Health and Wellness - focus on innovation for Latin America

By Paola Gioffre | May 12th, 2020

The news portal Cosmetic Latam has reached out to Paulo Sevilha, Personal Care Regional Sales and Marketing Director-Latin America, to gather interesting information on Croda’s current situation and actions. This is a translation of the original interview.

Croda is the name behind high performance ingredients and technologies for some of the biggest and most successful brands all over the world. Our objective is creating, making and selling specialty chemicals that are relied on by industries and consumers everywhere.
As a global supplier of specialty ingredients for the Beauty and Personal Care industry, we have a diverse cosmetic product range that delivers innovative solutions for current and future cosmetic trends, all supported by proven efficacy testing. We also offer a complete range of natural and botanic ingredients from our Crodarom branch and a full range of active ingredients for hair and skin care from our Sederma branch.

The Cosmetic Industry during the Pandemic

We have heard of many companies from this sector who have changed their production to attend the current demands for products to fight against Coronavirus. How has the pandemic affected Croda’s activities globally and regionally?
Croda, just like other suppliers in the personal care industry, has been impacted by the priority changes in our clients and their consumers, both regionally and globally. We have offered immediate and strong support to our clients, adapted our processes and operations to accommodate important changes on their demands. There is a Crisis Management Committee to ensure the continuous supply while caring for the health and safety of our employees.
Today all non-essential industrial activity functions are working remotely. Many digital tools have been made available for our clients and employees to avoid an impact on the service and technical development, which so far has been effective.

Latin American Market

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on the global supply chain and is present in many countries in the region. How do you think this situation is going to affect the cosmetic industry development in Latin America?
There is no doubt that consumer habits have been through an important change during the pandemic. However, the cosmetic industry has always been agile and innovative to respond to consumer demands. The effects will take place in the change of relevance of the categories, as well as different spending levels consumers are willing to spend on daily personal care products. Health and wellness will keep on as important trends. Human relations and time at home will also be highly valued after the sanitary crisis.
I feel that there will be a growing collaboration among the various players in the supply chain to accelerate the process of new product development.

Innovation and Technology

What other long-term impacts may be seen in the way you conduct business, in creativity and on the way you currently work with your clients?
Our purpose is “Smart Science to Improve Lives”. It drives all our actions as a high ethical principles company and the way we conduct business. Science by itself doesn’t necessarily translates into something that improve lives and Croda understands it very clearly in this purpose.
Croda has committed to become Climate, Land and People Positive by 2030 and to be the most sustainable supplier of innovative ingredients. We will help provide solutions to some of the world’s biggest challenges in the coming decades. I think purpose-driven companies will be the ones who will survive, given that clients and consumers are more and more concerned about the impact that their current purchasing decisions has over the future generations.

With all the event cancellations and putting off, companies need to find other tools to communicate with their clients and to share their news. Croda has launched “The Power Hour with Croda”. Can you tell us what it is about and how you are implementing this idea?
This initiative started from the opportunity to share a series of information and relevant topics on the moment we are all going through. They are webinars about various themes where Croda presents technological leadership, such as skin actives, sun care, makeup, sustainability and others. They take place at different times to accommodate professionals globally and are recorded so that people who have not been able to access live can access the content at their convenience. We have a great audience success, given that Croda is a player who supports their clients. Besides, it is an important tool to generate insights for new developments in a moment of huge changes in the needs and trends. We have observed a great participation from Latin America.
Besides, we have launched the Health and Wellness landing page on our Croda Personal Care website, containing relevant content for the region, carefully built by our Marketing, Technical and Sales teams in Latin America. The novelty was very well received among our clients and we keep on doing regular content updates according to the feedback we receive.

Croda | New Products

Have you observed and trend in product launches? What do you think will be the key to attend the new consumer demand for a more personal, cleaner beauty?
Clean beauty, sustainability, natural, vegan, minimalist and simple will be, along with multiple benefits, the priority for delivering new products to the consumer market. Croda has led the way by launching our ECO Range of iconic surfactants now obtained from a bio-based synthesis route. These are EO derivatives made from bioethanol in our Atlas Point unit in USA. By using these ingredients, one can achieve a sustainable/bio-based product without having to change their labels and registers.
Another launch I would like to highlight is the KeraMatch V, a vegan keratin to attend the growing demand for vegan hair care products.
I would also like to mention the Majestem Drypure launch, a botanic origin active obtained from Plant Cell Culture for mature skin treatment. The Plant Cell Culture technology is eco-designed and causes minimal environmental impact, because it requires a tiny amount of vegetal tissue to obtain the actives. Besides, Majestem Drypure comes in a powder format, compatible with anhydrous formulations, fulfilling a market demand for water saving. It is especially recommended for makeup applications and presents multiple benefits – antiaging, antiwrinkle, antipollution, antioxidant and fights glycation – attending to different skin needs in one active.

Sustainability and development

We are aware that Croda keeps investing on innovation without leaving sustainability aside. What products are you working on in your Innovation Centre in Campinas?
Surely the innovation tied to sustainability is the key priority in Croda and it would not be different at this moment. We are converting our Innovation Centre in Campinas into a technical expert centre for Hair and Sun Care, the greatest markets in Latin America. We are working towards the development of products that can be manufactured in our Campinas site, so we can contribute to our clients demands for immediate attention and decrease carbon footprint. We will soon have news about it in the region and we will export for other consumer markets.
It is also worth mentioning that in our website there is a search tool called “Go Green”. We provide with it a faster way to find the highest natural content and most sustainable products from our ingredient portfolio to our clients. The “Go Green” tool goes hand in hand with our commitment to be Climate, Land and People Positive by 2030, and we are proud to be part of this mission with Croda.