The company’s study, Global Market, Natural Personal Care Products 2009, revealed that the trend for natural personal care products in Asia is strong, with the region commanding a 40 per cent share of the global market. According to Nancy Mills, industry manager for consumer products at Kline, this market is worth $7,545 million (€5,555m) in manufacturers’ dollars. Manufacturers favour profits over ethics The report showed consumer awareness of the concept of ‘natural’ in Asia is quite high due to the rich heritage of Ayurvedic and herbal medicine. However, manufacturers that formulate with cheaper, synthetic ingredients that they market as natural dominate the market. According to Mills, this is directly related to a lack of regulations and labeling requirements for cosmetics and personal care products. “In Asia there are some countries [China for example] that don’t have restrictions on the ingredients used in personal care products and they don’t have requirements for divulging ingredients on product labels,” she said. “We have found that companies have very little motivation to formulate with these more expensive natural ingredients,” she added. Growing importance of becoming more ‘truly natural’ However, Mills claims that manufacturing products with authentically natural ingredients will become more important as the certification process gains momentum. “It [certification] started in Europe, it is growing in America, it is starting to take off in Brazil and we believe Asia will be following,” she explained. “Companies need to be reformulating and working towards being more truly natural if they want to be successful in the long term in this market,” she predicted.
Source：Cosmetics & Herbal News