Surfactants usually form a single layer of molecules at the surface of water. We have shown that under certain conditions more than one layer may form. When this happens the system seems to become a powerful wetting agent (it will wet Teflon). A whole range of useful technological properties would follow from this, e.g. more effective detergency, and since the phenomenon seems to be associated with more charged ions such as calcium and aluminium, hard water would enhance detergency in contrast to the usual reduction. It is important to be able to extend this behaviour to more surfactants. There is also a drive to use renewable materials. The methyl ester sulphonates are renewable from palm oil and we have shown that they have the interesting ability to form multillayers. We propose to examine the effect of the calcium(magnesium)/aluminium balance on the multilayering phenomeno