INTERVIEW
TP: Why would a formulator necessarily want to replace phenoxyethanol with CuraVia? EM: For many applications, phenoxyethanol is the preservative of choice. But there are places where phenoxyethanol maybe doesn’t deliver in a way the formulator needs it to deliver. For instance, there are certain types of emulsions where you get clouding effects. That’s just one of a number of reasons that phenoxyethanol perhaps can’t perform universally. What we notice is there are a lot of sustainable molecules, natural or bio-identical molecules at low pH, like organic acids. There are great options available to the personal care industry below pH below 5. But there were very few molecules that
were available from pH 5.5 to pH 9. So that’s where we focus. There was a need for additional molecules in the neutral range. Again, as consumer pressure retailer pressure and regulatory pressure mount, we need more molecules.
TP: Where are you at with product development? EM: We’ve spent the last 18 months partnering with several multinational companies to go through beta testing to make sure that we have a good product before going to market. We’ve recently scaled to what is considered
in the biotech world as the ‘valley of death’ – pilot scale. We checked that box in the first quarter of 2023, and we’re one step away from commercial production scale. We now have our initial safety testing back
and we’re completing our safety packages so that we can submit dossiers around the globe. We’re ready to send out samples now.
TP: There’s several companies in the market offering fermented ingredients. Playing devil’s advocate, why does the market need Curie Co? What are you offering that others aren’t? EM: I think the market needs a lot more molecules, not fewer. If you look at regulation around the globe, it’s like a big red pen to molecules that the industry has been using for the last 100 years. Formulators in general have an ever-dwindling palette of available preservatives. Quite frankly, there is no magic bullet.
There’s no one preservative that works across every industry or even in a single industry across every product. We end up mixing and matching things based on the pH or the formulation or the surfactant used. Formulators are running out of what they can mix and match together to make safe products free of contamination. We’re seeing that with all the product recalls recently.
TP: How difficult is quality control with enzymes? Isn’t that an issue with fermented ingredients? EM: That’s why you have really tight controls on all of your manufacturing, both upstream and downstream. Our head of bioprocess also came from Merck. So I would say that we’ve got quality and
rigour within our team. That expectation translates to the contract manufacturers that we partner with.
www.personalcaremagazine.com
Natural Organic Sustainable
Ingredients for: Hair care Skin Care
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INFO@CARIBNATURALPRODUCT.COM July 2023 PERSONAL CARE Sun Care
17
“We’re about a one-in-100 replacement. So, one tonne of our
enzyme could displace about 100 tonnes of phenoxyethanol ” Erika Milczek, chief executive of Curie Co
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