To Personal Care

In cosmetic applications,  gellan gum can be used in lotions and creams, make-up, face masks and packs, hair care products, toothpaste, and air freshener gels and providing body, stability and pleasing skin feel. Gellan gum can provide effective stabilisation and suspension of shampoo and conditioner formulas.

It is ideally suited to products requiring a pseudoplastic (shear thinning) rheology.

In creams and lotions, the high yield value of gellan gum fluid gels effectively stabilises these emulsions and imparts a 'light and silky' feel when rubbed on the skin. Gellan gum also keeps emulsions stable during temperature fluctuations, for consistent quality in transit, as well as on the shelf.

In suntans and sunscreens, gellan gum stabilizes the oil phase and delivers the important ingredients to the skin in a uniform manner. Gellan gum offers excellent stability over the wide range of temperatures that these products experience.

In toothpaste formulations gellan gum is beneficial both for its binding properties and its reversible, non-stringy, true-gel structure. It provides excellent flavour release, so significant reductions of flavour and sweetener levels are possible.

At typical use levels, gellan gum contributes very little viscosity during toothpaste preparation allowing the design of fluid formulations that subsequently form a gel after packaging. This low viscosity performance makes manufacturing and packaging easier and allows the incorporation of fragile ingredients such as encapsulated flavours that would not normally be possible with typical binder systems. Blends of low and high acyl gellan gum can produce toothpastes with a variety of binding, stand-up and preparation viscosity.