Swiss-based Clariant, a global player in the specialty chemicals segment who employs a workforce of 17,442 people and recorded sales of CHF 5.847 billion last year, recently announced the opening of its new Active Ingredients Unit. Thanks to this initiative the company aims to provide an enhanced and dedicated technical support to the personal care industry, addressing its highly specialized and most demanding needs. As the provider itself pointed out in a press release, Clariant’s goal is to enter the active ingredients market and therefore to expand its traditional portfolio, which already includes specialty formulation ingredients for skin care, hair care and body care applications. The Sanofi Bioparc in Toulouse, France, hosts the first Clariant Active Ingredients unit’s facilities since last January. This same location is considered home to a focused and highly skilled team of professionals, who can display an important experience in the field of active ingredients. Also, the Muttenz-headquartered firm added that its intention is that to further expand the Toulouse site over the next months. The Sanofi Bioparc, according to sources, was selected because of its proximity to a number of potential industrial and development partners in the cosmetics industry, given the strong focus the entire area has in the biotechnology arena. The Beraca and BioSpectrum product families will most likely the first to benefit from this operation, thanks to the forecasted introduction of a series of unprecedented nature-inspired actives. The Toulouse team will also rely on innovative pharmaceutical industry-standard laboratories, focused on skin biology research and tests. On the other hand, biochemical laboratories will target consumers’ unmet needs by synthesizing, as the company stated, unique and outperforming molecules. Ernesto Horikoshi, global head of Active Ingredients, stressed the importance of the «trusted partnerships» that Clariant established «with key players in the active ingredients industry» and of the «unique access to natural cosmetic ingredients», together with the «strong experience in formulating personal care products». These elements make him confident that «the newly established expert team and state-of-the-art facilities add the vital missing ingredients to steer this business successfully». From its point of view, global head of Industrial & consumer specialties business unit Christian Vang, believes the division provides Clariant with a «flexible start-up capable of rapidly launching active ingredient innovations to meet the highly-specialized product development needs of personal care brands».