Givaudan: A History of Ingredients, Perfumes and Perfumers

For me, creation is the art of welcoming the unexpected.
Calice Becker, perfumer and Director of the Perfumery School

Extracting scent from flowers. Understanding the smells of nature as molecules. Bringing those materials together in a perfume that someone can wear. Throughout Givaudan’s history, these separate pursuits have come together through a succession of companies and individuals.

Roure, the natural-ingredients merchant in Grasse. The Givaudan brothers, working with synthetic fragrance materials in Zurich. Jean Carles, training generations of perfumers. No single one of these histories explains Givaudan as it is today. Following both the research into ingredients and the creative work of the people who use them reveals the work behind a perfume.

Givaudan today: key facts
Key dates
The Givaudan brothers and the making of fragrance ingredients
1. From experiments in Zurich to production in Vernier
2. Chemistry as a way of understanding natural scents
Roure: extraction techniques and perfume creation
1. Turning the flowers of Grasse into usable ingredients
2. Jean Carles and couture perfumes
From Roche ownership to an independent company
Research into plant scents, and how perfumers use it
Training perfumers and passing on knowledge
References

Givaudan today: key facts

Official name: Givaudan SA
Founded: 1895, Zurich, Switzerland
Founders: Léon Givaudan and Xavier Givaudan
Headquarters: Vernier, Switzerland
Key milestones in the formation of today’s company: the merger of Givaudan and Roure in 1991; the spin-off from Roche and stock-exchange listing in 2000
Official website: Givaudan

Givaudan supplies fragrances, flavours and ingredients to companies that make perfumes, everyday consumer products, food and more. It operates through two divisions: Fragrance & Beauty and Taste & Wellbeing. The former covers perfumes, scents for detergents and personal-care products, fragrance ingredients and beauty ingredients; the latter covers flavours and aromas for food and beverages, among other applications.

Consolidated sales for the 2025 financial year were CHF 7.472 billion, of which Fragrance & Beauty accounted for CHF 3.830 billion. Alongside composing perfumes, this business includes developing and manufacturing fragrance ingredients themselves, as well as technologies that make fragrance work in a wide range of products.

Key dates

1768: Antoine Chiris begins his fragrance business in Grasse, establishing one of the natural-ingredient traditions that will eventually become part of the group.
1820: Claude Roure establishes Roure-Bertrand & Fils in Grasse.
1873: Louis Maximin Roure presents “concretes”, concentrated extracts of floral scent, at the Vienna World’s Fair.
1895: Léon and Xavier Givaudan begin their fragrance business in Zurich.
1898: The Givaudan brothers move into industrial-scale fragrance production in Vernier.
1900: Roure’s floral extraction techniques using absolutes receive recognition at the Paris World’s Fair.
1905: Naarden, the Dutch company that will later become part of Quest, begins as a glycerine distillery.
1937: Jean Carles at Roure creates Shocking for Schiaparelli.
1946: Jean Carles begins training perfumers at Roure.
1958: Givaudan acquires Esrolko, expanding its food-flavour business.
1963: Roche acquires Givaudan.
1964: Roche acquires Roure-Bertrand-Dupont.
1968: Givaudan opens its perfumery school in Vernier.
1970s: Naarden acquires UOP Fragrances, taking over Chiris’s natural-ingredient processing facilities and operations.
October 1973: Givaudan Japan K.K. is established.
1976: The Seveso accident releases dioxin from ICMESA, then a Givaudan subsidiary.
1991: Givaudan and Roure, both owned by Roche, merge to form Givaudan-Roure.
1992: The Roure and Givaudan perfumery schools merge.
1996: ScentTrek, which captures the scents of plants and other natural subjects, receives a technological award from the Fragrance Foundation.
June 2000: The company is spun off from Roche and listed on the Swiss stock exchange as Givaudan SA.
2002: Givaudan acquires FIS, Nestlé’s flavours division.
2006–2007: The acquisition of Quest is announced in November 2006 and completed on 2 March 2007.
2014: Givaudan’s annual sustainability reporting describes the enzyme-based development of Akigalawood and its commercial use in perfume.
October 2015: The perfumery school opens a campus in Singapore.
June 2024: House of Naturals is launched, bringing together the sourcing, research, production and creative use of natural fragrance ingredients.
February 2026: Givaudan announces investment in the construction of Campus 52, a centre for natural fragrance ingredients in Grasse.

