Industrial Surfactants Set for Strong Growth

Where there is foamy lather, there usually is a surfactant. But does it follow that if there are no bubbles and foam, there are no surfactants? Not with industrial surfactants, where some specifications for the compounds even require foam suppression. For industrial surfactants, instead, the role is that of a usually hidden—but crucial—facilitator. For such surfactants, the markets are quite different from those of their household- detergent brethren, used in commodity quantities in a handful of well-defined and well-tracked end uses, made by a relatively small number of large chemical suppliers. For industrial surfactants, instead, there is a plethora of ill-defined, fragmented markets, which use small quantities of surfactants—sometimes down to the parts-per-million level—and supplied by a host of companies ranging from the giants to the very small specialty outfits. Industrial surfactants find their way into a vast number of industries. In fact, as one marketer puts it, there is no industry that doesn'...