Word: scent
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...scent business isn't all wine and tuberoses. Technological advances, consolidation and the race to get into new markets are shaking up the industry. IFF is Pepsi to Givaudan's Coke, and the two firms account for about 30% of the $18 billion global market for flavors and fragrances. Givaudan lurched ahead this spring by buying Quest, which had been the market's fifth leading player. IFF is coming out of a rough spell, with three different CEOs since 1999. "There has been a lot of turmoil at the top," says John Leffingwell, president of Leffingwell & Associates, an industry consulting...
...come up with the next big things for the nose or taste bud, fragrance-and-flavor companies send their scientists on "scent treks." On a recent trip to Papua New Guinea, Roman Kaiser, director of smell research for Givaudan, collected more than 50 samples, including a rare hoya plant. "The scent reminds you of dark chocolate, with olfactory notes rarely found in flowers," Kaiser says. He has amassed more than 2,500 natural scents over the years and has reconstituted more than 450. To create authentic flavorings, Givaudan's researchers go on "taste treks" to gourmet restaurants and popular street...
...records her findings chemically. Her primary tool, a solid-phase microextractor, is a $100 penlike device that can record the specific molecules present around anything with a smell. Fennel, cucumber, melon, tomato leaf, black plum and hydroponic celery might soon start to show up as notes in consumer fragrances. Scent notes of Japanese ginger, Indian mango, lantana leaves, evening maiden orchids and pickled jalapeņo peppers could also appear in the next generation of soaps and shampoos...
...training and apprenticeship to develop a refined understanding of the thousands of compounds smell authors draw upon. "Not everyone who blends a few ingredients is a true perfumer," says Subrenat. "Just as not everyone who burns a steak at home is a three-star Michelin chef." The best scent specialists are so savvy that they can identify the most prominent three "notes" in any commercial product with a smell, and can often guess who designed...
...perfect scent isn't worth anything, though, until it leaves the laboratory. To capture and translate the smell of a plant for consumers, IFF relies on a kind of camera for smell. The bell-shaped glass tool captures a living plant's "headspace": the air surrounding it. Using chromatography and mass spectrometry, scientists analyze the captured molecules, and computer programs help map out the plants' primary components. Most have between 60 and 120, with as many as 100 minor notes. Developers re-create the smell using natural or synthetic oils. To do that, IFF draws on a rotating...