Supermarkets are full of low-quality plastic toothbrushes sold at discount prices. If you want to put wooden oral care products on the market, you must find a competent supplier that can create top-quality wooden toothbrush handles that consumers are willing to spend more to have than plastic ones.
To produce perfect products, the manufacturer must be able to select the right raw materials and prepare them properly. Let’s discuss the topic in this article.
Wooden toothbrush handles: how to get the highest quality
A top-quality product derives from the best raw material. Nature gives us hundreds of types of wood, each with its own characteristics and peculiarities that must be considered when creating a specific item. The right type of wood can have great impact on cost, performance, and the look and feel of the end product.
Based on its experience, a reliable manufacturer can advise you about the best wood to use when producing wooden toothbrushes and oral care products.
Only a producer that operates exclusively in the timber sector can guarantee the highest level of precision and knowledge of this special raw material. Wood requires high competency and special machining to be prepared and managed properly to obtain perfect final products.
For example, the moisture content of wood significantly affects its performance and workability. A precise level of humidity, usually from 8% to 12%, is required to avoid shrinkage or expansion. A reliable supplier should have in-house special drying chambers to ensure optimal results.
Each chamber should have a built-in control unit with a heating, spray, dehumidification, and air circulation system with the possibility to adjust them according to the starting moisture content and the type of wood to treat.
If the supplier manages the drying process internally rather than through outsourcing, it can guarantee maximum quality and longevity of the product. Furthermore, having an in-house drying chamber allows the manufacturer to treat batches of wood of the same size as the batch it needs to manufacture. Hence, it can prepare only the needed material on demand, avoiding storing unused wood for any extended period of time.
Preparing wood properly is also essential for safety and application of finishes
Wooden toothbrush handles must be carefully sanded to fix possible imperfections and allow the stain and finish to penetrate the wooden surface. This process distinguishes just an acceptable result from an excellent one.
Moreover, correct sanding produces toothbrush handles with no splinters.
You should ensure your supplier uses a natural process free from chemicals to make the surface smooth and safe for contact with people’s gums and oral mucosa. It can be a painstaking process that may take few hours in order to respect wood fibers and provide safe oral care items.
Each item should then be coated with a special FDA-approved formula that seals the wooden fibers, providing antibacterial treatment and being water repellent.
Strict quality controls must be in place to ensure wooden oral care products are hygienic and safe for consumers’ health. Your supplier should combine automatic control systems and human quality control over raw materials as well as production to ensure precision and consistency.
A reliable partner pays great attention to sustainability
Be sure your partner uses only FSC-certified timber collected following strict rules imposed by the market to fight illegal logging, deforestation, and global warming.
Moreover, if your supplier:
- harvests wood from nearby forests
- has production plants where wood is collected
- promotes the use of fast-growing timber
- uses scraps of bigger wooden items to produce toothbrush handles
it means it works hard to reduce the company’s carbon footprint and makes the entire production process more eco-friendly, leading to a shorter supply chain that offers better competition.
The Minelli Group has been FSC certified since 1998 when it was not yet a standard. We purchase wood only from the origin, with no middleman involved, and a sawmill located next to the forest controls the carbon footprint of the overall process.
Thanks to our Scrap Management System, whether we produce a cutting board, a knife chop, or a bath brush, we optimize scraps from production and obtain wooden blocks that are carefully stocked for future production of smaller items, such as toothbrush handles or interdentals.
All our products are individually checked with a sophisticated automatic system of visual control with eight infrared video cameras, so you can be sure you receive the highest precision and accuracy with no risk for users.
If you need further information or have a project in mind, do not hesitate to contact us!
