aboutus
CCUK Ltd owes its success and international standing to its foundation networking organisations, originally set up under the Yorkshire Forward regional development agency (RDA) in the early 2000's.
Jane Mockford and Lisa Buck (former director of CCUK) set up Yorkshire Chemical Focus (YCF), a networking and training organisation for the chemical and process industries and in 2009 its partner Personal Care Programme was established by the team, under the leadership of David Elliott. The PCP was the forerunner of CCUK, serving the cosmetics and personal care sector with networking events and attendance at the Global In Cosmetics trade shows, with support from Alastair Gardner of UK Trade & Investment, the forerunner to the UK’s Department for International Trade.
When the RDA funding ceased, YCF Ltd continued as an independent membership organisation, providing member networking, national and international events, training and specialist forums.
The idea of the UK's first official Cosmetics Cluster was introduced in 2015 by Gill Westgate under YCF Ltd, then as part of CATCH UK. Jane Evison joined the team with a focus on education, skills and sector wide communications and helped deliver the Education & Skills white paper project.
2020 saw our latest evolution with the formation of Cosmetics Cluster UK Ltd, an independent not-for-profit company with a growing membership across the UK. Alastair Gardener joined as a Director bringing expertise from the chemical sector and international Trade and in 2021 we welcomed Kirsty Mahwhinney, a beauty brand strategist to head up our marketing and communications activities.
We were sad when Lisa Buck decided to resign from the Board in March 2022 after a decade of leadership and networking in the cosmetics and chemicals sectors. However, we are delighted to welcome Dr Katerina Steventon as a new Director of CCUK. Katerina brings expertise in skin science, she owns her own beauty brand and for the past 3 years has worked within the National Biofilms Innovation Centre (NBIC) coordinating NBIC/CCUK partnering activities.