The French manufacturer of purified, patented natural active ingredients for the cosmetics and dermo-cosmetics industry has been operating since 2024 its Agronomic Studies and Research Center (CREA) to study species and varieties of interest and develop cultivation itineraries for botanical raw materials the group uses in its operations.
Located in Silab’s single site in Saint-Viance, France, the CREA spreads across 5 hectares and has 6,000 m2 of farming tunnels. Its purpose is to provide technical support and regular follow-ups to producers collaborating with Silab in order to maximize and secure the quality of botanical raw materials used by the company to create and produce natural active ingredients. Compliance with Silab’s specifications on botanical raw materials is increased thanks to these reinforced partnerships, thereby promoting the success of the initiated projects.
To this end, many actions are implemented such as mastering plant and seed production to provide producers with the species to cultivate, testing and acclimatizing new cultures on the territory, developing cultivation itineraries aiming to improve crop yield and their impact on the environment, or even exploring optimal transformation parameters (drying, grinding) of botanical raw materials.
“At Silab we rely on our scientific expertise and our historical mastery of natural to secure, trace, and give value to botanical raw materials. Since we have precise specifications, we initiated this project not to ensure our own botanical raw material production, but to provide our partners with sustainable support. We make sure that the methods and equipment used during our trials are representative of what our producers use daily so that cultivation itineraries can be reproduced,” commented Brigitte Closs-Gonthier, Chief Executive Officer at Silab.
With this approach, Silab aims to secure botanical raw materials having an optimal quality to produce high added value natural active ingredients.
