With a long history of over 200 years, the Bensaude Group has always combined its entrepreneur spirit with a permanent willingness for cooperation and innovation. The most recent example is the new participation, minority and through the holding Bensaude Participações, SGPS, SA, in the IGNAE project, reinforcing the bet in projects with innovative nature and, in this case, given the umbilical connection of IGNAE to Terra Nostra Park, patrimony of Bensaude Group.
The Azores have the distinction of being the first archipelago certified by EarthCheck, the main scientific benchmarking certification for travel and tourism, which maintains a strict set of guidelines for an area to be globally recognized as a sustainable destination.
Sharing this understanding of the Azores' nature, Ignae is committed to respecting the Azores' ecosystem, seeking to use its resources in a sustainable way, focusing on ingredients and production methods which allow a minimum use of the precious actives extracted in the archipelago.
In this sense, Ignae developed a proprietary technology, the EPC Factor, which uses actives extracted from plants and algae of the Azores, which are processed using advanced biotechnological processes, allowing these actives to be used effectively in minute quantities. Considering the innovation developed, there is a patent request for this technique, which may later be applied in several areas.
Ignae also uses thermal water collected in the Terra Nostra Park, in the Furnas Valley, as well as oil from the camellias existing in this place, distinguished by the International Camellia Society with "Camellia Garden of Excellence".
The IGNAE brand is available in places such as the United States, Canada, Hong Kong (its second largest foreign market), Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, among others, in a total of 16 countries.
Created by Miguel Pombo in 2017, IGNAE quickly distinguished itself after getting in the market by the fact of being selected as one of the brands of choice by aesthetician Joanna Czech, who used it on several of her clients, at events such as the Met Gala, and in her Clinic in the US.
In 2020, Ignae welcomed Claire Chung as CEO, who was previously President of Net a Porter China, with a long career in the global luxury market and a member of the boards of global companies such as Bang&Olufsen and Delsey, giving a new impetus to its strategy of digitizing and approaching global markets. After trying Ignae products for the first time, the executive decided to visit the Azores and Terra Nostra to learn about the brand's origins, and the partnership began there.
Recently, apart from the Máxima magazine's Conquista Máxima award, Ignae also received the Positive Luxury award and the Best Body Product award from the US ELLE magazine, at the Green Beauty Stars awards.
Besides its research in the cosmetics area, Ignae is currently developing several research projects, privileging the partnership with the Azores University, with the purpose of creating in the Azores a competence centre of excellence in the area of biotechnological exploitation of natural resources from the Azores, This project was recently given a new boost with the allocation of funds under the Mobilization Agendas of the Recovery and Resilience Plan, thus contributing to the empowerment of the technological fabric of the Autonomous Region of the Azores and the creation of an increasingly robust cluster in the area of biotechnology.
This investment of the Bensaude Group is another important milestone in its long history of pioneering and avant-garde, respecting the valuation of its heritage, Terra Nostra Park, and its commitment to sustainability.