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Hi, this is Victoria Meyer. Welcome back to The Chemical Show, where chemicals means business. Today's episode focuses on the cosmetics and personal care business. If you're not in the industry, you might be wondering what the heck does chemicals have to do with cosmetics and personal care? And if you are in the industry, like many of my listeners in our audience, then you know the answer to that is everything. This past week. I attended the N Y S C C suppliers day.
That is the New York Society of Cosmetic Chemists Suppliers Day, which is held in New York city every year. It is the biggest North American conference and trade show where the chemical industry intersects and meets with the cosmetics and personal care industry. There are thousands of attendees and thousands of booths and a lot of buzz.
Formulators and cosmetic chemists from big brands and small brands are meeting with, Ingredient suppliers, chemical companies, packagers, all the service providers that meet together to fulfill the requirements for the personal care industry.
And at the event, you see some of the same chemical companies that you see at many other events, as well as a lot of small niche boutique and specialty chemical companies, innovators, raw material suppliers, and other folks that are there specifically to bring magic. And in the many cases, it really is magical to the personal care industry.
It was fun to walk the floor, to see what was happening, to hear the buzz, to see the new innovations, to talk to people that are doing some new and novel chemistries and creating some really cool products. That are eventually going to end up on store shelves.
And what was really awesome was just to witness the passion across that entire, um, across the entire event and people everywhere who are really passionate and interested in personal care in delivering products to real people, real consumers. And in fact, it's something, you know, We can all recognize, we touch and we feel, and we interact with on a very personal basis every day. And so that makes this event really unique and really important.
In today's episode, First of all, I want to get a shout out to the NYSCC organization and all the people that work together to put on the event. It was great. I enjoyed being able to attend and actually even got to do some behind the scenes VIP media tour stuff, which was really fun and saw some new indie brands.
I am not going to cover that today, but if you head over to the blog, I'm going to be writing um, a little bit about my experience and about some of the new things that are coming to market. So stay tuned, watch LinkedIn, watch our email. You're going to be hearing more about that. So today's episode focuses in really on the three key questions I asked a variety of people in the industry, and you're going to hear from each one of them in their own words.
What I think is really interesting is there's a lot of alignment and there's also some opposing points of view. You'll see that when it comes up. I'm here with Bob Jacobs from Hydrosome Labs in the innovation space here at NYSCC. What are the key trends that you see driving cosmetics and personal care? And then how do you guys fit into that?
Yeah. So, you know, we've spent a lot of time looking at this and we've walked the show. I think clean beauty is a really big trend. Probably don't, no surprise to anybody. Efficacy is another one, so really driving performance, product performance, and getting a little bit more out of formulations of active ingredients. And we tie into both of those. So our technology is a clean technology, and our technology is one that improves the performance of active ingredients.
I am here with Jack Drawdy from SCT. Jack, what do you see as the trends that are really driving cosmetics and personal care today?
Well, it's a great question. As luck would have it, we are launching a dry product today, this week., so one, one of the trends that we've seen is this trend toward less plastic and less water. So we've created a product called Sopal Zero, which is a dry soap. Uh, it, it has the ability to be used as a powder, or it has the ability to be pressed into a bar. But either way, we see trends that are going more towards less plastic, less water, less cost.
And that's the reason for us to develop these types of eco friendly products, dry products.
Next. I've got Petia Tartaska CEO of Innova, DM.
The big trends are natural and sustainable. But let me say that, as always, women value mostly efficacy. We want our cosmetics to work, and this is priority number one. But within the realm of cosmetics that work, natural is big and I believe will always be big because we prefer, we are kind of natural, beautiful flowers and we prefer to work with natural ingredients and natural cosmetics. Also, sustainability is getting better.
Deservedly more and more attention because we realize we have to be environment conscious and to contribute to saving our planet.
from Colonial Chemical.. So Dennis, let's talk a little bit about the trends. What trends do you see influencing and shaping personal care cosmetics right now? trends do you see influencing and shaping personal care cosmetics right now?
