L’Oreal has been one of the major forces in the development of green chemistry actives in the cosmetics industry. In 2006, the world’s biggest beauty company introduced Pro-Xylane, the first environmentally-friendly, natural skincare active to use green chemistry manufacturing.
First rolled out in the L’Oréal Paris brand, today Pro-Xylane is one of L’Oreal’s flagship ingredients and is used in formulas across its other leading brands, including Lancôme, Kiehl’s, SkinCeuticals and Giorgio Armani.
In a bid to ramp up its green chemistry expertise, L’Oréal has acquired a minority stake in Debut, a US biotech startup, through its BOLD venture capital fund, the beauty giant’s largest direct investment in a synthetic biology company. Other investors in the funding round include leading venture capital companies, but L’Oréal is the exclusive beauty industry investor.
BOLD is an acronym for Business Opportunities for L’Oréal Development and was inaugurated in 2018. Created to take minority stakes in innovative startups, the fund invests across marketing, R&I, digital, retail, supply chain and packaging.
In 2021, one of BOLD’s most forward-thinking investments was in the Swiss startup Gjosa, which develops smart water tools for reducing water consumption. The investment led to the development of the L’Oréal Water Saver, which helps to reduce the water used in hair salons by 60 per cent.
In 2022, BOLD made its first Japanese investment with Sparty, a startup focused on personalised beauty – one today’s biggest cosmetic trends.
Debut is even more innovative, specialising in “cell-free” ingredient manufacturing. An advanced biomanufacturing platform that bypasses the limitations of traditional fermentation and takes direct control of biological processes to produce complex natural products such as polyphenols, biopolymers, and natural colours prized for their high performance anti-ageing and antioxidant properties.
L’Oréal sees the pioneering technology as key to its sustainability goals. The investment gives the multinational access to Debut’s technology and data base to develop new ingredients to incorporate in moisturisers, serums, hair, makeup and personal care products.
Debut was founded four years ago and its portfolio features more than 7000 ingredients that can be made without the use of living cells. The company claims it can make new antioxidant like polyphenols, for example, from discovery to pre-production within six weeks.
In very simple terms, genome research allows Debut’s scientists to develop a natural ingredient by studying how plants make molecules in nature and then replicating the process. But the technology is much speedier than nature and is also less resource-intensive and more reliable than cultivating plants, flowers and trees.
We are absolutely delighted to have L’Oréal as an investor when advanced sciences are needed to thoroughly re-imagine how beauty ingredients are made to address the challenges of cost, quality, scalability and sustainability head-on, said Joshua Britton, founder and CEO of Debut.
“Debut’s ambition is to turn the active ingredient manufacturing process on its head, and in doing so, help industry leaders like L’Oréal maintain its innovative edge and desirability, fulfilling its responsibility to both the planet and consumers”.
The breakthrough partnership will pave the way to consistently produce green chemistry ingredients of the highest possible standards at scale. Some of the new actives can offer significant improvements in critical functions like barrier protection, antioxidant activity and even senescence, delivering a potential that will revolutionise the beauty space over the next decade.
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