Ashland Care Specialties announces "Imagine, Collaborate and Succeed" at in-cosmetics 2013

Ashland Care Specialties announces "Imagine, Collaborate and Succeed" at in-cosmetics 2013

PARIS, France - Ashland Care Specialties, a business unit of Ashland Specialty Ingredients, announced innovative approaches to beautiful hair and skin at in-cosmetics 2013 and invited the personal care industry to collaborate on novel projects aligned to consumer aspirations of beauty around the world. Under the theme of "Imagine, Collaborate, Succeed," Ashland pledged to leverage new ingredient technologies, global formulating expertise and consumer science for companies dedicated to novel products that fulfill consumers' ideas about beauty in Asia, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and the Americas.

Ashland launched the "Imagine, Collaborate, Succeed," initiative to better serve personal care product makers that require very precise consumer-based solutions in virtually every marketplace around the world.

"Every region of the world has its own perception of beauty," said Jim Mish, group vice president, Ashland Care Specialties. "That's why, today more than ever before, we look at the world from many perspectives. In announcing our global initiative, we invite the personal care industry to collaborate with us on geographic-specific projects that, when completed, will be credible in the minds of individual consumers."

Global program, local impact
Ashland's global technology centers of excellence, along with new regional laboratories, an expanded ingredient technology portfolio and new resources aimed at understanding unique consumer requirements anywhere in the world, allow the company to better serve personal care manufacturers with formulating solutions that resonate with the personal needs of the global personal care consumer.

Ashland has expanded its global resources and built one of the largest portfolios of natural, synthetic and semi-synthetic polymers derived from plant and seed extract, cellulose ethers and vinyl pyrrolidones, providing product makers unique opportunities to create novel products more quickly and efficiently than before.

"Delivering on consumer desires, wherever they reside, is one of the single most important factors that determines the future success or failure of most personal care products," said Mish. "Accordingly, in the past couple of years, we have worked to align our own resources toward consumer needs and desires for beautiful hair, beautiful skin and stunning smiles. We are on the ground in more markets, conducting consumer studies to ensure our resources are in line with the marketplace. In doing so, we are better prepared to help our customers succeed."  

Rapid prototyping
Product prototyping is one of Ashland's strongest customer support capabilities. More than 15 technology platforms and thousands of ingredient SKUs afford Ashland the ability to rapidly develop a short list of formulation solutions. When formulation solutions alone cannot meet consumer expectations, Ashland puts its molecular science and synthesis experts to work in search of new molecules. New molecules enable product formulators to bring new consumer benefits to the marketplace. Beyond this, Ashland supports all of its scientific endeavors with a consumer science team that understands how to measure what consumers need and want.

New approaches to beautiful skin
Beautiful skin begins with a good foundation. Ashland's new Actopontine™ biofunctional is a bio-engineered peptide designed to support skin's own production of dermatopontin, a protein essential to rebuild and remodel the extracellular matrix of skin. Actopontine biofunctional has been shown in vitro and ex vivo to increase dermatopontin and other proteins critical to skin's foundation, including collagen.

Collagen may decline as much as 68 percent from the age of 30 to 80. Actopontine has been demonstrated to significantly increase the presence of collagen I and III in ex vivo studies. Further testing shows that an area of skin biopsy treated with the biofunctional exhibited significantly thicker and longer fibers than in an area without treatment, suggesting an increased quantity of dermatopontin located on a thicker network of collagen fibers.

Normalizing skin ecology
Ashland is also advancing skin care by innovating products intended to support the skin's natural defenses against external threats. The skin is an ecosystem with distinct microbial communities in a range of physiologically and topographically niches. Approximately one billion bacteria per square centimenter of skin live in cooperation with the host. Under normal conditions, resident microbes remain harmless. Enhancing this ecosystem may result in an improvement in moisturization, radiance and appearance.

In light of this knowledge, Ashland has launched the Skin's Ecology initiative, which shows how formulators may use the Lipigenine™ biofunctional to help normalize the bacterial community living on skin and achieve a beneficial probiotic effect. By incorporating the Lipigenine biofunctional in a topical cream, formulators may help support the skin's production of antimicrobial peptides on the stratum corneum and boost its natural defenses.

Formulating for efficiency and efficacy
As evidence of Ashland's commitment to helping formulators innovate consumer-desirable products, the company is introducing APShield™ 100 polymer, the first commercially available technology demonstrated to advance the performance attributes of antiperspirant products. By enabling formulators to reduce the amount of aluminum salts found in typical, high-functioning antiperspirants, this technology delivers a host of consumer benefits including less whitening on skin and staining on fabric. APShield™ 100 polymer boosts the efficacy of aluminum salts so its use can be reduced by as much as 80 percent in some formulations.

Supporting trends toward beautiful hair
At in-cosmetics, Ashland also announced Conditioneze™ 22 and Conditioneze™ 37 cationic solutions, two offerings designed to impart deep conditioning to hair, consumer desirable luster and soft, silky feel properties. The new offerings allow formulators to produce with relative ease a range of higher-value products aimed at today's trend toward well-conditioned, beautiful-looking hair. The expansion to Ashland's leading line of conditioning and deposition polymers affords hair care product makers the option to utilize Ashland for a larger spectrum of conditioning solutions.

A truly personal approach
Expanding product lines based on consumer needs, aligning resources to address consumers' perceptions of beauty anywhere in the word and adding consumer science capabilities in emerging markets, Ashland offers the personal care industry a truly personal approach to the consumer.

"Ashland is organized to collaborate with consumer product makers that want to deliver on the imaginations of consumers," said Mish. "Today we invite attendees of in-cosmetics 2013 to imagine, collaborate and succeed

For more information, visit Ashland at stand E31 or contact Penny Antonopoulos (pantonopoulos@ashland.com).

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About Ashland Specialty Ingredients
Ashland Specialty Ingredients offers industry-leading products, technologies and resources for solving formulation and product performance challenges in key markets including personal care, pharmaceutical, food and beverage, coatings and energy. Using natural, synthetic and semi-synthetic polymers derived from plant and seed extract, cellulose ethers and vinyl pyrrolidones, Ashland Specialty Ingredients offers comprehensive and innovative solutions for today's demanding consumer and industrial applications.

About Ashland
In more than 100 countries, the people of Ashland Inc. (NYSE: ASH) provide the specialty chemicals, technologies and insights to help customers create new and improved products for today and sustainable solutions for tomorrow. Our chemistry is at work every day in a wide variety of markets and applications, including architectural coatings, automotive, construction, energy, food and beverage, personal care, pharmaceutical, tissue and towel, and water treatment. Visit ashland.com to see the innovations we offer through our four commercial units - Ashland Specialty Ingredients, Ashland Water Technologies, Ashland Performance Materials and Ashland Consumer Markets.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:

Media Relations
Penny Antonopoulos
+1 973-628-4142
pantonopoulos@ashland.com