Published in the BBMAG #28.

With raw materials that are taboo, banned, nearly extinct or to be used in moderation, can we still innovate in the realm of fine perfumery and open new paths for the future through naturals or synthetics? The answer is yes, for those who’d like to hear it.

For decades, people have spoken of the fragrance palette in hushed tones, whispering terrible predictions about the date planned for its annihilation, comparing it to shagreen. Of course, nature and regulations have made dismal cuts into the usual panorama of materials. Of course, the financial crisis has cut budgets (high) in half for possible future star materials. But sustainable development and the frenzied proselytizing that goes with it have come in just at the right moment to rally the common-sense crusade. We can also stay philosophical and think, often rightly so, that it’s not raw materials that are lacking, as the 800 new fragrances launched throughout the world in 2009 prove.

Rundown
So yes, it’s true, things are happening in fragrance. “They announce the end of the use of certain natural raw materials, for reasons of price, legislation, trends, but we have quite a lot of ressources to face the situation. These constraints enabled us to bounce back with new opportunities, via technology, and that’s a formidable challenge that allows the industry to really expand again,” sums up Christine Gladieux, vice president raw materials of the Robertet group (Charabot-Robertet), which has become one of the top natural products platforms in the world, a major supplier of composition companies and increasingly of brands. “We may use fewer natural molecules and perfumers may sometimes prefer synthetic ones, but the major groups are working a lot more in an open-formula style and we are seeing a return to natural ingredients,” she adds, pointing out an incredible partiality for gorgeous materials “among perfumers of the lite generation” not very familiar with this level of quality and delighted to make as much use and abuse of it now. Hence chypre’s comeback is no accident. What’s coming back strong is a desire for the beautiful, the good and the real. And with this, a questioning of processes, work methods, and a concern for purity, lightness and subtlety which “product hearts” – fractions, or assemblages of fractions of a raw material – provide.

Olivier Polge (IFF), maker of Balenciaga's Paris, a chypre violet fragrance.

Constantly improving quality
It’s not so much that professionals’ enthusiasm is waning, but that curiosity is, especially the curiosity of consumers. For some years they’ve been used to repetitions from a fragrance industry financed and commanded by major groups, an industry that doesn’t dare to venture onto recently carved paths, out of fear of getting dizzy on the new fragrance emotions.

More than 3000 synthetic and natural raw materials are side-by-side on fragrance makers' shelves.

A dizzy spell happens so fast… And yet we can reassure ourselves at once that creativity is very present from one end to the other of the fragrance sector, in synthetics and naturals. “Today, perfumers know very well how to formulate with natural ingredients again, and every bit as well to use the great materials. And they do this with great creativity enabling them to make abstract scents with naturals,” says Ms. Gladieux, happily, unhesitatingly citing Christine Nagel, fragrance-maker at Fragrance Resources,“who has a very feminine way of using her juices: she immediately makes naturals, and notably rose, fabulous. Or Maurice Roucel “who showed talent in re-launching sambac jasmine, as Sophia Grosmann was able to give rose a modern twist, giving the young generation the desire to use it in their creations.” The natural ingredient is the soul of the fragrance and that’s the one that stands out.” It’s true evolution also comes through “fragrance speak,” the incredible way perfumers have now of telling the story of their great materials. They no longer use an angelic or marketing style as was the case quite recently still, but a very artistic one, mixing the realism of process with the intended creative effect. “Fragrance work isn’t material, as opposed to the work of a fashion designer,” explained Olivier Polge at the launch of Balenciaga Paris, which he composed together with Nicolas Ghesquière using the brands’ archives. “Violet was used in a “green” way, with flowers and leaves, on a chypre accord with redistilled wood essences to make the colors a bit brighter. So the violet looks a little leathery, has a little bit of a patina, like a violet with chypre overtones.” As to the average quality of the fragrances, “it’s improving from year to year, in spite of the banalization and number of products launched. But there is less and less capacity for differentiation because of lack of budgets for beautiful raw materials. It’s a shame, because it signals the disappearance of great signatures. If we have to act, it’s now,” says Xavier Brochet, vice president natural product 
innovations at Firmenich.

