Lonza’s New Hair Care Technology Center Embraces Global Footprint

Lonza Consumer Care has broadened its Personal Care R&D footprint with the addition of the Global Centre of Hair Care Technology on Feb. 25 at Blackley, Manchester, United Kingdom.

The center serves as the hub from which Lonza Consumer Care will expand its presence in the hair care market. The team will apply ingredient expertise and formulation design to create original concepts, validated through advanced measurement techniques, said Penny Antonopoulos, head of Global Marketing, Personal Care.

“Establishing this lab allows us to deliver specialty, science-backed solutions targeting the hair fiber and collaborate with manufacturers and marketers of hair care brands globally,” she explained.

In conjunction with the Global Centre of Skin Care Technology in New Jersey and the Alpharetta Innovation Technology Centre in Georgia, the focus at the new location will provide solutions to resonate with the scalp and hair care needs for consumers’ desires around the world, explained Antonopoulos.

Inspiration

The Lonza team was inspired to provide chemistries with demonstrated benefits beyond traditional cleansing and conditioning applications to keep consumers’ hair in its most healthy state.

According to Antonopoulos, the goal and promise Lonza set was to progress their expertise of the hair fiber to generate robust and reliable data for new product development, in addition to broadening their hair care portfolio.

To improve anti-aging of hair, help repair damage and for general hair protection, the company looks into manageability and other needs of healthy hair in terms of:

• Shine,
• Volume,
• Manageability,
• Anti-frizz benefits and more.

Additionally, the team will collaborate with the group in Georgia to evaluate on-hair performance attributes on their anti-dandruff applications. Furthermore, in the area of scalp health, as the Skin Care Centre develops scalpceuticals, the Hair Care Centre will be able to assess and quantify the impact these chemistries can deliver to the actual hair fiber.

Hair Equipment

Jamie Hawkes, Ph.D., global head of Haircare Technology is the lead at the center and holds significance in outlining the testing plans to help strengthen internal capabilities.

According to Hawkes, the center utilizes industry standard equipment and test methods in order to generate efficacy data to help meet customers’ specific needs. The center also developed personalized testing equipment and test protocols, which give additional data for added value to their products.

“For the immediate future, the majority of our testing will be focused on the mechanical properties of hair when treated with our products, such as improved hair strength, lower breakage, improved combability and smoothness of the hair fiber,” he explained.

Global Footprint

With the many variations in hair care and all the international collaborations, the company plans to develop tools, equipment and data packages to fit specific markets and needs and to help their customers.

“By collaborating with our customers and giving them data that they would want to generate themselves, we would effectively be helping them shortcut their development process, which ultimately would be in the best interest for both parties in order to achieve the intended targets,” said Hawkes. 

“In essence really, we’re going to be focusing on the global needs of the hair care industry, regardless of region,” added Antonopoulos.

The hair care and skin care goal for the company is to inspire formulators with a variety of functional solutions in the portfolio, which focuses on what is needed to be delivered to excite the consumers, she explained.