Who's afraid of Virginia Woolfat?

... or maybe tallow was the flunky ingredient?

There does seem to be something iffy about the use of tallow in the UK. I say UK but we've seen it happen across Europe, too. I'm citing the culmination of snippets I've built up from forums and from googling on the matter but I believe that sourcing of tallow for use in beauty products has become problematic due to potential disease within the donor animal. Consistent supply may not be possible. Love for anyone with concrete information to chime in.

One interesting fact: use of palm oil in beauty products, especially soap is probably as old its mass-production. Current owner of PZ Cussons, for example, which is the PZ part (or Paterson Zochonis) was a company formed back in 1884 with the specific purpose of exporting palm oil out of the Sierra Leone Colony & Protectorate and later from Ghana & Kenya ... for use predominantly in the soap-making business.

Interestingly, just a short number of years ago PZ Cussons closed down their famous British plant and moved production to Malaysia. Cue @donnie_arko's snippet above about Arko moving production out to Malaysia. Seems they're making soap cheaper than anyone else could possibly.

Back to supply ... if everybody else is doing one thing, it's very difficult to do something else at the same scale.
 
I've had a detailed look at the ingredient lists of the soaps that I own and found that the new MWF looks very close to T&H Sandalwood (latest offering) which I enjoy very much indeed and that soap came as quite a surprise, given poor reputation from some years ago!

This bodes well ...

MWF
Sodium Palmate, Potassium Palmate, Aqua, Potassium Stearate, Potassium Palm Kernelate, Sodium Cocoate, Glycerin, Sodium Stearate, Sodium Palm Kernelate, Palm Kernel Acid, Parfum, Sodium Chloride, Lanolin, Titanium Dioxide, Tetrasodium Etidronate, Pentesodium Pentetate, Sodium Gluconate, Tetrasodium EDTA & Limonene

T&H Sandalwood
Sodium palmate, Potassium palmate, Aqua, Potassium stearate, Potassium palm kernelate, Sodium cocoate, Glycerin, Sodium stearate, Sodium palm kernelate, Parfum, Palm kernel acid, Titanium dioxide, Sodium chloride, Tetrasodium etidronate, Potassium pentetate, Sodium gluconate, Tetrasodium EDTA, Citronellol, Coumarin

Not to put myself in direct opposition to @PLANofMAN for sake of an argument, quite the contrary; for me, I tend to prefer soaps that leave me with a taut feeling. What I like about MWF is an almost unique behaviour whereby I get that but without dryness, something I ascribe to the lanolin, and I say that because I get similar from LEA stick and the Wilkinson Sword stick. In some respects I'm rather hoping for that extra dryness.

I particularly like vintage soap, especially Boots and Culmak, and what I don't know is the ingredient set because they're from a time when ingredient listing was not mandatory. I have an ingredient list for an older Culmak (not current formulation) that I picked up from a forum and it bears a lot of similarity with Edwin Jagger & Muhle ... and this new MWF formulation.

Again, this bodes well ... I hope.

On the flip, MWF has just become "yet another much of a muchness (crap shoot?) British hard soap of the same formulation as everyone else" ... but with lanolin? Of course it won't be the MWF that we know, but it will still be MWF. Personally, I'm really looking forward to trying it out.

... or, it might just be another Trumpers-style fail and forever be known as the King that lost his crown.
 
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Another one bites the dust. I must admit I thought Mitchel’s would be the last to lose the tallow. I think that just leaves D.R. Harris & Salter as the last traditional brands with tallow included. Time to stock up, methinks.
 
NatJag said:
That made me chuckle. 3 mins after @Paul's review. Order in!
I read Mantic59's comparison of the old and new Tabac formula, he did think the new one was a little more foamy. I'll be interested to see how this pans out. I'm not going to panic buy.
Click to expand...

Haha! Yeah, I'd actually already put the order in, but good to have that positive feedback ... even if he is a vendor ;)

I've got both tallow & veg Tabac and I like both. Hopefully, this will be the same. Times move on. To example that further, I have several generations of Boots shaving soap from vintage sources and a couple of generations of Culmak. There are differences, but of course there are ... times change.
 
Yes, Palm oil is always going to be as contentious as animal product. The trouble is, it's in almost everything from shave soap, bathroom products generally, to peanut butter, ready meals and a million other things edible or not. They cottoned on long ago to ethical consumers trying to avoid it and now there's about 30 different names they can legally use when they list it in the ingredients. Not all are as obvious as "sodium PALMitate".

www.ran.org

Palm Oil's Dirty Secret: The Many Ingredient Names For Palm Oil - The Understory - Rainforest Action Network

Did you see the palm oil infographic we released today? I hope so! If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out. Were you shocked to find out that palm...
www.ran.org www.ran.org
 
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