Speaker Interview: Geoffrey Stijfs, Sappi Europe

Q: You’ve been part of the Cleaning Products Europe community for a while now, both as a speaker and a sponsor. What keeps bringing you back to this particular conference?

To me, Cleaning Products Europe is the place where the status quo can be challenged. New ideas and gradual (or acute, with the coming of artificial intelligence) changes to the cleaning industry are highlighted in a way that is met with curiosity and constructive criticism, rather than being dismissed as wishful thinking.

Organisation-wise, I find Cleaning Products Europe one of the most streamlined and welcoming conferences I’ve had the pleasure of visiting in my career. The attendee pool is well-balanced between fast moving consumer goods manufacturers, raw material suppliers, and regulatory body representatives, giving depth to each discussion, from multiple angles in the value chain.

In summary, Cleaning Products Europe is the ideal place to put your ambitions on the spot in front of a well-rounded representation for all industry aspects. Doing so has given me the courage, knowledge, and reassurance that my ambitions were grounded from my context to the right context, while still remaining true to the goal of pushing the industry forward.

Q: For those who may not know your company as well yet, how would you describe what you do — and what problem you’re most passionate about solving in fabric and laundry care?

Sappi is a woodfibre company that unlocks the power of trees for sustainable solutions in commodity applications. Aside from paper and pulp solutions, this vision translated into a well-rounded biomaterials portfolio. One such biomaterial is fibrillated cellulose, a highly branched, 100% natural cellulose fibre that has an extremely high surface area.

One of the biggest challenges the cleaning industry faces, in my opinion, is the high impact transportation has on the ecological footprint of fast moving consumer goods. If laundry detergent, in an ideal world, would only be produced in a solid format, the overall logistic overhang for that market segment could be reduced by over 90%... Sadly, there are limitations to solid detergents, such as their cleaning power and incompatibility with certain key ingredients.

Back to fibrillated cellulose. Our fibres’ surface area binds significantly more ingredients to its surface, compared to other binders in this product format, boosting cleaning power. Our cellulose is also natural, meaning it can resist chemical breakdown from more volatile ingredients, improving compatibility. Overall, I’m proud to share that we have seen success in commercialising a solid detergent sheet format with superior cleaning performance, with one of our key customers.

Q: You spoke at Cleaning Products Europe before and even treated the audience to a live demo on stage, which people still talk about. What do you remember most from that experience?

It was a bold decision to demonstrate this new product format on-stage, but it convinced people that our vision was materializing! This sparked many… many conversations, from regulatory aspects to suggestions on product format and marketing language, to collaboration proposals to test compatibilities with specialized ingredients, and more. Overall, I would say it was this demonstration that really landed the idea in people’s minds, and I contribute a lot of our success in this product format to that moment.

I remember the demo itself very well indeed. Funnily enough, one detail that stood out the most to me was the yellow pants my volunteering assistant wore that day! Somehow, I believe that added to the magic of the moment.

I was very nervous, hoping my demo detergent sheet samples (prototypes, at the time) would dissolve properly and generate enough foam, so people would understand it is a cleaning product.

Q: You’ve mentioned before that Cleaning Products Europe has led to real commercial opportunities for you. Without naming names, how did being at the conference help you connect with the right people and turn conversations into tangible outcomes?

I attribute this in large part to the organization. Smithers is very involved in selecting the right attendees for the event. When speaking, the organisation doesn’t just reserve a slot for you and leave it at that. They try to understand your topics, see if they fit with the general flow of the day, and request input into who you would ideally like to be present when you speak. They work based off that, and it works. It’s how I met our key customer, now ready to commercialise their fibrillated cellulose-based detergent sheets.

Aside from the expertly curated attendee pool, the open-minded attitude the conference likes taking results in an excellent cocktail for new business development.

Q: This year you’re coming back with a completely new topic. Without giving too much away, what sparked your interest in Microfibrillated Cellulose as a game-changer in fabric care?

Indeed… I want to express my thanks to connections I made at Cleaning Products Europe, many of which helped me a great deal in arriving at this new topic.

The commercialisation I landed through CPEU also got me promoted to Head of Sales for our fibrillated cellulose products in the wider homecare area. As part of my new responsibilities to build and grow our homecare business, I started digging into what is at the core of innovation at the fast moving consumer goods manufacturers. That gave me three general directions: consumer experience (visible clean and noticeable freshness), sustainable innovation, and cost saving.

Ideally, you’d like to do all three at once, right? So the next logical question is: ‘what ingredient is essential for consumer experience, yet bears high cost in use?’ And the answer is fragrance… I’ll explain during my talk how we continued from there!

Q: When we talk about laundry performance, consumers often describe it in very simple terms—how it looks, how it smells, how it feels. Why do those sensory cues still matter so much when developing innovative formulations?

Consider the following: How do you judge if your laundry is clean? You use your eyes to see if the stains are gone, and the fragrance inside of the laundry detergent provides a second confirmation that the washing was successfully completed. If it looks clean and smells fresh, it feels clean.

Being a manufacturer, a lot of selling points to consumers are based on these two central values. Think ‘deep clean’, or ‘long-lasting freshness’, as opposed to ‘ease-of-ironing after washing’. The first two claims are essential nowadays (and will remain so in the future), whereas the latter is more ‘nice to have’.

Imagine you take a piece of clothing out of your closet, and it has been laying there for a while. When you put it on, you smell a faint, yet pleasant freshness, as if the clothing was washed yesterday. This is the type of thing that keeps the consumer coming back to your product. The question for manufacturers is ‘How can I achieve this, without incurring too much cost?’, because price kills all value at some point.

Q: Fragrance, freshness, softness—these are emotional drivers for consumers. How does your upcoming talk help formulators think differently about balancing performance, sustainability, and user experience?

I’m going into the CPEU conference with the aim to share my ambitions, as I know from experience that it will bear fruit in time, through finding the right context. In particular, this year I wish to challenge the idea that the use of biomaterials impart a significant cost to manufacturers (and by consequence, consumers), while showing inferior performance. With my talk, I’m challenging the belief that cost saving, enhanced consumer experience and sustainable innovation can go hand-in-hand… if you find the right place to innovate in.

Q: Given the size and setup of Cleaning Products Europe, what kind of conversations are you most looking forward to having with delegates this year?

I always enjoy when someone actually disagrees with what is presented, as it shows critical thinking of the audience. I appreciate the most, also when they happen to me. They may seem uncomfortable at first, but you always take more from those interactions than when somebody simply agrees with your views.

For example, when I was pitching the detergent sheets, several people told me that they would not be compatible with enzymes, even though I thought they would be. Turns out the heat from the sheet production does indeed reduce their performance to a large extent. There are obviously ways around that, but it does surely add a layer of complexity to reaching the right product format. Now that I know this, I appreciate this person’s input that much more for it.

Q: If someone is on the fence about attending Cleaning Products Europe this year, what would you say they’d gain from being in the room—especially compared to just reading about trends online?

You will see first-hand that the cleaning industry – while absolutely massive in size – is comprised of people with the same shared enthusiasm for the market as you. You will see that nonsense is addressed as such, while ambition and conceptual thinking is embraced and supported. If you believe you have a good idea/product/concept, pitch it to the CPEU organisers and hold it up against the light for industry experts to see. The return is infinitely more valuable than the investment.