L'Oréal invests in green chemistry with Unilever and Kao

L’Oréal is once again looking into green chemistry. The global beauty giant has just invested, via its venture capital fund BOLD, in an alliance formed in June 2022 by the American biotechnology specialist Genomatica (known as Geno) and the Dutch consumer goods giant Unilever, which was joined in September by the Japanese cosmetics group Kao. The aim is to create new sustainable ingredients derived from living organisms for use in everyday beauty products.

“Thanks to Geno’s biotechnological expertise, L’Oréal will replace traditional ingredients with biobased alternatives, such as those made from plant-based sugars. These new ingredients will be used in various L’Oréal products, allowing the company to take a major step towards its goal of having 100% eco-designed products and 95% of the ingredients in its formulas biobased, derived from abundant minerals or from circular processes,” L’Oréal said in a statement.

The amount of this new investment by L’Oréal was not disclosed, but in November 2022 the group had also taken a minority stake in the French biotech specialist Microphyt, which has developed a low-carbon process for the production of microalgae, microscopic plant organisms used in cosmetics for their active properties, among other things.

In 2022, the L’Oréal group achieved a turnover of 38.3 billion euros, up 18.5%.