Engineering biology and circular feedstocks offer a route out of the cosmetics sector's fossil carbon dependency, but UK regulation is adding cost and delay to commercialisation.
The Bio-based and Biodegradable Industries Association (BBIA) and Cosmetics Cluster UK (CCUK) have called for regulatory reform to support bio-based cosmetic ingredients, publishing a joint report that identifies the UK’s approval system as a major barrier to commercialisation in the sector.
Bio-based ingredients require 11 regulatory stages compared with seven for fossil-derived equivalents, according to Bio-Beauty: The Future of Engineering Biology in UK Cosmetics. Approval takes approximately 72 weeks and costs around £815,000 - roughly 45 per cent longer and more than double the cost of bringing a petrochemical equivalent to market. For a small sample of UK SMEs, the regulatory burden amounts to £35.7 million in lost annual gross value added and 473 unrealised jobs, according to BBIA data.
The cosmetics industry emits an estimated 50 million tonnes of CO2 annually - comparable to Belgium’s total emissions - with around 87 per cent of formulations relying on fossil carbon-based ingredients. The report notes that precision fermentation and enzymatic biosynthesis has the potential to replace many of these inputs and cut greenhouse gas emissions. Microbial oil fermentation has demonstrated up to 90 per cent reductions compared with conventional petrochemical production, the report states.
Bio-Beauty profiles 10 UK firms producing bio-based cosmetic ingredients or packaging at commercial or near-commercial scale. These include Clean Food Group, which converts food industry by-products into cosmetic-grade oils and fats via microbial fermentation, claiming up to 90 per cent lower emissions than petrochemical routes. Holiferm ferments sophorolipid biosurfactants from renewable feedstocks as replacements for petrochemical and palm-derived surfactants. Croda Beauty has developed KeraBio K31, a fermentation-derived keratin it describes as 100 per cent hair-identical, while Twig uses AI and high-throughput automation to design microbes for precision fermentation and has developed Mycolux, a novel suncare active.
Beyond ingredients, Shellworks converts waste biomass into biodegradable packaging via microbial fermentation, and Celtic Renewables operates a commercial biorefinery converting whisky residues and agricultural waste into green chemicals with up to 85 per cent lower emissions than petrochemical equivalents.
The research highlights how parallel UK REACH and EU REACH regimes have added complexity since Brexit, with overlapping requirements across HSE, OPSS, FSA and Defra. It notes that existing regulatory systems were designed around fossil-based inputs, the report argues, and do not recognise comparable safety data across bio-based analogues - a gap that forces companies to repeat testing already completed under a different framework. Life Cycle Assessment methodologies compound the problem, with BBIA research finding that methodological limitations can make bio-based products appear up to 103 per cent more environmentally damaging than fossil-based equivalents.
BBIA and CCUK recommend a UK bio-based materials regulatory roadmap for 2026-2030, with a single-window submission portal aligned across Defra, DBT, DSIT and relevant regulators. The report calls for a Green Innovation Pathway to fast-track approval of low-risk bio-based materials within UK REACH, and for data equivalence measures that would allow existing safety profiles - such as those for Holiferm’s fermentation-derived sophorolipids - to be recognised across comparable products. Environmental measures including carbon intensity, recyclability and circularity should be embedded in regulatory assessments and procurement frameworks, the authors argue, alongside alignment with OECD and WTO standards.
The report builds on the Beauty and the Bioeconomy Taskforce established by BBIA and CCUK in 2024 to replace petrochemical inputs with plant-derived alternatives and advance fermentation-based production. Engineering biology is one of eight growth-driving sectors in the UK’s Industrial Strategy, and the government has committed £2 billion over the next decade, including £380 million for research, development and infrastructure to scale bio-based products.
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