Organic Growth: Ceresana Report on the European Bio-Based Surfactants Market

KONSTANZ, Germany - May 5, 2026 - PRLog -- Green chemistry is becoming more and more important for the chemical industry: The packaging of cosmetics and natural cleaning products increasingly promises ingredients that are "100% organic, vegan, biodegradable, and renewable". Glycolipids, for example, can be obtained from corn sugar or rapeseed oil. Ceresana has now analyzed the European bio-based surfactants market for the first time. Ceresana expects these "green" chemicals to generate sales of more than EUR 10.1 billion in Europe by 2034.

Clean Surfactants for Clean Water

Natural surfactants may be more compatible with aquatic life and human skin than conventional fossil-based products. Surfactants or surface-active agents can facilitate the removal of dirt, form foam, and enable the mixing of water and oil. Because of this, they are the main ingredient in washing powder and liquid detergents. Household laundry detergents and natural cleaning products are by far the most important sales market for biosurfactants in Europe today, accounting for around 46% of total revenues. This is followed by personal care products and cosmetics as well as industrial cleaning agents. However, the versatile chemicals are also used for a wide variety of other applications, for example as emulsifiers in skin creams, as dispersing agents in paints and printing inks, as antistatic additives in plastics and textile fibers or as wetting agents in fertilizers and pesticides. There are surfactants in toothpaste as well as in cooling lubricants, extinguishing foam, disinfectants, and contraceptives. Industrial applications include ore extraction and the bioremediation of oil fields.

Bio-Economy with Biomass

All surfactants have a water-repellent and a water-attracting part, both of which can be bio-based. Sugar surfactants can consist of coconut fatty alcohols and glucose, for example. The most important sugar surfactants at present are the high-foaming alkyl polyglycosides (APGs): non-ionic surfactants that can be produced purely on a plant basis. APGs are less sensitive to water hardness than anionic surfactants, effective at lower temperatures, skin-friendly, non-toxic, and biodegradable. With these environmentally friendly properties, APGs could become an alternative to linear alkylbenzene sulfates (LAS), the most widely used petrochemical surfactants today. Glycolipids, such as sophorolipids and rhamnolipids, are also promising biochemicals. Blends of petrochemical and biogenic chemicals are marketed as "bioattributed", "proportionately biobased", or "mass-balanced grades". The ongoing trend toward bio-based products not only reduces dependence on crude oil and natural gas, but also opens up new recycling opportunities for organic residues, such as by-products from the paper industry and biofuel production or food waste.

Further information: https://ceresana.com/en/produkt/biobased-surfactants-mark...