Unilever is looking to co-create sustainable haircare, skincare, and deodorant products with innovative start-ups, scale-ups, and academic spinouts. Last year, the company launched its Positive Beauty vision, setting out a plan of action through its brands to champion an industry-leading new era of beauty that's more equitable, more inclusive, and more sustainable.
"We're creating the next generation of technologies and ingredients for our beauty and personal care products that are not only highly effective, but also natural and sustainable," Unilever's Chief Research and Development Officer, Richard Slater, said. "Collaborating with disruptive new players in this space is going to lead to even more breakthroughs as we grow our business and portfolio for a future where people and planet can thrive together."
The Unilever Foundry, Unilever's collaborative innovation network, has launched a challenge to find the next generation of biodegradable and sustainable cosmetic ingredients and packaging materials through its Positive Beauty Growth Platform. Through a series of pitch competitions and entrepreneurial challenges, the Positive Beauty Growth Platform allows innovative scale-ups, start-ups, and spinout companies to present their unique biodegradable and sustainable cosmetic ingredients or packaging solutions to the Unilever Beauty & Personal Care leadership and expert practitioners.
Global Head of Unilever Foundry, Baz Saidieh, said, "Startup-led partnerships are an important pillar to drive growth and innovation. The Positive Beauty Growth Platform is proving a catalyst of finding the greatest startup innovations and powering experimentation at scale.
"For our latest challenge, we're keen to engage and explore partnerships with innovators developing biodegradable and sustainable ingredients and packaging for the future—something we know is increasingly important to people around the world.”
The leading ideas will be given a chance to explore partnership opportunities within Unilever's €20 billion Beauty & Personal Care business. Last year, almost 300 companies from the fast-growing and ever-evolving world of social commerce applied to get involved in the Platform's first challenge. A panel of Unilever's leaders and experts shortlisted 33 candidates, from seed stage to billion-dollar businesses, from Silicon Valley to Singapore. Many are now kicking off pilot projects with Unilever brands, helping to deliver business solutions and pioneer consumer experiences in new spaces.
In this year's competition, Unilever is searching for unique biodegradable and sustainable solutions across haircare, skincare, deodorants, and aerosols that might include planet-positive solutions across conditioning and sensorial agents, UV filters, and boosters, product dyes and colorants, preservative helpers, and antioxidants. They may also include packaging solutions that are compostable or marine degradable, have reduced carbon footprint, are from renewable feedstock sources, or replace our typical plastic applications.
Unilever welcomes bold, brave new ideas challenging what biodegradable ingredients are today and could become in the future. Saidieh commented, "If this call-out is half as successful as our last challenge, we should be in for some stunning collaborations."
