The EU-ban of phosphates in DW detergent - I didn't even notice

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I found Fairy doesn’t work well in my Miele dishwasher as it’s far too high foaming. You can hear the machine gurgling as there’s nothing but foam in the sump.
 
I too have had Fairy foam up in my Bosch, and have had the machine go into a suds lock on a couple of occasions, where I opened the door to add an item, or checked to see what the problem was.

I thought dishwasher detergents simply had to be low-foaming so that the machine worked properly? i.e. non-ionic surfactants.

Which ingredients are causing the excess suds? Are they adding anionic surfactants to the mix?
 
I quite liked the older Fairy 'Tab-in-tab' tablets, which were hard tablets with a compressed blue powder in an indentation (like mortar on a brick).

Regarding Fairy Platinum pods: they also 'flavoured' the crockery! Awful.
 
I'm giving Sun Expert Gel a try

They've launched two versions of Sun Expert Gel here now too.
I thought it might be interesting to give it a try. It was in Tesco for €8.00 reduced from €12.00 RRP

iej-2017090318120400733_1.jpg
 
It looks like a rocket ship ready for blast off!

"Active Oxygen Pearls" - does that mean there's bleaching agent in it?
 
Sun expert gel

@Rolls_rapid: Yes, Sun expert gel's pearls are made of a bleaching agent and it's the only gel detergent to clean tea and other bleachable stains completely (Finish classic gel, which was the only dishwasher detergent still available to contain some chlorine, changed to a non-chlorine formulation at some point at the end of 2016). I gave it a try but it makes way too much foam in my Miele G562 and I passed it to my mom, who has a more recent Miele dishwasher and loved it so much that she's been using only that ever since. You mentioned you used Sun professional powder - I'm tempted to try it, did you get any good result in your machine?
BTW, I live in a hard-water area in Nothern Italy and refill the salt tank in my machine whenever needed, I use Pril phosphate-free tablets (the Italian name for Somat) and a phosphate-free, supermarket-brand powdered detergent made by McBride that my G562 seems to enjoy much better than tablets, and I always get excellent results!
 
Sun Professional Powder

Not used since before 2012.

I did get good results in terms of removing tea stains from mugs, but starchy pasta was better removed with Finish or Lidl's bio formulations. Sun bio tablets were pretty equal to Finish, I thought.

Re: Sun Expert Gel:

If only Unilever would sell it in the UK - they'd probably 'clean up!' Finish Gel is useless - nice fragrance, but useless on bleachable stains.

I despair at Unilever's marketing department's logic. It's nuts!
 
And...

Because Sun Professional Powder was sold in larger cartons, and thus took longer to get through, I got the distinct impression that the cleanability of the detergent dropped as time went on. Probably the chlorine bleach was evaporating into the atmosphere just by sitting there. Took best part of a year to get through the stuff!

I remember one of the individually wrapped tablet brands (possibly Sun bio tablets or Fairy 'Tab-in-Tab') ballooned it's wrapper. I presumed the oxygen bleach was escaping from the package.
 
The UK sun professional products don't look the same as the consumer ones here. It's possible they're not the same formulation at all.

Persil Dishwasher tablets aren't sold here btw. They appeared very briefly and were replaced again by Sun.

I don't remember Sun nor being available here but there seems to be a bit of a push on at the moment as it's taking a good bit of shelf space from Finish.

It's good to see R&B, P&G and Unilever with strong products though as otherwise we're stuck with a duopoly.

I would really like to see Henkel bringing in some.detergent products here though. I suspect the "UK & Ireland" market segmentation will be gone soon anyway wirh Brexit. I would guess Ireland will be rolled in with Benelux or France rather than the UK.

It should be interesting as it's not always entirely clear where the detergents are made. The final packing and branding isn't that big a deal and many of the national brands are just the same stuff with a slightly different brand name or label.
 
"not always entirely clear where detergents are made&#34

Exactly.

When I was trying to find out where the currently useless Finish Gel was made, I came across something in the Web, which basically said that manufacturers can opt to have products made in one country, for the distribution in other countries.

The old chlorine Finish Gel was bar-coded starting with '5'; i.e UK.
The new hopeless stuff is coded '8'... Italy

"The first two or three digits of an EAN-13 barcode identify the country in which the manufacturer's identification code was assigned. They do not necessarily indicate the country in which the goods were manufactured."

 
I recently finished off the last of my Finish Gel with Chlorine (Blue Slime) and have tried the new formula (Yellow Slime) a few times. The Gel hasnt been as good since they obviously made it safer as for years it came with a lid that was push to open and any spillage would turn into a Light blue powdery crust. The version I just finished turned into a blue rubbery substance around the lid and didnt quite have the same smell.

I now just keep the yellow version for the gentle cycle with glassware after a dinner party and have wine glasses to use day to day that go cloudy from the Finish Quantum tabs.
 
@rolls_rapid

It's usually an 87 code which is the Netherlands because it's a huge node for logistics.

Also Benckiser was a Dutch company and Unilever is an Anglo-Dutch company with joint HQ.

The UK is only 50
Quite a few other countries start with 5 too.
 

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