Formulation needs reshaping ingredient sourcing in the GCC

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) beauty market is growing, but growth alone does not explain what is changing inside formulation laboratories and manufacturing facilities across the region.

The GCC beauty market was valued at approximately US 14.3 billion in 2025 and is forecast to approach US 21 billion by 2030. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) alone accounts for around 40% of regional beauty spending.

At prestige level, beauty grew 12% in 2024 with skincare recording the strongest category growth at 17%, while fragrance retained the largest share at 49% (BeautyMatter for Messe Frankfurt Middle East, 2026; Chalhoub Group, 2025).

Behind those numbers, I am seeing something more specific with procurement, manufacturers, product developers, brands and ingredient suppliers across the region. Teams are not only asking, “what is new?”, they are also asking: “what solves this particular formulation problem?.”

The briefs reaching the supply side are becoming more precise, such as requirements for solubilisers that can carry oil-rich fragrance without leaving the skin with an undesirable tacky afterfeel that can often be present in hot and humid climates, and that hold up through the day.

Milder surfactant systems built for frequent scalp cleansing and variable water conditions, alternative emollients with defined sensory profiles and ingredient derivatives that allow differentiated product architectures.

Increasingly, they also want ingredients compatible with lower-energy manufacturing and systems that let an existing fragrance move into new formats or categories.

This long list and shift has implications for how raw materials are purchased, developed, positioned and are ultimately being sourced in the region.

One recurring request is for non-tacky solubilisers and alternative sensory modifiers. In the GCC this is closely tied to demand for alcohol-free fragrance formats and halal-conscious product development. 

Removing ethanol from a fragrance system places the full burden of solubilisation on surfactants and co-solvents and many of these leave residue.

Solubilisation may begin as a physical chemistry problem; incorporating poorly water-soluble fragrance or oil-soluble materials into an aqueous system but the finished product is experienced through the skin. 

A technically clear, stable formulation can still fail the brief if it leaves excessive tack, drag, residue or an afterfeel inconsistent with the intended positioning.

This matters because sensory performance is not superficial to product development. Recent research has demonstrated that changes in emollient systems produce measurable differences in how users perceive cosmetic emulsions, particularly their appearance and afterfeel (Gerken et al., 2026). 

Earlier work established statistical relationships between rheology, texture, stickiness, spreadability and consumer perception (Huynh et al., 2021).

Ingredient selection therefore increasingly needs to consider performance after application, not simply functionality inside the formulation. If consumers do not enjoy using a product, they will not use it consistently enough to see results. Consistency is efficacy. 

Across haircare, scalp care, baby care, body cleansing and facial skincare, I am seeing growing interest in milder surfactant systems.

In the GCC, this is driven by usage patterns as much as by trend. Heat, perspiration and occlusive headwear push many consumers towards frequent scalp cleansing.

Variable water mineral content across the region, including hard water in some areas, adds a further formulation challenge.

This is scientifically relevant, surfactants perform essential cleansing functions but their interactions with stratum corneum proteins and lipids can influence dryness, irritation and barrier integrity.

Contemporary research continues to show that surfactant structure, charge, micellar behaviour and formulation context influence skin compatibility (Abdollahi et al. 2025).

For haircare, the question is broader than cleansing alone. Surfactant systems also shape foam, rheology, deposition, mildness and the experience of both hair and scalp (Cornwell, 2018).

This makes “sulphate-free” an increasingly inadequate formulation brief on its own. A better technical conversation considers the complete surfactant blend, concentration, micelle architecture, pH, conditioning system and intended frequency of use.

For the GCC, how the system behaves in variable water conditions matters.

And for suppliers, that creates an opportunity to move beyond ingredient labels towards formulation-relevant evidence of mildness and performance.

Single oils is another area where sourcing conversations are becoming more nuanced. As the demand for jojoba and jojoba-like materials increases, it's important to consider it from all angles and I’ll explain why. 

Chemically, jojoba differs from conventional triglyceride plant oils. Its principal lipid fraction consists predominantly of long-chain wax esters formed from fatty acids and fatty alcohols (Pazyar et al., 2013).

That chemistry allows the jojoba category to extend beyond liquid jojoba into esters, waxes, butters and structured derivatives. Each gives formulators different routes into skincare, haircare, body care and fragrance. 

The sourcing question therefore becomes less about whether a brand wants "jojoba" and more about what the jojoba material needs to do. It might need to alter glide, influence afterfeel, structure an anhydrous format, modify an oil phase or support a particular sensorial direction.

That distinction sounds small, but commercially it is important. Better ingredient sourcing begins with understanding the function required in the finished formulation.

A need I expect to grow in importance is cold and lower-energy processing. As the region builds more local manufacturing capacity, this is becoming a cost and throughput question, not only a sustainability one.

