Organic grape extract from Gattefossé can replace water in formulations
A pure extract from organic grapes, the ingredient can replace water which can help formulators increase the organic content of a product at relatively low cost, the company claims.
This can help a company attain organic certification as standards generally hold the percentage of organic ingredients in the final formulation as an important criterion.
Organic grape
The grape extract joins the organic orange and lemon extracts in the Original Extracts range, as well as the non-organic ingredients that include kiwi, lotus, bamboo and apple.
According to Gattefosé’s marketing manager Laurent Schubnel, producing the organic original extracts is challenging as the company has to have close partnerships with local suppliers to source the organic fruit.
"Furthermore our manufacturing process needs to be approved by Ecocert as natural to make sure the final product can be certified as 100 per cent natural," he told CosmeticsDesign-Europe.com.
Bio-compatibility
According to the company the original extracts contain volatile components, trace elements and mineral salts that are found in the fresh plant, which it claims improves the water’s bioavailability.
Gattefossé’s Laurent Schubnel explained that the majority of customers use the organic Original Extracts as a way to improve the global bio-compatibilty of the formula with the skin.
“The original extracts are closer in terms of pH, electronic potential and resistivity to the skin,” he previously told CosmeticsDesign-Europe.com when describing the range.
Not a cheat, a solution to organic formulation
“It is not a cheat so much as a solution. The way our customers will be using this ingredient is not simply to turn a non-organic formulation, organic. I imagine they will be using it with other organic ingredients as well,” Schubnel said.
Indeed, organic certification includes other criteria, for example an often very high proportion of natural ingredients, so the extract would only provider part of the answer.
Asked whether the full range was likely to go organic, Schubnel said it depended very much on customer demand, as well as organic crop availability.
“For a while we had the organic orange but it was not very popular. Then its popularity exploded which prompted the launch of the lemon variety. However, some fruits might be easier to find than others.”
