The French natural ingredients company has long focused on perfumes and flavors, but in recent years it has put more R&D focus on the nutraingredients sector.
This year, the company launched its fifth branded ingredient into the nutricosmetics sector, Damasty, which relies on a blend of rose and cantaloupe melon to boost skin antioxidant levels and improve brightness and evenness.
According to the firm, the ingredient has shown efficacy to “significantly increase in the antioxidant power of the skin and the beauty benefits this brings” via four advanced oral clinical studies on over 160 women.
Robertet Health & Beauty explained that it has “pioneered use of ‘PAOT Technology’ (Total AntiOxidant Power score) for nutricosmetics,” which it said: “allows for quantifying the antioxidant capacity of a biological tissue.”
Via this method, it has demonstrated that taking one capsule of Damasty (300mg) a day increased the skin’s natural antioxidant defences in the female subjects after just one month of daily consumption.
The company said the results were confirmed by an indirect count conducted in a cohort of 42 women over a period of three months, within a double-blind trial.
“A significant reduction was observed in the trial group as compared to the control group,” it stated.
According to the French company, which is based in Grasse in the south of France, these two placebo-controlled clinical trials [SD1] “demonstrate the mechanism of action through which consuming Damasty allows strengthening the natural defense of the skin and better preparing it to withstand external aggressions.”
Rose extract with “high bioavailability”
One trial on 18 women demonstrated that the rose extract at the heart of Damasty has very high bioavailability; the kinetic responses were significantly dose-dependent, which the firm said proved that “the extract is successfully metabolised and made available to the skin to use it to its advantage.”
The clinical trials also proved the ingredient’s efficacy on skin brightness and evenness. After two months of consuming 300mg (one capsule) each day, one hundred per cent of the female subjects indicated their skin was brighter.
“The difference in terms of skin evenness also evolved throughout the trial,” the firm said. “The results showed a significant improvement in terms of skin evenness (+45%) between the beginning of the study and the end of the two-month supplementation period with Damasty.”
It said that the “melanin index further confirmed these effects,” noting that this marker “diminished significantly more in the women who consumed the tested product starting from the first month as compared to the women in the placebo group.”
It said that this effect continued to intensify until the third month of consumption “thereby demonstrating the effect of Damasty on skin evenness,” it said.
Increased demand for ‘inside-out’ beauty products
According to Irène Lamour, Robertet’s nutricosmetics marketing and sales director, there is a growing demand for these kinds of ‘beauty from within’ ingredients within the skin care category.
Lamour said the ’interior beauty market’ is “worth $7.5bn and forecast to grow by more than 6% a year.”
“Demand is driven by research into more holistic skin care,” she said. “The development of scientific innovations in applications and the proof of efficacy provided by placebo-controlled clinical studies are boosting consumer interest in ‘beauty from within’.”
She also noted that “consumers are looking for ingredients that reassure them, that speak to them and for which they can know the origin.”
“The rose is a highly evocative ingredient. It is present at all of life’s happy events, it adorns our garden and it is used in many food products such as jams, cakes and infusions,” she said.
The Robertet Group itself has been working with these Damask roses for 160 years for fragrances and flavors, and now for nutraceuticals.
The business grows its Damask roses in Antalya, Turkey. It has its own production facility where 1,000 tonnes of fresh flowers are collected and hydro-distilled in May and June each year.
After hydrodistillation, the polyphenol-rich water is concentrated and dried, along with essential oil and hydrolate.
The water, which is rich in polyphenols, was previously not considered valuable, but is now collected in stills for Damasty.
Another important component of Damasty is a melon juice powder, which is rich in natural superoxide dismutase.
The Robertet Group also owns this unique variety of cantaloupe melon (Cucumis melo L.). Its extraction plant is close to the melon fields in Avignon in the south of France and the first distillations are carried out on site, straight after the flowers are picked early in the morning, so the flower retains its organoleptic richness.
Robertet Health & Beauty also conducted another clinical study on Damasty on melon-based superoxide dismutase (SOD B) and said the results showed that this “significantly enhances skin resistance to UVs.”
