Durham partnership brings new R&D capability to P&G

Durham researchers have teamed up with partners P&G to bring new synthetic capabilities to P&G’s Newcastle Innovation Centre. Funded by an Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP), Dr Matthieu Starck has developed synthetic routes to key formulation components within the Mahon Lab at Durham, and transferred the technology to P&G, enabling industrial chemists to design and prepare new formulation components for evaluation.

Matthieu’s work is a key component of a strategic partnership between P&G and Durham University, delivering unique and globally scalable innovations to improve products. A large component of this partnership focusses on improving the performance and environmental footprint of everyday cleaning tasks. The ANTENNA team, led by Prof. Mark Wilson, are developing new analysis and modelling tools to provide a step-change in formulation chemistry to meet sustainability challenges including reduced water and energy use. This KTP laid the foundations for a collaboration between Dr Clare Mahon’s group at Durham and Dr Gang Si’s team at P&G. Supported by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, the PolyForm team are developing the fundamental capabilities for sustainable, high-performance cleaning by developing new tools, models and synthetic routes to generate new sustainably-sourced polymers for formulation within consumer goods products.