Enabling the Next Generation of Home Care Solutions with Multifunctionals
Interview with Tony Bartolini
Global Category Director Home Care at Symrise
After almost three years since launching its Home Care product category, Symrise has introduced three flagship multifunctional ingredients, Yesteem™, Fioflex™, and Flexceed ™, aligned with its mission to deliver effective solutions tailored for dishwashing, laundry, and surface care. As a market leader in developing smart ingredients for the Personal Care industry, the company has leveraged its technical know-how to help formulators reimagine household product formulations, always focusing on innovation, expertise, and sustainability. Tony Bartolini, Global Category Director for Home Care at Symrise, discusses in more detail the state of the market and Symrise’s commitment.
After almost 3 years active in the Home Care product category, what is Symrise’s current position in the dynamic market of home care products?
Symrise’s long history of research, technical knowledge, and our cutting-edge formulation laboratories, have enabled us to move with agility and purpose in the fast-paced sector of home care products, and to come up with innovative ingredients that help customers bring high-performing products to the market. Our newly developed multifunctionals are engineered to be the linchpins of next-generation cleaning products, backed-up with LCA data such as carbon footprint, and offering a powerful convergence of benefits: enhanced formulation integrity, superior cleaning efficacy, and improved consumer experience.
The world of multifunctionals has always been a key area of investment for Symrise. Understanding the huge potential of solutions that serve a wide range of purposes has facilitated some of the industry’s most exciting success stories. And we are now applying this expertise to developing innovative solutions for household products. Our multifunctional ingredients work synergistically to provide innovative cleaning solutions, empowering customers to do more with less and supporting their sustainability goals by enabling minimalist formulas.
The Beauty and Home Care Center of Expertise near Paris, inaugurated in 2023, exemplifies our dedication to innovation and customer support. Equipped with state-of-the-art technology, the Center specializes in formulation, application testing, and patent development for laundry, dishwashing, and surface care products, helping clients efficiently integrate our advancements into their own formulations to serve consumer needs.
What are the key benefits of your technologies for formulators and consumers?
At Symrise, we address both consumer needs and formulator challenges by delivering innovative, multifunctional ingredients for dishwashing, laundry, and surface care.
Multifunctionals have proven repeatedly how future-oriented and versatile this product category is. As part of the ‘less is more’ movement, ingredient solutions that satisfy several formulations or consumer needs rank very high, for obvious reasons. The concept of minimalism is about avoiding the unnecessary and suggests, for formulations, that single ingredients can perform more than one function, consequently reducing the number of materials used.
Focusing on the Hand Dish Washing liquid application, multifunctionals such as Yesteem™ and FioFlex™ enhance cleaning performance, enzyme stability and product integrity, while also improving the foam generated, the overall sensory experience and the labeling. By streamlining formulations and offering robust product integrity, we empower brands to deliver high-performing and responsible-consumption products that stand out in the market.
Regulatory compliance and safety are key in Home Care formulations. How does Symrise ensure its ingredients meet global standards?
Symrise ensures regulatory compliance and safety in Home Care formulations through a robust global infrastructure that combines scientific expertise, advanced laboratories, and dedicated regulatory teams.
Our Regulatory intelligence teams operate proactively, constantly modeling potential future restrictions based on known global trends. We ensure that regulatory feasibility is a non-negotiable criterion from the initial research phase. We aim for the highest common denominator of global compliance, meaning that an ingredient designed to meet the strictest standards (whether in the EU, North America, Latin America, or Asia) provides maximum flexibility and market access for our clients, minimizing the need for costly regional reformulations later on.
In what ways do Symrise’s Home Care ingredients contribute to cleaning solutions that promote responsible consumption?
Symrise has been working to strengthen the concepts of sustainability throughout its entire value chain, from improving the environmental profile of existing products to creating new solutions, always considering the socio-environmental impact and seeking innovative solutions that support both people and the planet. Crucially, we provide our clients with validated Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) data packages. This means our partners receive the precise environmental footprint data associated with our ingredients, which allows them to accurately calculate and substantiate the sustainable claims of their final product.
What sets our ingredients apart is their low carbon footprint and biodegradability in both aerobic and anaerobic conditions, making them ideal for formulations that promote responsible consumption. These innovations are also compatible with key certifications such as EU ECOLABEL, ECOCERT and CLEANGREDIENTS, giving formulators confidence in meeting regulatory and consumer standards.
By delivering powerful, multifunctional ingredients that enhance formulation stability, sensorial experience, and even skin benefits, Symrise empowers brands to meet consumer expectations for transparency, safety, and sustainability, without compromising product efficacy.
The Home Care market is constantly evolving. What trends and challenges are you currently observing, and how does Symrise stay ahead to offer relevant and effective solutions?
Consumers are increasingly seeking sustainable, high-performance cleaning solutions that minimize environmental impact. There is a growing demand for products with enhanced biodegradability, and reduced carbon footprints, reflecting a shift towards conscious consumption and regulatory compliance. At the same time, formulators face the challenge of developing innovative products that deliver outstanding cleaning performance, sensory benefits, and robust product integrity while meeting stringent regulatory and sustainability standards.
At Symrise, we invest in R&D to engineer our partners’ competitive advantage. Our advanced laboratory capabilities and deep ingredient expertise allow us to pioneer formulations that fundamentally elevate their market position. We design every ingredient to be a multi-tool, empowering formulators to unlock superior performance while radically simplifying complexity. Our Home Care Application Laboratory is a true co-creation engine, dedicated to translating global market foresight and emerging trends directly into tailored, high-impact solutions for our partners’ brands. This unique collaborative approach ensures partners’ brands are always first to market, giving them the power to do more for consumers and lead the category.
In a nutshell, we serve as strategic enablers for competitive advantage.
Learn more about Symrise Home Care products or contact homecare-ci@symrise.com
