Fragrance Company’s Research, Testing Create Sweet Smell of Success
A honeybee would likely have a nervous breakdown if trapped inside a New Jersey fragrance factory where scientists are constantly in search of new scents to sell.
An overwhelming odor fills the plant of International Flavors & Fragrances. It is the mingled essence of hundreds of concentrated odors released into the air when workers open canisters filled with rare ingredients that are blended to create a desired smell.
Sweet orange and rare rose oils compete with spicy vanilla and cinnamon. A lovely lavender scent tangles in the air with the woodsy odor of moss.
IFF scientists have devised scents for detergent companies that ask for something “fresh” or “clean.” They put the smell in products that range from household air fresheners to expensive perfumes.
Face Challenges
IFF researchers also have faced some unusual challenges, said company spokesman William G. Dalton. When the Philadelphia Zoo wanted to let children experience all their senses in its new “Treehouse” exhibit, IFF devised a “dinosaur vegetation” fragrance.
When the owner of a shopping mall bakery was overwhelmed by the omnipresent odor of a pizza shop next door, “he needed sensory competition,” Dalton said. “We developed a smell for fresh-baked goods, and it worked.”
In 1988, IFF, which employs 4,800 people in 36 countries, reported net sales of $839.5 million and a net income of $128.7 million. The company touts itself as the “ghostwriter” to its clients, refusing to identify any of the famous brands of fragrances the company has developed.
Not everyone is impressed with the smells, though. Environmentalists and local residents have complained about noxious odors and discharges into the Raritan Bay, prompting state environmental officials to impose fines.
At times, those fines have been stiff, including a $1.25-million penalty in October, 1986, for ground-water pollution. In view of the problems, the company is modifying its monitoring equipment as the facility continues to grow.
Soap Ingredient Banned
The business of fragrance boomed when federal health officials banned the use of an anti-bacterial ingredient in soaps that killed odor-causing bacteria, Dalton said.
“Fragrance was the natural substitute,” Dalton said.
But the fascination with fragrance is hardly a new phenomenon. In February, archeologists dug up a 2,000-year-old flask of oil that might have been used to anoint ancient Israelite kings.
Today, scents are found in advertising strips between the pages of magazines, in most every brand of shampoo and even in plastic toys.
“We have not seen any indication that there is too much fragrance on the market,” Dalton said. “People get excited by new fragrances. As long as it’s pleasing, it’s acceptable.”
Employees Test Smells
To get public reaction to a newly developed scent, IFF hires local residents “to smell a variety of different things in a variety of ways, whether on skin or cloth or whatever,” said Ira Katz, director of research and development. “We’re not necessarily interested in whether they personally like it, but whether it covers a malodor, such as body odor or kitchen odor.”
Testers in cubicles--mostly women--take quick sniffs from small jars, then record the overall intensity of each. In some instances, the testers have sniffed forearms, smelled dank laundry or even hovered over a row of smelly garbage cans.
In IFF’s compounding facility next door, employees look like chefs as they mix oils, crystals and other liquids in stainless-steel buckets and tanks to produce concentrates of various fragrances. The “recipes” are top-secret and divided up among several employees to protect the secrecy of a customer’s formula, said Ted Trembley, general manager of the IFF compounding facility.
The fragrance compounds are then shipped to a customer’s own plant, where they are mixed with other ingredients to create the completed product.
The raw ingredients used to produce an individual fragrance vary in their rarity. Bulgarian “rose otto,” for instance, is perhaps the most expensive--it takes one ton of rose petals to make about two pounds of the intensely strong-smelling oil worth more than $5,000, Trembley said.
Reproduce Scents
The high cost of natural ingredients such as sandalwood and exotic flowers has led IFF researchers to devise methods of artificially reproducing scents.
The scientists also have devised a method to capture a scent in its natural state--the most desirable intensity, Trembley said.
“A fresh flower does not have the same molecular structure after it is cut,” he said.
To duplicate those exact scents, scientists use a portable mechanism that can be taken anywhere, from the tiny greenhouse on the roof of IFF headquarters to a large field of flowers in Europe.
The method involves placing a small glass globe over a flower and using a simple pump to draw the air around the blossom into a small tube, said Robert Trenkle, a senior project chemist.
Captures Aroma
An absorbent material in the tube captures the “aroma molecules,” and the material is then analyzed with a spectrometer to determine its primary components.
“The trickiest part is putting all the components back together and coming up with the same scent,” Trenkle said.
A flower’s scent, he said, is an “elaborate mixture of chemicals being emitted . . . usually to attract an insect. A flower’s odor is not for us to enjoy. It’s for a much more important reason.”
In the last decade, IFF has concentrated on capturing thousands of fragrance “notes” and reproducing them for the benefit of the human nose, Dalton said. Some fine perfumes, he said, may be combined from 1,500 ingredients.
“Our perfumers are very creative people,” he said. “They are actually artists starting with a blank canvas, developing a fragrance from zero.”
Despite the technological advances made in creating new scents and synthetically reproducing scents, Dalton acknowledges that one part of IFF’s scientific and creative process will probably never be duplicated.
“We can test our products only with the human nose,” he said. “And even then, it’s still very subjective.”
