MADRID--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cepsa Química, a leading company in the production of surfactants and their raw materials, such as fatty alcohols and their derivatives and linear alkylbenzene (LAB), will present NextLab, the world's first sustainable LAB, at the annual ACI convention to be held between January 30th and February 4th in Orlando. LAB is used to produce linear alkylbenzene Sulfonate (LAS), the largest primary surfactant used in the homecare industry to manufacture biodegradable detergents.
Sustainability has been one of Cepsa Química’s goals since its beginnings. The company is the largest LAB producer in the world and a pioneer in the production of biodegradable products and the development of safer and more environmentally friendly technologies. Today, sustainability is driving the homecare industry, as final consumer’s awareness about climate change and respect for the environment, demands more sustainable and environmentally friendly products for home care and cleaning. That is why NextLab was born.
“All the products of the NextLab portfolio have the same properties as PETRELAB, Cepsa Química’s LAB, but are manufactured in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way. NextLab is designed to help our customers manufacture products with a lower carbon footprint and aimed at caring for the environment and protecting nature,” stresses Paloma Alonso, EVP Chemicals at Cepsa.
Sustainability without compromising performance
Cepsa Química understands that it is critical to develop and produce pioneering chemicals to help its customers to continuously improve their formulations.
Aligned with the market needs, NextLab has the same outstanding properties as traditional PETRELAB while minimizing its carbon footprint. LAB is the raw material of LAS, the most used surfactant in household detergents due to its excellent washing performance, flexibility, and processability, and it is used in any detergent format. It is used both in traditional formats (powder or bar detergent) and in more sophisticated products (single-dose capsules or highly concentrated liquid detergents). Because of that, from the total surfactants employed in the formulation of household detergents, LAS represents more than 60%.
The NextLab portfolio, Cepsa Quimica’s journey to Sustainability
NextLab products are dedicated to the Home Care Industry, which, along with the Chemical sector, is looking for new, more sustainable products, with the critical priority to decrease GHG emissions into the atmosphere to reduce climate change impact. Leading Home Care Companies have challenging targets dedicated to this matter, and Cepsa Química has developed a Multi-Generational Plan to evaluate different technologies and identify key projects to develop more sustainable products to address customers’ needs. NextLab is a new family of products, born sustainable, consisting of three main types of NextLab, each one of them with its own identity and objective.
- NextLab – R, available worldwide, is the LAB produced with renewable raw materials, based on mass balance approach, with reduced GHG footprint considering “cradle to gate” and “end of life” analysis compared to its fossil counterpart based on the use of alternative feedstocks (using preliminary data, as Life Cycle Assessment validation is underway).
- NextLab – Low carbon, LAB produced with a GHG footprint reduction considering “cradle to gate” and “end of life” analysis thanks to the replacement of conventional energy with alternative sources to decrease plant emissions during the production process (using preliminary data, as Life Cycle Assessment validation is underway). This material is currently available for the North American market.
- Finally, still under development, NextLab – C, the LAB that will be produced with circular raw materials, dedicated to increase the industry circularity reducing waste.
NextLab – R and Low Carbon already have industrial production with immediate availability and aim to help their customers to achieve their targets to reduce carbon emissions and incorporate alternative feedstocks to traditional materials and lead the transformation of the homecare industry towards Sustainability.
Cepsa is a leading international company committed to sustainable mobility and energy with a solid technical experience after more than 90 years of activity. The company also has a world-leading chemicals business with increasingly sustainable operations. In 2022, Cepsa presented its new strategic plan for 2030, Positive Motion, which projects its ambition to be a leader in sustainable mobility, biofuels, and green hydrogen in Spain and Portugal, and to become a benchmark in the energy transition. The company places customers at the heart of its business and will work with them to help them advance their decarbonization objectives. ESG criteria inspire everything Cepsa does as it advances toward its Net Positive objective. This decade, it will reduce its Scope 1 and 2 CO2 emissions by 55% and the carbon intensity index of its energy products sales, which includes Scope 1, 2 & 3 by 15-20%, with the goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2050.
Cepsa Química is a world leader in its sector and is leading the shift towards sustainable chemistry, with a clear commitment to the fight against climate change and the transition to a circular, non-fossil economy. The company leads the worldwide production of LAB, the primary raw material used in biodegradable detergents, where Cepsa Química is a pioneer player. It is also number one in the production of cumene, an intermediate product used in the production of phenol and acetone, which are the primary raw materials for the manufacture of engineering plastics and of which it is the world’s second-largest producer.
Cepsa Química currently employs more than 1,000 people and has plants in seven countries world worldwide (Spain, Germany, Brazil, Canada, China, Indonesia, and Nigeria).
