Greentech Madagascar venture to develop cosmetic ingredients

The active ingredients supplier has begun a new convention with Madagascar in a bid to develop new cosmetic active compounds.

The supplier's latest project involves working closely with the University of Antsiranana whereby it provided a research laboratory to development of new cosmetic active compounds.

The venture is another move for Greentech towards fulfilling its goal to invest in international partnerships, the most recent being Peru and West Africa where it supplied all necessary equipment for plant extraction and analytical control of those cosmetic ingredients.

"In this way, this will be locally new add-valued market for producers of raw materials, new employment for engineers and technicians in Madagascar and thus new income for local communities," say company reps on the collaboration.

Ethical sourcing

Efforts like this have been increasingly gaining interest from the cosmetics industry as it collectively moves towards sourcing ingredients in a more ethical way and this has led to a demand in education and transparency in the way companies go about their actions.

According to Greentech, new common structure 'GreenMadag' has been especially created for the development of new actives from local flora rich in medicinal applications as well as an educational program for the formation of competent technicians is in progress.

The first steps of development of cosmetic ingredients and extractions assays will be realised in this GreenMadag laboratory and then scale-up phases will be performed in the company's laboratory.

Urging the cosmetics industry to get on-board

The company has been urging the cosmetics industry to keep establishing long term relationships to ensure respect is given to any local environments affected by its sourcing activities.

In the last 15 years, Greentech has been developing and producing active ingredients from plants and microorganisms in the cosmetic and nutraceutical field.

Its R&D laboratory comprises of a 30 000 plants - 300 000 biological molecules data base  and is using bio-informatics and molecular modeling for rapid and targeted development of new actives.