The world of Taste & Smell

Flavours and Fragrances (F&F) are the essential ingredients for food and personal or home care products. Lux, the bathing soap, comes with seven different variants, namely, caress me, kiss me, touch me, wake me up, shake me up and young & radiant, and this is possible because of an industry worth $22.8 billion is working behind it.  The five largest companies in the industry are Givaudan, International Flavours & Fragrances (IFF), Firmenich, Symrise and Takasago. All of these companies spend a big share of their budget in research.

IFF invests heavily in research, spending about $185 million annually to develop new smells for products like deodorants, shampoos and perfumes, and creates fresh flavours for snacks, packaged meals and drinks.

The smell and taste factory

At the New York City, headquarters of International Flavours and Fragrances (IFF), master perfumers experiment with novel smell combinations in the largest fine fragrance perfumery lab in the world. IFF has 6,500 employees and produces more than 31,000 compounds, about 60% of which are flavours and 40% fragrances.

If we look back at the source, the companies in the industry cultivate huge botanical gardens with remarkable diversity wherein an exotic fruit from China sits next to a colourful African flower, which resides near a spicy herb from India. When researchers travel abroad and discover plants with interesting scents, they are added to the collection.

Earlier researchers used to have cuttings from flowers, but scientists, nowadays, have changed the way they smell. Now to capture the fragrance of a flower without having to kill it, IFF uses a kind of ‘smell camera’ that detects and absorbs the particles that surround a plant to record its scent. The information is then translated into a formula with the help of chromatography and spectrometry, the technique that helps identify the many components that make up a flower’s scent.

Ever wonder where that apple smell in your shampoo came from? These companies have a vast library of scent oils serves as its perfumers’ palette. Dozens of these can be combined to produce a new, branded smell for a shampoo, soap, body lotion, perfume or deodorant.

The nose workshop

It takes more than a decade of intensive training to develop enough skill to work as a perfumer for a leading fragrance developer, such as Givaudan or IFF. In addition to training its staff of scent evaluators, IFF runs a perfumery school for future talent.

In addition to casual testing, seeking consumer’s insight is another important research procedure. IFF conducts formal psychological studies of its scents, asking consumers in more than 30 countries to respond to detailed questions, such as how a fragrance makes them feel, what type of product they might expect to find it in and what texture of material it evokes.  Speaking about the research methodology to understand consumer’s insight, Karen Stanton, Director -Marketing, IFF, says, “Our methodology includes focused group discussions, bringing consumers in together, observations, and accompanied shopping exercise. We outsource people to go and talk to people. It’s very extensive I would say.”

The big players

The international flavouring industry is a concentrated and competitive industry. Consolidation has been ongoing for many years, but intensified in 2006-09 when major deals were struck by two of the world leaders, Givaudan and Firmenich. The industry has become more concentrated and the top three companies, Givadudan (Switzerland), IFF (U.S.) and Firmenich (Switzerland) hold 45.5 per cent of the global flavour market.

The trend

Adventurous consumers are embracing bolder, more extreme flavours and scents. They desire variety and novelty. These consumers are looking for excitement and new sensations in life, which naturally leads to greater sensory experiences in their food and fragrance choices. So a change in the trend is constant. Commenting on the trends Dough Tough, CEO, IFF says, “These trends keep changing. 20 years back, market was inclined towards more soft products, onion flavour was in demand. People are a lot health conscious and majority of the trends are focused around low fat low salt products.  Our research helps us figure out these trends and we market the products accordingly”. When asked to pick the best selling flavour and fragrance so far, he says “In flavours segment it has been the tomato flavour. In soups it is widely used in majority of the countries, and then it is used in chips which are again having a big share of flavours, then condiments also. So tomato is the king of all flavours.  In fragrance segment, it’s citrus which is widely used. Citrus or lemon is something which connotes clean. This is why most of the wash related products use lemon flavour as an essential ingredient”.

For the Year 2011, Bell Flavours and Fragrance announced the top five flavours for each category.

The future

As consumers graduate from using basic soaps and detergents to higher end products, such as skin creams, lotions, hair gels and other applications, the demand for more sophisticated and expensive fragrances will increase. In the flavour market too, as processed foods grow at over 12% on an average, the demand for flavours in the savory and beverage application areas is growing. This is fuelled by rising disposable incomes in urban areas and an increased willingness to consume store-bought foods.

With IFF opening new Creation and Application Laboratory in Gurgaon, it’s clear that this industry is speeding up its’s presence in India. Currently India contributes just three percent to IFF’s global business but they see India’s vast market as the next target after UK and USA. But in a country like India where the market is stacked with brands and competitors, innovation and ability to foresee new trends will be the key for any company to spread its fragrance across the region.