Our Formulas Have These 6 Things for Completeness

Our Formulas Have These 6 Things for Completeness

Introduction

BPI Labs’ formulas contain 6 elements that assure product perfectiveness each time we manufacture your personal care product. Does your formula have these? If not, then you probably don’t have a production-ready formula. If you want to know how we transition incomplete formulas into production-ready formulas, click here.

The six things your formula needs

To manufacture your personal care products accurately and consistently your formula needs the following six things.  These essential elements can be found in the formulation template we’re providing: Click here to download our formulation template.

1. Specific gravity

Your formulation’s specific gravity is a ratio of the weight of your formula compared to the weight of water in some known volume unit.  We need this ratio to determine the weight of your batches and each ingredient in the batch of product formula.  Our customers always order some number of units at some volume, like fluid ounces, and we will use specific gravity to convert their order into a mass measurement, like pounds.  Manufacturing in mass measurements is how we can produce your product perfectly each time, and specific gravity is the ratio we need to make the volume to mass conversion.  Read more about this here: Your Cosmetic Formula Needs Specific Gravity.

2. Weight-on-weight percentages of ingredients

Knowing each ingredient’s weight as a percentage of the whole formula assures manufacturing accuracy. Once we are aware of the weight-on-weight percentage of each ingredient, we can determine the amount of each needed for any batch of product, down to the gram, no matter the size of batch.  For example, if water is 10% of the formulation composition, then to make 10 lbs of product, we will need one pound of water.

3. Supplier of ingredients

Not every supplier makes an ingredient the same way. For example, one supplier may make the ingredient glycerine with 98% glycerine and 2% water, while another supplier’s glycerine may contain 90% glycerine and 10% water. Knowing the supplier for each ingredient of your formula and the supplier’s trade name for that ingredient guarantees we make your formula exactly the same every time.

4. Processing instructions

These instructions will include the instruments essential to mixing your product and when to add, mix, chill, or heat your product’s ingredients and to what degree. If a compounded product is heated for too long, for example, and too much water evaporates, it can ruin the entire batch. Processing instructions are another element needed to create a consistent product every time.

5. Specification sheets

This sheet describes the qualities of your product regarding look, color, viscosity, feel, etc. It allows us to compare your product to what we manufacture to certify your product is manufactured according to specification every time.

6. Formula Number

A formula number is your product’s name-tag at BPI Labs; it is what we use to identify your product. The formula number changes between versions of your formula, and the formula number helps us gather the correct ingredients and materials when we manufacture your product. You will also use your product’s formula number when submitting a purchase order.  Click here to discover how a formula is different from a recipe.

Conclusion

BPI Labs guarantees consistent manufacturing results with these 6 essentials.  Every formula at BPI Labs has these essentials in addition to a record of production, which includes any troubleshooting we did to bring your product into specification.  We always review these historical records before production to verify we’re ready to manufacture your personal care product the right way every time.

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Turning Your Recipes into Cosmetic Formulas

Turning Your Recipes into Cosmetic Formulas

Why we need your recipe to be a formula

We use the language of recipes and formulas to make a distinction between a product that is ready to be manufactured and one that is not. If you have instructions to manufacture a product that is measured in volume, or it doesn’t have weight-on-weight percentages, among some other aspects, then you have a recipe, and it isn’t ready to be manufactured. BPI Labs regularly turns recipes into formulas, and you should read on if you’d like to know how and why we convert recipes to formulas.

The downside to a recipe

A recipe of a personal care product will often take the form of a list of ingredients, each with a volume measurement, that equal some amount of product when combined. Examples of volumetric measurements include gallons, liters, quarts, tablespoons, or fluid ounces among some others.  Baking a cake is a perfect example of a listing of ingredients, with corresponding volumetric measurements, and a final result (1 cake).  Though recipes can help us bake a delicious cake, they prevent consistent and accurate manufacturing in a cosmetic manufacturing environment.  For example, volume measurements using large measuring cups would be laborious with over-pouring and cleanup, and inexact since we’d be eyeballing messy measurement lines.

The mixing tanks used by BPI Labs are also large, opaque, and do not contain measurement marks like a common measuring cup. The constant movement (agitation) in a tank makes it difficult to get an exact understanding of how much product has been added or is needed. Moreover, air is often added to a mixture while mixing, which increases the mixture’s volume.  Finally, volumes can be deceptive since ingredients can expand and contract in warm or cold temperatures.  A chemical that is stored at fifty degrees Fahrenheit in a warehouse can expand as it sits in a 70 degree Fahrenheit manufacturing area, and we’re typically heating or chilling your mixture in a mixing tank to create your personal care product.

The upside to a formula

A formula for a personal care product is made with mass measurements. The amount of each ingredient needed to make your product is determined by the weight of each ingredient in grams or pounds. The advantages to using a scale instead of volume measurements include getting more exact measurements (down to fractions of a gram), not worrying about expansion or contraction of an ingredient’s volume during production, and the ability to scale the size of a batch up or down quickly with precision.

Scaling a batch up and down in size is simple when using mass measurements and with formulations that call for percentages of each ingredient.  If 500 gallons of product is needed to fill 4000 bottles, then we can use something called the specific gravity equation to translate 500 gallons into pounds or grams of product needed.  Scaling a batch becomes as simple as looking at the percentage of an ingredient called for and multiplying it by the pounds of product needed, which we got from the specific gravity equation.  For example, if the formulation calls for 50% water (among other things), then we just need to multiply 50% by the total pounds of product we intend to manufacture.  Now we know how many pounds of water to use.  Maybe we’d like to make the batch 10 pounds larger; how much more water would we need?  We’ll just add another 5 pounds of water.

By the way, if you’re interested in learning about specific gravity then read our post here.

Translating recipes into formulas

If we are asked to produce a recipe, the first thing we will try to do is convert it to a formula.  We begin by trying our best to follow the recipe’s instructions and create a sample.  Next, we’ll record the weight of each ingredient we used, weigh the final amount produced, and then measure the specific gravity.  We’ll send the sample to our customer for their approval. Assuming the sample is approved, we’ll turn our notes on the weights of each ingredient into a percentage of the total amount produced and record this into a formula with the specific gravity.  After these things, we will have the ability to create any amount of product requested and use the right amount of ingredient down to fractions of a gram.

Conclusion

There is significantly more to a formulation than a listing of ingredients, percentages called for, and the specific gravity.  You can look at our post on the six things every formulation needs here.  Otherwise, you can trust BPI Labs to help you purchase a formulation or transition a recipe you own into a production-ready formulation your customers will be happy with every time.

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