Ecological and ethical factors are becoming increasingly important for consumers in the beauty and personal care market. The BL CS has created the new segment BNA to meet the demand for botanical extracts and natural actives with a focus on sustainability and scientific claims. The new segment is headed by Kai-Steffen Krannig: "Nature is an infinite source of inspiration for genuine beauty and well-being. Together, we want to become a leading global partner for botanical extracts & natural actives in the personal care market."

BNA plays an important role in expanding the portfolio of biosolutions of the Nutrition & Care division through a B4B (business-for-business) approach to enable highly differentiated standard and tailor-made plant-inspired solutions that are backed up by science.

"By bringing together sustainable sourcing, biotech processes and scientific claim substantiation with our recently established Skin Institute, our customers benefit from high performance, sustainable specialty botanical ingredients that allow them to differentiate in the market," said Yann d’Herve, head of the BL CS.

Experts from the most recent acquisitions work in the BNA segment: Alkion Biopharma (2016), Botanica and Wilshire (2021) and Novachem (2023). The segment also includes Evonik’s legacy business for example TEGO® Turmerone a natural plant extract of the curcuma root.

BNA offers two product types: botanical extracts, which are obtained by infusing an herb, or botanical in a liquid to extract a desired ingredient; and natural actives, which go one step further by providing a defined content of specific phytochemicals and a proven scientific claim with a promise for efficacy.