Making Quality Cosmetics

Alastair Gilchrist is a graduate in chemistry from the University of Manchester. He started his working life in the quality control department of Sterling Winthrop in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. After a few years he joined Bristol Myers Company as a development chemist working on Clairol hair care and hair colour brands as well as Mum deodorants and Mr Muscle household products. An opportunity arose to become manufacturing manager where making cosmetics became Alastair's day job. Mr Muscle was sold but Clairol relaunched Herbal Essences which brought a whole new set of challenges in a factory not ready for what became a very successful brand. Alastair successfully led the re-engineering of the manufacturing department to cope with the new production demands learning a lot about hygienic engineering in a short space of time.
After the sale of Clairol to Proctor and Gamble Alastair set up an independent consultancy, Gilchrist Technical Services Limited and he has continued to work mainly in the cosmetics industry since 2003 helping companies start-up cosmetic manufacturing or improve the facilities that they have. Experience gained while working on projects in the pharmaceutical industry and performing a key role in the design, build and qualification of a vaccine manufacturing facility has been invaluable in writing compliance sections of the text.