Croldino

Croldino is a German maker of hand cleansers for heavy dirt, based in Solingen. Its range runs from a tube of cleansing cream for household and hobby use to workshop hand-wash pastes sold in ten-litre buckets, alongside a hand soap, a hand disinfectant and a cleaning stone for hard surfaces. The company dates its work to 1928 and uses the line "effective skin and surface cleaning since 1928" as its tagline [1].

Croldino sits at the edge of the beauty category: it is a hand-care and cleaning brand rather than a cosmetics house in the usual sense, and its products are aimed at oil, grease and lubricant stains rather than at grooming. The brand is active, with a live website, a current product range and a commercial register entry shown as active.

The brand's own account of its origins is brief. Croldino says it has been developing and making products for stubborn dirt "for almost 100 years", and it places the start of that work in 1928 [2]. A pharmaceutical distributor that stocks the brand's hand-cleaning cream repeats the date, describing the product as proven since 1928 for heavily soiled hands after work on cars, in the workshop, in the garden or around the house [9]. The founders of the business are not named in any available account.

The brand's ownership structure involves two closely linked Solingen companies, and the sources describe it in slightly different ways.

The legal notice on croldino.de names the business as Croldino e. K. at Martinstraße 22 in Solingen, with Andreas Durst as the responsible person, and gives its entry at the Wuppertal local court as HR 22 589 [3]. The abbreviation "e. K." marks a registered sole trader under German law. A commercial-register aggregator lists the entity under that same register number, HRA 22589, as Croldino Schneider e.K, with Andreas Durst of Solingen as owner and the manufacture of cleaning agents as its business [10]. The two names refer to the same register entry, address and owner; the aggregator's last recorded change dates from September 2008, so it may not reflect a later change of name.

The question of who operates the brand day to day has a second answer. The "Shop" link on croldino.de leads to the DURSOL SHOP, run by Dursol-Fabrik Otto Durst GmbH & Co. KG from the same Martinstraße address, whose managing director is also Andreas Durst [6]. A 2014 press release issued for DURSOL GmbH announced that the company was adding the Croldino hand-cleaning and hand-care line to its programme and referred to the products as Croldino products from DURSOL [7]. No source describes a formal parent-and-subsidiary relationship between Croldino e. K. and the Dursol company, so the brand's corporate parent is not established.

In practice the brands share a storefront. The DURSOL SHOP sells Croldino next to the metal-care brand DURSOL, the car-care brand AUTOSOL and LASZMOE [4]. The Instagram link on croldino.de points to the AUTOSOL account rather than to a channel of Croldino's own.

Croldino sums up its approach as "gentle to nature, powerful against dirt" [2]. The website groups its products under three headings: household and hobby, professional use, and all surfaces. That split reflects the brand's two audiences, home users dealing with garden or kitchen stains and tradespeople cleaning oil and grease from their hands at the end of a shift.

The products sit at the everyday end of the market. The company lists the German drugstore chains Rossmann and Budni, the retailers KODI and Manufactum, and the distributor Dr. Bosshammer Pharma as stockists [1].

The best-known product is the Pflegende Reinigungscreme, a cleansing cream sold in a 100 ml tube. Croldino describes it as a high-strength, all-purpose cleansing cream for heavily soiled or discoloured hands. According to the company, it contains no abrasive particles and is made without parabens, preservatives or silicones.

For heavier work the brand makes two hand-wash pastes, both sold in 500 ml tins and 10-litre buckets. The Profi-Handwaschpaste uses mild scrubbing particles to lift oil, grease and lubricants. The ULTRA-FINE Handwaschpaste targets the same kinds of dirt, and the company presents it as particularly gentle on the skin. Croldino says both pastes are free of silicones and dyes, are pH-neutral to the skin, and have had their skin tolerance confirmed by dermatological testing.

The range also includes an antibacterial liquid hand soap, which the brand calls a highly concentrated soap with a fresh scent, and a 125 ml hand disinfectant. For the disinfectant, Croldino says it works within 30 seconds, removes 99.9 % of bacteria and is effective against enveloped viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 [1]. Outside personal care, the Universal-Putzstein is a 400 g cleaning stone that, according to the brand, cleans and polishes glass, plastic and metal surfaces.

No third-party certifications are documented for the range. The company's website lists named in-house contacts for research and development and for product safety.

Croldino is active. Its website is live with a current product list and stockist names, and its hand-cleaning products are offered with current prices in the shop linked from that site [5]. The commercial register entry for the business is shown as active [10]. No dated product launches or announcements have been documented in recent years, so the brand's current activity rests on its ongoing commercial availability. Counting from the 1928 start the company gives, the brand reaches its centenary in 2028.