TAGS: Skin Care Hair Care in-cosmetics Sustainability / Natural Cosmetics
Biosyntia to showcase its sustainable active ingredients made by precision fermentation at in-cosmetics Korea.
Bringing Sustainable Innovations to the Ingredient Market
Natural and sustainable have been two key trends driving the cosmetic industry. Active ingredients, although small volume components, carry most of the product claims and are hero ingredients in the eyes of the consumer. So, there is good reason to consider sustainability when sourcing your actives.
Biosyntia is one of the companies bringing sustainable innovations to the ingredient market. They are a Danish based biotechnology company and have developed a precision fermentation process for B-vitamins, with the first ingredient replacing petrochemically produced biotin.
Furthermore, they produce high-purity Forskolin and highly potent flavonoid antioxidants:
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Bio-B7™ - One of the world’s first fully natural high-purity d-biotin, produced by precision fermentation. Biotin is known for its skin and hair conditioning effects
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Forskeffect™ - Fully natural high-purity Forskolin, produced by precision fermentation. Forskolin activates the cyclic AMP in cells and supports the skin barrier function as well as cell repair after UV damage
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Flavonoids – These are a range of small potent antioxidants that Biosyntia is working to produce by precision fermentation, at high purity, and with a low batch variation
All of the above ingredients are produced within the EU.
Sustainable Ingredient Sourcing Challenge
There are two fundamental issues for formulators and brand owners when sourcing sustainable active ingredients:
1. Several active ingredients are only produced from petrochemicals. An example is most vitamins, like B5 (Panthenol) and B7 (Biotin). In petrochemicals, the carbon source is crude oil, which needs a series of chemical synthesis steps to be converted. The more complex the molecule the more steps are needed in the production, resulting in significant chemical waste. For biotin, you produce 17 kg of hazardous chemical waste for every 1 kg of synthetic biotin yielded. Fermentation processes can eradicate chemical waste and also the dependence on fossil-based raw materials.
2. For some active ingredients, it is possible to source from nature, by extracting and up-concentrating active molecules from plant material. However, active ingredients exist only in trace amounts in nature (mg/kg). To produce 1 kg of pure standardized material you can easily need 1-2 tons of e.g. berries, flowers, or fruits. For some ingredients, there are relevant waste streams. For others, like Forskolin, you can only extract the active from the root of a specific plant. Fermentation processes have the potential to be several thousand times more efficient in terms of land usage.
Unlocking the Potential of Precision Fermentation
Precision fermentation is an innovative technology, leverages yeast and bacteria’s ability to produce active ingredients, efficiently, more sustainably, and from a natural carbon source. Fermentation avoids petrochemicals and complements plant-sourced actives. In precision fermentation, you start from a sugar source, which is converted by the micro-organism into an active ingredient. From the fermentation broth you extract, purify, and crystallize the single ingredient to have a high purity active.
Fermentation technology is an alternative and complementary technology that can be a game-changer for the cosmetic industry, especially for clean and green brands, which have been fairly limited in their sourcing regimen. From a formulation perspective, fermented ingredients have the additional benefit you avoid batch-to-batch variation, seasonality supply issues, issues with coloring, and inactivity. It is easy to trace the production from the sugar source to the final product and less risky in terms of counterfeits and fraud.
Biosyntia creates active ingredients which are green and clean. Their platform technology holds great potential to unlock thousands of ingredients – the question is, which new sustainable hero ingredient are you missing?
Visit Biosyntia at in-cosmetics Korea 12-14 July 2023 at M61 to learn more.
Source: Biosyntia
