Context/Overview

The quest for effective and sustainable ingredients remains constant in a fast-moving cosmetic industry. The startup Gaia Tech is making use of food byproducts to create ingredients that align with the industry’s need to respond to growing consumer and regulatory demands for sustainability. The startup has developed a methodology to transform olive oil production sidestreams into a top-performing product, and aims to extend this approach to other valuable sources of natural compounds.



State of the art/Analogs

There are a number of olive antioxidants available in the market. When compared to competitors, Gaia Tech’s Phenoliva Active stands out for its high concentration of hydroxytyrosol (up to 20%) , a compound that has been associated with numerous health benefits (1) (2) and is employed in applications encompassing anti-ageing, hair care, suncare and skin lightening. The product provides additional benefits: Its liquid format makes it very formulator-friendly by facilitating its solubility in final products. Moreover, while upcycled natural extracts often have a strong color or odor, Gaia Tech’s extract has no color or odor impact on final formulations.


AIM – Fill in the gap

Gaia Tech was founded to address the problem of food production residues and to provide sustainable ingredients for the cosmetic industry. The co-founder Claudio Reinhard identified the potential in olive oil production byproducts during his research at ETH Zurich. Within the research, a consortium of industrial and scientific partners have conducted research and tested applications. The olive antioxidant extract delivered promising results that have been confirmed by accredited laboratories. Gaia Tech emerged from the research project as a spin-off company and is tasked to make the findings available to the market.


Description: Gaia Tech’s Co-Founders Dr. Enrico Tenaglia and Claudio Reinhard in the laboratory, where they have significantly improved organoleptic properties and hydroxytyrosol content of the upcycled olive antioxidant.

Your start-up: who are you

Number of people: 3-5

Year of foundation: 2023

Website: https://www.gaiatech.ch/


What do you offer

Gaia Tech’s offers products and services with a strong focus on upcycling to the cosmetic industry.
The product portfolio currently includes:

  • Phenoliva Active, an olive fruit extract that has four main competitive advantages:
  1. Strong performance: Natural extract with a broad phenolic profile and high concentration of hydroxytyrosol.
  2. Traceable origin: Raw materials sourced directly at olive producers in Europe.
  3. Scientific innovation: Proprietary extraction technology based on 3 years of research conducted at ETH Zürich.
  4. Circular solution: We only make use of olive pomace for the sourcing. This upcycling process is a next step towards closing the loop of wasted food byproducts.
  • Phenoliva BioBeads: Granules derived from olive pits represent a bio-based solution to microplastics and a gentler alternative compared to other natural exfoliants.
  • Phenoliva CleanChar: Activated carbon powder with European origin and an exceptional absorption power for detoxifying products.

Moreover, the company provides:

  • The Innovation Discovery Service which accompanies customers with assisted product trials. The service includes briefing, fresh samples, R&D support, data sharing, and result assessments. 
  • The Custom Development Service offering clients a customised project. This service includes the analysis of requirements, a project proposal, the subsequent product development, sample & data sharing, and result assessment.


Why you

Gaia Tech stands out for its proprietary green extraction technology, the 100% European origin of raw materials, and its strong commitment to science and sustainability. The ingredients performance is very appealing to formulate product innovations. A researcher from the cosmetics industry confirmed that Gaia Tech has "the best antioxidant technology they have tested so far".


Challenges

The key challenges for upcycled ingredients is to match the performance of the current industry standards. In an effort to meet the expectations of industry professionals in terms of organoleptic characteristics, Gaia Tech has been optimizing the color and odor aspect of its products. In a recent product development iteration, the team has achieved a significant improvement of product color and odor through the optimization of the extraction process.


Perspectives

This year Gaia Tech is obtaining product certifications and is performing clinical studies on its current product, and will undertake the early-phase biological characterisation of a panel of new products at the MonacoTech incubator. The company will be exhibiting at the Cosmetic-360 fair in Paris in October. In the near term future, the startup is planning the commercial production and distribution. Ultimately, Gaia Tech aims to expand its product range and enhance its market presence through partnerships and continued innovation. The company plans to extend the upcycling process to other agrifood byproducts, with the goal of providing solutions to substitute synthetic and fossil-based ingredients in various industries.


References and notes

References and notes

  1. Karković Marković, A.; Torić, J.; Barbarić, M.; Jakobušić Brala, C. Hydroxytyrosol, Tyrosol and Derivatives and Their Potential Effects on Human Health. Molecules 2019, 24, 2001. https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules24102001
  2. Nunes, A., Marto, J., Gonçalves, L., Martins, A.M., Fraga, C. and Ribeiro, H.M. (2022), Potential therapeutic of olive oil industry by-products in skin health: a review. Int. J. Food Sci. Technol., 57: 173-187. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijfs.15384