Clariant partners with KitoZyme

Clariant announces long-term partnership with KitoZyme to deliver innovative white biotechnology products for personal care applications
New range of sustainable and cost effective range of biopolymers
Clear move to deliver technology ingredients with the character of differentiation

Muttenz, 25 August 2011 – To meet the needs of Personal Care customers worldwide looking for natural and sustainable ingredients, Clariant, a leading global supplier of specialty chemicals, has announced to enter a long-term partnership with KitoZyme, a leading edge manufacturer of biopolymers. The complete range of effective, sustainable and sensory enhancing biopolymers for personal care applications of KitoZyme will be available from October 2011 under Clariant trade names Vitipure™, Zenvivo™ and Velsan®.

The new Clariant range of products is extracted from secured vegetal source and reaches a benchmark for the production of vegetal Chitosan, Chitin-Glucan and their derivatives. By-product valorization demonstrates that they are both eco-friendly and cost effective. In production they are modular and sequenced in such a way that each intermediate product is isolated and purified before moving to the next stage ensuring pure and ultra-pure grade units. Overall, they facilitate the effective management of cost, quality, flexibility, traceability, molecular characteristics, and specifications.

Sourced by selected suppliers that meet requirements in terms of purity, microbiological quality and traceability, they are produced from fully renewable, non-GMO and traceable fungi, by-products of biotech and food industry, these biopolymers comply with GMP (FDA and EMEA), HACCP and ISO9001: 2008.

According to Hugues Bultot, CEO at KitoZyme, “developing new industrial processes based on the ‘biorefinery’ concept is a clear trend in the White Biotech sector. A biorefinery increases the profitability along the value chain and helps white biotech companies to be more environment-friendly and more sustainable. With countless numbers of microorganisms currently produced by the different actors of the White Biotech, biorefinery offers many excellent opportunities for product innovation. Moreover, thanks to our proprietary processes, they offer the double advantage of by-product valorization and generation of efficient ingredients in a cost-effective, highly reproducible and safe way.”

Clariant’s Michael Willome, Head of Business Unit Industrial & Consumer Specialties says: “Clariant’s decision to partner with KitoZyme is fully in line with our strategy to be the preferred partner to the Personal Care industry by providing sustainable innovations and superior sensoric differentiation based on formulation expertise and market insight. This partnership helps us to become a supplier of technology ingredients with the character of differentiation, with the help of new technologies and a deeper product portfolio.”

Dr. Ralf Zerrer, Head of Strategic Marketing of Business Unit Industrial & Consumer Specialties concludes: “Thanks to its unique and patented process, the new Clariant biopolymer range guarantees customers innovative solutions for cosmetic formulations and high quality of its Chitosan and Chitin-Glucan polymers in terms of traceability, safety, purity and specifications.”