Manufacturing the Future of Beauty: How PerMix Powers Innovation for Unilever’s PONDS Lab

Manufacturing Week is more than a calendar event—it’s a reminder of how far we’ve come since the first Industrial Revolution, and how innovation continues to shape the products we use every day. Factories once powered by steam engines now hum with advanced automation, digital monitoring, and smart materials science. What drives this evolution? The same forces that have always driven progress: the need for precision, efficiency, and scalable quality.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the world of cosmetics. Skin care today is no longer about simple creams and lotions. Global leaders like Unilever push the boundaries of science with their PONDS beauty labs, developing advanced formulations that blend active ingredients, botanicals, and emulsifiers into products that promise consistency and performance on a global scale.

When Unilever needed a solution to meet these demands, they called PerMix.

Meeting the Challenge with PerMix Technology

In the PONDS beauty lab, mixing isn’t just about blending ingredients—it’s about creating stability, preserving delicate actives, and ensuring smooth textures that feel luxurious on the skin. That’s where the PerMix Plow Mixer with Chopper and Heating/Cooling Jacket comes in.

• Plow Mixing Action: Creates an intense fluidized mixing zone, ensuring powders and liquids are uniformly combined without dead spots.
• Integrated Chopper: Eliminates agglomerations and ensures fine dispersion of materials like pigments, powders, and actives.
• Heating & Cooling Jacket: Provides precise temperature control, a must for cosmetics where ingredients can be heat-sensitive yet require thermal stability.

Together, these features make it possible to scale lab formulations into full production while maintaining consistency and quality—an essential requirement in a global brand’s supply chain.

The Industrial Revolution, Reimagined

Just as the first industrial revolution transformed textiles and steel, the modern wave of manufacturing innovation is transforming beauty and health. The industry demands equipment that is:

• Flexible: able to handle powders, pastes, and liquid additions.
• Efficient: shortening batch times and reducing energy usage.
• Precise: offering repeatability and control that ensures every jar of cream is identical, whether produced in São Paulo, Shanghai, or Chicago.

PerMix answers that call. By engineering mixers that combine versatility with reliability, we support the next phase of industrial progress—where science, sustainability, and customer experience intersect.

Why PerMix

Unilever turned to PerMix because of three things: engineering excellence, performance, and partnership. Our mixers don’t just blend ingredients—they blend innovation with practicality. We design solutions for today’s challenges while leaving room for tomorrow’s needs, empowering global leaders to keep pushing the limits of what’s possible.

As we celebrate Manufacturing Week, the story of PerMix and Unilever’s PONDS lab reminds us that manufacturing is not only about making things. It’s about shaping the future—whether that future is a stronger steel beam, a life-saving pharmaceutical, or a skincare cream that changes how people feel in their own skin.

John

See Full Bio