Webinar preview: Tate & Lyle explores replacing synthetics without compromising texture

Consumers are increasingly seeking skin care solutions that do not contain synthetic ingredients — instead, they want natural, sustainable options that deliver equal efficacy. 

According to Innova Market Insights’ 2025 Lifestyle & Attitudes Beauty & Personal Care survey, 51% of consumers globally say they always look at the ingredient lists of the products they buy. When it comes to categories like skin care, consumers overwhelmingly are looking for natural ingredients, with 60% of global consumers in agreement. 

On February 5, Personal Care Insights will host a webinar with Tate & Lyle and Innova Market Insights to discuss how the pressure is on formulators to deliver clean label solutions without compromising product look and feel. The webinar will focus specifically on how this trend is shaping innovation and how brands can tackle formulation challenges. 

We explore how nature-based, readily biodegradable ingredients, combined with Tate & Lyle’s proprietary methodology, can replace synthetic thickeners while maintaining the desired physical and sensorial properties. 

Ahead of the webinar, we sit down with Jacob Rocker, associate principal chemist at Tate & Lyle and Tom Vierhile, VP of Strategic Insights, North America at Innova Market Insights. 

“Consumers today are more ingredient-aware than ever, using ingredient lists as a key purchase metric. The ingredient list can be the ultimate authority when it comes to evaluating product quality, more so than front-of-pack claims or advertising claims,” says Vierhile.

Registration for the webinar is accessible for free here. 

Formulation problem and solution

While clean label ingredients are favored by consumers, they also come with their own set of formulation challenges. 

“Natural ingredients, while desirable from a marketing perspective, may have challenging properties that personal care makers have to contend with. Natural ingredients may have undesirable color or fragrance characteristics, textures perceived as grittier or less absorbent than those of synthetic ingredients,” says Vierhile. 

“There are ways to ameliorate these properties, and that is part of the challenge of transitioning from personal care formulations based on synthetic ingredients to clean label formulations.”

Clean label skin care makers are using natural and botanical ingredients like coconut husk, walnut shells, and bamboo powder to replace synthetic ingredients. However, synthetics may offer performance advantages over natural ingredients, such as greater efficacy, longer shelf life, and easier application. That is where formulators come in.Transparency builds trust in beauty brands. 

Tate & Lyle maps individual product variables to its ingredient data repository, reducing reformulation complexity and minimizing the need for panel testing, to cater to the consumer demand for naturally derived thickeners while maintaining performance. 

“Our model simplifies multivariable measurements into easy-to-interpret results, supporting the formulation process by combining data-driven decisions with the traditional experience-based approach,” says Rocker.

The specialty ingredients company says it can accelerate development and enable brands to meet consumer demand for naturally derived skin care products. 

“Our method converts quantitative data into qualitative insights. That allows us to leverage historical information to identify a robust starting chassis to deliver against a formula target, accelerating development by reducing the number of samples needed to achieve a desired result.”

Rocker explains that, with the right approach and reliance on naturally derived ingredients, formulators can deliver the right texture and product attributes when replacing synthetic thickeners, cutting down development time.

Consumers crave transparency

Transparency is an increasing focus for beauty consumers. More and more shoppers want to know about the ingredients in their cosmetics and how they are created and/or sourced. 

According to Innova’s 2025 Lifestyle & Attitudes Beauty & Personal Care survey, 86% of American consumers say they have the same or more trust in local brands or companies. Natural ingredients drive skin care innovation. 

“Trust is hard to cultivate and easy to lose, which means skin care marketers need to be transparent and consistent when communicating with consumers about natural and sustainable ingredients,” explains Vierhile. 

“Regarding sustainability, consumers may be especially wary of so-called ‘greenwashing’ where sustainability claims are inflated to make a product look ‘greener’ than it really is. Today’s consumers are looking for proof and details to help substantiate sustainability claims.”

“If ingredient makers and personal care marketers are not transparent and truthful, social media may fill in the gaps in ways that may be hard to challenge. You do not want to ‘go viral’ for the wrong reasons.”

Looking at food trends

Innova’s VP of Strategic Insights says that recent trends in natural ingredients in food and beverages are likely to carry over into personal care. Vierhile notes the growing consumer interest in how ingredients are produced and where they come from. 

“The ‘regenerative agriculture’ claim represents a deeper commitment to the health of the planet than typical ‘organic’ or ‘natural’ claims. The latter claims are increasingly seen as parity claims by consumers and the price of entry for market participants.”

“This means that ingredient makers and personal care producers will have to raise their game to meet the growing demands of future consumers for clean, sustainable personal care products.”

Vierhile also mentions that sustainability is a key purchase consideration for personal care consumers, given the highly personal and intimate experience of using these products. 

Sixty-four percent of consumers in Europe say they think about sustainability when they buy personal care products, according to Innova’s 2025 Lifestyle & Attitudes Beauty & Personal Care survey.

“That is a huge percentage, and it indicates that consumers are actively looking for product claims that attest to a given product’s sustainability status. That’s a bullish development for descriptive claims like ‘toxin free,’ ‘microplastic free,’ ‘reef or ocean friendly,’ ‘paraben free,’ and more that are already on the rise, and likely to grow in the future,” Vierhile concludes.