Pure and Safe Personal Care: Sanitizer with Gas Chromatography

Pure and Safe Personal Care: Sanitizer with Gas Chromatography

You will be selling safe hand sanitizer at advertised ethanol volumes.

Multiple controls have been instituted to guarantee you will receive sanitizer containing ethanol at advertised levels without contamination or impurities.

The Problems

The FDA issued no less than 4 warnings regarding hand sanitizer last month, several as recent as last week.  The FDA has been warning consumers about the hazards of hand sanitizer made with methanol on the market stating that it can be absorbed through the skin.  Methanol’s toxic effects in sufficient quantities causes nausea, blindness, and death among other symptoms.  NBC News reported this week that 15 adults were hospitalized and four died after consuming sanitizer with methanol.  Moreover, some products on the market, the FDA warns, have alarmingly low levels of ethyl or isopropyl alcohol making them ineffective at defending against Covid-19.

BPI Labs has heard other stories from its customers.  In a conversation with a customer last week we learned that their last manufacturer of hand sanitizer ruined their product by mixing bad ethanol with good ethanol, believing all ethanol is manufactured similarly.  Almost as recently, another customer complained that a manufacturer produced smelly hand sanitizer because they incorrectly believed that all ethanol sources have the same purity, purpose, and commercial grade.  BPI Labs has been instituting redundant safeguards against these outcomes, which include locating several reliable suppliers of cosmetic ethanol, onsite tests with gas chromatography, and purchasing a carbon filtration system.

The Solutions

BPI Labs purchased a $20,000 gas chromatography system that can indicate not only the purity and concentration of a sample of ethanol, but it will identify the presence of other impurities, such as methanol, in the sample. Since this system can reliably tell us the purity of ethanol within minutes, every shipment of ethanol to our facility will be tested before we receive it into our facility and especially before it is used or intermixed with other batches of product. Moreover, BPI Labs will source its ethanol from a single, reliable source to minimize the intermixing of differently manufactured ethanols.

Finding sources of good ethanol is a high priority for BPI Labs, and we have found several sources for ethanol in the event that a source becomes unavailable. Our primary supplier for ethanol presently triple filters ethanol to remove odors and impurities from the product. Our management team is evaluating and authorizing other suppliers of ethanol only if they filter ethanol for cosmetic use. In the event that sources of ethanol become difficult to locate, BPI Labs has also purchased an activated charcoal filter system that is designed to remove impurities from ethanol, and with our gas chromatography machine, we can certify the purity of the ethanol being used in your hand sanitizer.

Conclusion

Creating the assurance of a quality product for our customers is a top priority as we bring hand sanitizer production online. If you are looking for a new source for hand sanitizer, set up a meeting with us today to discuss how we can meet your needs.

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Tubes Win, Bottles Lose in Cosmetics

Tubes Win, Bottles Lose in Cosmetics

The Experiment

Last week we asked a great, domestic tube manufacturer and supplier for tube prices to compare with bottles. 

The results are in: You can have hand sanitizer in tubes with caps from a single supplier, in continuous supply, that also have a printed label, and come with applied metallic safety seal for significantly less than bottles with only 6 – 8 weeks lead-time.

Tube Prices

The prices we received were for tubes with pre-applied caps and metallic, induction, pre-applied, safety seals and 4-color print from a single supplier.  The prices we received are below:

 

Tube Vol.(fl.oz.

Dimensions

$ per 25K Ordered

$ per 100K Ordered

1

1″ x 3.5″

$.26

$.22

2

1 3/8″ x 3.75″

$.28

$.23

3

1 3/8″ x 5 1/16″

$.29

$.24

4

1.5″ x 5 7/16

$.30

$.25

6

2″ x 5.5″

$.33

$.28

8

2″ x 6 13/16″

$.35

$.30

Tube Specifications

The specifications on these tubes were the following:

 

Tube Type

Co-Ex

Tube Length

+/- 1/16″

Outer Layer Blend

MDPE

Outer Color

White

Head Color

White

Cap Style

Flip-Top

Cap Color

White

Decoration

4-Color Offset

Coating

Matte Coating

Safety Seal

Metallic

Bottle Pricing

We also purchased an 8 fl.oz. Boston round bottle in June and 4 fl.oz. sharp-shoulder with disk-top cap in March for some of our customers.  Note: the pricing for the bottles is at all volume purchases.  The pricing came in at:

 

8 oz. Clear Boston Round Bottle 24-410 $0.21991 4 oz. Sharp Shoulder LPDE Bottle 24-410 $0.19413
Bottle Shipping $0.02 Bottle Shipping $0.02
Black Saddle Pump Locking $0.245 White PP 24-410 Flip Cap $0.06
Pump Shipping $0.03 Cap Shipping $0.02
Labels $0.13538 Labels $0.12
Labels Shipping $0.01 Labels Shipping $0.01
Total per Unit: $0.6603 Total per Unit: $0.4241
The Comparison

The differences between bottles and tubes are stark:

 

8 fl.oz. Bottle 8 fl.oz. Tube 4 fl.oz Bottle 4 fl.oz. Tube
Suppliers: 3 1 3 1
Components: $.60029 $.35 $.37413 $.30
Shipping: $.06 $.03 $.05 $.03
Totals: $0.6603 $0.38 $0.42413 $0.33
Percent Difference: / -42% / -22.19%
Are you able to find better pricing?

Even if you are successfully finding better pricing for bottles, you are probably purchasing the cap or pump separately and you are having these bottles either screen-printed or you are paying a manufacturer to print sticky labels.  Only after all the packaging arrives, usually from separate suppliers, BPI Labs must setup a long line of machines to load bottles, fill them, apply a cap, maybe apply a label, apply a screen code, and then feed them onto a collection table where they are boxed.  Our tubing machine does all of this by itself, which significantly reduces your cost of manufacturing hand sanitizer.

If you can have all the packaging you’d want, from a single source, not including case or master pack, for the same price as bottles or for less, then why use bottles that come with the extra supply-chain hassle and manufacturing costs?  Bottles not only make less economic sense, but you can read here the many other reasons that tubes make more sense than bottles to fill with hand sanitizer.  Speaking of bottles, has anyone got a lead on some available sources for us?  Asking for a friend.

Size Availability

The tube sizes you can purchase include those in the table above, but given a large enough order and lead-time we could have custom parts purchased to fit many different size tubes into our new Norden tube filling machine. BPI Labs will have the first Norden tube machine customized with additional safety features to make hand sanitizer in tubes a safe and efficient process.

Updated Conclusion

While prices have changed since this article was written, which was during the height of the 2020 pandemic, tubes have been perennially cheaper to manufacture.  To manufacture your tubed product, BPI Labs sets up a single machine instead of a line of machines, and you’ll see this difference in your bottom line.  Working with a single supplier and using the simpler tube components means you can’t have manufactured product for less.  Hopefully, this article provides enough reason for you to contact us and find out if hand sanitizer in tubes makes sense for your market and brand.

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