Viridi Appoints Former Unilever R&D Leader as Strategic Advisor
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Viridi announced the appointment of Alastair Sanderson CChem, FRSC as a strategic advisor as the company enters the scale-up phase of its CO2-based chemistry platform.
Sanderson brings more than three decades of experience in Unilever R&D, where he led the development and commercialization of next-generation home care technologies focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and building new sustainable raw material value chains.
At Unilever, Sanderson helped develop the Carbon Rainbow framework, designed to diversify the carbon sources used in consumer product formulations. He also served as project leader for Flue2Chem, an Innovate UK-funded collaboration involving 17 partners that explored the conversion of captured industrial CO2 into commodity surfactants for commercial products. The project received a Net-Zero Industries Award at COP30 2025.
“Viridi has reached a point where the underlying science is solid, and the focus is now on delivery,” Sanderson said. “What appealed to me is that the technology has moved beyond proof-of-concept. The questions now are about scale, manufacturability and how it fits into existing industrial systems, which is often where promising chemistry either succeeds or fails. I’ve spent much of my career working on that transition from research into real products. Viridi is at exactly that stage, and that’s where I think the work becomes most interesting and impactful for CO2-based materials.”
Viridi also appointed Kostas Papanikolaou as process chemist. Papanikolaou previously worked at SABIC, Johnson Matthey and CO2-utilization company OXCCU. At Viridi, he will support the scale-up of applications and catalyst manufacturing to prepare the technology for industrial deployment.
“These hires reflect where Viridi is as a company today,” said Dr Daniel Stewart, CEO of Viridi. “The early work was about proving the chemistry; the focus now is on scale-up, manufacturing readiness and working with commercial partners who need technologies that perform reliably in real manufacturing environments.”
Viridi recently launched Vireya, a CO2-based anionic surfactant, and is collaborating with surfactant manufacturers and consumer brands including Zschimmer & Schwarz. The company said its current focus is advancing commercial readiness and supporting broader industrial adoption of CO2-derived chemistry.
Learn more: https://viriditech.com.
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