skin & Hair Cleansing

Click the images or buttons below to download skin & hair cleansing recipe cards. 

Bee Sweet Honey
Body Wash

This cold-processed body wash has a smooth, honey-like appearance and luxurious texture, thanks to COSMOS® Certified GENUVISCO® CG-129 Carrageenan. Our lambda grade provides viscosity in surfactant systems that cannot be thickened with salt.

Clearly, It’s The Fluid Gel Exfoliating Foam Cleanser

COSMOS® certified KELCOGEL® CG-LA (E) Gellan Gum helps this eye-catching cleansing foam stay water-thin but exceptionally clear and stable as it suspends actives like gently exfoliating jojoba beads.

Lotus Enlighten
You Shampoo

Our shampoo has a luxurious feel and mimics the rheology of traditional, salt-thickened shampoos. COSMOS® certified ARBALON® R-50 (EV) Cellulose Liquid suspends the pearlescent mica without altering viscosity or feel. Our COSMOS® certified grade of lambda carrageenan thickens without gelling, creating a thick, smooth texture and high viscosity.

CELLULON® Cellulose Liquid: A nature-based, biodegradable solution for suspension, stabilization and uniform distribution

A nature-based, biodegradable solution for suspension, stabilization and uniform distribution.

CP Kelco’s CELLULON® Cellulose Liquid technology was designed to enable innovation with a multifunctional formula that’s also sustainable. It forms a microscopic, 3D network that reliably suspends actives, perfumed encapsulates, beads and decorative particles with minimal impact to finished product viscosity and dispersibility. Through its unique functionality, it is compatible with even the most concentrated liquid detergents.

CELLULON® Cellulose Liquid is made using a millennia-old microbial fermentation process consisting of nature-sourced ingredients to support its eco-friendly: biodegradable attributes – a distinct value proposition that consumers can feel good about.

Common formulation challenges solved

  • Replace microplastic suspending polymers with a nature-based, biodegradable solution
  • Significantly reduce the level of VOC-generating ingredients and their contribution to wastewater
  • Effective with high and low surfactant formulations
  • Disperses easily and dilutes quickly
  • Fully activated for use with no pH adjustment or high-shear mixing
  • Tolerates enzymes, pH, salt levels, temperature
  • Differentiate function without compromising on affordability and sustainability from nature-based ingredient

 

Meet Komagataeibacter xylinum​

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Meet Komagataeibacter xylinum​

All rights reserved. Video may not be copied, reproduced, distributed, republished, downloaded, displayed, posted or transmitted
in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of CP Kelco.

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questions? We can help.

Meet Komagataeibacter xylinum​

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in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of CP Kelco.

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CELLULON® Cellulose Liquid Is The More Sustainable Suspension Aid

CPK-website_Innovation_HPC Preview3_11-2021

 

The power of plants is everywhere these days – from what’s on your plate for dinner to how you clean it afterwards. According to Innova Market Insights (April 2021), there is a rising demand for more plant-based cleaning options. Newness is taking shape in plant-powered dishwashing liquid formulations that clean yet are skin-friendly and biodegradable. Consumers have an increasing awareness of synthetic ingredients and their effects, especially on the environment.

Formulators often wonder how using plant-based ingredients might alter functionality in a dishwashing liquid. Will they deliver the same cleaning power to remove tough, baked-on grease? Also, how will the ingredients hold together? Homemade dishwashing liquids are usually quite thin and need to be shaken.

CELLULON® Cellulose Liquid is the more sustainable suspension aid. It’s a biodegradable, nature-based alternative to thickeners such as carbomers. It suspends decorative beads, pearlescents, fragrance encapsulates and scrubbers independently of surfactant level. And it stabilizes in a wide range of conditions with minimal impact on the viscosity of the final product. Made by microbial fermentation, CELLULON® Cellulose Liquid is bio-identical to cellulose commonly found in nature. Yet our patented process creates a continuous, reticulated network with a very high surface area-to-weight ratio. This 3D net adds reliable structuring and a true yield value at low concentrations in a formulation. 

