L'Oréal strengthens investment in biotech innovation

L'Oréal has partnered with biotech innovator Abolis to enable the end-to-end discovery, development and manufacturing of innovative and sustainable ingredients for beauty products.

The new agreement will allow purpose-made, sustainable ingredients to be produced at the scale needed to satisfy global demand for responsible beauty, accelerating L’Oréal's commitment to "prioritising bio-based ingredients in its beauty formulations".

Anchoring the agreement are L’Oréal and global specialty manufacturer Evonik through a new series A funding round by Abolis, a French biotech start-up with expertise in tailor-made industrial solutions based on microorganisms for a wide range of industries, including food, healthcare and cosmetics.

The investment from L’Oréal and Evonik allows Abolis to expand its capabilities in the development of microbe-powered solutions that help industries transition to more sustainable business models.

It marks a new, strategic phase in the L’Oréal-Abolis collaboration, which began in 2020 and led to an extended lab set-up in 2022.

L'Oréal Group invests more than €1 billion in research and innovation each year. A large percentage goes towards its work in green sciences, with a major focus on biotechnologies.

With 4,000 researchers working in 20 research centres across 11 countries, L’Oréal registered 610 patents in 2023 alone.

As part of its continued strategy, the company uses incubation, partnerships, investments, and acquisition to fuel innovation.

• Incubation – The L'Oréal Green Sciences Incubator works with startups such as the French Algentech on synthetic plant cell biology, Belgian Novobiom on fungal technologies, and American-French Interstellar on AI-controlled biofarms.
• Partnerships – In 2020, L'Oréal partnered with Dutch biotech Micreos to develop endolysin – a protein which targets unwanted bacteria in the skin flora which is responsible for skin problems including eczema.
• Investments – As well as incubating start-ups, it also invests in startups such as low-carbon microalgae farm specialists Microphyt and cell-free ingredient manufacturer Debut Bio.
• Acquisitions – In December 2023, L'Oréal announced it has completed the acquisition of Lactobio, a probiotic and microbiome research company based in Copenhagen.

"Whilst biotech isn’t a new field for L’Oréal, having isolated and discovered thermal plankton in 1994 for cosmetic use, these partnerships offer new opportunities to use synthetic chemistry and biotechnologies to create highly effective active ingredients in service of the beauty industry," reads a statement from the group.