L'Oréal and French biotech Microphyt announce a strategic partnership under which L'Oréal's private equity fund BOLD (Business Opportunities for L'Oréal Development) will acquire a minority stake in Microphyt.
This operation is fully in line with L'Oréal's Research & Innovation strategy in the field of Green Sciences, through numerous strategic partnerships with innovative start-ups in the biotechnology sector, in France and internationally. This proactive policy is at the heart of the objectives that L'Oréal has set for 2030 as part of its sustainable development program, including the goal that 95% of its ingredients will be bio-sourced, derived from abundant minerals or from circular processes.
Microphyt, created in 2007 and located in Baillargues (Hérault), has developed a revolutionary low carbon impact process for the production of microalgae - microscopic plant organisms used in cosmetics for their active properties and functional qualities.
Thanks to its patented process and its mastery of natural stimuli (light, salt, nutrients, temperature variation, etc.), this French biotech is among the companies producing the largest varieties of microalgae in the world on a large scale and in a controlled manner. Microphyt has an integrated platform for the transformation of these microalgae and thus develops natural and renewable ingredients perfectly adapted to the sustainable ambitions of L'Oréal.
L'Oréal and Microphyt will build a technological platform and will pool material and human resources to design raw materials from microalgae biomass. The two companies aim to establish a long-term partnership for the development of new cosmetic solutions.
This merger follows a number of strategic scientific partnerships that the Group has forged in recent months to strengthen its pioneering Green Beauty Sciences ecosystem: the life sciences research specialist VERILY, the National Institute for Materials Sciences (NIMS) in Japan, the Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering (SCELSE), and the Laboratoire de Chimie des Polymères Organiques de Bordeaux (LCPO).
" Our ambition is to collaborate worldwide with the most disruptive scientific entities in the field of Green Sciences, in order to develop together responsible innovations on a large scale and make them accessible to the greatest number of peopleexplains Barbara Lavernos, Executive Vice President, Research, Innovation and Technology, L'Oréal Groupe. We are very pleased with this new partnership with Microphyt, which will allow us, thanks to its unique natural solutions derived from microalgae, to further accelerate our transformation towards a more sustainable beauty".
For Microphyt, the partnership with L'Oréal reinforces its strategic roadmap. Since the realization in 2019 of one of the most important fundraising of its sector with notably the SPI funds of Bpifrance and Sofinnova Partners, Microphyt has strongly accelerated the development and the marketing of natural ingredients from microalgae for nutrition and cosmetics. In the last 18 months, Microphyt has launched 3 innovative active ingredients in cosmetics and has started the commercialization of its first two proprietary ingredients in nutrition on the American market of food supplements.
"We are delighted with the partnership with L'Oréal which is fully in line with Microphyt's ambition to give access to the greatest number of people to natural solutions derived from microalgae, explains Vincent Usache, General Manager of Microphyt. The "extended lab" technology platform is perfectly complementary to our own activities. It will enable us to accelerate the development of eco-designed ingredients in common with L'Oréal and to use our production capacities to facilitate their scaling up within our industrial platform.