Yeah, I mean certainly, you know, the discussion has been primarily around sustainability, making sure that there's less harm to the environment with products that we're producing and that goes, really all throughout the personal care from ingredients to packaging to transport and all the different things that are interrelated in that regard. So that's really, I think the overarching, driving force behind. What's happening new, you know, within the industry.
And then we turned our focus into sustainability and sustainable chemistry.
So I'm here with Yann Chilvers from Cavalo, which is a digital solution provider for Personal care and cosmetics, among some other industries. So, Yann, how do you see advancements in sustainability and sustainable chemistry shaping the future of cosmetics and personal care?
So, we're in an age of a lot of greenwashing, and so we see a big trend toward, like, really being able to substantiate the sustainability claims that the suppliers and the brands have. And that has a big link today with all the traceability and the supply chain control.
And so being able to go all the way to the person that picked up a plant, for example, uh, through all the manufacturing process and controlling that supply chain, uh, will be like one big key that we see in the, in that sustainability journey.
Is that something that you see your technology platform helping with in the future? Sure.
Absolutely. Absolutely. So we are trying to really offer like full transparency on the ingredients. Uh, we give the control to the suppliers of course to control who access that data. So we don't want, uh, having data leakage to competitors. Uh, on the other side, being able to share that information with friends, uh, is key. Uh, in Europe in particular, you have the, uh, you have like some big push, uh, to our like reliability and substantiation.
So by 2027. Uh, with a green deal, all the brands will need to be able to prove the origin of the ingredients. Uh, and therefore, like digital platform will play a, a key role in this.
Here's Petia with her perspective.
So sustainability is a big trend and I believe will get bigger and bigger. And I'm happy to say that Innova BM is contributing greatly to the choice of sustainable ingredients in the cosmetics industry. These are biotech products, biotech ingredients that, um, cultivated in the lab in this way we save we don't do soil depletion. We save from cultivation of the land, pesticides, fertilizers, tractors, energy, water great saving on this.
And also our patient technology works with protected and rare plants by producing protecting the rare plants in a biotech factory. We are able to help preserve biodiversity and we are really proud of this. And most importantly, these ingredients work.
Daina Cantanese of Integrity, Biochem. I provided a perspective on sustainable chemistries. And really the importance of performance. Along with sustainability.
I believe that the performance aspect of sustainability is really what makes these, um, sustainable materials really credible and gives them the backing to, to give customers what they're looking for on top of their sustainability goals. So when we say performance, we're saying, what does it do in the product? What is it adding and what is it giving to our customers that they so desperately need?
And so on top of the sustainability goals that we have always reached with our materials and with other materials in the industry, we want to see the performance increase on top of that.
Jack also shared a perspective on the role of sustainability and sustainable chemistry.
Yeah, again, we, I think you've got to go back to these things for instance, the, the Dextera product, right? It comes from a byproduct of corn and wheat. You're not impacting the food source. These are things that are byproducts of the food source. But you're upcycling it, right? And so it's a, it's a great story in utilizing things that were once being thrown away. The same thing with the Sokal Zero. You're not having to dispose of the plastic once you start using these.
It's like you're going to hotels now. You don't see the little bottles anymore. Everybody's, it's all, it's in the shower, on the wall, and they're being filled by partners.
Yeah, so I think sustainability has a couple different aspects, but one is on the contents of the formulation, right? Trying to reduce the chemicals that are in the formulation, trying to clean the formulation that way. And, you know, from our standpoint, there's really nothing cleaner than water, especially ultra pure water. And that's really the basis of our technology.
The bubbles in our technology become a delivery vehicle for the ingredients that are in there and allows people to cut back on that. Another one is just the carbon footprint of the manufacturing process, right? And our technology has a very low carbon footprint when it comes to the energy to create the bubbles, to create these formulations. So we're checking those boxes, both those cases.
Our conversations also covered the role of AI in innovation. And it'll be no surprise. That companies are at various points on the maturity curve with their use of AI. And of course, AI is still in many ways in its infancy. When we think about its application in industry and with formulations and more.
What about AI? You know, AI is the buzz right now, and when we think about AI and its role in innovation, what do you see?
I mean, AI is a definitely a buzzword. You see it a bit everywhere. Uh, I like to think that. AI is not, it should not be like a goal in itself, right? You need to start with what is the problem you want to solve. Uh, and then AI can be one solution among others and, and addressing it.
