Acme-Hardesty has served as one of the personal care industry’s leading distributors of bio-based products and specialty ingredients, driving performance and growth for over 80 years. Our committed personal care staff has contributed significantly to the rapid expansion of our product portfolio while assisting our customers in developing innovative solutions for their most pressing formulation challenges. We supply manufacturers with the high-quality ingredients they need to produce everything from hair products to skin care solutions.
We’ve always run our business with a focus on sustainability. Our team concentrates our efforts on procuring renewable resources using the most sustainable practices to provide customers with natural ingredients they can trust. We strive to obtain nothing less than the safest and most reliable ingredients from our suppliers to deliver the highest value to our customers.
Whether you’re looking for surfactants, specialty ingredients, oleochemicals or preservatives, Acme-Hardesty has ethically sourced solutions that reflect our high quality and sustainability standards.
Some of the most vital components of any skin care line are active ingredients. At Acme-Hardesty, we offer sustainable and effective actives suitable for countless cosmetic products. Actives are the chemicals or molecules in a product that deliver certain benefits — in short, actives are the functional ingredients that make the product work. These substances address many skin-related problems, such as dryness, aging, acne, pigmentation and psoriasis.
Our naturally derived emulsifiers are both sustainable and innovative. All our personal care emulsifiers comprise renewable resources that are environmentally friendly and safe.
Emulsifiers are ingredients that keep contrasting substances such as oil and water from separating. Emulsifying solutions are featured in many cosmetic formulas, such as creams, lotions and other moisturizing products, helping to blend unlike ingredients together to form a homogeneous mixture.
Ester compounds are formed from condensation reactions occurring from a combination of carboxylic acid and an alcohol. These ingredients are known for their pleasant scents, flavors and textures and are commonly used as emollients, solvents, thickening agents, surfactants and fragrances in the personal care industry.
Our ester and emollient products help shield, restore, moisturize and revitalize hair and skin while providing pleasant sensory properties to your finished personal care products. Esters are highly beneficial to the skin, hydrating, smoothing and softening the skin’s surface without leaving an oily residue. These qualities make them ideal for products like lotions, moisturizers and creams. Esters are also widely used for powders, shaving creams and conditioners.
As your personal care chemicals distributor, we carry only the highest-quality esters on the market. That’s why we’re proud partners of Gale & Cosm, an Italian company known for its naturally based cosmetic ingredients. This company serves the international personal care and cosmetic industries with raw materials that reflect their values of delicacy, natural derivation and eco-friendliness.
We carry cosmetic fillers that manufacturers and end users can trust. Fillers are ingredients found in cosmetics that create texture, volume or lubrication, modifying the feel of personal care substances such as makeup, moisturizers and hair care products. Among the more common types of fillers on the market, parabens are preservatives that maintain product integrity. Bio-based polyethylene glycols (PEGs) are other widely used fillers that act as thickeners, solvents and penetration enhancers in cosmetic products.
With ECKART as our exclusive cosmetic filler supplier, you can expect our ingredients to encompass their ideals of environmental safety and sustainability. Their resource-saving, biodegradable filler ingredients provide the proper stabilization and rheology to optimize your personal care products, giving them the look and feel you desire.
As your leading cosmetic chemical supplier, we understand the importance of sustainability in the cosmetics industry. That’s why we carry a broad line of natural oils and butters that allow end users to meet their hair and skin care needs.
Natural butters and oils are rich in nutrients, making them ideal for cosmetic products that treat hair and skin, such as moisturizers and soaps. These substances come from natural, renewable resources such as berries, leaves, bark, seeds and other plant parts.
Many of our products come from Citróleo, one of our main suppliers for natural oils and butters. This Brazilian company carries 100% natural products optimized for the personal care, pharmaceutical, home care and cosmetics industries. Because Citróleo focuses on biodiversity and ecosystem balance, its cosmetic ingredients are highly sustainable and are not subject to harmful refining processes.
We have an extensive assortment of methyl esters, fatty acids, fatty alcohols and other responsibly sourced oleochemicals to serve all of your personal care product and cosmetic manufacturing needs. Our oleochemicals are derived from natural sources like plants and animal fats found all over the globe.
We also carry palm kernel oil- and palm oil-based oleochemical solutions available as Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) Mass Balance. You can learn more about Acme-Hardesty’s RSPO membership here.
Acme-Hardesty produces a broad range of pigments for cosmetics that provide coverage while adding luster and color to personal care products. Our pigments are suitable for numerous cosmetic solutions, such as eye shadow, lipstick, blush and nail polish.
There are many types of cosmetic color additives, but most fall into two primary categories — organic and inorganic. Organic pigments include products such as lakes, botanicals and synthetic dyes, while inorganic colorants refer to mineral compounds, including zinc oxide and iron oxide.
With ECKART as our exclusive partner for personal care pigments, we’re able to deliver some of the most functional and eco-friendly products in the industry. Because ECKART specializes in sustainable pigments, we’ve procured a comprehensive range of products ranging from pearlescent pigments available in glass flakes or synthetic mica.
We offer a comprehensive selection of cosmetic preservatives ranging from natural and custom solutions to classic preservation products to meet our customers’ individual needs as they keep up with the growing demands of the personal care industry.
