Glabridin or licorice extract: why these are two different purchases
One supplier's list says licorice extract, another says glabridin 90%, and the two prices are not comparable. What you are actually paying for, and what to put in the specification to get what you need.
A formulator asks for a brightening ingredient from licorice. A buyer finds two entries: licorice root extract at one price and glabridin 90% at a price of an entirely different order. Both answers are formally correct, and both can turn out to be wrong.
What sits behind the words
Licorice, Glycyrrhiza glabra, contains dozens of compounds. In cosmetics the brightening effect is associated above all with glabridin, a flavonoid that inhibits tyrosinase, an enzyme in the melanin pathway.
Licorice extract is a raw material in which glabridin may be a fraction of a per cent, or absent entirely if the extraction targeted something else. Glabridin 40 / 90 / 95% is a standardised product with a declared content of the active.
Why the percentage changes all the arithmetic
A formulator needs not a mass of raw material but a mass of active in the finished product. If the formula calls for a given glabridin concentration, then at 40 per cent purity you need twice the mass you would need at 90.
Comparing price per kilogram of raw material is therefore meaningless. What you compute is price per kilogram of active, and that is what you compare between suppliers. The expensive material often turns out cheaper on that basis, and it takes up less room in the formula as well.
Five points that belong in the specification
First: the INCI name and the botanical source. Second: the active content with the analytical method stated, usually HPLC. Third: the solvent and carrier, because they decide where the ingredient can be introduced at all.
Fourth: the document set — a batch COA, MSDS, allergen declaration, heavy metals, residual solvents, microbiology. Fifth: shelf life and storage conditions, because some flavonoids are sensitive to light and oxidation.
How it looks at a supplier
India's Sunpure Extracts, for instance, carries glabridin at three purities at once — 40, 90 and 95 per cent — and this is precisely the case where the grade is chosen by the formulator and not by procurement.
A practical note: request the COA not for the product in general but for the specific batch, and check the declared percentage against the analytical method. The gap between as specified and as analysed in this batch is where expectations diverge most often.