Introduction

The 66^th SEPAWA Congress took place together with the 15^th European Detergents Conference (EDC) at the Estrel Congress Center in Berlin.

It is widely known: the SEPAWA Congress together with the EDC is the most important meeting place for the detergent/ cleaning product, cosmetic, and perfume industries in Europe. Berlin has become an established convention site. The wide acceptance is made clear alone by the fact that around 3300 congress and exhibition visitors were registered during these three days. At the same time, participants from more than 60 countries attest to the increasingly international significance of the event. The number of companies increased to 310. These figures show that both the number of persons attending and the number of exhibitors were new records.

The content-related excellence of the congress is also important for acceptance. Thus, within the scope of the European Detergents Conference, conceptualized by the Division of Detergent Chemistry of the German Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh) eight highly scientific talks were given on the ‘Smart Approaches for Detergents in a Fast Changing World’. During the SEPAWA scientific conference, which dealt with the latest research results of relevance for the detergent/cleaning product, cosmetic and perfume industries, including regulatory framework conditions, 32 talks were presented. A permanent part of the congress program is the series of presentation blocks in the forum for innovation. This year there were 69 talks, due to the increasing demand also in parallel sessions, offering the opportunity to present the most recent results of their developments. A total of 43 poster presentations submitted by next-generation scientists from universities and academic institutions together with industrial researchers and institutional bodies of our industries.