Sun shines on Barcelona show

The event, held on 17-19 April was produced with theme, Solar Beauty, and had a resulting focus on sun care products, though the whole range of personal care ingredient technology was covered by the multitude of suppliers exhibiting at the show. The show had increased its unique visitor number for the 2012 event by 5%, delivering one of the most successful editions in the exhibition’s history. Welcoming 590 exhibitors, it was also the biggest show ever, 10% larger than last year’s record-breaking Milan show. The three-day event recorded a total of 7,152 unique visitors in attendance at Barcelona’s Gran Via Exhibition Centre. The total daily visitor figure (including re-visits) increased by 9% to 13,071. As ever, the international contingent was strong, with 70% visitors hailing from outside of Spain in search of the newest products and latest developments from the world’s most innovative personal care ingredients suppliers. More than 70 new products were unveiled at the Innovation Zone – the visitor’s roadmap for launches at the show. This commitment to creativity was echoed at the Innovation Zone Best Ingredient Award, which saw Unipex/Lucas Meyer Cosmetics take Gold for its new ingredients Progeline and Adipofill. A man-made beach complete with real sand, deckchairs and parasols, provided the perfect Mediterranean backdrop for the in-focus Solar Beauty theme. The beach brought together a full-scale innovation platform where visitors could explore the history of sun care, chat with experts on regulation, social networks and new technologies or have their skin tested for UV exposure. Echoed throughout the event, in-focus also offered a Scientific Seminar on sun protection, panel discussions on the latest solar trends, while Mintel gave product demonstrations based on the latest sun care launches from the East and the West on the Innovation Zone. A series of well-attended Innovation Seminars, Workshops, Scientific Seminars and Marketing Trends presentations covered hot topics such as green formulations, the possible alternatives to animal testing and the cutting edge technologies involved in Cosmetogenomics, making this year’s educational programme one of the most in-demand to-date. As part of the programme, market analyst Euromonitor hosted a briefing which looked at the cosmetics market as it stands today. The presentation featured Euromonitor’s global head of beauty and personal care research, Irina Barbalova, and senior personal care company analyst, Oru Mohiuddin. Irina Barbalova explained that the beauty and personal care (BPC) industry, which saw 5% overall global growth, is continuing its upward curve in 2011 mainly due to the strong performance of premium market products. Premium cosmetics outperformed mass cosmetics across Western Europe, North America and Asia Pacific in 2011, with 4.7% growth. “The resilience of the BPC industry and the rise of premium products over mass products illustrate one of these global shifts we witnessed last year,” said Barbalova. “As companies compete for lower consumer budgets, they explore new ways of engaging with consumers.” Euromonitor’s latest research shows that leading BPC companies are seeing growth in emerging markets, but the recession in Western markets is challenging their business model, leading them to reconsider their approach to retail, mergers and acquisition, innovation and new products positioning in order to remain successful and relevant. “We see more leading BPC companies engaging in, for example, streamlined commitment to sustainability, as they see themselves taking on a broader role of improving consumer lives,” added Oru Mohiuddin.

The exhibition

Akzo Nobel introduced Recentia plant serum fractions, a new line of bioactive ingredients based on cutting-edge Zeta Fraction technology. With conventional plant extraction, botanical extracts are isolated from dried plants using chemical solvents as separation media. This results in plant cell degradation that enables only a narrow band of ingredients to be extracted, and leads to a host of other limitations. These limitations include poor reproducibility, low specific activity, deteriorated odour, poor shelf-life stability, minimum product differentiation, and inconsistent incoming raw materials. Zeta Fraction technology selectively isolates intracellular components from living plants and marine sources to produce a much wider range of bioactive cosmetic ingredients able to capture the powerful synergy that exists within plant cells. Also instead of using external solvents as separations media, Zeta Fraction technology preserves the inherent osmotic pressure of the plant cell juice and uses it as a separations medium. Targeted fractions are mechanically and gently separated based on their electrokinetic (zeta) potential. The result is a wide range of multi-targeted benefits which are not always obtained through conventional plant extraction technology, including: minimising formation of reactive oxygen species and free radicals (DPPH: 2,2-diphenyl-1- picrylhydrazyl), preventing oxidative damage from sunlight generated singlet oxygen, ensuring photostabilisation of active product ingredients susceptible to UV radiation, showing increased effectiveness of cosmetic ingredients, showing COX-2 inhibitory activity, demonstrating MMP-9 inhibitory activity.