How to Pull an Ingredient Percentage From a Supplier PDF

Every maker has opened a supplier PDF looking for one number, the actual concentration of an ingredient, and found instead three pages of hazard pictograms, a paragraph about eye irritation, and a percentage buried in a table with no obvious label. Here's how to actually find it and what to do once you have it.

Start with Section 3, not the cover page

If the document is a safety data sheet, skip straight to Section 3, "Composition/Information on Ingredients." An SDS has 16 standardized sections, and this is the one that matters for your filing. Everything before it, hazard identification, first aid measures, is useful for handling and storage but won't give you a percentage.

Inside Section 3 you're looking for a table or list with columns something like: chemical name, CAS number, and percentage or percentage range. Sometimes it's formatted cleanly. Often it isn't, especially with SDS documents translated from another language or generated by older software.

When the percentage is a range

You'll frequently see something like "30 to 60%" instead of a fixed number. This is normal and not a red flag, it usually reflects that the supplier reformulates slightly batch to batch or is protecting proprietary ratios. For your own concentration math, use the midpoint unless the ingredient sits near a Hotlist restriction limit, in which case ask the supplier directly for the number used in your specific lot. Document which figure you used and why, so if a filing is ever questioned you can show your reasoning.

When there's no percentage at all

Some SDS documents, particularly for single, well-characterized substances sold at high purity, just say "100%" or don't break out a range because the product is the substance. Others, especially blends or trade-secret formulations, will show a component list but withhold exact percentages, citing confidential business information. In that case:

• Contact the supplier and ask for a certificate of analysis or a technical data sheet, which sometimes has what the SDS omits.
• Ask specifically for the number you need for regulatory filing purposes. Suppliers who sell into regulated markets usually have this on hand even if it's not printed publicly.
• If a component still won't give you a number and it's a minor player in a blend, note it and move forward with the components you can quantify, flagging the gap.

Watch for trade names hiding as chemical names

Sometimes the "chemical name" column in Section 3 is actually a trade name, especially for extracts, complexes, or specialty actives. This is where CAS number becomes your anchor. If two documents call something different names but share a CAS number, they're the same substance. If a component has no CAS number at all, that's common for many botanical extracts, and it just means you'll rely on the INCI name alone for identification.

Mapping trade name to INCI

Trade names never appear on a cosmetic notification. Whatever the label says, "GlycoSoft 200" or similar, you need the actual INCI term underneath. Most technical data sheets list the INCI name somewhere near the top or in a small print block, often labeled "INCI Name" directly. If it's missing, the supplier's regulatory or technical contact can supply it in an email, which is worth keeping on file alongside the PDF.

A quick checklist for pulling the number

Step	What you're looking for
1	Locate Section 3 (SDS) or the composition table (TDS)
2	Confirm INCI name, not trade name
3	Note CAS number if present
4	Record percentage or range
5	If a blend, multiply each sub-component by your use level
6	Flag anything with no percentage for supplier follow-up

Once you have the number

The percentage you pull is only useful once it's carried into your finished-product math. If the ingredient is itself a blend, multiply each component's internal share by how much of the blend you're using, the same logic applies whether it's a preservative system, a surfactant blend, or a botanical complex. From there it gets checked against the relevant restricted list for whatever market you're filing in, Canada's Hotlist being the one most makers hit first.

This part of the process, hunting through PDFs, matching trade names to INCI, doing the multiplication by hand, is exactly where Cosmetic Comply saves the most time. Feed it your ingredient list and it maps everything to INCI and CAS, expands blends, and carries the percentages through automatically, so you're not re-deriving the same numbers every time a formula shifts slightly.

Keep a copy of every SDS and TDS you pull a number from. Not because anyone's likely to ask, but because six months from now when you tweak the formula, you'll want the paper trail showing exactly where each figure came from.