NorFalk selected to join Venture Lab program, Aptar acquires scented-paper tech company iD SCENT
🌳🫧Restorative Ingredient Production
At the start of the month, biotech surfactant maker NorFalk was selected to join the BioInnovation Institute’s year-long Venture Lab program, supporting startups in the business of life science research.
The BioInnovation Institute, known as BII, is a Denmark-based foundation that was established in 2018; and its Venture Lab program provides cohort members with guidance and resources including, business acceleration, scientific development, team development, lab access, office access, and a €500,000 convertible loan. To date, BII has taken some 80 startups through its program.
NorFalk is the only company in this latest BII cohort that will supply the cosmetics and personal care industry. NorFalk is also based in Denmark and leverages a platform technology that ‘recycles chemicals’ to produce bio-based surfactants. Other companies in the cohort are poised to effect change in the furniture, dairy, pharma, and medical industries.
“We are pleased to welcome this new cohort of early-stage companies...to the Venture Lab program,” says Bobby Soni, Chief Business Officer at the institute, in his remarks to the press.
“BII's mission,” he stresses, “is to create products for the welfare of people and society, and we believe that BII's support of the innovative science in this Venture Lab cohort will deliver on that promise.”
🌸Sustainable Sampling
This week, beauty packaging solutions company Aptar announced its latest acquisition: iD SCENT, a France-based fragrance sampling innovator known for its durable, recyclable scented-paper technology.
The company was founded in 2004 and is perhaps best known for its Scentouch fragrance sampling solution: “Scentouch is a patented, bottle-shaped fragrance sampler made of paper; the scent is impregnated onto the cellulose fibers via air compression. The consumer removes the cap to reveal the fragrance-impregnated applicator,” as Katie Nichol reported for Luxe Packaging Insight in 2020 when Shiseido’s Narciso Rodriguez fragrance brand became the first to use Scentouch in a media campaign. The unique Scentouch sampler is able to give a fragrance’s scent for months or years after production.
Simply put, iD SCENT is a business dedicated to “[reducing] the environmental impact of fragrance sampling.”
“We were convinced from the start that, even if a sample is by definition a one-time usage, we could make it more durable,” says Maxime Caffon and Julie Naso, Co-Executive Directors of iD SCENT in a joint statement to the press. “We are proud to have succeeded in meeting our challenge….[And,] we are delighted of this integration to Aptar because their commercial and industrial power, together with our knowhow, will enable to serve faster the global need for more sustainable sampling solutions.”
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