Marine cosmetics

The cosmetics industry harnesses several natural properties of seaweed — resistance to dehydration, gelling power, protective pigments — to develop products with antioxidant, moisturising or anti-ageing effects.

Seaweeds are used in cosmetic formulas in two ways: as active principles in their own right, or as functional ingredients (thickeners, gelling agents, stabilisers, emulsifiers, moisturising agents and preservatives). Carrageenans are particularly used in this second role.

The various seaweed species are either harvested locally on the foreshore, or produced in the laboratory for the rarest species, from young plants grown from preselected genetic samples put into culture.