Ease of Use

Comes pre-activated and ready to use. No pH adjustment required. Easy to disperse under low-to-moderate mixing conditions.

Excellent Performance

Low use level of 0.5-5% w/w. Provides suspension and stabilization without significantly altering the pour viscosity of the formulation. Freeze-thaw stable to -20° C for at least 5 cycles.

Cost Efficient

Suitable for economic formulations as well as highly concentrated formulations, including unidose laundry systems. Cellulose is not water-soluble. Formulating into low/no-water formulations is possible! 

 

Have questions about a specific formulation? Contact us. 

 

How to Clean Up Home Care Products

Consumers across all segments like to read product labels before purchasing. They have great expectations for ingredient transparency and would like brands to show how “clean” their labels are. We’ve seen the rise of ‘clean beauty’ transforming the personal care market. The trend has also reached home care, including laundry detergent, fabric softeners and dishwashing detergent. (Should we call it clean cleaning?) Let’s take a look at how it started and how it’s going.

In 2020, a survey by IBM and the National Retail Federation looked at consumer shopping behavior in 28 countries.

Nearly eight in 10 survey respondents said that sustainability was important. Seven in 10 said they were looking for specific attributes in their product choice, and nearly six in 10 would change their shopping habits to help reduce negative environmental impact.

What do consumers look for? Here is a partial list of issues that could be important:

Not containing chemicals harmful to my family

Not containing chemicals harmful to the environment

Biodegradable

Free from plastics

Made from plants/vegan

Food-grade ingredients

Paraben free

Understanding of fragrance ingredients/use essential oils

Hypoallergenic/Gentle on skin

Cruelty free

Concentrated formula

No product waste/recyclable packaging

Treatment of employees and concern for community

As we can see from the list above, the issues reflect a concern of “doing no harm” to the health of humans, animals and our waterways.

Why Biodegradability Is Central to Sustainability

Manufacturers are turning to more plant-based surfactants, enzymes and other functional materials rather than petroleum-based solutions, and more concentrated formulations for less packaging. However, ingredients also need to be biodegradable to break down rapidly in a way that is not harmful to the environment or waterways.

Researchers estimate that about eight million metric tons of waste plastic enters the ocean every year. Microplastics – those scrubbing, pearlescent and fragrance beads used to differentiate home and personal care formulations – were part of the plastic problem. They began to appear in body washes, liquid face soaps, dishwashing liquid, liquid laundry detergents and fabric softeners in the ‘70s. Consumers liked the idea of scent capsules that helped provide long-lasting freshness. Manufacturers liked that they were economical and rinsed off easily. 

However, the microplastics also passed straight through wastewater treatment systems, which were not designed to filter them. Since the microplastics were not biodegradable, they tended to accumulate in waterways and could be ingested by marine life, potentially entering our food supply. Many countries now ban the use of microplastics, and the search is on for a biodegradable alternative.

CELLULON® Cellulose Liquid: A Biodegradable Stabilizer

Any new technology to replace microplastics will require something to stabilize it in liquid formulations. CELLULON® Cellulose Liquid may be just the hero stabilizer that formulators need. Chemically identical to plant-derived cellulose, CELLULON® Cellulose Liquid is produced by a microbial fermentation process.

This provides several unique benefits:

  • It is biodegradable and eco-friendly with a lifecycle not dependent on land and water usage
  • It forms a 3D, net-like structure to easily suspend opacifiers
  • High surface area-to-weight ratio
  • Not sensitive to temperature, salt or pH
  • Compatible with highly concentrated formulas
  • Disperses easily
  • Dilutes quickly
  • Won’t thicken or affect pour viscosity
  • Dependable, batch-to-batch repeatability for
    scale up
  • Low cost in use

In summary, biodegradability should be an essential part of your sustainability commitment when looking to clean up your home care formulations.