L'Oréal has made a minority investment in Sinehigh Innovation. Sinehigh Innovation is a Chinese biotech company focused on innovation for the development of novel, sustainability-focused cosmetics and beauty ingredients and solutions.
The French cosmetics giant has made this investment through Mecifang and with the support of Bold, the group's strategic innovation venture capital company. Sinehigh Innovation is a Chinese startup founded in 2017 by a doctor specialising in supramolecular chemistry. Its innovative smart self-assembly technology enables combinations of ingredients that were previously impossible, resulting in end products with greater efficacy and sustainability.
This is L'Oréal's first open innovation in the 'Big Bang Beauty Tech Innovation Challenge', which began four years ago in China.
As the French company has indicated, with this investment it intends to explore its full potential in the world of raw materials in order to overcome the known limitations in this field: incompatibility, instability and supply to develop innovative formulas for the skin, hair and scalp.
Barbara Lavernos, Executive Director of Research, Innovation and Technology, stressed that China is an "incredibly important enabler" and must be taken into account in L'Oréal's innovation strategy.
Jiaheng Zhang, founder and CEO of Shinehigh Innovation, said in the company's press release: "I am delighted to cooperate with L'Oréal Groupe, a world leader in the beauty industry. We have jointly researched the supramolecular development of multiple active raw materials in the fields of skin care, make-up, hair care and hair colouring. This is of great importance for the industrialisation and grounding of cutting-edge supramolecular technology. We look forward to exploring together further possibilities in the research and development of raw materials, their application and the development of the global market."