The World's Largest Chemical Distributor Just Placed Its Bet on Insempra and Precision Fermentation

Jens Klein has spent the better part of a decade arguing that biology can outperform petrochemistry. When he founded what was then called Origin.Bio in 2021, he raised fifteen million dollars on a thesis that synthetic microorganisms could replace the fossil-fuel-derived inputs underpinning industries from fragrances to detergents. "We are creating a new type of manufacturing company in the biotech world," Klein said at the time. "We can change the world for the better by delivering sustainable ingredients for final products."

Five years later, the company, now rebranded as Insempra, has signed an exclusive global distribution agreement with Brenntag, the world's largest chemicals and ingredients distributor. The deal marks a commercial milestone for Insempra, but the more interesting story is what it reveals about how bio-based specialty ingredients might finally reach global markets at scale.

The beauty and personal care industry has long faced a quiet contradiction. Consumer demand for sustainable, traceable, low-carbon ingredients has grown sharply, but the supply chains capable of delivering them have lagged. Plant-extracted omega-7 oils, sourced from sea buckthorn and macadamia, are the conventional answer to formulators seeking skin-compatible lipids, but they come with meaningful drawbacks such as Batch-to-batch variability and agronomic constraints.

Insempra's omega-7 lipid is designed to address all of that. Produced through precision fermentation, the biolipid offers formulators a consistent, fully oil-soluble ingredient with high thermal stability and minimal odour impact, alongside a refined sensory profile that the partners describe as silky, lightweight, and non-greasy. Because it bypasses the crop-based supply chain entirely, it also carries a lower land and water footprint than its plant-derived alternatives.

The ingredient itself is technically sound. What Insempra lacked was the infrastructure to move it globally. That is what Brenntag provides.

Brenntag operates roughly six hundred sites across more than seventy countries, with deep formulation support capabilities and established relationships across the cosmetic brand ecosystem. For a biotech company still maturing its commercial operations, those assets are nearly impossible to replicate independently.

"Brenntag's unparalleled market reach, deep technical expertise, and commitment to sustainability make them the ideal partner to bring our Omega-7 biolipid and future products to market," Klein said. "This is only the beginning. We are already developing additional breakthrough ingredients that will continue to transform the beauty and personal care industry."

Brenntag's motivation is equally strategic. The company is actively building a proprietary bio-based ingredient portfolio under its own brand, a deliberate move away from pure commodity chemical distribution toward higher-margin, differentiated specialty products. "Insempra's expertise in industrial biotechnology combined with Brenntag's global distribution network, technical capabilities, and Innovation and Application Centers creates a powerful platform for delivering sustainable beauty solutions," said Michael Wilkop, Regional President Beauty and Care EMEA at Brenntag Specialties. "This is the first of several innovative products we plan to introduce together."

CosVivet ActiLipid O7 will debut publicly at in-cosmetics Global in Paris on April 15, with Brenntag presenting at 13:45 in the Sustainability Zone Theatre. Beyond that launch, the partnership is structured as a long-term collaboration, with additional Insempra products expected to follow across the company's fragrance, lipid, and performance materials platforms.

The broader implication extends well past Insempra. If Brenntag, a company with 15.2 billion EUR in 2025 sales, is now building a proprietary bio-based portfolio through partnerships with precision fermentation startups, it suggests that industrial biotech's commercialization problem is beginning to find a structural solution. Rather than reinventing the wheel, companies with fermentation platforms can leverage preexisting distributor networks and save decades of time and billions of dollars to construct.

Klein's long-stated ambition, to replace both petrochemical inputs and plant extracts alike with fermentation-derived materials at an industrial scale, is converging with the commercial infrastructure needed to actually deliver on it. The bet he placed in 2021 is starting to pay off in ways that go beyond any single ingredient.