Solazyme Teams up with Unilever to Create Renewable Soaps
With this announcement, one has to wonder what Solazyme can’t use their algae to create. First it was biofuels, then in January they announced algal foods, and now they are looking to use their renewable algal oils in soaps and other personal care products.
Here is the press release detailing their latest endeavor:
Solazyme and Unilever Partner to Bring Algal Renewable Oil to Personal Care Products
Consumer product giant taps Solazyme to develop a cost effective alternative
South San Francisco, Calif. – March 10, 2010 – Solazyme, Inc., a renewable oil and bioproducts company, has signed a research and development agreement with Unilever to develop oil derived from algae for use in soaps and other personal care products. The agreement follows the culmination of a yearlong collaboration between Solazyme and Unilever, in which Solazyme’s renewable algal oils were tested successfully in Unilever product formulations.
“Algal oil provides important benefits in personal care applications,” explained Jonathan Wolfson, CEO of Solazyme. “Solazyme’s algal oils can help meet the growing demand for completely renewable, natural and sustainable personal care products. Unilever is an acknowledged world leader in sustainability and we are honored to be working with them to develop this new renewable source of natural oils for their world class consumer products.”
Solazyme and Unilever are working to demonstrate a process to incorporate targeted algal oils into personal care products at a commercially relevant scale. The work will further develop Solazyme’s technology platform, which allows algae to produce oil and biomaterials in standard fermentation facilities quickly, efficiently and at large scale.
Among other sustainability initiatives, Unilever is vigorously exploring various next-generation sources of renewable oil for use in its products. Unilever’s collaboration with Solazyme represents a substantial step in the company’s exploration of algae as a source of renewable oil.
“Unilever is committed to the highest sustainability and environmental practices and is working to drive industry change and set new standards,” said Peter Gallagher, VP of Global Skin R&D, of Unilever. “Exploring sources of alternative natural oils, is one of the most important aspects of our greater sustainable sourcing strategy and working with Solazyme’s algal oils is an excellent fit.”
For more information, please visit www.solazyme.com.
While this might not affect algae biofuels directly, it does highlight the variety of different uses algal oils have. Ultimately, the more uses out there for algae, the higher the chances are that growth systems will be perfected that can grow commercial levels of algae for use in biofuel production at competitive prices.
