Startup chemical firms developing biobased cosmetic ingredients have secured major investments to scale production to commercial levels.  These ingredients, typically biosurfactants or biobased oils and emollients, are derived from fermentation or chemical modification of biobased materials.  Now is a great time for R&D teams to evaluate the new biobased alternatives—not just for their green credentials, but for the unique functional benefits they may offer in next-generation product design.

A major portion of cosmetic ingredient innovation happens in startup companies (1).  In a previous article, we reported that ingredient innovation has centered on chemicals produced by biotechnology and on polymers and oligomers, which are not subject to the European REACH regulations.  Sustainability and biodegradability are important market drivers in new ingredients.  Ingredients made by fermentation can find a ready market, because they are generally biodegradable and have a low carbon impact.  They also do not contain common synthetic impurities, such as 1,4 dioxane present in ethoxylated ingredients.

Recently, several startups received major investments to allow them to grow their production capabilities to commercial scale.(2)  Many developed renewable ingredients to lab scale and are now preparing scaleup activities to pilot scale.  Some have partnered with larger specialty chemicals firms to help with manufacturing and distribution.

In general, most startup firms target one of three product areas.  First is biosurfactants and specifically glycolipids.  Second, a few firms develop oils and emollients based on renewable feedstocks.  Finally, other products based on renewable sources are oleofuran surfactants, emulsifiers, and amino acids and proteins.

A major challenge for all new ingredients is that they are more costly than traditional, petroleum-based ingredients.(3)  For that reason, companies have focused on beauty and cosmetics rather than cleansing, because the profit margins for ingredients are higher and the volumes are lower.  However, the aspirational goal of many firms is to replace legacy petroleum-based surfactants in cleansers and detergents with biobased versions, which are milder and more sustainable.

New ingredient chemistry

Biobased cosmetic ingredients coming to market fall into three categories based on their feedstocks and production processes.  First, extracts of plant materials can have effects on biological pathways in the skin.  Many different plant extracts (known as bioactives) are launched each year with skin appearance claims based on clinical and consumer tests.  Bioactives are out of scope for this article.  We plan to review them in a future paper.

New biobased ingredients are often produced by fermentation using yeasts or bacteria.  The fermentation process is carefully controlled with known feedstocks and extensive post manufacturing purification.  Common feedstocks are biobased sugars such as corn sugar, plant oils, and other biomass.  There are many waste products in agriculture and the food industry that can be utilized as feedstocks in fermentation.  Some firms have used post-consumer food waste as well, which is challenging due to possible contamination with foreign objects and substances.  Pretreatment of the feedstock prepares it for the fermentation process.

The main category of biobased ingredients produced by fermentation is biosurfactants.  These are bioderived surface active chemicals that find use in cleansers and foams.  The most important new fermentation-produced biosurfactants are glycolipids, encompassing mainly sophorolipids and rhamnolipids.

The third category of biobased ingredients are those made by traditional chemical processing of bioderived components.  This includes the more established alkyl polyglucoside biosurfactants (APGs) and also biosurfactants made by coupling sugars with biobased oils.

Biosurfactants

Glycolipids are surface active compounds consisting of a glycolic head group and an aliphatic tail.  They differ from APGs in that they are generally produced by fermentation processes, whereas APGs are made by reacting glucose with fatty alcohols or acids, both from renewable sources, in a chemical synthesis process.

Two main varieties of glycolipids exist.  Rhamnolipids are anionic glycolipids consisting of mono or di-rhamnose sugars linked to b-hydroxylated fatty acids with various chain lengths.  They are produced by microbes, mainly Pseudomonas aeruginosa.  The number of rhamnose units and fatty acid chain lengths can vary, so that rhamnolipids are complex mixtures.  As fatty acids, they are anionic surfactants.(4)  Rhamnolipids are good foaming agents compared to other glycolipids.

The other main group of glycolipids are the sophorolipids.  These are composed of a sophorose sugar head and a fatty acid tail.   Sophorose is a dimer of glucose, and a stereoisomer of maltose, another glucose dimer.  The fatty acid is terminally linked to the sophorose, so that it has a carboxylic acid group at the other end of the carbon chain.  This carboxylic group can be free, forming the acidic form of the sophorolipid, or esterified with one of the sophorose hydroxyl groups, the lactonic form.  The relative levels of the lactonic and acidic sophorolipid determine the properties of the sophorolipids, as does the hydrocarbon chain length distribution.  Sophorolipids are produced by yeasts such as Candida bombicola and Starmerella bombicola.(3,5)  They are less surface active and milder than rhamnolipids.

