Our know-how
Solabia Group, a pioneer in the cosmetics industry for more than 50 years, provides a wide range of ingredients (active ingredients, functional ingredients, plant extracts, and beauty pearls) thanks to its strong innovation potential.
Innovation at the heart of Solabia cosmetics
The expertise of its researchers, combined with the mastery of its technologies, allows Solabia to offer its customers different complementary and additional know-how. Indeed, we owe the diversity of our products to the multiplicity of our technologies and expertise:
- White Biotechnology
- Green Biotechnology
- Blue Biotechnology
- Green Chemistry
- Mineral Dispersions
- Delivery Systems
A center of excellence in the beauty industry
Innovation lies at the core of Solabia’s Cosmetics division. Leveraging a unique combination of expertises and technologies, Solabia develops innovative active and high-performance functional ingredients designed to meet the evolving needs of the beauty industry.
Backed by a global network of 16 production sites and 9 R&D centers, the Group benefits from a broad range of complementary technologies and scientific expertise. Its innovation ecosystem connects research centers in France (BioEurope, PolymerExpert and ID bio), Switzerland (Mibelle Biochemistry) and the United States (AppleChem), alongside other specialized teams across the Group. By combining expertise in biotechnology, plant extraction, polymers, formulation and green chemistry, this collaborative network accelerates the development of innovative, scientifically validated and sustainable solutions.
Our six pillars
At Solabia, we believe that true innovation lies at the intersection of nature and biotechnology. Our cosmetic division is built on six pillars of scientific excellence, each contributing to the creation of high-performance, safe, and sustainable ingredients.
White Biotechnology
Biotechnology is an integral part of Solabia’s foundations, covering all its divisions and contributing to the worldwide reputation of our group. Applicable to the skin, biotechnology includes all processes that use or modify plants and/or microorganisms to develop cosmetic active ingredients with biological activity for the skin.
Within the Solabia group, we have three biotechnological technologies at our disposal to meet current requirements in terms of quality and innovation: fermentation (obtaining polysaccharides), enzymatic biocatalysis (obtaining oligosaccharides, ceramide analogs or oligopeptides) and enzymatic bioconversion (obtaining extracts enriched in polyphenol dimers).
Green Biotechnology
Green biotech is where botanical tradition meets biotechnology, enabling us to enhance, transform, and reproduce high-value plant-derived molecules beyond what nature can provide directly.
Three complementary approaches support this expertise. Subcritical water co-extraction, through our SolaGreen® technology, extracts fragile, high-value compounds using only water and no organic solvents. Enzymatic bioconversion, through Solabia Laccase technology, harnesses enzymes to create highly bioactive polyphenol dimers found only in trace amounts in nature. Plant cell culture, developed by Mibelle Biochemistry, cultivates rare or endangered plant material in bioreactors, ensuring a sustainable and controlled supply independent of seasonal constraints.
Blue Biotechnology
Our marine expertise rests on two complementary offers. Macroalgae, cultivated and harvested off Ouessant Island in Brittany, where our teams manage a certified organic seaweed operation across a marine domain of more than eight hectares, the source of our high molecular weight fucoidans and of our sea rockweed extracts, alongside a Codium fragile harvested sustainably from the Portuguese coastline. Microalgae, cultivated in Israel’s Arava desert in the world’s largest photobioreactor facility: a closed, fully controlled system, exposed to natural sunlight, where twenty years of expertise produce the astaxanthin and fucoxanthin concentrates behind our antioxidant and photo-ageing actives. Marine fermentation completes the picture, with exopolysaccharides derived from marine bacteria.
Bio-based Chemistry
Driven by the pursuit of naturality, performance and sustainability, bio-based chemistry designs and optimizes functional molecules through environmentally responsible processes. Leveraging this expertise, Solabia Group develops innovative ingredients and eco-designed polymers, using solvent-free and resource-efficient technologies to deliver high-performance cosmetic solutions.
Among these innovations, L-PCA, obtained through thermal cyclization, forms multifunctional complexes when combined with mineral salts, amino acids or fatty alcohols. This same approach underpins the eco-designed polymers developed by PolymerExpert and our patented solvent-free enzymatic synthesis technology, Solabia Omega Ceramide®.
Mineral Dispersions
Mineral UV filters are on the rise, carried by a growing demand for natural, safe and clean cosmetic products. But formulating mineral protection remains a genuine challenge: zinc oxide and titanium dioxide are hard to disperse, they tend to leave a white cast on the skin, and every gain in protection is usually paid for in texture.
With years of expertise in sun care, our teams have developed an offer based on a process and a blending technology of their own. The G-Block™ and S-Block™ ranges deliver high-SPF, broad-spectrum UVA and UVB protection, with best-in-class transparency including on darker skin tones, a reduced white cast, and a consistent SPF from batch to batch. Several references are 100% natural and COSMOS approved. And because sun care is worn every day, we offer a range of sensory signatures, from a creamy texture to a powdery finish. The same expertise extends to colour with our AppleCare™ pigment dispersant systems.
Delivery Systems
Stemming from an expertise recognized for more than 30 years, the Beauty Pearls by Solabia are symbols of perfection and purity but also of luxury. They are obtained one by one from know-how Made in France and a high precision macro-inclusion technology.
The Beauty Pearls by Solabia are visually seductive, attractive, and sensorial at the same time as well as when they melt on the skin’s surface. As serum, emulsion, mist, or mask, The Beauty Pearls by Solabia offer new gestures and galenic forms in three dimensions combining efficiency, naturality, and sensoriality.
