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Cella Crema Da Barba - reformulated?

Hey fellow wetshavers.

I have been wetshaving with a DE for a little over a year now and I have enjoyed it so far. A couple of days ago I bought Cella Crema Da Barba... in the 150 gram red tub and I really love using this soap. Now, looking around different websites and B&B I have found the ingredient list on my Cella shaving soap to be a little different than normal.

The normal ingredient list goes as following:
Cocos Nucifera, Tallow, Stearic Acid, Potassium Hydroxide, Sodium Hydroxide, Aqua, Potassium Carbonate, Parfum

The ingredient list on my Cella tub goes like this:
Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Oil, Adeps Bovis (Tallow), Stearic Acid, Aqua (Water) Potassium Hydroxide, Sodium Hydroxide, Potassium Carbonate, Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis (Sweet Almond) Oil, Tetrasodium EDTA, Parfum (Fragrance).

So looking from the ingredients Nicky Chini have added Almond Oil and Tetrasodium. They have also put more water in since it is listed earlier. I have uploadet some pictures so you can see for yourself, sorry for the poor quality.

I wonder if they really have reformulated Cella or if it just the vendor I bought it from. I live in Denmark so I bought this shaving soap through the british Amazon at a company called The Original Shaving Company.
Do you guys have any thoughts about this? (I am counting on you Marco/Mr. Cella. :001_smile)
 

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Thanks for the post, this information is interesting. My tub, purchased around a year and a half ago, seems to be a hybrid. It matches your normal ingredient list, but adds the Almond Oil before the Fragrance.

Cella is an amazing crop as far as I am concerned. I am curious about the tetrasodium and why it is necessary.
 
It is a perservative for the almond oil, since it is not perserved very well without "help". Maybe that is why they started to include it.
 
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Tetrasodium EDTA is not a preservative. It is a comlexing agent, that binds Ca and Mg ions in hard water. Oils are preserved by adding antioxidants, most often vitamin E.
 
The new one with tetra sodium is supposed to lather better in hard water. I thought I read something that it should be softer on the skin too for people that had reactions.
 
Tetrasodium EDTA is not a preservative. It is a comlexing agent, that binds Ca and Mg ions in hard water. Oils are preserved by adding antioxidants, most often vitamin E.

Thanks for the chemistry of this. I took inorganic years ago but don't remember anything called a comlexing agent. I'll Google that word to see what pops up.

<edit> Aha, you meant comPlexing, that makes sense now. Something like a chelating or binding agent too I suppose.
 
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I don't have experience with block-Cella or the previous formulation of tub-Cella, but the new stuff works really well for me. I wonder whether block-Cella will get the same change?
 
EDTA is a chelating agent which is very common in cosmetics such as soaps and shampoos. Basically it binds ions to remove them from solution. Its complexed with sodium in solid form but will replace sodium with calcium and magnesium (calcium is usually the reason/problem) which is present in "hard" water. If you have soft water you should not notice any difference in performance, but if your water is hard it should be substantially improved. Whether or not chemistry translates to real world results is a whole different issue.

I do know that the EU has placed more requirements on cosmetic manufactures to add extensive detail to labeling that was not required previously, and that has been responsible for some changes in labeling over the last couple years, even if the formulation itself hasn't changed.
 
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Thanks for all the great chemistry replies.

I have hard water where I live in Denmark, but I have never tried the old version of Cella. Maybe the old version will perform worse with my water, but I cannot complain about the new versions performance. It lathers up quickly, provides tons of glide and cushion and smells wonderfull. Having tried more expensive soap like Martin de Candre, Esbjerg (technically a "croap"), the big T's and so on, I can honestly say that I would be fully happy with having nothing else than Cella in my den. Of course this means that shave-apocalyse would have to arrive.:tongue_sm
 
The real world performance effects of EDTA in hard water is it makes the soap massively more efficient (requires less product), and also can cause more of the famous coconut oil "bloom", which can be beneficial, depending on your lathering technique. Many popular soaps without it manage hard water lathering by being massively more weighted to K-salts than they would need be if they included EDTA.
 
The real world performance effects of EDTA in hard water is it makes the soap massively more efficient (requires less product), and also can cause more of the famous coconut oil "bloom", which can be beneficial, depending on your lathering technique. Many popular soaps without it manage hard water lathering by being massively more weighted to K-salts than they would need be if they included EDTA.

I never new that about the K salts, thanks Ian!
 
The real world performance effects of EDTA in hard water is it makes the soap massively more efficient (requires less product), and also can cause more of the famous coconut oil "bloom", which can be beneficial, depending on your lathering technique. Many popular soaps without it manage hard water lathering by being massively more weighted to K-salts than they would need be if they included EDTA.

Indeed thanks, Ian. I always learn a lot from your posts.
 
I love Cella. I never understood the almond correlation. I know it's in the ingredient list but it always smelled like Cherry Coke to me.
 
There's definitely some similarities between cherry and sweet almond. P.160 for instance is supposed to be "sweet almond" and it smells way more like cherries than Cella IMHO.
 
I also have the red tub Cella, and it doesn't feel any different from the normal one. I would bet that the differences in the ingredient list is due to some EU regulation on packaging. They are always changing the labeling rules.
 
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