Research comparing hot, hot-cold and cold-process emulsions found that moving from hot to hot-cold processing saved approximately 82% of thermal energy for oil-in-water emulsions and 86% for water-in-oil emulsions. The process also reduced the cradle-to-gate carbon footprint of the model formulations (Tamburic et al., 2023). 

Notably, the energy effect outweighed the effect of switching to natural ingredients. For brands pursuing lower-impact products, how a product is made may matter more than what it is made from.

Cold processing is not appropriate for every formulation, and changing process conditions can require significant reformulation, stability and preservation work. 

But the evidence shows why ingredients that simplify processing, shorten manufacturing cycles or reduce heating requirements have commercial value alongside their formulation function. 

For manufacturers scaling production, how an ingredient is processed can matter almost as much as what it does.

Nowhere is the GCC's influence clearer than in fragrance. Fragrance represented 49% of GCC prestige beauty in 2024 (Chalhoub Group, 2025). United Arab Emirates (UAE) fragrance exports have risen almost seven-fold over the past decade, placing the country among the world's top ten perfume exporters by value (BeautyMatter, 2026).

The opportunity, however, extends beyond conventional fine fragrance. Oil perfumes, hair fragrance, body mists, scented balms, solid formats and fragrance-skincare hybrids create different formulation requirements around solubilisation, emollience, deposition, structure, volatility and sensory finish.

For raw-material suppliers, fragrance should therefore be considered not only as a perfume category, but as a format-development opportunity.

If suppliers are to move beyond ingredient labels, the evidence they bring should match the brief:

• Non-tacky solubilisation, considering solubilisation ratios with the actual fragrance type, alongside sensory or afterfeel data at use level.
• Mild cleansing, developed with irritation and mildness data on the complete blend at the finished pH, not the single surfactant in isolation.
• Sensory emollients with comparative panel data, against the material being replaced.
• Low-energy processing with demonstrated stability and texture parity between hot and cold or hot-cold methods.
• Regional performance, considering stability at temperature and humidity conditions representative of GCC supply chains and summers.

The larger lesson from these conversations being had in the region is fairly straight-forward. A fast-growing market does not necessarily need a larger volume of ingredient information. It needs better science translation between formulation needs and material capabilities.

When a developer asks for a non-tacky solubiliser, the most useful response is not twenty solubilisers. When a manufacturer needs a mild cleansing platform, a catalogue of surfactants is not enough.

The value lies in understanding the requirements, narrowing the technically relevant options and making the route from raw material to formulation decision easier and suggestions that will uphold the testing phase that can genuinely be scaled up.

As the GCC moves from being predominantly a market for beauty consumption towards one increasingly involved in formulation, manufacturing and export, ingredient sourcing will become more discerning. The suppliers and procurement teams who understand that shift will not simply bring more innovation into the region. They will help translate it into products that are genuinely worth making.

References

• Abdollahi, H., Ghanbarlou, S., Babapoor, A., Yari Kalashgarani, M., Valadez, I., Zarrintaj, P. and Davachi, S.M. (2025) 'Surfactant-containing detergents: impacts on dermal health', Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces, 256(Pt 1), 115026.
• BeautyMatter (2026) 'Why the GCC has become beauty's next global growth engine', BeautyMatter, August. BeautyMatter for Messe Frankfurt Middle East (2026) GCC In Focus: 2026 Middle East Beauty Market Report. Dubai: Messe Frankfurt Middle East.
• Chalhoub Group (2025) GCC Personal Luxury 2024: Unstoppable. Dubai: Chalhoub Group.
• Cornwell, P.A. (2018) 'A review of shampoo surfactant technology: consumer benefits, raw materials and recent developments', International Journal of Cosmetic Science, 40(1), pp. 16–30.
• Gerken, A., Libby, E., Vigilante, P., Safee, R., Szoboszlai, M. and Baki, G. (2026) 'Sensory contribution of emollient cascades in skin creams evaluated by CATA analysis', International Journal of Cosmetic Science.
• Huynh, A., Garcia, A.G., Young, L.K., Szoboszlai, M., Liberatore, M.W. and Baki, G. (2021) 'Measurements meet perceptions: rheology–texture–sensory relations when using green, bio-derived emollients in cosmetic emulsions', International Journal of Cosmetic Science, 43(1), pp. 11–19.
• Pazyar, N., Yaghoobi, R., Ghassemi, M.R., Kazerouni, A., Rafeie, E. and Jamshydian, N. (2013) 'Jojoba in dermatology: a succinct review', Giornale Italiano di Dermatologia e Venereologia, 148(6), pp. 687–691.
• Tamburic, S., Fröhlich, J., Mistry, S., Fischer, L.J., Barbary, T., Bunyan, S. and Dufton, E. (2023) 'Sustainability by reduced energy consumption during manufacturing: the case of cosmetic emulsions', Cosmetics, 10(5), 132. 

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