Unilever plans $270 million personal care innovation hub

Unilever has unveiled plans to develop a new $270 Global Innovation Centre in New Haven, Connecticut, due to open in 2029. This will be a leading hub for the company’s research and development for its personal care, beauty and wellbeing businesses.

The company said that that the location placed it “at the heart of one of the world’s fastest-growing biosciences innovation clusters - home to dozens of world-class universities and hundreds of companies.”

The centre will give Unilever capabilities in several areas. These include: packaging innovation, with a studio to allow faster development of packaging prototypes; a centre for skin care and cleansing; as well as its polycultural skin and hair centre of excellence specialising in creating ingredients and products that address the unmet needs of millions of consumers. A human performance lab, generating data and insights in human physiology; and a fragrance house will also be part of the new facility.

“The combination of assets and capabilities – including AI and quantum computing – will speed up materials discovery, product testing and development,” the company said. 

Unilever added that the US is its priority market for the expansion of its beauty, wellbeing and personal care portfolio. “US brands and US culture trends travel globally so the country serves as a platform for international product roll-outs,” the company said. Unilever adds that it holds more than 500 patents in the US and that access to universities and companies across the New Haven area will help it to build its expertise in skin biology, and microbiome and skin-brain axis.

Unilever Chief R&D Officer Richard Slater added: “The centre will bring these capabilities together to create products that are developed in the US and built to scale globally. The step change here is integration and speed […] with AI accelerating every stage of the cycle.”

The company said that this latest development supports its strategy to “become a sharper focused beauty, personal care and wellbeing company, built on shared capabilities across science-led innovation, demand creation and operational execution.” 

The centre is set to employ around 300 people when it becomes fully operational. The investment of $270 million, over the long-term, includes $50 million in capital expenditure, which Unilever says is its biggest R&D capital expenditure investment in the US in 40 years. “This builds on nearly $15 billion invested in the US business over the past decade, across both acquisitions and capital projects,” the company said. 

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• Unilever and Geno partner to develop bio alternatives to palm oil