Unilever Invests 80 Million Pounds in Fragrance Research, Development in the U.K.
— Unilever is investing 80 million pounds in the U.K., with plans to build a state-of-the-art fragrance research and development facility in Port Sunlight, England, the town founded by William Hesketh Lever, father of the company that would eventually become Unilever.
Unilever said its plan is to develop 'leading-edge' digital capabilities and to recruit and partner with third parties on fragrance talent and expertise. The aim is to develop fragrance for everyday products such as shampoos, moisturizers, body washes, deodorants and laundry detergents.
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Unilever said the new facility will be a 'significant step' in its overall plan to build world-class, in-house fragrance capabilities and to accelerate growth and productivity through fragrance design and ingredient buying.
The facility will include a fragrance research and innovation lab; a compounding facility where new fragrances are blended and developed, and evaluation suites where products are tested.
The site will be digitally enabled end-to-end and include robotics to blend fragrance oils. There will be real-time data capture to enable digital modeling, as well as AI to drive fragrance development.
Unilever already has R&D facilities and factories in Port Sunlight, and the company said the addition of a fragrance hub will help it act with 'greater speed and efficiency.'
Unilever also plans to hire perfumers with 'cross-category expertise' from fragrance houses around the world. The specialist team will also include fragrance evaluators, who are trained to smell and assess fragrances, and ingredient technologists who will work on Unilever's long-term technology program to deliver pioneering fragrance innovations.
Richard Slater, chief R&D officer at Unilever, said the new 'fragrance facility and expert perfumers will enable us to bring fragrance insight and innovation to our brands at speed and, working with our partners, to reinvent how fragrances are created for consumer products, leveraging cutting-edge science along with AI and robotics.'
The fragrance facility is part of a wider, 300-million-pound investment by Unilever in the U.K. in offices, R&D sites and factories over the next two years.
Port Sunlight, which is located between Liverpool and Chester, is Unilever's largest innovation site in the U.K. Alongside two factories and two R&D labs, Unilever has also opened an Advanced Manufacturing Center and a Materials Innovation Factory, the latter of which was built in collaboration with the University of Liverpool.
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