LONDON, EN - Avocados continue to cross boundaries on the plate and beyond—most recently from the internal beauty of health to the beauty sector. After three years of research, development, and testing, Westfalia Fruit’s U.K. business is supplying ground avocado seeds to premium beauty brand Dr. Craft for use as a part of a range of cosmetics available Q3 2022, in select markets.

“It’s been an exciting journey to be on,” Graham Young, Global Category Management Executive at Westfalia Fruit, commented in a recent release. “These are not overnight developments, however, through extensive research, experimentation, and demonstration, and through the correlation and application of scientific knowledge, we are proving that much is possible coupled with partnering with like-minded organizations. I do like to think of it as being an example of good in the industry and that's our purpose as a company, to do good.”

As we reported earlier this year, the new Avocado Dr. Craft range was working to demonstrate proof of concept that this versatile fruit could be used as a replacement for microplastics within cosmetics, among a number of other work streams in the process of development for use within a wide range of industries.

“The project has involved several U.K. universities, including Leeds and Kingston, to verify and validate the use of avocado seeds,” shared Johnathan Sutton, Group Safety and Environmental Executive at Westfalia Fruit. Sutton has been working closely with Dr. Craft and its academic arm Keracol to ensure the use of avocado stones meet all safety requirements. “The extraction process is very complex, but with perseverance, a perfect particle size and process was discovered to work within a cosmetic body scrub as the replacement for microbeads.”

According to Westfalia, sustainable inclusion of avocado components in beauty and cosmetics opens a new, higher value alternative in line with a company history of identifying, implementing, and pioneering innovative and industry-leading methods to protect environments in which it operates in the most sustainable way possible. A commitment the Dr. Craft team appears to identify with.

Professor Richard Blackburn, Co-Founder and Director of Keracol and the brand Dr. Craft, commented on this unique partnership.

“The Dr. Craft brand is founded on scientific knowledge and expertise, using nature as our inspiration,” said Blackburn. “With a focus on green chemistry, our previous research looked at extracts from wine industry grape waste and citrus peels in a number of different products, but the more we studied avocados the more interesting and exciting it became.”

Whie Dr. Craft is currently only available online and in premium U.K. and European retailers, this new function to avocado waste components poses an exciting question about opportunities to come: Where and when will the next opportunity to mitigate produce waste emerge?

Westfalia Fruit Group