Native Extracts aims to collaborate with C-beauty brands with ‘advanced’ Chinese botanicals

Director Lisa Carroll believes the firm’s portfolio of natural ingredients would resonate with Chinese beauty consumers, given China’s long history and connections to botanical and herbal medicines and remedies.

She noted that the company has a range of cellular extracts that would be familiar to Chinese consumers, such as licorice, arnica, ginkgo, and green tea.

“They have centuries and centuries of connection to botanicals as solutions to human problems in China. We’re really excited to show the market the advances of plant science have come in the last decade. We’re going to be able to show them what's actually in the water soluble or the hydrophilic entourage of licorice and arnica,”​ said Carroll.

The firm is aiming to work with the local beauty players in China. Carroll believes the firm’s ingredients have the potential to spur innovation in the market.

“They can get to use a new, improved, advanced green science version of those popular Chinese botanicals that they got so much trust in. They will get to access that natural molecule and we know purity and naturality is important to the Chinese consumer.”​

At the same time, the company aims to explore more Chinese botanicals to add to its own portfolio.

A strategic partnership

On March 19, Native Extracts announced that it had entered a partnership with the Heyi Commercial Group to make its entry into China’s beauty market.

That same week, Heyi debuted Native Extract’s natural Cellular Plant Extracts officially at the Personal Care and Homecare Ingredients (PCHi) trade show in Shanghai, China.

“In the last decade we’ve been approached to enter China so many times. While I wanted to do it, we knew we needed to wait for the right partner and Heyi is that partner. Not only do they distribute ingredients, but they also have another arm that does contract manufacturing, and also a regulatory arm,”​ said Carroll.

Heyi’s regulatory expertise in particular has been a boon for the firm as it seeks to register its ingredients in the Inventory of Existing Cosmetic Ingredients in China (IECIC).

Another advantage of getting its ingredients on to IECIC would be to help brands outside of China, particularly Australian brands, come to market with Native Extracts ingredients.

Most importantly to Carroll, the demand for more of its native ingredients will open more opportunities for the First Nation growers it works closely with.

“Creating new markets for our ingredients creates greater demand for our growers to scale too, along with new opportunities to engage and diversify their crops if they choose too. This has always been an important part of our business model,”​ Carroll said.

Its entry into China comes at a time when the local consumer is especially concerned about where their ingredients come from and how they are made, Carroll added.

Native Extracts’ first ingredient launch in China was its flannel flower cellular extract, which is set to be a key product in China given its anti-pigmentation properties.

Moving forward, more Australian extracts will be launched into China, including Kakadu plum, river mint, mountain pepper berry, and finger lime, to name a few.

With China, Native Extracts is now represented in eight countries, including the US, the UK, and India.