Liquid soap business in Nigeria, learn how to make liquid soap from scratch, market it and make over 15k weekly.
How To Make Liquid Soap for Business
Here is another high rewarding and fast moving small business in Nigeria that requires a very low startup capital, typically N5,000.
Some products are called EEE (Essential for Everybody Everyday) products. Soap is one of them, not everyone will buy a car but everyone needs soap!
It does not require electric power or expensive equipment. Soap is next to food, shelter and transportation, soap is a basic need for everyone. Your product will never run short of demand except they lack good quality.
At the time of this posting a N3,000 worth of raw chemicals will produce up to 60 litres of liquid soap. If sold at N100 per litre, that fetches you N6,000.
With good packaging, you could sell at N150 per litre and make N9,000 from your N3,000 soap formulation!
If you are able to repeat this process 10 times in a month, that should fetch you an amazing N60,000 income from merely re-ploughing your initial N3,000 again and again.
Soap production is simple, so why paying a lot of money for a bottle when you can make your own liquid soap at home?
You don’t need much investment to start the production. Continue reading to learn how to make liquid soap from scratch. Just follow the instructions.
NOTE: The vendors that sell the chemicals can advise you on the quantities of chemical for any amount of production volume like 25 litres, 50 litres or even 10 litres, or as the case may be:
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What you will need for the preparation
Talking about how to make a liquid soap from scratch, here are what you will need for preparation
- Water
- Hand gloves to protect your hands. Touching the soap directly with your hands can cause crack skin
- Nose mask: to protect you from inhaling the concentrated chemicals
- Turning stick or long spatula
- Measuring spoon and a funnel (to add it to the bottles)
- Plastic bowls or buckets
- Bottles for packing
- Towel for wiping bottles dry and cleaning of hands when done
- Hand gloves, long sleeves, trousers, shoes, and socks to cover and protect yourself from spillage over the skin
The Ingredients and chemicals
Some people think the chemicals required to make liquid soaps are very expensive. No! They are not, in fact they are available in our main market all over Nigeria.
2). Sodium Lauryl Sulphate (SLS) - 1/2 cup - it looks like rice grains and is whitish in colour. This agent helps to break surface tension (surfactant) to allow better interaction with other chemicals, It is the main active foaming agent.
3). Soda ash (sodium carbonate) - 1 cup - This serves as a stain remover, it helps to soften hard water.
4). STPP ( Sodium Tripolyphosphate) - 1/2 cup - This acts as a foam booster, It is a strong cleaning agent and helps the SLS to work on its full potential.
5). Sulphonic (sulfonic) acid - 2 litres - it is a black liquid substance. This is the agent that helps to produce foam in liquid soap
6). Texapon - 1/4 cup - This is a foaming agent which forms micelles that allow non-polar materials like oil to be dissolved in water. A lot of liquid soap producers in Nigeria don’t use Texapon and SLS together in the same production; Why? Because both of them perform almost the same function. They go with just one.
7). Caustic soda - 1/2 cup - This is an agent that removes dirt in clothes
8). 2 tablespoons preservative
9). Fragrance (as desired) - It gives your liquid soap a sweet fragrance. There are lemon, pineapple, ambipur. lavender or strawberry fragrance. Choose anyone you like in your production
10). Colorant (as desired) - This normally comes as a powder and should be diluted with water before adding to the soap mixture. The colour adds beauty to the finished product. Most producers go with deep green colour but I love light green
11). 20 litres water - This serves as the solvent.
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Preparation of your liquid soap
I believe you have gotten all you will need for your preparation, including the ingredients and chemicals. Now, let's begin!
Mixing of the chemicals
Dissolve Antisol with 2 litres of water and let it stay for at least 24 hours or over night, If you are using Nitrosol, dissolve it with 5 litres of water and use immediately.
Dissolve caustic soda with 1 litre of water and keep it overnight for fermentation to take place.
Dissolve soda ash with 1 tin milk of water and keep it overnight.
The next day, dissolve STPP with 1 cup of water and keep aside
Dissolve SLS with 1 cup of water and keep aside
Dissolve Texapon with sulphonic acid and keep aside
Finally, dissolve the colourant with 1 cup of water (make sure you dissolve the colour completely).
Final Process
Add caustic soda solution into the texapon and stir till the whole salt is fully dissolved. Caustic soda is very corrosive, make sure you are careful.
Add the sulphonic acid little at a time till all is added to it. Stir gently as the product may foam heavily.
Continually add water to it and stir until the mixture turns whitish
Add the dissolved STPP and keep stirring
Add the dissolved SLS to the content and stir
Add soda ash and stir
Turn the mixture into the bowl containing the Antisol or Nitrosol and keep stirring till the solution thickens. Stirring should be very slowly because vigorous turning may lead to excess foaming
Add the dissolved colourant.
If the foaming is excessive, stop stirring till the foaming disappears and turn again. You can as well dilute the mixture with water if it is too thick.
Add fragrance and preservative and stir. When all the chemicals are well mixed, leave the mixture to stay for some hours, and finally package into bottles.
Now your liquid soap is ready and you may start selling and using it right away!
Note: There are different methods of production, Some people believe that the SLS and Texapon should not be used together.
They use either Texapon alone or SLS alone, but not the two. I will advise you to continue to use whichever that works for you. For me, I use the two together.
Watch the video by Sunshine Resources below:
Marketing your Product
Liquid soap business in Nigeria requires perseverance, serious calculation and good marketing strategy.
Start by producing for your neighbours, friends, colleagues and family members. Produce in small-scale and package them in reused water bottles. Take it to restaurants, Schools with hostels, markets, hotels etc.
If you are going into large-scale, advertise your product using both online and offline portals.
Reduce your prices in order to get the favour of buyers. Use a name that is very unique, simple to pronounce and memorable.
Make the liquid detergent a little more foamy and thicker than the ones that are already in the market, this way you will be able to penetrate the market and become known.
CONCLUSION
Start making money quickly by producing liquid soap, the chemicals needed to start liquid soap can be found around you. Let us know your own experience, drop your comment below.
This was pretty straight forward. Thank you
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