Speciality Chemicals Magazine SEP / OCT 2024 | Page 50

Suppliers to the personal care industry are integrating megatrends in customer demand in their product development . Andrew Warmington reports from In-Cosmetics Global 2024

Addressing the megatrends in personal care

Suppliers to the personal care industry are integrating megatrends in customer demand in their product development . Andrew Warmington reports from In-Cosmetics Global 2024

Biodegradable . Biobased . Natural . Renewable . Gentle . GMO-free . Ethical . And , above all else , sustainable . These have gone from being buzzwords to being part of what suppliers of personal care ingredients address as a matter of course in their new product development , including the major chemical companies . It was all on show at the latest iteration of In- Cosmetics Global at Paris in April .

For Evonik , the focus was on its “ growing portfolio of biosolutions ” based on its many years of experience with ceramides and sphingolipids . The latest addition to these was Hairmimics , a ceramide containing traceable castor oil that mimics essential lipids in the hair to improve its strength and resilience . The company had launched the Ecohance programme in 2023 . The idea , a company representative said , “ not just to be biobased and biodegradable but to add more levels of sustainability , be it social or ethical aspects , upcycling , using side streams or waste streams , or using ecofriendly processes ”.
In Paris , Evonik added two new Ecohance products to bring the total to three . Ecohance Remo XP is a multifunctional rheology modifier for surfactant systems , which is made via a low-energy enzymatic process , mainly from wood waste . It won the Gold Award for Innovation in Ingredients at the In-Cosmetics Awards .
A wide variety of innovations were on show at Ashland ’ s booth
Second was Ecohance Soft Baobab for skin care , which is based on seeds left from wild harvesting of baobab in the ‘ Great Green Wall ’ of Africa ’ s Sahel region , purified or treated to reduce the level of cyclopropenoid fatty acids that make the oil inedible . Thus it does not use the fruits and compete with food production . Some of the profits are being reinvested in social and ecological projects in northern Ghana .
Sustainability , said Yann D ’ Hervé , head of the Care Solutions business line at the company ’ s press conference , will be fully integrated into Evonik ’ s next-generation portfolio .
The business is targeting > 50 % of sales coming from its Next Generation Solutions range by 2030 , with the technologies contributing to a 25 % reduction in CO 2 emissions
Tunable products
Ashland showcased a wide range of products from its platform technologies , which it claimed “ enable customers to respond to global megatrends and regulatory landscapes ” being renewable , natural , biodegradable , non-microplastic , non-GMO and vegan , as well as tunable and scalable to multiple
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