Many of our preservatives for cosmetics come from Sharon Laboratories, a supply partner specializing in delivering preservative solutions to manufacturers worldwide. This company ensures the highest standards of product quality and safety through its state-of-the-art technology, eco-friendly facilities and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certifications. Sharon Laboratories is responsible for our SharoSENSE solutions, a product line featuring preservative blends for the personal care industry.
We understand the importance of high-quality functional ingredients when it comes to our customers. That’s why we’re always adding new and innovative solutions to our extensive portfolio.
Acme-Hardesty carries unique ingredients that help consumers boost the purity and performance of their products. As your personal care chemical distributor, we offer sustainable, bio-based solutions that meet the highest quality standards while proving safe for our people and the environment around us. We’re always looking for new technologies to set our customers apart with natural and efficient ingredients for everything from hair treatments and face creams to cleansers and shower gels.
Surfactants are substances that stabilize oil and water mixtures by reducing surface tension and increasing spreading and wetting abilities. Acme-Hardesty offers a complete line of surfactants that deliver superior cleansing performance and rich foaming properties to numerous personal care products. Their powerful lathering and foaming capabilities make them ideal ingredients for shampoos, shower gels, conditioners, lotions and liquid hand soaps.
As one of the largest personal care chemical distributors in the industry, we offer naturally derived thickening agents that optimize cosmetic products. Thickeners enhance the volume, viscosity and consistency of personal care products, promoting greater performance and stability. These substances commonly have moisturizing, gelling and emulsifying properties and can consist of wax, protein, alcohol, silicone or polysaccharide structures.
We get many of our thickeners and rheological additives from our principal partner ECKART, a company dedicated to worldwide sustainability. ECKART maintains a constant balance between cost-efficiency and environmental friendliness in everything they do. Their goal is to maintain resource-saving procedures for their sustainable pigments, protect the climate and expand green, eco-friendly electricity while reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
Balance is necessary to keep our pets healthy. Acme-Hardesty’s line of topical, personal care ingredients was developed for animals with skin issues or sensitivities, controlling the attack of germs and bacteria and regulating the microbiome of the animal’s skin. Shiny hair, soft and hydrated skin, and strengthened hair follicles are just a few of the many excellent benefits that these completely natural ingredients offer to pet care formulations.
At Acme-Hardesty, we carry a wide range of oleochemicals suited for numerous personal care and cosmetic needs, from thickening agents to emulsifiers to emollients. Our bio-based fatty alcohols, glycerine and fatty acids have several purposes in the personal care and cosmetic industries — for example, our fatty alcohols are applicable as surfactants, emollients, thickeners and emulsifiers. Our fatty acids also perform as thickening agents and emollients alone but act as cleansing agents when paired with glycerine.
In the personal care industry, manufacturers create products specialized for beautification and hygienic applications, such as cosmetic and skin care products like toiletries, makeup, shaving cream, moisturizer, deodorant, soap and facial tissue. This market is highly stable and is even expected to grow in the coming years as the population expands. The personal care industry is projected to experience average growth in the United States and even more significant expansion internationally, particularly in developing locations with growing urbanization and disposable income.
We’re dedicated to helping you achieve your business goals with our bio-based personal care ingredients. We believe in the power of bio-based products — that’s why we carry nothing less than the most sustainable and ethically sourced solutions. As you experience greater demand, we’ll continue to reliably provide solutions that meet your needs.
Personal Care Chemicals
Personal care manufacturers use numerous ingredients in their products, from emollients and emulsifiers to thickeners and surfactants. When you come to Acme-Hardesty for responsibly sourced personal care chemicals, you’ll find only the highest-quality ingredients on the market.
We carry a broad array of palm-based oleochemicals and glycerine products that are free of allergens, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). Our selection also includes biodiesel glycerine derived from soybeans, soap lye crude glycerine, and industrial- and technical-grade materials.
Our suppliers make our Jamaican black castor oil (JBCO) by gently roasting castor beans and preserving the ash content through careful processing. This ingredient's hydrating, cleansing and nourishing properties make it highly valuable for promoting healthy hair and skin and delivering softness and shine to dry, coarse hair. Jamaican black castor oil also contains omega fatty acids, which offer numerous dermal benefits like pore tightening and skin clearing.
AHCOHOLTM 1618, also known as cetyl stearyl alcohol or cetearyl alcohol, comprises 16 cetyl alcohol and 18 stearyl alcohol and is extracted from both man-made and natural sources. Our vegetable-based cetyl stearyl products are useful for numerous manufacturing purposes, including personal care applications like thickening agents and emollients in hair conditioners, skin creams and lotions. You can purchase our non-GMO, allergen-free AHCOHOLTM 1618 solutions in liquid form packages supplied in either bags or isotanks.
Isopropyl palmitate (IPP) is a byproduct of palmitic acid and isopropyl alcohol that presents itself as a colorless, odorless liquid. Cosmetic and personal care manufacturers commonly use this ingredient as a cosmetic thickening agent, moisturizer and emollient. Acme-Hardesty offers vegetable-based IPP products with a minimum of 90% C16 esters. This liquid ingredient has a shelf life of two years from the manufacturing date and is packaged in drums.
Whether you're looking to implement preservatives, pigments or thickeners into your cosmetics, Acme-Hardesty has the high-quality ingredients you need to enhance your personal care products. We've acted as one of the largest personal care chemical suppliers in the industry for over 80 years, bringing essential materials to manufacturers so they can make life better for consumers worldwide.
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