Why is the soap expensive?
Sara Idenfors- Well, that’s how it is!
There are already enough manufacturers of cheap chemicals in the world; our focus is reuse, the circular economy, the environment, the climate, and the local community.
If you only want to buy cheap chemicals, there are plenty to choose from!
In 2018, more than 300 million tonnes of chemicals were consumed in the EU, and more than two-thirds of these were chemicals classified as hazardous to health, according to Eurostat. More than 20,000 individual chemicals have been registered in the EU under the Regulation on the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH).
We stand for a different approach, in which we reuse materials and create a natural surfactant—and unfortunately, this is not the norm today. The norm is to produce chemicals at a low price and at a furious pace.
We are slow, circular, and manufacture in Sweden—even in the inland of Västerbotten—and that results in a different cost structure. Unfortunately!
A simple test you can do is to read the labels on everything you eat or buy for a week—check where the product was manufactured. It gives you a good idea of how little is actually manufactured in Sweden today. In a short time, we have lost almost all domestic production. In a troubled world, this creates yet another source of uncertainty.
The next test you can do is to try to find a fabric that was actually produced in Sweden—not a garment designed in Sweden, but one actually made from textiles produced in Sweden. Then look at the price tag!
If you find a cleaning product, tablets that are meant to be dissolved, or something similar, it may say “concept developed in Sweden”—but that is not the same as manufactured in Sweden. It was probably made in China. There are surely advantages to this, but it is not our niche, not our business idea, and not our mission.
We hope that within a couple of years we will be able to reverse the trend and instead establish a new norm in which products made in Sweden from recycled raw materials are commonplace, while new, imported chemicals are the exception. Only then can the price difference be levelled out or change.