Essay prize – A pressing subject

Jennifer Dargan is the winner of this year’s SPC prize for the best essay on the 2012 SCS Cosmetic Science diploma course. This is an edited version of her winning article exploring the advantages and disadvantages of different binders in pressed powder formulations

Pressed powder (PP) formulations, are extremely popular as they are portable, come in a wide variety of colours and textures, and are suitable for most skin tones and a wide range of applications.^[1] In order to enable customer satisfaction, the products need to achieve certain criteria including:

• the PP shade has to represent what the consumer perceives in the packaging and not change after application
• having the necessary slip to ensure the product can be easily applied to the skin
• having good adhesion properties, absorbency and coverage properties so that the consumer does not have to continually reapply the product^[1]

A common raw material (RM) that is present in this type of formulation is the binder or compressing agent. The choice and percentage of binder can impact on many aspects of the PP formulation, from manufacturing to compression of the PP into packaging and the characteristics of final product.^{[1, 2]}