The consumer goods giant has unveiled plans for a new, purpose-built global innovation center in the US, which will be home to research and development for its beauty, wellbeing and personal care brands.
The center will be located in New Haven, Connecticut, at the heart of one of the world’s fastest-growing biosciences innovation clusters – home to dozens of world-class universities and hundreds of companies. The aims is to give Unilever’s scientists, engineers and experts opportunities to co-create alongside pioneering researchers and technology partners.
“This new center is where we’ll innovate at the intersection of science, technology and culture,” says Herrish Patel, President of Unilever USA and CEO of Personal Care North America. “As the US becomes a center of gravity for Unilever, we’re harnessing the best of American innovation to match our growth ambition here in the US and around the world.”
The new facility will include a global center for skin care and cleansing, as well as the group’s polycultural skin and hair center of excellence, which specializes in creating ingredients and products that address “the unmet needs of millions of consumers.”
A human performance lab will generate new data and insights into human physiology, enabling on-site testing of ingestibles, and accelerating growth across our wellbeing brands.
In a Unilever Fragrance House, perfumers, chemists and packaging designers will work together from the earliest stages of development, placing fragrance at the heart of product creation and sensory experience.
Furthermore, a packaging innovation studio will allow Unilever to incorporate real-time consumer feedback to enable the faster development of packaging prototypes with premium shelf appeal, both online and in physical stores.
“The center will bring these capabilities together to create products that are developed in the US and built to scale globally. The step change here is integration and speed: science, design and sensorials working as one, with AI accelerating every stage of the cycle,” explains Richard Slater, Unilever Chief R&D Officer.
Unilever says it will invest USD 270 million in the project over the long term, including USD 50 million in capital expenditure, the group’s biggest R&D capex investment in the US in 40 years. This builds on nearly USD 15 billion invested in Unilever’s US business over the past decade, across both acquisitions and capital projects.
Around 300 employees will work at the center when it’s fully operational, which we expect to be by spring 2029.
