Eleven formulation concepts — five in Technology & Disruption, six in Sustainability & Ethics — will compete for the Laura Marshall innovation awards at SCS Formulate in Coventry, UK, next month, with winners announced at the SCS Annual Dinner on 10 November.

Ashland, Croda and Innospec headline the shortlists, but the field runs wider: Barentz, IMCD, Safic Alcan, Brenntag, Cornelius, Inolex, Uniproma and Carst & Walker all made the cut. That mix — multinationals alongside mid-size distributors and ingredient houses — tells you the judges rewarded formulation concepts, not marketing budgets.

For practitioners who follow the ingredient pipeline, this shortlist is an early signal. What's on a show-board in Coventry in November often shows up in branded skincare 18 months later. So it's worth reading the list closely.

What made the Technology & Disruption shortlist?

Five concepts earned a finalist slot:

• Boba Burst — Safic Alcan
• Hybrid Shield SPF 50+ Stick — Barentz
• Moonlight Milky Serum — Ashland
• Pocket Wash Essentials — Innospec
• Sea Cycle — IMCD

The SPF 50+ stick is the most immediately legible entry for clinical readers. Stick formats for photoprotection keep gaining ground because they solve a real adherence problem — convenient reapplication over makeup, on travel, on kids. A hybrid shield concept suggests the formulator is chasing both UV filter performance and sensory acceptibility, the two things that historically fight each other in high-SPF sticks.

The rest of the category spans texture and format innovation. Boba Burst, Moonlight Milky Serum and Pocket Wash Essentials point to experience-driven formats — bursts, milky serums, portable washes — while Sea Cycle, from IMCD, hints at a marine-sourced or marine-circular ingredient story. The finalists will present a show-board explaining each innovation on the exhibition floor.

What made the Sustainability & Ethics shortlist?

Six concepts compete in the second category:

• Adaptive Barrier Renewal Peptide Lotion — Croda
• Dual PDRN Bi-Phasic Cell Regenerator — Carst & Walker
• PDRN Soothing Repair Cream — Uniproma
• Pro-Recovery Skin Wrap (Advanced Post Recovery Cream) — Cornelius
• Second-Skin Complexion Perfector — Brenntag
• Shine Bright, Frizz Light Mask — Inolex

The PDRN entries deserve your attention. Two of the six shortlisted concepts — from Carst & Walker and Uniproma — build on polydeoxyribonucleotide, the regenerative active that injectable aesthetics adopted first and that topical formulators are now chasing hard. A bi-phasic cell regenerator and a soothing repair cream suggest formulators are testing whether PDRN can do meaningful work in a leave-on vehicle, not just in a syringe.

Croda's Adaptive Barrier Renewal Peptide Lotion speaks to barrier-repair positioning, the claim language dermatology readers will recognize from eczema-adjacent cosmeceutical launches. And Cornelius's Pro-Recovery Skin Wrap targets the post-procedure lane — exactly where aesthetic practices and retail skincare increasingly overlap.

Note the categories themselves. Sustainability & Ethics sits as a standalone award, which means the judges scored environmental and ethical credentials separately from technical novelty. Barrier repair and PDRN regenerators landing in that bucket implies the sustainability story lives in the ingredient sourcing and supply chain, not just the claim.

Who judges, and when do we know?

The judging panel spans retail, innovation, regulation, academia and media:

• Nuria Lima — Quality Assurance Manager, Superdrug
• Clare Barr — Director of Innovation, Meiyume
• Nico Shaw Núñez — Director of Regulation and Sustainability, CTPA
• Dr. Hazem Sawaf — Founder & Managing Director, 7 HOPES
• Jo Allen — Editor
• Amanda Solaiman — Senior Lecturer in Formulation Science, University of Sunderland

That composition matters. A retail QA manager, a regulator and an academic formulator will score a concept very differently — a formulation that survives this panel has cleared both a commercial and a technical bar.

The winners will be announced during the SCS Annual Dinner at the event on 10 November.

What does this change for practitioners?

Nothing today. But two shortlist entries — the SPF 50+ stick and the PDRN topicals — mark the formulation directions most likely to reach your patients' shelves next. Watch the 10 November announcements; the winning concepts tend to reappear as branded product launches within the following product cycle.