FEATURE ARTICLES

Over many hundreds of years one of the key areas for the application of personal care products has been the face. The human face is exposed to the elements for most of the year, whether it be bright sunshine in the summer or cold, dry winds in the harshest of winters.

Today’s beauty consumers want it all. The savvy youth market seeks refreshing effects on application and ways to dramatise their appearance – along with perceivable benefits.

Age spots, also called Lentigo senilis, are small, localised, sharply circumscribed sites of hyperpigmentation of the skin. Contrary to freckles, which are due to an UV-induced increased, but reversible production of melanin, lentigines are caused by local hyperplasia (cell proliferation) at the basal layer of the epidermis.

Several research studies on aged people carried out by different research teams have highlighted the existence of a new theory in skin ageing named ‘inflammaging’.1–3 Skin inflammaging results from a combination of several deleterious pathways inducing a vicious cycle of micro-inflammation.

In the cosmetic industry, evaluating the reality and soundness of the claims is of primary importance in order to support advertising and marketing needs but more particularly to meet the regulatory requirements of different nations.

In the cosmetic industry, evaluating the reality and soundness of the claims is of primary importance in order to support advertising and marketing needs but more particularly to meet the regulatory requirements of different nations.

More and more, China is the country that global companies are looking to as the place to grow their business. This is understandable, as China has the world’s largest consumer base of 1.3 billion people, with the total value of the Chinese personal care market potentially reaching US$32.7 billion by 2014.

Across the personal care market, the past few years have seen a steady rise in the determination of companies to assert their ‘sustainable’ credentials. This has in many cases become a more dominant concept than ‘green’, but the two together have a considerable hold over the marketing and PR campaigns of many key players in the industry.

The purpose of this series of articles is to briefly review the theory and practice of distillation of essential oils. Although many producers use some form of distillation to extract essential oils, very few thoroughly understand the theory behind the practice that lays the basis for the practices they utilise.

It is critical for formulators to understand the synergies and interactions of the materials that are used to deliver safe and effective sun protection in order to comply with the continuously changing requirements of the industry.

in-cosmetics will analyse solar beauty and social commerce as part of its free Marketing Trends programme at this year’s Barcelona event.

Launching new cosmetic products with innovative active ingredients requires science and evidence: science to under stand underlying principles, to build theories with predictive power in order to birth the breakthrough idea that will create the cutting-edge product.

During the product development phase of cosmetics, a whole set of evaluation procedures is applied in order to check the effective result of the various trials in comparison with the requirements of the hypothesised characteristics. Some of them are essentially instrumental (e.g. pH, viscosity, density) microbiological or belong to the bioengineering evaluations.

Recently, there has been growing interest in sunscreen performance. This interest includes not only making more efficient formulations but also more effective formulations.

One of the goals of science is to understand the unknown. The function of science, quite simply, is to make life easier. Breakthroughs in emulsion technology do just that.

The oceans and seas are a great place to find natural actives and functional materials for personal care products. They are the last great untapped resource. Despite covering more than 70% of the Earth’s surface, only a tiny proportion of their full potential is being used in personal care.1

Cosmetic scientists are developing new ways to identify new natural sources, which enable innovative compounds with excellent cosmetic properties such as firming, restructuring, moisturising or antiwrinkles.

Modern formulation development depends on innovative ingredients, new marketing approaches, shaping new trends and developing clinical studies that prove and support the benefits of cosmetic formulations to the end users.

Worldwide, consumers spent US$2 billion a week last year on skin and sun care products. That is 29% more than five years ago, according to Euromonitor International.

In just over a year from now, the new European Regulation on cosmetic products (full name: ‘Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 November 2009 on cosmetic products’)1 will come into force