Fragrance Innovation
Innovation here means getting more out of a tree without asking more of it. Extraction routes, analytical work, and the occasional failed experiment we keep talking about.
One material, several usable characters
A benzoin resinoid is not one smell. Fractionating it separates the sweet vanillic top from the heavier balsamic body, and gives perfumers two materials where they had one — without a single additional tree being tapped. The line went in during 2019 and now runs across resins, patchouli and nutmeg.
- Vanillic and balsamic benzoin fractions
- Low-iron patchouli fractions for pale bases
- Terpene-reduced citrus and leaf oils
The specification is only worth what the instrument says
Every lot is run before it is released, and the trace goes out with the sample rather than sitting in a file. Where a season pushes a material outside its usual range, we publish the range it actually landed in. It costs us the occasional sale and it has never once cost us a customer.
- GC-MS on every released lot
- Trace and batch certificate shipped with samples
- Season ranges published, including the bad years
Work in progress, described honestly
Two things are open at the bench right now. The first is a cold-process route for cananga that keeps more of the green top than steam does. The second is a longer study on whether tapping intervals change the vanillin profile in benzoin — a question the households have opinions about and the literature does not. Neither is finished. Both will be published either way.
- Cold-process cananga: in trial
- Tapping interval study: third season of data
- Findings published whether or not they are useful to us
The extraction routes behind all of it.
Technology