MILAN, Apr 8 (Class Editori) – The battle for the protection of the environment as finally reached Unilever, the US multinational producing and selling its products in 190 countries and to 2,5 billion consumers. Every day, the company distributes food, refreshment, home and personal care brands, and generates 57% of its turnover (51 billion euro in 2018) in developing countries and emerging markets.
Today the multinational announced the start of sales for an innovative skin care product line – MyKAI – developed with Bio-on, the top Italian company in bio-based plastic production.
First of its kind, My KAI makes the most of Bio-on technologies and offers customers with an innovative sunscreen line bringing skin and environmental protection together.
The two companies manage to drastically reduce plastic-based components in favor of "ultra-green" filtering ingredients – 100% bio-based particulates – choosing to contain the environmental impact without giving up water resistance. UV-B rays are the primary cause of sunburn, while UV-A rays can cause long-lasting harmful effects.
The bio-based particulate developed by Bio-on for the MyKAI line is the first case in the world of micro-beads replacement, known for polluting the ocean, in cosmetics production.
Unilever will put the MyKAI sunscreens – coming with SPF 15, 30 and 50 – on the market starting this week, and available in selected cosmetics stores and beauty salons as well as online, including Amazon.
"MyKAI is a concrete example of how Unilever is rethinking itself in terms of sustainability, thus offering consumers with innovative products and abiding to the set goals of its Unilever Sustainable Living Plan business model. Unilever is using MyKAI to fulfill two objectives of its USLP – helping more than a billion people improve their health and wellness conditions by 2020, and halving its products’ environmental impact by 2030," explained Fulvio Guarneri, President and CEO of Unilever Italy.
"MyKAI is an important step in our 'full-green' cosmetic revolution, aiming at making the sunscreen market eco-friendly and respectful of lands and seas," said Marco Astorri, co-founder and President CEO of Bio-on. "Together with Unilever, and through the continuous development of new solutions for cosmetics production, we are using our bio-polymers to define new production standards".
Bio-on, listed in the AIM segment of the Italian stock exchange since 2014, produces and licenses the most innovative bio-plastics in the world – all thanks to its intense applied research activity and the development of advanced bio-fermentation technologies, state of art in terms of the eco-friendly and sustainable chemistry of the future. Bio-on's bio-polymers are called PHAs (polyhydroxyalkanoates) and are derived from renewable plant sources currently in no competition against the food production chain, like: molasses; beet waste juices; sugar canes; potatoes and fruit waste; generic carbohydrates sources; glycerol; waste frying oil; and even the CO2 extracted from the atmosphere.
Bio-on's bio-plastics, known as Minery PHAs, have the same thermo-mechanical properties of traditional plastics derived from polluting petrochemical processes, but are fully sustainable. They are 100% natural and degradable, as certified by Vincotte and USDA (United States Department of Agriculture). PHAs' extreme versatility allows Bio-on to produce the Minery PHAs bio-plastics in microscopic amounts, in order to use it to replace the invisible micro-breads contained in most cosmetic products – as well as in professional SLS 3D printers, perfumes, fodders, and many more.
Bio-on has important agreements in place with leading groups, such as Maire Tecnimont in Italy, the TAIF JSC group in Russia, for the design and supply of high-tech fermentation plants. Innova Imagen will be the first PHAs bioplastic production plant using the Bio-on technology, and will start its activity in Tatarstan next year. The company is owned by Himes Group, operating in the textile sector in Mexico and the United States. The Mexico plant will produce PHA bioplastic, obtained from agroindustrial residual and by-products. ACOR, the plant located in Spain, produces and trades sugar, edible oils, biodiesel and several products for animal feed and renewable electricity.
Recently, the group set up Zeropack, to exploit patents destined to revolutionize the world of food packaging in the fruit and vegetable sector through the use of bioplastics, selling 50% of patents to Rivoira, world leader in the production and distribution of fruit
The goal is to quickly secure a leading position in the new frontier of food packaging for fresh fruit and vegetables, fish, meat and cheese.
Bio-on closed 2018 with a turnover of 51 million euros, +40 compared to 2017, and an ebitda of 42 million compared to 7 million euros in 2017. To quickly respond to the exponential and increasingly diversified growth in demand, Bio-on operates through 6 Business Units: Bio-on Plants, RAF, Recovery And Fermentation, CNS (Cosmetic, Nanomedicine & Smart Materials), SMD (Structural Materials Developments), fdm (Fashion Development Material) and ENG (Engineering).
(Source:Class Editori)
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