Clean and Comfortable: Growing Global Market for Surfactants

KONSTANZ, Germany - April 14, 2025 - PRLog -- A life without surfactants? It might be possible, but it would be quite dirty and greasy. Surfactants are among the most important and most frequently used chemicals because they can mix water and oil, form foam, and dissolve dirt. For these cleansing and surface-active substances, the market study forecasts further sales growth of 3.6% per year on average until 2033.

Surfactants Market Shows Variety of Applications

Surfactants are used in numerous market segments. Washing powder and liquid detergents for households consist to a large extent of surfactants and are their most important area of application, currently accounting for around 55% of total demand for surfactants. Ceresana anticipates high growth rates for cosmetics and personal care products, such as toothpaste, disinfectants, and contraceptives. However, the market study forecasts the largest surfactants market size increase of around 2.8% per year for surfactant consumption by manufacturers of plastics, paints, and coatings. Surfactants are also required in numerous other areas of application, such as cooling lubricants in the metal industry, auxiliaries in the textile and leather industry, wetting agents in agricultural chemistry, printing inks, construction chemicals as well as in fire-fighting foams or in flotation chemicals for ore processing and oil extraction.

Surfactant Types and Their Market Potential

Surfactants are primarily produced from crude oil, but increasingly also from bio-based raw materials such as sugar, vegetable oils, or vegetable soaps. A distinction is made between anionic, cationic, and non-ionic surfactants according to their electrical charge. The new surfactants market analysis by Ceresana provides important key figures on production, demand, import and export, but also on individual types of surfactants. Anionic surfactants have a global market share of just under 49%. These include linear alkylbenzene sulfonates (LAS) in particular, which foam strongly and have a high washing power, but are not completely biodegradable and are therefore increasingly facing more environmentally friendly competition.

Current Fourth Edition of the Ceresana Market Study on Surfactants:

Chapter 1 of the new study by Ceresana provides a comprehensive analysis of the global surfactant market – including forecasts up to 2033. The demand for surfactants is broken down for the individual application areas. In addition, demand, production, and revenues are broken down by product types. Anionic, cationic, non-ionic, and other surfactants are considered individually.
In Chapter 2, the surfactant market is analyzed individually for 42 countries.
Chapter 3 provides useful company profiles of the 63 largest surfactant manufacturers.

Further information on the new edition of the market study "Surfactants – World": https://ceresana.com/en/produkt/surfactants-market-report...