The fat stripped from slaughtered cattle is giving soap-plant manager Jerry Hook indigestion.
Hook runs a Colgate-Palmolive Co plant that depends on the tallow to make Irish Spring soap. Normally a low-cost waste product, the material is no longer cheap. Prices have doubled in 10 months, boosting costs for the US$1.4 billion-a-year US soap industry at a time when few manufacturers can raise prices.
"We bring it in by the truckload," Hook said from Colgate's Kansas City, Kansas, plant. "Tallow is the main ingredient. Substituting something else might be an option, but the cost could be prohibitive."
Tallow prices have shot up mostly because of a drop in the number of cattle being slaughtered for beef. Prices probably will remain high until November or December, when government figures suggest that slaughterhouses will step up production, analysts said.
For now, soapmakers have few alternatives. The prices of vegetable fats such as palm and soybean oil have soared because of reduced harvests in North America, Asia and Australia. Making soap from non-animal fats requires different manufacturing processes from tallow, adding to the expense, analysts said.
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