Ready for some genetically altered algae in your Dove soap or Ben & Jerry's ice cream? South San Francisco biofuel company Solazyme has struck a deal with British conglomerate Unilever to manufacture 3 million gallons of algae-based oil for the multinational whose brands include Dove and Ben & Jerry's. It's a big one for Solazyme, which started out 10 years ago producing jet and automobile fuel from algae and has since expanded into food and cosmetics with its microalgae" additives. In addition to Dove and Ben & Jerry's, Unilever brands include Pond's, Caress and Noxzema in the personal care category, and Hellmann's, Lipton and Breyers in the food department. The "tailored oils," targeted initially at Unilever's beauty products, are the first to be produced on a commercial scale at Solazyme's sugarcane processing facility in Brazil. The company's own line of algae-infused cosmetics, including an antiaging ingredient called alguronic acid, have been sold in Sephora stores since 2011 under the Algenist label.
"
Latest
Latest News
Each news summary is created according to strict standards. Here's how we do it.
Each summary is created using a consistent editorial procedure. The target length is approximately 16 lines of 11-point Arial text in a 650-pixel-wide column. Up to 25% of a summary may be set in bold to emphasize the most important ideas. Summaries are composed of verbatim excerpts presented in the same sequence as they appear in the original news source, with very minor editorial additions. Where material has been omitted between excerpts, the omission is indicated with ellipses (...). Any words added by an editor for clarity or context appear in [brackets]. Our original news editor was Fred Burks. Tod Fletcher edited most summaries from 2007 through 2014, and Mark Bailey has served as news editor since 2014.