Evonik and Celtic Renewables have agreed a partnership aimed at building a bio-based supply chain for the cosmetics and personal care sector, Sustainability Magazine has reported.

The deal links Evonik, the German specialty chemicals group headquartered in Essen, with Celtic Renewables, the Scottish biotech firm that produces bio-butanol from whisky distillery residues.

Neither company has yet disclosed the specific ingredient platforms, capacity figures, offtake volumes, or commercial timeline attached to the agreement in the public reporting reviewed here. The full scope — including which Evonik business unit is the primary counterpart — remains to be published.

What we know

The Sustainability Magazine headline frames the partnership around a bio-based cosmetics supply chain. The two companies operate in adjacent but complementary spaces.

Evonik runs a Personal Care & Hygiene business that supplies emulsifiers, emollients, conditioning agents, and silicone alternatives to formulators globally. The group has been repositioning several of its ingredient lines around renewable carbon and fermentation-derived actives for the past several years.

Celtic Renewables commercialises a patented ABE (Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol) fermentation process, originally developed at Edinburgh Napier University, that converts draff and pot ale — the two main by-products of Scotch whisky distillation — into bio-butanol. Bio-butanol is a solvent and intermediate used in fragrance and personal care applications.

Why bio-butanol is relevant to cosmetic formulation

Bio-butanol is conventionally produced from petrochemical propylene via the oxo process. Switching to a fermentation route that uses agricultural and distillery residues gives downstream buyers a verifiable waste-to-ingredient story, with knock-on benefits for Scope 3 emissions accounting.

In formulation work, n-butanol and its derivatives — butyl esters, glycol ethers, certain emollients — appear across fragrance carriers, nail care, skin conditioning systems, and selected surfactant blends. A circular, ISCC+ certified source of n-butanol would let brand owners substantiate bio-based content claims that increasingly appear on pack and in retailer sustainability disclosures.

What it means for procurement

For procurement teams, the operational questions are price parity with petro-butanol, chain-of-custody certification (ISCC+ or comparable), and shipping logistics. Celtic Renewables' feedstock pool is concentrated in Scotland, where the whisky industry generates hundreds of thousands of tonnes of draff and millions of litres of pot ale each year.

The downstream question is whether the partnership delivers specification-ready volume, not just a press release. A circular claim that satisfies the EU Green Claims Directive, the UK's anti-greenwashing rules, and major retailer sustainability standards requires robust mass-balance documentation. The partners will need to publish this before formulators can write the material into bills of materials.

What to watch next

The next data point to monitor is a full joint statement or technical disclosure from either company. Specific items to look for:

• Named ingredient SKUs entering Evonik's personal care catalogue
• A defined offtake, licensing, or co-investment structure
• ISCC+ or Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials certification
• A pilot plant or commercial-scale capacity figure, since Celtic Renewables has historically operated at demonstration scale

The first independent formulation data or specification sheet from an Evonik customer using the new feedstock would be the most concrete proof that the supply chain is real and not just a memorandum of understanding.