Formulacare i-2010 Formulator’s Workshop was held in Manila from 17-18 March this year. Ideally situated away from the hustle and bustle of downtown, SMX Convention Centre is in a convenient location close to the airport and next to the mega ‘Mall of Asia’, a centre offering the widest possible choice of food and shopping.
Each pavilion was given generous space to display their products with ample space for discussion as well.
This was a rare privilege to have a congregation of specially selected bench chemists representing over 15 suppliers. Whilst the common exhibitor corridors seemed uncrowded, visitors to the exhibition were all huddled in the 4 different concurrent workshops. As I expected, each workshop/laboratory session was fully subscribed. Having to choose between concurrently-run workshops was most difficult. I wished I had been able to split myself so I might have been able to attend more workshops.
The BB Cream workshop was hosted by Cognis. Cognis specially flew over their ASEAN team of formulators for this session. This workshop was chaired by Mr Sang-Uk Choi and Yeah-Yong Baek Kurnadi Kurniawati. Cognis’ formulators taught us the finer points of how to make a homogenous cream. We had the privilege of ‘dirtying’ our hands to make an anti-ageing cream and a BB cream. What I valued most was the sharing of experiences and formulation tips on what-to-do and what-not-to-do which far outweighs anything you can read from theorists and textbooks.
The 2nd workshop I attended was on Rheology and textures conducted by Seppic. This workshop was chaired by Grace Sun and assisted by Marty Lumain. I found the lecture portion fairly technical in which an in-depth understanding of rheology was needed in order to appreciate the finer points of the presenter’s delivery. For the hands-on section, we helped prepare simple rheological systems, after which we compared the texture profiles of the 4 different rheological modifier systems in order to evaluate their pickup, stringy and gel hardness.
The 3rd workshop I attended was ‘Understanding Mixing ‘ given by Maria Lüder, Managing Director of Qenax. This was one of the most popular workshops and it was attended by over 54 persons over the two sessions, probably because the science of mixing is the heart of every successful production process. Maria’s presentation was delivered at just the right speed with many pointers and tips to help formulators and production chemists. Maria gently eased us into the complexity of thixotropy using simple illustrations such as toothpaste to explain pseudoplastic properties.
If you are interested in the various types of stirrers, their flow patterns and applications, this was the presentation to be at. For the benefit of theorists, she also shared with us the physics of emulsion instabilities. To many of us however, the type of stirrer, speed and time which Maria explained were far more pertinent to the success of our formulation. The take home messages for us were: (1) know the speeds and mixing times; (2) take note of your cooling rates (3) understand the properties of your ingredients- this is important because if you over shear, may destroy your expensive actives!
Time permitted me to attend only one more workshop- how to use Defin’s portable skin research instruments to measure skin gloss using Skin Gloss meter and Vapormeter to measure transepidermal water loss (TEWL). The workshop was conducted by Mr Aki Immomen, Director of Marketing and Sales. The equipment was user friendly but extremely sensitive. It was unfortunate that the conditions of the workshop were not ideal as we weren’t able to achieve expected results, perhaps because the instruments demanded an experienced user and the right environment to operate effectively.
Formulacare 2010 is a clinic to cure your formulation headaches. I found this a rare opportunity for formulators to discuss and exchange ideas with an international group of formulation chemists from Cognis, Croda, Synerga and Maria Luder just to name a few. The attendance was full for the laboratory workshop sessions. With eager ears and eyes, my senses were tuned in to learn formulation tips from expert bench chemists. I have been a formulator for many years and am still learning and looking for tips This event has been worth attending. I will be first on the pre-registration list for Jakarta.
