In-cosmetics 2026: Nouryon talks “skinification” and multifunctional hair care
22 Apr 2026 | Nouryon
Elke Patteet, VP of Personal Care at Nouryon, told us about the company’s latest advances in multifunctional ingredients. She emphasized the growing importance of all-in-one product solutions that deliver on sustainability, performance, and sensoriality without compromise. Patteet detailed Nouryon’s history of working with starch as a sustainable and sensorily high-performing natural modifier and the emerging skinification trends in hair and scalp care.
This is Ella Janull for Personal Care Insights at In Cosmetics Global 2026 joined by Elka Patitz, the vice president of personal care at Nurrio.
Hi, hello.
Hi Ella.
So let's jump right into it.
Where are you seeing the most growth in personal care right now, especially across performance, sensorials, and responsible chemistry?
I do think it has to be an all-encompass.
There's no sustainability without performance, but performance needs to have a sustainability component.
And of course the texture, the feel, the sensory aspect is so important for consumers.
So that is where we grow all three together.
Is above the other and it has to work all right.
And how is ingredient innovation shifting towards multifunctional solutions that improve formulation efficiency?
If you're here in the in the booth here, the most questions we got is about it needs to be multifunctional.
People want to use, consumers want to use a product that has more than one thing.
It needs to be a moisturizer and a sunscreen, and it also needs Have potentially some skincare in it.
It's about helping our formulators to have the efficiency with the formulations to make sure that that's what the consumers have in the end, because that's the question.
It needs to do more than one thing.
They want to have more things together.
Also, it's ease of use because you don't have time to have multiple products used, so they want it all in one solution.
And Nurion's personal care portfolio includes natural starch-based modifiers.
How are these innovations helping formulators meet current consumer demands for natural, biodegradable, and premium sensory profiles?
We have 40 years back science in starch, right, and we are building on that.
And when you talk about natural products, starch is a natural product.
It's bio-based.
It's biodegradable, so it's amazing.
It helps so much with the texture, but it also helps with the audiology modifier, so the consistency that you want.
So those things together is exactly what people are asking for.
It helps you to have a product in the consistency that you want with the feel that you want, and of course it's so sustainable.
So that's that's a great example of how we help the consumer to have that.
OK.
Speaking of sustainability.
There's a lot of growing expectations around sustainability and claims around that.
How is Nurion's broader strategy around bio-based biodegradable ingredients enabling brands to substantiate eco-friendly positioning without having trade-offs on performance?
As I said before, we don't want to bring anything to the market that is a trade-off.
It has to be all in one sustainable and performance and give the right consistency and.
So we will not bring anything in the innovation portfolio that will not meet those three criteria.
We do not compromise on anything because that's not what consumers want to have.
And also we will help our formulators to have the formulations that they create for their consumer and markets.
So that's it's it's, it's embedded in our DNA and we make it personal and that's also why we want to make sure that the customers can use it and in the end.
OK.
And my final question is, you mentioned some strong consumer interest in multifunctionality.
What other trends are you seeing emerge and how are you gearing towards addressing these?
One of the other things is skinnification of hair, right?
It starts with the scalp, how, how healthy it is.
It's about the conditioning of the hair, and then only you can style it to perfection because one without the other will not give you the greatest performance, so it's all encompassing the same thing.
So you start from the scalp to the conditioning of the hair to the styling of the hair, and then you have a perfect picture in the end, so.
All right, perfect, thank you so much for joining us at Personal Care and Sights.
Thank you Ella.
