When BioHygiene launched in 2016, the world was shifting. Environmental awareness was rising, and sustainability was moving from the margins to the mainstream, shaping consumer expectations, tenders, and brand reputation.
At the same time, businesses faced economic uncertainty and cost pressures, especially in cleaning, where reliability mattered and margins were tight. The industry struggled to balance environmental ambition with operational reality: eco-friendly products often meant higher cost, inconsistent performance, and increased risk.
BioHygiene was created to close that gap. Backed by over 30 years of biotechnology expertise, the challenge was translating advanced science into cleaning products that performed consistently, scaled affordably, and worked for the people using them every day; a challenge that would define the next decade and establish BioHygiene as the UK’s leading biotech cleaning brand
Entering a Market That Wasn’t Ready…. Yet (2016)
Early attempts to bring biotechnology directly into the cleaning market revealed a hard truth: scientific innovation alone doesn’t drive adoption. Cleaning is an operational discipline. Decisions are shaped by cost-in-use, ease of training, compliance risk, and whether a product performs reliably across hundreds or thousands of sites.
To move faster, BioHygiene brought together two worlds that rarely worked closely enough: microbiologists and formulation experts, alongside people who had spent their careers inside the cleaning industry.
That partnership accelerated learning dramatically.
It shifted the focus towards fundamentals: fewer products, broader application, clear differentiation, and technology that distributors, operators, and businesses could trust. BioHygiene was positioned not as a “nice-to-have” eco alternative, but as premium environmental technology at operationally viable prices, delivering consistent performance across sites. This period of reflection and strategy allowed BioHygiene to move beyond theory and into real-world application, proving how science could support the needs of modern businesses.
Removing the Barriers to Change
One of the biggest obstacles to sustainable cleaning has always been entry barriers: price, performance, complexity, and training burden.
By combining scientific expertise with deep market understanding, BioHygiene tackled those barriers head-on.
Rather than launching dozens of niche products, the range was deliberately narrowed. Multi-use formulations replaced bloated cupboards. Colour coding made adoption intuitive. Dilution rates were pushed further than the market norm; not for novelty, but to reduce cost-in-use, packaging, and logistics impact in one move.
This philosophy led to the brand’s first major innovation: stronger dilution without sacrificing performance. Moving beyond traditional ratios wasn’t just a sustainability win; it fundamentally changed the economics. Less product, less plastic, fewer deliveries, and lower lifetime cost.
From there, the evolution continued. BioHygiene began assessing not just performance, but CO₂e impact, aquatic toxicity, and total environmental footprint. That thinking later led to industry-first innovations such as biotech water-soluble paper sachets. What started as a packaging decision became a systems shift.
COVID: A Defining Stress Test
Four years into the brand’s journey, the pandemic hit. Demand for hygiene solutions surged, while supply chains fractured and key ingredients became unavailable for many manufacturers. Cleaning moved from background operation to front-line priority, particularly in sectors that remained open, such as facilities management.
With a strong UK supply chain built around naturally derived, sustainable raw materials, BioHygiene demonstrated resilience when it mattered most. Performance, safety, and availability weren’t optional, they were essential. COVID didn’t change BioHygiene’s direction, but it validated it even further into the market.
Teaching the Market, Not Chasing It
One message became clear early on: if sustainability cost more, cleaned worse, or complicated operations, it wouldn’t scale. Stronger dilution reduced cost and plastic simultaneously. Concentrated formats evolved into sachets options to remove waste, improve consistency, and lower transport emissions. Product ranges were refined, not inflated.
Each innovation followed the same principle: price should never be the reason a better technology fails. That mindset helped unlock adoption at scale, turning environmental cleaning from a specialist choice into a practical one.
But the market has followed, and with more businesses embracing “cleaner, leaner, greener” values, new challenges have emerged. The cleaning industry, after more than a century dominated by harsh synthetic chemicals, greenwashing remains prevalent, and understanding of biotechnology is still inconsistent.
That’s why BioHygiene goes beyond removing barriers to change. We invest in education, transparency, and science-led insight, giving businesses the confidence to ask the right questions and make informed decisions. Because biotechnology isn’t a trend. It’s a science.
Having spent much of my career in the cleaning industry, it was clear why many environmental ranges struggled to scale. They were often more expensive, less consistent in performance, and positioned alongside legacy chemistry that manufacturers were understandably cautious to disrupt.
What made BioHygiene different was the combination of three things. First, a deep understanding of the market and how cleaning actually works on-site, from cost-in-use and training to consistency across multiple locations. Second, a technical team with decades of experience applying biology in far tougher environments than cleaning, including wastewater treatment, industrial effluent, and waste management. That expertise allowed us to select the right biology and build genuinely effective, differentiated formulations that outperformed traditional chemistry in real-world use.
The third factor was intent. There was a genuine commitment to creating something credible, not just something with green logos. Technology choices were made by considering aquatic and human toxicology, CO₂e impact, packaging, and overall environmental footprint, not as marketing claims, but as design principles.
That combination, understanding the market, delivering products that work, and caring deeply about the full environmental impact, is what enabled BioHygiene to scale without compromise.
Looking ahead, our focus is on going further. Leveraging our understanding of biology to stay ahead of innovation, adapting to new ways of cleaning, including automation and robotics, and continuing to invest in support, education, and training; making it easier and more accessible for the people who use our products every day.Erum Ahmed, Chief Commercial Officer at Biological Preparations
Looking Ahead
Ten years on, BioHygiene stands at the forefront of sustainable cleaning, proof that science and practicality can go hand in hand. What began as a challenge, bringing biotechnology into a risk-averse market, has grown into a decade of innovation, simplification, and education. As businesses continue to balance performance, cost, and environmental responsibility, BioHygiene remains committed to providing solutions that work, helping organisations make informed choices, and shaping industries to achieve where cleaner, leaner, and greener results without trade off.
