Do You Need To Do Stability Testing?
To show you how important it is to ensure your products are safe for sale imagine this scenario. You get a call from ACCC telling you that a customer has complained about a product that has gone moldy and they would like to know how you ensured the safety of your products. What would you tell them? if you ensure your stability testing is done through CSTA then you can confidently provide your certificate to them which shows exactly what your product passed for and that you took care to get the testing done. This can then back up your claim that you ensured your product was safe for sale.
Our highly trained Cosmetic Chemist can offer stability testing for your products and offer a certificate of satisfaction on completion. But why would you want this and do you need it?
In Australia we currently do not have any defined guidelines on how in-depth the stability testing of skincare and cosmetic products needs to be. However the ACCC regulates product sold in Australia including skincare and cosmetics. This ensures that products are sold in a suitable and safe condition. ACCC has previously contacted skincare brands to advise them that their products were contaminated and worked with them to remove them off the shelves. While companies can obtain insurance to protect themselves against this it is important that you show due care and diligence to ensure you took action to release a safe and quality product or your insurance will most likely not cover any loses. Releasing a product that is not stable or is even dangerous can lead to big consequences including reputational damage, financial loses and even lawsuits. So it’s important that you can prove you took steps to ensure your products were safe at the time of manufacture and over the recommended product life.
The best way to ensure your cosmetics are safe over the lifetime of the product is to get them stability tested. It is recommended to get a qualified chemist to do the tests for you although you can do the tests yourself. The benefits of getting a chemist to do the tests over yourself doing them is that you might not have the knowledge and experience necessary to do the tests, when you test your own products you might be biased and allow a failed product to pass because you know the extra work involved if it doesn’t pass. You also need to maintain more paperwork than a third party because you would need to prove you actually did the tests and did them in a effective manner. The equipment required to do the tests and to accurately measure all the properties of the cosmetics can easily get into the $10,000s.
Cost To Do Stability Testing
There are currently a few companies in Australia that offer stability testing and full Preservative Efficacy Testing but at up to $5000 per product this can add up substantially to $10,000s for a skincare range so this option is normally reserved for larger brands. This leaves smaller brands that sell at market stall and on Social media etc at a disadvantage because they don’t have the finances to do these tests, even if you did have the finances could you imagine spending $5000+ just to learn that your product failed the test and needs to be reformulated?
This is where we come in!
We understand small businesses because we are one, we want to work with you because safe products shouldn’t just be limited to larger businesses. We can give you the right tools to be assured your products formula is safe and stable. Our Cosmetic Chemist has developed a unique system to test your Cosmetic products for stability issues, oxidation issues and initial preservative issues. This means you will have more reassurance that your products are put on the market stable and safe.
We even offer a money back guarantee so you can be sure that even if your products don’t pass our initial tests this time you will have the opportunity to reformulate them and for them to pass another time.
What This Test Doesn’t Show
We need to be very clear that this test is not a Preservative Efficacy Test. While Cosmetic products do not require P E T tests at the time of writing this, some people may want to get the P E T test done. P E T testing is a requirement from the TGA for Therapeutic goods however Cosmetic products don’t fall into this category so if you are looking for an affordable option instead of following rules designed for the pharmaceutical industry and therapeutic industry then consider using our preservative tests.
P E T testing is a test we cannot offer because it requires live bacteria. Your skincare is loaded with bacteria and tested to ensure the preservative inhibits growth of the bacteria to a certain specification. While this is a great test it is also very expensive and needs to be done on top of stability testing in an approved lab.
P E T Testing Vs Our Testing
We have put together a test that we believe can provide you with confidence that your product is stable. We put it through a combination of different tests to provide evidence that it is stable. We also do dip slide tests at specific intervals that will test your preservative is still effective. The difference between our testing and P E T is that we test your product excluding external factors such as bacteria from hands or the environment and the P E T tests specifically for external factors.