So where we can see AI really delivering value is when you have a big data sets, uh, that is structured or unstructured, uh, and you want to understand trends, uh, or if you want to automate certain processes that can make a lot of sense. Um, but there are other application areas where AI ultimately does not always justify the investment that are, that we make.
There's definitely a trend towards AI across the industry. How do you see that being used to help foster innovation?
So as a company, we're just now starting to formulate a plan on how to use and what AI to use. We're looking at a number of sources. But I think that In terms of how our technology grows, I don't think we've found that right fit yet, but in terms of how we approach our customers, we're certainly using it to model what we think fits our brands, what we're doing fits the brands that are out there. And that's how we're starting to develop that process.
But we realize that if we're not utilizing it, we're behind.
Then let's talk a little bit about AI.
So, there's a lot of people here as well talking about AI, be it for formulating or de formulating there's all sorts of new tools that are out there. I think one of the most powerful things that we're going to see out of AI is the ability for companies like ourselves, producing surfactants, it to train models to predict, you how we can produce new surfactants to fine tune, certain performance parameters.
And these models are can be so well tuned that they'll actually go through routine production mechanisms and eliminates potential chemical candidates that may be not sustainable or too difficult or not able to be produced at mass scale. And so this is a sort of, I think, future really of AI to be able to generate our path forward for, for new chemistry.
Of course, one of the reasons that companies attend supplier's day is to learn about new innovations. And to be identifying those ingredients, active ingredients technologies that will help them move ahead rapidly, um, to bring products to market.
One of the things that we're talking about is kind of just emerging technologies and innovation. What are the emerging technologies that you see that could actually revolutionize the space?
Yeah, I think, you know, the whole bioprocessing and fermentation space is huge because we can create things that, nature's creating now, but in a more sustainable and repeatable way. And our technology actually has a role in fermentation as well. We're able to improve the output, the yield, and the speed of fermentation processes with our technology.
So, some ingredients and technology I believe are going to be changing the sustainability space of personal care really is technologies that marry performance and sustainability. So on top of the sustainability goals that we have always reached with our materials and with other materials in the industry, we want to see the performance increase on top of that.
And do you see customers and the end consumers really wanting this and being willing to pay for this?
Yes. So we do see customers that really want the high performance and the sustainability aspect, but I think there's a level to how much they're willing to pay for these materials. I think at the end of the day, that merriment between performance and sustainability is really the key to the future for our consumers.
So, certainly here at the show, we're seeing a lot of the biotech. People that are using microbes of all different kinds, whether it be yeasts or bacteria or sea algae to produce novel materials be them peptides or proteins, or even surfactants, which interplays with You know, what we offer from the manufactured surfactant side. So we're seeing kind of all these things coming around.
It's really exciting and then some of these are using, wild strains of organisms or, or wild algae, for example, but then some are also doing genetic modification in order to optimize different properties of these materials to really hone in on specific chemistries and, things like the bio produced collagen or other types of ingredients are really coming online and you'll see a lot here at the show.
It's interesting you mentioned genetic modification because obviously GMO. It's a hot topic and it's considered a no no of foods, let's say.
Right, so there are a couple things. So, genetically modified organisms have been used for a long time all throughout foods and personal care, produce maybe things we don't think about too much, insulin is produced by genetically modified organisms citric acid, which is a commodity chemical is produced by microorganisms. A lot of times they're genetically modified but really, when we're producing these high purity materials, all the, GM proteins get removed as well.
I think people are more worried about genetic modification of their food, rather than genetic modification of an organism that's used to produce a commodity type chemical,
so what did you think when you listen to today's episode, when we think about the trends that are driving cosmetics and personal care today, when you think about the role of sustainability and sustainable chemistry, and there are so many amazing innovations in this space. You know, I talked to just a sampling of folks. There are so many more I'd love to hear from you in terms of what are some of those innovations that you see driving cosmetics and personal care today?
What did you hear at the show? What did you see? Thanks for listening today. Keep listening, keep following, keep sharing, and we will talk with you again soon.
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