Solid and bar formats

The strongest answer to the category's central problem, and a different manufacturing process.

Removing the water entirely

A solid bar, a tablet, a powder or a sheet: the cleaning chemistry without the 95 percent that is water.

Shipping collapses. Packaging collapses. The preservative problem disappears, because there is no water for anything to grow in.

And it is a genuine environmental claim that is quantifiable rather than adjectival.

What changes

The process: pressing, extruding, molding or granulating rather than mixing a liquid.

The ingredients: solid or solidifiable versions of what a liquid formula uses, plus binders and disintegrants that a liquid does not need.

The performance question: it has to dissolve completely, at the temperature the customer uses, in the time they are willing to wait. Incomplete dissolution is the characteristic failure.

And hygroscopicity, because a solid cleaner absorbs moisture from the air and cakes.

The packaging changes completely

From a bottle and a closure to a wrap, a tin, a tube or a sachet.

Cheaper, lighter, and with a new requirement: a moisture barrier, which a liquid never needed.

It also removes the child-resistant packaging question in most cases, since the thresholds for dry forms are higher — 10 percent rather than 2 for hydroxides.

And it makes plastic-free packaging genuinely possible, which is the commercial point for many makers.

What is hard about it

Equipment. Pressing and tabletting is not a mixing vessel and a stirrer.

Dissolution consistency, which is the difference between a product and a lump.

Moisture control in manufacture and in storage.

And customer behavior: a solid cleaner requires the customer to do something, and the instruction has to be unmissable or the first use fails.

References