SEPAWA Innovation Award for REWOFERM® biosurfactant

Essen, Germany. During this year's annual congress of SEPAWA Evonik has been honored with the SEPAWA Innovation Award 2016. The jury rewarded the outstanding cleaning properties and the excellent ecological profile of the REWOFERM® biosurfactant.

The winner in the surfactant category is an exceptionally mild surfactant to the skin. At the same time, the sophorolipid is readily biodegradable under both aerobic and anaerobic conditions and fully complies with European Ecolabel requirements. REWOFERM® is manufactured from yeasts in an ecologically friendly fermentation process using only renewable raw materials. With a Renewable Carbon Index (RCI) of 100%, it is the most sustainable secondary surfactant commercially available.

"Precisely where other surfactants reach their limits, our product scores heavily," says Dr. Xiaolan Wang, head of Evonik’s Household Care Business Line. It has excellent surface cleaning power, it removes cosmetic stains, and it removes grease. Furthermore REWOFERM® helps to control the foaming behavior of cleaning products. "With this profile, the sophorolipid offers customers an opportunity to differentiate themselves in the promising bioproducts growth segment," says Wang.

The SEPAWA Innovation Award is not the first prize Evonik has received for REWOFERM®. In spring of this year, the product was named "Bio-Based Material of the Year."

The SEPAWA Congress is the largest European forum for the detergents and cleaning products industry and for manufacturers of cosmetics, personal care, and perfume products. In mid October, more than 2,500 trade professionals traveled to the German town of Fulda to learn more about the latest trends in these areas.