Five Minutes With Alexandra Keating, a Former PM’s Daughter Turned Founder of Body Care Brand, Uni

If growing up as the daughter of Paul Keating has taught Alexandra Keating one thing, it’s that she can do anything she puts her mind to. With a track record of tech start-ups behind her, the last three years of her life have seen her flex her entrepreneurial skills in beauty.

Her body care label Uni launched in Australia this year exclusively at Mecca. As the story goes, after an eye-opening visit to the Great Barrier Reef, Keating was inspired to channel her reef conservation concerns into a beauty brand. Uni is proudly refillable, carbon-neutral and vegan. Here, Keating takes five to tell us more about her story.

What got you started on your journey of starting Uni?

I really started with sunscreen. Someone on [surfer] Kelly Slater’s team sent me a sunscreen deck, and was like, “Can you look into this? Should we be investing in this? You’re Australian.” I kind of innocently gave my advice and starting looking into formulations. SPF is also just body care. I realised that body care isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do, both in terms of the formulations and the packaging. On the packaging side, a lot of the single-use plastics found in our landfill and our oceans comes from the beauty industry.

How did your Australian upbringing influence the brand?

We as Australians have body care, and I think a lot of it comes from the fact we’re in the sun a lot, therefore we use sunscreen. We have a lot of sunscreen on our skin, therefore we use exfoliants. Everyone wants to appear tan, therefore we’re using tanning products. It does change our skin. We need to exfoliate more, we need to moisturise more. As a result, we have a body care category. Most countries don’t have it, it’s a really emerging thing.

I just couldn’t get good body care in America. So I was buying it when I came back to Australia, and then I was in Europe a lot more, so I’d be buying things there. It was nothing that I really thought was that great, but was good enough.

How did growing up as a prime minister’s daughter impact Uni’s ethos?

I’m quite morally driven, and I get quite obsessed with fixing problems. I don’t know why, but l know I can fix a problem if I put my mind to it, which probably comes more from my parents’ parenting style.

What considerations do you think more brands should be making in terms of sustainability, from ingredients to packaging?

If you’re using mixed plastics – which is usually what a traditional beauty business uses – it’s going to last forever. I think that everyone’s just looking at the bottom dollar. They’re trying to make it so cheap and it’s just unnecessary. And I think what we’re trying to prove is that people will pay for quality, both in terms of formulations and packaging. We use aluminium in our packaging. Over 70 per cent of all aluminium ever created is still in production today. That’s incredible.

Keating’s responses have been edited for length and clarity.