Bespoke haircare manufacturing

Shampoos, masks and leave-ins from a UK hair care manufacturer

Every shampoo, conditioner, mask, treatment and serum we develop and make as a UK hair care manufacturer for premium wellness brands is bespoke: built as a formula your brand owns and documented for the UK, the EU and the US. We make every product in our Leicester facility and fill, label and batch code it in the pack you choose, from bottles with flip caps or pumps to jars, tubes, droppers and cartons. Each product comes with its specification, safety report, stability and challenge test reports and a certificate of analysis for every batch.

We build each product to your brief: the cleansing system, conditioning actives, texture, scent, pack and claims, with stability and safety data behind them. Bench samples are compared blind, on hair tresses and by sensory panels, for lather, wet feel, combing, shine and scent, and a pilot batch proves the process at scale before routine production. Your formula is yours, as our formula ownership commitment sets out, and R&D is a paid stage that can be included with an order of the right size.

• Shampoos and cleansers. Clarifying, gentle daily, colour-care and sulphate-free shampoos, co-washes and cleansing conditioners.
• Conditioners and masks. Rinse-off conditioners, deep masks and pre-wash treatments, from light detanglers to rich repair creams.
• Leave-in treatments and serums. Leave-in conditioners, detangling sprays, heat protection sprays, bond-building treatments and hair serums.
• Oils and styling. Finishing oils, curl creams, gels and styling creams, including routines for curly and coily hair.
• Waterless formats. Solid shampoo and conditioner bars and non-aerosol dry shampoo powders.

Treatments lead growth in US prestige retail: in the first half of 2026, prestige hair care sales rose 11% and hair serums nearly 60%, with masks, oils, leave-in treatments and scalp-focused products also growing (Circana, August 2026). Haircare starts at the scalp. Our scalp care and hair serum manufacturing page covers scalp serums, scrubs and private label hair oil, and our Korean skincare manufacturing page covers layered K-beauty routines. We also make hair supplements, so a serum and a supplement can share one routine and one development plan. Our skincare and cosmetic manufacturing hub sets out the full range, and our body care manufacturing page covers washes, lotions and deodorants.

Surfactant blends, conditioning emulsions and packs for wet hands

1. Specify. We agree the specification with you: ingredients and grades, claims, pack, markets and shelf life, with every ingredient screened against each market's prohibited, restricted and preservative lists.
2. Approve suppliers. Every material comes from a supplier approved before use and reviewed every year.
3. Make. Shampoos are built by blending surfactants into water, dispersing conditioning polymers, adjusting pH and setting viscosity last. Conditioners and masks are emulsions: fatty alcohols and cationic surfactants are melted, combined with the hot water phase and cooled under controlled mixing to set their creamy gel structure, with heat-sensitive actives and fragrance added as the batch cools. Oils and serums are blended with their antioxidants.
4. Check in process. Appearance, odour, pH, viscosity and fill weight are checked against the specification.
5. Fill and label. Products are filled into bottles, tubes, pumps or jars and labelled, and labels are verified on every batch.
6. Test and release. Every batch is tested by accredited partner laboratories (ISO/IEC 17025), as part of every order. Three retained samples per batch are kept for shelf life plus one year, and quality control releases every batch against its specification.

Packs for haircare

Haircare packs have to work in wet hands. Shampoos and conditioners go into bottles with flip caps or pumps, masks into jars or tubes, sprays into trigger or fine-mist pumps, serums into droppers or airless pumps, oils into amber glass or barrier plastics filled with low headspace, and bars into cartons or wraps. Every pack is approved on compatibility data with your formula before we use it, and every unit carries its batch code.

Why hair's negative charge decides how we formulate

Charge, pH and the cuticle

Hair carries a negative charge in almost every product it meets. Its isoelectric point sits at about pH 3.67, so "any cosmetic with higher pH bears a net negative charge on the hair surface", and alkaline products swell the fibre and open the cuticle scales (Gavazzoni Dias, International Journal of Trichology, 2015). The scalp is skin, and skin's surface is naturally acidic, on average below pH 5 (Lambers and colleagues, 2006). We set shampoos and conditioners in a mildly acidic range that suits both scalp and fibre, and we check the pH of every batch.

Cleansing without stripping

A shampoo balances cleaning, foam and mildness. Sulphate systems foam richly and thicken with salt; amphoteric surfactants such as betaines make them milder; amino acid surfactants and glucosides give gentler, sulphate-free cleansing but usually need polymers to build texture. The cuticle's outer lipid layer, which includes 18-MEA, keeps hair water-repellent, and alkaline chemical treatments can strip it, leaving hair more hydrophilic (Gavazzoni Dias, 2015). Colour-care and repair shampoos therefore keep cleansing gentle and add conditioning polymers.

Conditioning and repair

Conditioners work by "neutralizing the electrical negative charge of the hair fiber by adding positive charges" (Gavazzoni Dias, 2015). Cationic surfactants and polymers settle where the fibre is most negative, and bleached or chemically processed hair has a higher affinity for them, so conditioning lands where damage is greatest. Bleaching also lowers the fibre's cross-link density, the damage that bond-building treatments are designed to address. We pair repair actives such as hydrolysed proteins, amino acids, ceramides and bond-building chemistry with tests that measure breakage and strength, so every repair claim rests on data.

