How breakthroughs in biotechnology are accelerating innovation at Unilever

Biography

Dr Neil Parry

Head of Biotechnology at Unilever

I’ve never seen innovation move as fast as it does today.

Biotechnology has huge potential to power our growth and strengthen our supply chain, and right now the opportunities feel limitless.

Fundamental science and tools that used to take us five years to develop now only take five months. This means that discoveries of new materials and optimisation of lead opportunities can happen in a timeframe that is engaging many more businesses and markets.

Thanks to large-scale data, machine learning and high-performance computing, we can now run thousands of different virtual experiments in the time it would take to do one in a physical laboratory.

Our biggest challenge is making the right choices about what to prioritise to ensure we’re delivering superior products for our consumers.

We see three key opportunities to strengthen our impact.

Creating high-value premium ingredients

The first is using biotechnology to create cost-effective, sustainable substitutes for high-value ingredients.

We have just launched an initial pilot programme with the University of Nottingham in the UK, exploring how we can use biotech to extract essential oils from plants and flowers that would otherwise go to waste. The ambition is to then use them to fragrance our products.

Many of our beauty brands have already made the switch to other sustainable biotech alternatives. Dove, for example, has launched hair products using biotech-derived vegan proteins like collagen and elastin in products such as Dove Intensive Repair Shampoo and Conditioner.

Similarly, REN has swapped natural bisabolol, an anti-inflammatory ingredient traditionally extracted from wild chamomile, for a fermented alternative for its Evercalm Barrier Support Elixir.

And it is not just in beauty and personal care that we are seeing biotech make an impact.

In Nutrition, we are leveraging biotechnology to find plant-based, sustainable ingredient alternatives for use across our brands.

Most recently, we have been working with The EVERY Company to explore how we can use precision fermentation to create nature-equivalent egg products without hens.

And in Home Care, biotech is accelerating the creation of new enzymes that could halve the number of ingredients we need to formulate our cleaning and laundry products.

AI is powering innovation in this area at a previously unimaginable speed. Working with Arzeda, a leader in protein and enzyme creation, for example, has allowed us to develop new ingredients five times faster than ever before.

Over the last 18 months, thanks to AI-powered Intelligent Protein Design Technology, we have developed new enzymes that can break down different types of stains, use less water and energy and replace petrochemical-derived ingredients.

The focus now is on scaling up production.

Sustainable substitutes with added consumer benefits

The second opportunity focuses on developing speciality ingredients through biotech that offer additional benefits for skincare, health and overall wellbeing in our products.

This area is making significant progress. In fact, we now have biotech-derived products that are outperforming their petrochemical predecessors.

A great example is our rhamnolipid technology.

Unilever scientists have spent years refining the formulation of Sunlight dishwashing liquid to deliver superior performance using 100% renewable and biodegradable ingredients. The result is a patented technological breakthrough called RhamnoClean that has fundamentally changed how we formulate hand dishwashing liquid.

Thanks to this breakthrough, we can now create rhamnolipids, a type of natural surfactant (ingredients that produce foam to lift and dissolve dirt, while remaining super mild to skin), by recreating on a large scale the natural biological process where bacteria convert sugar from agrochemical industry waste into this natural surfactant. We estimate this innovation could reduce greenhouse gas emissions from our products by up to 50%.

RhamnoClean technology is now being rolled out across our Sunlight hand dishwash premium range, and in order to secure supply we have partnered with chemical specialists Evonik to build the world’s first industrial-scale rhamnolipids plant at its factory in Slovakia.

Unlocking resilient supply chains

Finally, biotechnology is helping us unlock cost-competitive alternatives that reduce our dependence on certain raw ingredients that can be difficult to source.

A great example is our Future Origins joint venture with Geno which aims to use biotechnology to scale and commercialise high-volume sustainable ingredients used in many consumer products.

Faster, more impactful innovation

Biotechnology isn’t new – in fact, the practice can be traced back to the creation of beer, wine and cheese. We use it to create soy sauce and Marmite. But AI is unlocking possibilities at an unprecedented speed.

By bringing together the very best in technology, data and people, we are identifying needs and trends and transforming them into sustainable, cutting-edge innovations across our business.

Together with our partners, we are not just keeping pace with the future – we’re shaping it.