Less widely used glycolipids are based on other polyol sugars, such as arabinose and mannose.

Glycolipids are biobased, biodegradable, and have low toxicity, making them attractive for applications in bioremediation, enhanced oil recovery, food and personal care, and medicine, among others.  They have been more costly than commodity surfactants,(6) but the gap may become smaller as glycolipid manufacturers scale up.  Several glycolipid makers have recently received investments that will be used to increase production scale (Table 1).

Sophorolipids by fermentation.  A number of startups make sophorolipids by fermentation.(7)  With a current capacity of over 1,000 ton/year, UK-based Holiferm has received funding to build a 3,000 ton/year sophorolipid fermentation reactor, with a 15,000 ton/year version planned for following years.  The company uses a patented gravity separation technology to purify the product, which lowers the carbon footprint of the process and reduces costs.  According to Lawrence Clarke, technical sales manager at Holiferm, the gravity separation also yields sophorolipids with a high percentage in the lactonic form, which gives the best degreasing performance in applications.

For biosurfactants, a low price point is required for market success, and Holiferm found that in some applications a smaller amount of its sophorolipids can be used than with other biobased surfactants.  Another advantage of Holiferm’s approach is that the feedstock consists of non-GMO rapeseed oil that is sourced in the EU, in contrast to other biobased surfactants that use tropical oils (such as palm and coconut oil) which are less sustainable.  Holiferm has partnered with Sasol, a global chemical company based in South Africa.

Solon, Ohio based Locus Fermentation Solutions has partnered with Dow and received funding to build 2,500 tons/year capacity to make sophorolipids for home and personal care.(8)  The company achieved US EPA TSCA registration for its biosurfactants.  Another US-based supplier is Glycosurf, which has been funded by grants from the US DOE.  Glycosurf offers a variety of glycolipids but has not yet scaled up.  And glycolipid maker BioReNuVa, based in Austin, Texas, received an undisclosed amount from Hallstar in exchange for a minority stake.(9)

Belgian startup Amphistar produces sophorolipids using the Starmerella bombicola yeast and a feed consisting of upcycled organic waste streams.  It recently raised $13.5m to scale up its fermentation process at a plant in Antwerp.  Cofounder Sophie Roelants said that there is a clear market pull for sophorolipids, but commercial launch has been delayed because of the need for REACH registration.  The upcycled feedstocks that Amphistar relies on are available in high volumes, so they have a consistent high quality and purity compared to other suppliers.  Besides, yeast-based processes are robust and resist contamination.

A lifecycle assessment provided by Amphistar shows that its upcycled sophorolipids have a significantly lower environmental impact than other sophorolipids.

Amphistar’s objective is to reach cost parity with commodity products in 10 years, when the biobased economy will be more mature.

Rhamnolipids.  Glycolipids are also offered by Evonik, the global chemical company.  An industrial scale plant in Slovakia produced its first rhamnolipid surfactants in 2024.(10)  The rhamnolipids are produced by a fermentation process using the bacteria Pseudomonas putida and a corn sugar feedstock.  Like all glycolipids, rhamnolipids are biodegradable and good foam formers, making them well suited for rinse-off applications in home and personal care.

Other glycolipids.  Biosurfactants can be based on other sugars.  San Carlos, CA based Ruby Bio developed a fermentation technology that uses wild-type yeast strains (such as Rhodotorula and related yeast species) to make glycolipids based on corn sugars and upcycled waste.(11) According to CEO Charlie Silver, the Ruby Bio biosurfactants offer cleansing performance similar to sodium lauryl sulfate at a lower cost than other glycolipids.  The firm can produce biosurfactants at the 1,000 tons/year scale.

Other biosurfactants.  Seattle, Washington based Sironix Renewables follows a different route to biosurfactants that doesn’t use fermentation.  It combines sugar-derived furans with natural oils, preferably soy or algal oil, to make a renewable oleo-furan surfactant.  Sironix CEO and Co-founder Christoph Krumm says that the oleo-furan functions well in hard water without the need for chelating agents.(12)  This removes or eliminates the cost penalty of using biosurfactants compared to commodity surfactants.  In March 2025, Sironix received a $3.5m venture capital investment to scale up its manufacturing operations.

Biobased emollients & oils

Biosurfactants producers have received the most funding recently, but other startups work on functional ingredients for home and personal care as well (Table 2).  The majority of emollients and emulsifiers in cosmetic formulations is biobased.  These ingredients are often derived from palm oil, coconut oil, or other oils extracted from plants.  Using extracted plant oils as a source of care ingredients instead of other biomass has two major disadvantages.  In the case of palm oil and coconut oil, large oil palm plantations in tropical regions have caused a loss of habitat for native species and a loss of biodiversity.  For those oils, transportation from the regions of origin to the product manufacturer adds significantly to the carbon footprint of the material.  In the case of soybean oil and rapeseed oil (canola oil), the farmland acreage used for oil production is not available to grow food crops, potentially leading to higher food prices or shortages.

