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Having launched in 2018, Roquette has taken the cosmetics industry by storm with innovative formulations and a focus on sustainable beauty. We caught up with Bénédicte Courel, Roquette Beauté General Manager, to chat about their global expansion and their passion for high-performance, plant-based products.

Roquette is world-renowned for its nutrition and health expertise and, since its launch in 2018, your cosmetics division has already made its mark across the world.  What are the pillars of your success?

With more than 85 years of expertise in plant-based ingredients for food, nutrition and pharma, Roquette is indeed well-positioned to address the cosmetics market’s challenges. In 2018, we launched our Roquette Beauté brand with the strong ambition that Roquette will be recognized as the expert for vegetal cosmetics in the coming years. Facts are there to support this ambition! Two years after Roquette Beauté’s launch, we have already doubled our number of ingredients and are now offering 20 plant-based and high-performing products in 2020. Roquette Beauté has expanded its footprint, with a presence in Europe, North America and Asia with the Beauté by Roquette® plant-based ingredients product range. Today, in October 2020, we reinforce our belief by opening our first Roquette Beauté Expertise Center near Paris. Our new technical capabilities are key to continue to strengthen our collaboration with our customers and partners and to address increasing consumers’ demand for innovative, high performing and plant-based formulations.

As a global leader in plant-based ingredients, sustainability is in your DNA.  You also pride yourselves on your range of high performing ingredients. What is the magic formula?

Combining high performance and sustainable, plant-based ingredients is one of the growing challenges for the cosmetics market, and the Roquette Group benefits from a unique combination of three main advantages today. We benefit from 85+ years of expertise in plant-based ingredients. We hold a solid knowledge and a strong track record in food, nutrition and health/pharma markets which can translate to the cosmetics market. And, last but not least, we strongly believe since we launched in 2018 that “Sustainable Beauty is all about Skin Health & Nutrition.”

We have a sustainable development approach in all our processes. We respect the 12 principles of green chemistry and we also innovate without controversial or unnecessary ingredients ​ and continuously think of our environmental impact. Our Beauté by Roquette® offering is produced 100% in Europe, with over 80% in France. At Roquette, we fully optimize and respect our raw materials. Enhancing all plant constituents from wheat, corn, potato and pea, we generate less than 0.5% of waste.

Roquette has lofty ambitions – last year you predicted that within 5 years, 50% of your cosmetic portfolio would be made up of new ingredients and solutions that do not yet exist. How is this developing and has Covid-19 caused you to scale back your plans?

Within two years, we have already doubled our Beauté by Roquette® offering, and our ambition is to continue to grow and offer more high performing plant-based ingredients that meet our customers’ needs.

We are keeping up with our fast pace to launch between two to three new ingredients every year, and the COVID-19 situation has not impacted our desire to deliver more innovative plant-based ingredients. Despite the in-cosmetics Global tradeshow being postponed in early 2020, we even took the initiative to organize our own Roquette Beauté Online Event to launch our latest solution, an all-in-one plant-based emulsifier and texturizer, Beauté by Roquette® DS 421, that was a real success.

The opening of our first Expertise Center will support and boost innovation and cooperation in the field of cosmetics. This unique spot is an important milestone in Roquette Beauté’s development strategy to be recognized as the B2B expert in plant-based ingredients for cosmetics. It will definitely accelerate our worldwide exchanges and innovation projects.

Tell us more about your Beauté by Roquette® range of ingredients – what trends do they cater for and why?

Beauté by Roquette® is a new range of sustainable plant-based and high performing ingredients designed for beauty and offering a broad combination of functionalities. Our ingredients address texture and sensory enhancement through brand-new innovative solutions. Our starches are also safe alternatives to mineral powders while providing sensorial benefits such as softness. With extra pure polyols, we offer moisturizing of the skin, and the ability to keep the mouth healthy. Our cyclodextrins bring enhancement of active ingredients’ efficiency and make perfumes last longer. Finally, our plant-based polyhydroxyacid (PHA) deliver soft peeling and skin anti-imperfection properties.

Some existing trends have been greatly accelerated with the pandemic. With working from home, physical distancing and mask-wearing, makeup and fragrance have become much less important. On the other hand, skincare, haircare, and bath-and-body products appear to be benefiting from self-care and pampering trends. The Beauté by Roquette® range definitely caters for these trends.

More information on the Roquette website

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Want to know more about the latest ingredients? Check out our latest ingredients round-up with Simon Pitman.