Xavier Brochet, Head of natural products innovation at Firmenich: widening the field of possibilities

Innovating through necessity
At Firmenich, Givaudan, IFF, Robertet, Symrise, Takasago and other companies, everybody is thinking about the palette of the future and the stakes of the future for the profession, whether in terms of maintaining tradition or maintaining the future of the industry.
In 22 years in the industry, Xavier Brochet has seen “raw materials and many other products, which seem new to us and have existed for a very long time in other regions of the world, disappear, reappear and appear. That’s also our job – getting raw materials transferred.” But it’s also to develop the traditional avenue of growth, meaning extraction with supercritical CO2 (liquid and gaseous), whose range is extended every year.“We’ve tried to use this technique on floral concrètes, followed by other techniques making it possible to deal with other raw materials,” explains Mr. Brochet, who remains discreet on the 4th generation under preparation, which is going to widen the field of the possible for this ultra-clean technique, as there are no residual solvents, natural CO2 being recycled several times then released in nature, just like when it was captured.

Michel Almairac (Robertet)

Antoine Lie (Givaudan): two fragrance composers skilled in a new formulation technique based on the quality of materials.

Combining natural and synthetic

Recent work at Firmenich on alternatives to natural moss, made necessary by IFRA standards, has made it possible to go back to the mosses of yesteryear, by reconstituting moss without moss. With the help of synthetics and naturals, 
Firmenich launched Fireco Oak Moss and Fireco Tree Moss, offered at once to fragrance makers. “For us it’s an important step and the stakes are significant for the future and not only for fine fragrance, because this material is used a lot in the functional fragrance sector,” explains Mr. Brochet. Another avenue of development is bio-prospecting, or product evaluation all over the world and from other sectors: “This is the dreamiest part, but also the most time-consuming,” admits Mr. Brochet, “because you have to get a culture going, analyze it, test, wait, respect the seasons and nature.” Firmenich recently experimented with two Asian ingredients, one extracted from a root to become a new vanilla, and the other extracted from dried fruits to be distilled and become a tagetes substitute (smell of fruity liqueur) without the downsides of tagetes, an allergen. This took four years of development but fragrance makers are beginning to use the ingredients in their compositions. “Within a year from now, one of these ingredients will be used in a market sensation.” Similarly, Firmenich, like all fragrance makers, is working on an affordable synthetic patchouli to alleviate the uncertainties of patchouli crops. As for the IFF, a new Naturals platform has been formed, made up of four sites: Grasse and La Lozère (LMR), Barcelona (Benicarlo) and Isparta in Turkey for rose (in partnership with Ercetin). Placed under the responsibility of the IFF’s R&D director in New Jersey, this platform benefits from all the research of the group’s synthetic labs and the contribution of biotechnologies, thus facilitating the emergence of new projects.

Making cost-saving formulations
Since natural ingredients are a bit more expensive than synthetic, they are the ones in the eye of the storm, especially in a period of economic crisis with pressure that spurs increasingly meager use of natural ingredients in fragrance making. Since we’re on the subject of money, let’s talk about figures. “A fragrance, on average, is 90% synthetic and 10% natural in weight, but 85% synthetic and 15% natural in 
value. Conclusion: the natural stuff will be of lesser quality. 
I prefer 95/5 and with natural 
ingredients of extremely high quality, and that’s what we 
do at Firmenich,” explains Mr. 
Brochet. Relearning to formulate differently, with a concentration level of 3 or 4% but of a very high quality, is also the 
approach of Michel Almairac, a Robertet fragrance composer “who keeps only what is essential and truly remarkable, taking away everything superficial to let the little bit of what’s natural stand out from the rest,” says Ms. Gladieux. In like manner, Antoine Lie, fragrance composer at Givaudan and in love with great materials, has been working for years on a new kind of formulation based on the idea of “concentrated quality” whether in synthetics or naturals. Or, how to use traces of fabulous materials, at lower concentrations, for equal rendering. He is working on this now and hopes to be more widely convincing, perhaps with tests.

Sabine Chabbert

beyond Beauty MAG #28

Part 2: next week…

Also discover : Stéphane Piquart, the white horse of naturals, India and China, new players of synthetic market & Updating materials