Reducing the need for palm oil from palm plantations, startup firm C16 Biosciences has developed a fermentation process that uses yeast cells fed by sugars from food waste.  Torula oil, its palm oil substitute, has a much lower environmental impact.  Earlier this year, C16 raised $4.5m to develop ingredients for the food industry.  The fermentation-grown alternative palm oil has a more consistent quality than plantation-derived palm oil and generates much lower CO₂ emissions.  As with all biobased ingredients, a hurdle is reaching price parity with commodity palm oil.(13)

P2 Science developed a green chemistry process to produce polycitronellol from terpenes, derived from tree sap, a waste product in the paper industry.  Since receiving additional funding in 2024, it launched additional polycitronellol emollients complementing its original launch of the terpene-based polycitronellol, manufactured in a process based on green chemistry.  It has shown that its ingredients outperform other emollients in hair care and fragrance applications.(14)

Another upcycled biomaterial is sargassum seaweed, the largest existing seaweed bloom.  Startup firm Carbonwave collects the sargassum from beaches and processes it into fertilizer and a cosmetic emulsifier.  It received $5m in venture capital investment in 2024.

Finally, companies with technologies to turn wood biomass into lignin and cellulose have been funded, with Bloom Biorenewables receiving $15.8m and Lignopure $2.7m.  Lignin is highly crosslinked and difficult to process.  Lignopure turns wood into cosmetic grade cellulose powder, while Bloom created innovative technology to separate cellulose from lignin polymers and cellulose sugars.  This technology will be scaled up to supply industrial quantities of microcrystalline cellulose for cosmetic applications.

Formulating with new ingredients

Including new ingredients in product formulations offers opportunities for improved performance, higher sustainability, and potentially unusual and unexpected benefits.  For example, Sironix found that its biobased surfactant acts as a chelator in addition to its surface active properties, and P2 Science found that polycitronellol performs well as a fragrance fixative.  Replacing petroleum-based ingredients with novel alternatives that have unique chemical structures and physical properties can give rise to unusual product performance.

Ingredient suppliers often provide example formulations with their ingredients, to educate formulators and illustrate the properties of their materials.  Startups offering ingredients with novel chemistry benefit from doing the same because product formulators need to learn how to work with the new ingredients.  This requires startups to recruit a finished product formulator with experience in developing formulations in the target product segment for the new ingredient technology.

It is difficult to develop formulations that truly highlight the new ingredients and their properties in applications.  Sophorolipid maker Holiferm lists over 30 example formulas on its website, for applications ranging across home and personal care.  The level of glycolipids recommended is 1 to 10% depending on the application.  However, most formulations have the glycolipid as a cosurfactant in addition to primary surfactants, such as cocamidopropyl betaine and sodium laureth sulfate.

Locus Fermentation Solutions markets its sophorolipids with Dow under the brand name Ecosense.  Its example formulations have the sophorolipid as a secondary surfactant with a glucoside or glycoside surfactant in facial cleanser applications.  The same is true for formulations with Evonik’s rhamnolipid biosurfactants or Amphistar’s sophorolipids.  Testing data provided by Evonik describe the rhamnolipid in formulas as a cosurfactant with other surfactants.  According to Karima Benaissi of Amphistar, the sophorolipid is best as a cosurfactant in cleansing applications, but it can be used as the sole surfactant and emulsifier in leave-on products.  In that case the biosurfactant can provide the maximum sustainability benefit.

The first industrial scale rhamnolipid plant was built by Evonik at its site in Slovenská Ľupča, Slovakia.  It started producing rhamnolipids in early 2024.  The target market is household and personal care cleaning.(8, 10)

Conclusions

Leading home and personal care startup firms have received funding that allows them to transition from pilot scale projects to commercial scale production.  Most startups developed fermentation-based biosurfactants and oils.  These materials offer formulators new tools to reduce environmental impact while maintaining product performance.  However, cost and regulatory hurdles still limit adoption. 

Even so, the outlook is promising. As scale increases and formulation expertise develops, these novel ingredients are expected to achieve broader use in home and personal care products. For R&D teams, now is the time to evaluate biobased alternatives—not just for their green credentials, but for the unique functional benefits they may offer in next-generation product design.

References

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