Oils, silicones and film-formers

Oil chemistry decides what an oil can do. Coconut oil, rich in lauric acid, with a low molecular weight and a straight chain, penetrates the hair shaft and reduced protein loss in laboratory tests, while mineral oil does not penetrate and works as a film on the cuticle (Rele and Mohile, Journal of Cosmetic Science, 2003; Gavazzoni Dias, 2015). Silicones give slip, shine and heat protection. As of October 2026, the EU restricts the volatile cyclic silicones D4 and D5 at 0.1% or more in wash-off products, and after 6 June 2027 the limit covers D4, D5 and D6 in every cosmetic, leave-ins included; Great Britain restricts D4 and D5 in wash-off products only. We build EU-bound serums and leave-ins without them, using esters, light hydrocarbons and non-volatile silicones instead.

Preservation and fragrance

Shampoos and conditioners are mostly water, and water gets into the pack in the shower. We build preservative systems only from the permitted preservatives list, within its limits, and prove them by challenge testing to ISO 11930. In GB and the EU, a product with a formaldehyde-releasing preservative carries the warning "releases formaldehyde" where the formaldehyde released in the finished product exceeds 0.001%, and we formulate smoothing products without formaldehyde or formaldehyde releasers. Fragrance labelling depends on product type: each allergen above 0.01% in a rinse-off shampoo, or 0.001% in a leave-in, is named on the label.

Rinse-off or leave-in: how exposure shapes haircare safety

Before launch, every product has a cosmetic product safety report (CPSR), signed by a qualified safety assessor who compares each ingredient's safety data with the expected exposure. Use decides exposure. The SCCS's exposure tables count 10.46 g of shampoo a day but keep only 1% of it on the skin after rinsing, while a hair styling product keeps 10% of its 4.00 g (SCCS Notes of Guidance, 2023). A styling product therefore leaves almost four times as much on the skin as a shampoo, and the assessor sets active and fragrance levels for leave-in use accordingly. We arrange the CPSR, and we run the test programme with accredited partner laboratories:

• Stability in the final pack, accelerated and real-time, with temperature cycling, tracking viscosity, pH, colour, odour, phase separation and, for oils, oxidation.
• Compatibility between formula and pack: we check that surfactants and oils don't stress the plastics, and that pumps and caps dispense cleanly to the last dose.
• Challenge testing to ISO 11930 for every product that contains water. Solid bars and anhydrous oils can qualify as low microbiological risk under ISO 29621.
• Microbiology on finished product, against the limits your specification sets.
• Claims tests, arranged with specialist partners: instrumental wet and dry combing, breakage under repeated brushing, shine, frizz in humidity, colour retention over repeated washes, expert salon assessments and consumer perception tests.

We are ISO 9001 certified by BSI, and the scope of our certificate, FS 822806, includes cosmetics. Our stability and shelf life testing page explains how the results set the shelf life and the date or period-after-opening symbol on your label.

Haircare documents, from INCI list to CPSR

Each product comes with its documents: the agreed specification, the INCI ingredient list, a certificate of analysis for every batch, the stability, compatibility and challenge test reports, the CPSR and the product information file built with you for your Responsible Person. Claims test reports join the file when you commission them.

SCPN, CPNP and MoCRA: notifying haircare in each market

A cosmetic cleans, perfumes, protects, changes the appearance of or keeps the hair in good condition, and the Cosmetics Regulation's examples include shampoos, conditioners and products for waving, straightening and fixing hair. As of October 2026:

• Great Britain. A UK Responsible Person, a CPSR and notification through the Submit Cosmetic Product Notification (SCPN) service before sale, with the product information file at the Responsible Person's UK address.
• European Union and Northern Ireland. A Responsible Person in the EU, or in Northern Ireland for that market, a CPSR and notification through the Cosmetic Products Notification Portal (CPNP). EU labels now list each of around 80 fragrance allergens present above set levels, so we write every label to that list from the start. The EU microplastics restriction reaches rinse-off products such as shampoos from 17 October 2027 and leave-on products from 17 October 2029, so we screen every polymer, from opacifiers to styling resins.
• United States. Facility registration and product listing under MoCRA, with safety records kept by the responsible person named on the label. Our FDA registration is a food facility registration for dietary supplements, so we register our Leicester facility under MoCRA as US haircare programmes start. A product sold to grow hair is a drug that needs FDA approval, so US haircare stays cosmetic on the label and in its marketing.

In Great Britain and the EU, every claim must meet the common criteria for cosmetic claims, evidential support included. In practice, "reduces breakage from brushing" rests on a breakage test, "easier to comb" on combing force, and "shinier-looking hair" on instrument or expert assessment. We write each claim into the specification and the test plan before the first sample, and we support SCPN and CPNP notification for the markets you sell in.

Start your project with your product, claims and markets, and we will build the formula and the regulatory file together.

References: Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 on cosmetic products (2009); Commission Regulation (EU) 2022/1181 on formaldehyde-releasing substances (2022); Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/1545 on fragrance allergen labelling (2023); Commission Regulation (EU) 2024/1328 on D4, D5 and D6 (2024); The Cosmetic Products Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 (Restriction of Chemical Substances) (Amendment and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2026 (2026); SCCS Notes of Guidance for the testing of cosmetic ingredients, 12th revision (2023); Gavazzoni Dias, International Journal of Trichology (2015); Rele and Mohile, Journal of Cosmetic Science (2003).