New multistakeholder value chains must be established if beauty wants to bolster successful and large-scale advances in marine cosmetics—an exciting area for innovation, efficacy, and sustainability.
The EU blue economy is vast, generating a turnover of $682 billion (€624 billion) in 2021, up 21% from 2020, with $83.4 billion (€76.4 billion) registered as gross profit, according to Eurostat data. And the sector, encompassing all economic activities based on or related to the ocean, seas, and coast employs more than 3.6 million people, according to the European Commission's EU Blue Economy 2024 report.
For cosmetics, therefore, development opportunities were big, according to an EU-funded review published in iScience—particularly given how “underexplored” the marine environment was in beauty, despite the abundance of bioactive compounds and ingredients available.
The review—backed by the European Union's B-Blue, 2B-Blue, and Community4Nature projects via the Interreg Euro-MED Programme—outlined how beauty could carve out its place within the wider blue economy, driving ingredient and product innovation and developing new and necessary value chains
Writing in the review, researchers spotlighted key areas of promise behind marine-derived actives for efficacious yet eco-consious product development across skincare, haircare, oral care, and cosmeceuticals for cleansing, moisturizing, antiaging, skin firming, anti-pollution, anti-acne, and sun protection.
“Beauty products featuring marine ingredients, such as extracts from seaweeds and other marine organisms, have gained increased popularity and present lucrative business opportunities,” they wrote.
Algae, Proteins, Seawater, Fungi, and Bacteria
And there was already strong evidence of success in the field, they said. In 2012, Icelandic company UNA Skincare launched with a facial cream and eye cream integrating brown seaweed Fucus vesiculosus extracts. Backed by extensive testing, focus groups, market research, and a human trial, the extract had been selected for its high antioxidant activity, ability to stimulate collagen production, and power to reduce activity of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs)—offering a positive overall effect on skin health. In 2007, Italian start-up Biosearch—a spin-off of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) and research institute Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn (SZN)—launched its cosmetics line, integrating green microalgae Tetraselmis suecica for its molecular level power in repairing epidermal cells. Launched under the name Gen-Hyal, in collaboration with Italian cosmetics firm PriGen, use of the marine active was novel, given it had long been used for aquaculture feedstock.
The researchers also identified two companies successfully working with jellyfish-derived collagen—an increasingly interesting alternative to fish, given jellyfish blooms were now negatively impacting fisheries and overall marine life balance. German marine ingredient specialist OceanBASIS, for example, launched its cosmetics line Oceanwell in 2001, blending sea kelp Saccharina latissima withcollagen derived from root-mouthed jellyfish. The company had been able to obtain one liter of collagen from each jellyfish—enough to manufacture 400 bottles of 30 ml product. In the UK, biotech firm Jellagen, founded in 2015, could be considered “pioneers” in demonstrating the unique advantages of collagen Type O versus mammalian-derived collagens, the researchers said. The company manufactured medical-grade collagen Type O from barrel jellyfish (Rhizostoma pulmo) collected in the EU and UK, proven to help tissue regeneration.
But given the ocean remained an “untapped bioresource,” the researchers said the search for and use of novel marine-derived substances and their screening for cosmetics-related bioactivities would continue to expand, remaining a “subject of active research.”
Seawater, for example, presented development promise because of the living microorganisms, minerals, and other substances it contained; marine bacteria had potential because of the carotenoids and polyphenols found within it, and algae continued to attract interest due to their remarkably rich bioactive composition. Beyond this, marine-derived fungi that produced secondary metabolites offered prospects in cosmeceuticals; marine sponges could be used for their enzymes, pigments, and bacteria, while thraustochytrids—a scarcely studied eukaryotic group of single-celled protists—might offer innovation opportunities around hydration, particularly in oil form. Sea cucumbers and marine invertebrates like jellyfish, sea anemones, and corals also presented strong areas for active cosmetics research and development.
Looking ahead, the researchers said there remained a clear need to optimize production and purification processes, conduct necessary cost analyses, examine scalability, and validate the feasibility, effectiveness, and safety of marine-based cosmetic formulations.
Transdisciplinary and Trans-sectorial Collaboration
The researchers said advances in blue cosmetics required a multistakeholder approach to tackle six key challenges: knowledge, conservation, technical limitations, collaboration, time, and regulatory.
“There are many obstacles and challenges that can hamper the commercialization of marine-derived bioactive compounds for cosmetics use, such as: nonconsistent supply of biomass, lack of investments for infrastructure and advanced technology for biomass processing, strict regulations, and cost effectiveness.”
Overcoming these challenges, they said, required advances in science and technology, strategic planning to ensure sustainability, supply, and market acceptance, and several transdisciplinary and trans-sectorial collaborations, rounds of financing, and management of potential intellectual property rights.
In particular, the value chain required sharp focus, given sustainable sourcing and supply could be considered bottlenecks in all nature-based applications. They explained, cultivation, fermentation, and farming centered around biotechnologies to improve availability, ingredient supply, quality control, efficacy, traceability, and security would also be critical, and industry would also need to consider the valorization of waste streams.
Once all of this was achieved, the researchers said blue cosmetics could progress according to demands, offering consumers effective, safe, tested, environmentally sustainable, and affordable products. This review, they said, served as a “valuable knowledge resource,” offering researchers, industrial producers, and policy makers a singular guide to understand the complexities in the production of blue cosmetics.
