Sourcing for fragrances and aromas

Even fragrance composition companies are launching into this big associative movement. Thus Firmenich teamed up with Amyris, a start-up specialized in biotechnologies, to develop ingredients intended for the fragrance and aromas industry.

Firmenich is committed to financing Amyris’s technical development of a cost-effective, sustainable, reliable source of a key perfume ingredient. “We signed on to two partnerships in the cosmetics world. The first is with Firmenich, to develop and sell an aromatic ingredient, and the second is with Soliance to produce renewable squalane, an emollient that comes naturally from shark liver oil or olive oil,” says Jeryl Hilleman, Amyris CFO. Whose turn next?

Strand Cosmetics hand in hand with its partners

For more than 10 years now, the Lyon company has been increasing its partnerships “for a mixture of various types of know-how” explains Stéphanie Reymond, in charge of operational marketing. Some are purely technological, such as the collaboration with Fibroline and its patented technology of impregnating porous structures with powders, with the aim of developing a portable blush on textiles, which is “interesting but hasn’t found a market”; the majority have been developed with packaging manufacturers.

“The pack/formulation alliance comes into play on three levels: either the package valorizes the formula; or it interacts with it, which is the case for example of the pump bottle or of spray; or the two overlap, like the airless pack, which spurs you to rework the formula, or mascara, where you cannot get free of the four-part formula/wiper/reservoir/brush combination. So to be successful with a product, it’s essential to work together from the very start of the project.”

For its two annual collections, Strand Cosmetics seeks innovation among suppliers. “We place special importance on their inventiveness, we week to understand how the packages they send us are made, their strengths and incompatibilities, like essential oils with some pump parts.”

If at the beginning these collaborative efforts were a bit complex to set up, the crisis was part of it, with a beneficial effect: “It made it possible to understand the importance of a win/  winrelatinship .

” In partnership with OekaMetall, Strand Cosmetics developed three gloss formulas for three applicators: foam-tip, tapered with reservoir inside, and larger reservoir. This partnership, set up at MakeUp in Paris last year, was renewed in 2011 because “we are re-working our entire mascara pack offer: with an in-house panel of experts, we are determining what formulas are best adapted to what type of wiper, bottle, brush. It’s a rather long operation that should reach completion in June 2011,” explains Ms. Reymond.

Finally with Promens, and its pack which received a Luxe Pack Green Award, Strand Cosmetics has come up with a 100% organic, Ecocert certified day cream “involving an ecodesign, totally synergistic project, offering an excellent carbon footprint.”

In addition, for the very first time the Lyon company was approached by a fragrance composition company that wanted to look into makeup gestures for new inspiration for ways to apply fragrance.

“We are thinking about sensory and visual innovations, thanks to a very enriching experience of cooperation. We are used to formulating with a concentration on the order of 0.1 to 0.2%, and here we have to do it with 5 to 10%. As the level of perfume is destabilizing for formulation, it requires us to rethink things and this allows us to determine what formulas of ours are the most robust for fragrance derivatives.”

At the same time, Strand has made contacts with DuPont de Nemours to co-deploy its new Natrafil technology with a project underway for 2011, but also with Saint-Gobain Desjonquères.

After Naya organic night cream in 2009 came Émoi Infini in 2010. It’s a collection of three perfumes for men, women and children, slipped into a lacquered black bottle. The Infini glass by SGD is recycled using household cullet, the inks are water-based, and it all comes in an eco-designed gift box and is produced with six other partners (M-Real did the carton, Extrême Paris the design, VPI the top, Rexam the screw pump, Mane the perfume concentrates and Strand the children’s jus).

Beyond Beauty MAG#31