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The cosmetics industry in Europe is a perfect playing ground for marine biotechnology because there is a demand of innovative compounds while comprising low to medium developmental and regulatory efforts, the latter resulting in a relatively fast development-to-marketing-track. Figure 0.21 EU beauty and personal care industry exports within the EU (grey bar) and outside (brown bar) by country (in EUR million)160. Role of SMEs in the cosmetics sector The cosmetic sector in particular is dependent from innovations. While global players emphasise their innovation-led philosophy of business, their contribution to R&D in relation to sales is relatively low. Beiersdorf AG e.g. has a high reputation as an innovator, but has spent only 2.6% of its sales for R&D investment in 2012 (EUR 159 million). It is an open secret that most of the innovations in the cosmetic sector have its seeds in the SMEs, which often are highly active in R&D. SMEs mostly invest two-digit percentages of their sales into R&D, sometimes even more than 50%. There are over 1,000 SME in Italy, over 500 in France, more than 300 in Germany and 200 in Spain supplying raw materials for the cosmetics industry. All in all this is a win-win situation, because the global cosmetic players buy intermediate products or in-license know-how and technologies from the SMEs, and put their sales power on the scales. Lines of specialisation continue along the value chain (see chapter “Value chains...”) and follow characteristic rules of the cosmetic sector. Lines of specialisation can be found in research, especially within the categories “marine science“, “life science“ and “dermatology“, whereas development often is a mixture of the mentioned science fields plus (bio-)technological and regulatory knowledge. Products and services offered currently and their future prospects161 In the “actives” market algae extracts play the most important role. There are only a few companies in Europe (mainly France, UK, Ireland, Spain, Norway, and Germany) developing and selling algae extracts, either directly or via bigger raw material suppliers to manufacturers of cosmetic end products. Interviews with market actors and own numbers result in the estimation of total sales of (micro- and macro-) algae extracts in Europe as active ingredients as high as EUR 15 million. Together with functional ingredients like alginate or agar-agar the total sales of algae extract to the cosmetic sector is about EUR 40 million. Another EUR 15 million is coming from marine-derived 160 Eurostat/Cosmetics Europe Statistics Working Group 161 Informations in this subchapter base upon own market research and activity of a stakeholder, oceanBASIS GmbH, Kiel, Germany 130 Study in support of Impact Assessment work on Blue Biotechnology

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