WAYNE, N.J.—International Specialty Products Inc. (ISP) Personal Care formed a unit from within its global personal care R&D and technical service capability that is designed to discover, develop and deploy next-generation technology for the personal care industry. The AVANT Institute combines ISP’s capabilities in molecular science, materials science and analytical science with its applications development resources. The AVANT Institute has been created to provide a unique resource for personal care companies looking to access cutting-edge technology concepts and to energize their new product development efforts with truly innovative ingredients and delivery systems for consumer products that anticipate and drive trends in the marketplace. The AVANT Institute takes as its model the R&D efforts that were pioneered in its Vincience® line of biofunctional ingredients and has broadened the scope to other areas in skin care, and to hair care, sun care and oral care.
According to Jim Mish, vice president and general manager of ISP Personal Care, the AVANT Institute is unique in the universe of supplier R&D efforts because of the way it combines depth of capability and services with the breadth of personal care market segments it covers. “Today, ISP Personal Care has a remarkably broad range of technologies and products that it offers the personal care industry,” he said. “This access to and expertise with all these technologies gives ISP a special vantage point from which to understand and anticipate the needs of the market and a good perspective on what these technologies can offer. The personal care industry already recognizes our Vincience business as among the true innovators in the skin care biofunctional ingredients market, and we have made a commitment as a business to have this type of forward-looking, research-intensive technology development capability in other market segments. This activity has been underway for some time and we can say that there are a number of truly special technology development efforts in the ISP Personal Care pipeline right now that will become a commercial reality in the very near future because of this group.”