P2 Science, a chemical manufacturing company based in Connecticut, is quietly becoming a beauty industry secret weapon.
The company specializes in clean, custom ingredients that use upcycled raw materials and “green chemistry,” the buzzy industry term to denote a focus on formulations without hazardous substances.
Launched in 2012 by a Yale professor and PhD student, the firm launched its cosmetics ingredient business in 2020 by partnering with top beauty brands. So far, this includes Rare Beauty, Moroccan Oil, Helen of Troy-owned Curlsmith, P&G-owned Mielle and LVMH-owned Ole Henriksen, among others.
For example, one of its early hero ingredients, called Citropol F, makes fragrances last longer. It’s made from upcycling pine tree waste and is found in Rare Beauty’s Find Comfort hair and body mist, hand- and body creams from Moroccan Oil, Innersence clean haircare, Herbivore lip balm, and skin care from Ole Henriksen. Another, called Citropol 1A, boosts moisturizing abilities in skin and hair care.
In 2023, P2 revealed a custom, exclusive ingredient cocktail for Unilever-owned Living Proof that now anchors its best-selling No Frizz Smooth Stylers. Dubbed its “proprietary smoothing technology,” Living Proof’s claims includes 75% less frizz and 6x smoother hair that lasts for 96 hours.
Ingredients from P2 can be found in more than 200 consumer products today. But unlike the influx of biotech ingredients (such as those from L’Oréal-backed Debut), which includes the scaling of a man-made molecule through fermentation, P2 turns upcycled natural materials into effective ingredients.
“The way we build our ingredients today is from byproducts from the pulp and paper industry, like terpenes,” Oihana Elizalde, CEO of P2 Science, told Glossy. “So, think about using things like wood waste, which, if not [used by P2], would have been burned. And so [we’re] finding ways to use these building blocks [from] nature to develop other ingredients, then [we] combine them in very unique ways.”
Announced in January, L’Oréal Group is investing in P2 through its new accelerator program, L’AcceleratOR. As previously reported by Glossy, L’Oréal Group is funneling a $117 million investment into the fast-tracking of 13 global companies over five years, including P2, one of only two selected from the U.S.
“We had nearly 1,000 applications from 101 countries,” Ezgi Barcenas, L’Oréal Group’s chief corporate responsibility officer, told Glossy. “We’re after the solutions that are mature enough to test and pilot as a solution in the first six to nine months, … then for us to learn from that and find ways to help them scale.”
L’Oréal Group partnered with the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership and its chief innovation officer, James Cole, to select and vet the 13 companies. Cole told Glossy he is most excited about new ingredient manufacturers and circulatory solutions. P2 represents both.
“Startups [partnering with] leading companies are potentially going to reinvent the way that we do business,” said Cole. “At the moment, you buy something all along the chain, but in the circular economy, materials will have to flow in different directions. And I’m certainly seeing some new, interesting business models and platforms that actually enable that transaction in a different way.”
This could mean new, innovative ingredients appearing in L’Oréal products soon. “Of course, we want the most scalable solutions as quickly as possible,” said L’Oréal’s Barcenas. “But along the way, we want to be very transparent about the learnings because even the application process can teach you a lot about the types of solutions out there, the types of innovation communities that you’re connected to and what we’re able to tap into now.”
Correction: A previous version of this story inaccurately listed Prequel, La Roche Posay, and The Ordinary as brands featuring P2 ingredients. It has been corrected.
