This work deals with the formulation of natural cosmetics enriched with antioxidant fractions from the ultrasound treatment (US) of the brown seaweed Saccharina latissima. The challenge was the development of a cosmetic matrix without jeopardizing the thermorheological features of the creams, adding microparticles containing the antioxidant fractions using two different carriers, mannitol and alginate. The fundamental chemical characteristics of seaweed and the extracts obtained via sonication, as well as the antioxidant properties of the latter, were analyzed. The highest TEAC (Trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity) value was identified for the extracts subjected to the longest processing time using ultrasound-assisted extraction (240 min). A similar yield of microparticle formulation (around 60%) and load capacity (about 85%) were identified with mannitol and alginate as carriers. Color testing of the creams exhibited small total color differences. The rheological results indicated that the testing temperature, from 5 to 45 °C, notably influenced the apparent viscosity of the matrices. All creams were adequately fitted with the two parameters of the Ostwald–de Waele model, with the flow consistency index following an Arrhenius dependency with the testing temperature. Neither hysteresis nor water syneresis was observed in the proposed cosmetics during 6 months of cold storage at 4–6 °C.

Different hydrating cosmetic creams were formulated with ulvans obtained by a previously optimized process, consisting of hydrothermal treatment and a solvent-free concentration stage to obtain ulvans with 80% purity in carbohydrates, 34% rhamnose, 11% sulfate and >10 kDa. The incorporation of low-mineralization thermal spring waters in the formulation of hydrating creams with 1% ulvans and green ingredients caused a shear thinning behavior that was more marked than in creams formulated with distilled water. As Burgas thermal spring water caused the largest decay, suggesting an improvement in the cream’s spreadability on the skin. This spring water was selected for formulating and bottling a commercial hydrating cream that was further evaluated regarding both physicochemical and biometric properties with a group of 120 healthy volunteers to assess the performance of both ulvans and As Burgas thermal spring water. The results of both objective and subjective evaluation indicate the enhanced skin hydration provided by ulvan and thermal spring water, as well as their favorable additive effect. A high tolerance was observed because all tested creams decreased the tightness sensation, and scaling was significantly reduced in the ulvan group. The findings confirm the potential additive skin benefits of combining ulvan with thermal spring water in hand cream formulations.

Companies regularly face market pressure to develop products faster but they also need to simultaneously incorporate technological constraints, sustainability trends, and customer requirements into their designs, which requires the use of systematic procedures. Firms that exploit natural resources and convert them into high-value products are among them. However, the literature on the application of such systematic approaches to products of this type remains scarce, as they often requrire extensive experimental plans involving the testing and optimization of multiple formulations. Here, we propose a systematic approach to the design of pine-resin-in-water emulsions, which can be used to fabricate pressure-sensitive adhesives. The strategy is customer-centric in the sense that the customers’ specifications are integrated into the decision-making tool used to assess the quality of the formulations obtained through experiments. This tool uses loss functions to assess satisfaction with individual quality characteristics and multi-attribute decision-making methods to integrate them into an overall quality metric. Our framework is aligned with industrial practices and consists of three sequential stages: (i) screening of primary factors; (ii) optimization of secondary factors; and (iii) assessment of the experimental repeatability of the formulations. In each of these stages, the decision-making tool is used to “drive” the process of finding the optimal formulation.