Grant: Applied Research and Development Grants - Level 1

Apollo Health & Beauty Care is a major manufacturer of store-brand health and beauty care products. Apollo also develops newformulations for their customer base comprised of high-profile retailers and distributors. There is a demand for Apollo to constantlyinnovate in the cosmetics field.In order for Apollo to continue leading the industry, it needs to develop procedures to analyse for active ingredients in its products.Currently, instead of mandating manufacturers to provide exact compositions on product labels, Health Canada only requires thatcosmetic ingredients be listed in order of decreasing predominance and ingredients below 1% can appear on the label in anyorder. However, Apollo intends to realize a competitive advantage by having its Quality Assurance (QA) team use the robustactive-ingredient analysis methods developed through this project to provide prompt feedback to the production line, whichminimizes waste. Another objective with developing and deploying these methods is to avoid the over-addition of certain activeingredients in products, which can also have unintended side effects on the consumer.Apollo and Sheridans Chemical and Environmental Labs will develop methods to quantify active ingredients found in mouthwash,shampoo, conditioner, and lotion formulations. Faculty and student researchers will tackle the extraction, isolation, andquantification of the active ingredients using Sheridans state-of-the-art lab facilities and analytical instruments. The last phase ofthis project is the onsite commercialization of the methods, during which Apollos QA staff will follow Sheridan-developedprocedures to analyse the company's products for active ingredients in a real-time manufacturing setting.