Active growth: Peptides set to be fastest growing active as China’s beauty industry sees ‘explosion’ of interest

According to market research firm Kline & Co, peptides are expected to grow faster than the average market for specialty actives, leading biotech and botanicals.

“Peptides will be the fastest growing active ingredients over the next five years because of a very specific situation in China. There's an explosion in the consumption of synthetic peptides in the Chinese market currently with new suppliers of peptides, new consumers of peptides, and a huge decrease in the price of synthetic peptides,”​ said Nikola Matic, vice president, chemicals, market research, Kline & Co.

This growth is being driven by demand from China, where there are an increasing number of domestic brands in the mid- to high-end segment driving the use of active ingredients in general. In the meantime, there are local suppliers producing peptides at a lower cost.

“In China, there are many suppliers of synthetic peptides that are supplying the growing number of mid- to high-end brands in China. These local brands are willing to introduce them in their formulations. Since China is a very important market, it pushed the growth up.”​

Matic was speaking at this year’s in-cosmetics Global, a beauty and personal care trade show that was held in Barcelona, Spain from March 28 to 30.

Speaking to CosmeticsDesign-Asia,​ Matic elaborated that some peptide patents have expired over the past few years, allowing other companies to produce them.

“Other companies have been producing the same ingredient at a much lower cost. If you look at what happened in the pharmaceutical industry with branded products and generics that came out at a much lower price, that’s what’s happening in China.”​

China set to dominate in actives

In terms of countries, the US and European markets are beginning to mature, while China continues to grow at a fast pace.

“The market is not going to grow as fast as the 6%, 7%, 8% you used to see. On the contrary, China is still having very fast growth. We're likely to see, sooner or later, China becoming the largest consumer of active ingredients,”​ said Matic.

Another Asian market that is seeing higher-than-average growth is India, which Matic believes is still in the early stages of development.

“We're at the very, very beginning of the take-off of active ingredients [in India]. Formulations in India are still restrained by the costs for formulations that do not permit the introduction of active ingredients – which are the most expensive ingredients.”​