The Givaudan brothers and the making of fragrance ingredients

From experiments in Zurich to production in Vernier

Born into a family from Lyon, Léon and Xavier began working with fragrance ingredients in Zurich in 1895. Their early work included musks and violet-scented ionones. There was a bakery nearby, and bread that smelled of violets was not to everyone’s taste: the experiments also caused problems with the neighbours.

In 1898, with the support of his older brother Xavier, Léon moved into industrial production in Vernier, near Geneva. The brothers brought in the perfumer Marius Reboul and the chemist Henri Barbier. Knowledge of how to make molecules and how to combine smells was part of the same enterprise from an early stage.

The bases developed by Reboul were blends of natural and synthetic ingredients, prepared as building blocks for perfumery. For perfume houses employing their own perfumers, these bases became useful creative tools. A company selling raw materials was also offering knowledge of how to combine them, before they became a finished perfume.

Chemistry as a way of understanding natural scents

Givaudan’s work with synthetic fragrance ingredients was also linked to the study of naturals. In the 1920s, research grew into the odorous components of plant-derived materials and other ingredients. Analysing nature and understanding how its scents work became a starting point for new materials and processing techniques.

The chemistry of ingredients and the formulation of fragrances for customers also follow different approaches to production. Writing for the centenary of the Vernier site in 1998, Gérard Gandillon, then its technical director, summed up the distinction.

Chemical production works to stock, while perfumery works to order.
Gérard Gandillon, Technical Director of Givaudan Roure

Making fragrance ingredients to a consistent standard, and composing them into fragrances for individual customers: his words neatly describe two roles within a fragrance company.

Roure: extraction techniques and perfume creation

Turning the flowers of Grasse into usable ingredients

Roure’s history begins in 1820, before that of the Givaudan brothers. In Grasse, Claude Roure established a company dealing in aromatic plants and essential oils, including jasmine and rose. Its work was to gather the scents of flowers and bring them to perfume-making.

At the Vienna World’s Fair in 1873, Louis Maximin Roure presented “concretes”, concentrated forms of floral scent. Roure’s work with absolutes was also recognised at the Paris World’s Fair in 1900. In today’s fragrance terminology, a concrete is an extract containing both aromatic components and waxes from flowers or other plant materials. An absolute is obtained by separating the aromatic components from this extract, using alcohol or another suitable solvent. Through extraction and refining, flowers become materials that perfumers can use in a formula.

Jean Carles and couture perfumes

Roure’s work expanded from supplying ingredients to creating perfumes. Schiaparelli’s Shocking, launched in 1937, was created by Jean Carles at Roure. A relationship was developing in which perfumers at fragrance companies did the creative work behind perfumes bearing the names of fashion houses.

Roure had also been home to Germaine Cellier since 1930. Carles’s Shocking; Cellier’s Vent Vert for Balmain and Fracas for Piguet. Working with the same company’s materials and technology, each perfumer developed a distinct composition. These individual creators are essential to understanding the relationship between a company’s history and its perfumes.

Carles developed a method for learning raw materials through similarities and contrasts between their smells, and began Roure’s training programme in 1946. Yet when composing a formula, he did not simply seek an even balance.

When you try too hard to balance a perfume, you extinguish it, you suppress its character.
Jean Carles

Thorough knowledge of raw materials can go hand in hand with making creative use of their strongest characteristics. Carles’s legacy included a way of learning how to do both.

From Roche ownership to an independent company

Givaudan came under Roche ownership in 1963, followed by Roure in 1964. The two companies continued to operate separately for some time. At Roure, Jean Amic, the son of Louis Amic, led the perfumers’ creative team. He connected perfume development with the business and became chief executive of Givaudan-Roure when the companies merged in 1991.

Givaudan also had chemical businesses beyond fragrance during this period. In 1976, an accident at its Italian subsidiary ICMESA released dioxin into the surrounding area. Known as the Seveso accident, the disaster and the response that followed remain part of the history of its years under Roche. Alongside ingredient research and the creation of celebrated perfumes, the company’s story includes this serious environmental accident.

In June 2000, Givaudan-Roure was spun off from Roche and listed as Givaudan SA. In 2002, it acquired FIS, Nestlé’s food-flavour business. In November 2006, it announced the acquisition of Quest International from ICI, completing the transaction on 2 March 2007.

Quest brought together the chemical and distilling work of the Dutch company Naarden and Chiris’s history in natural fragrance ingredients. Naarden began in 1905 as a glycerine distillery, then moved into flavour ingredients, including those obtained from caraway seeds grown nearby. Through its acquisition of UOP Fragrances in the 1970s, it also gained Chiris’s processing facilities in Grasse. The acquisition of Quest was another point at which knowledge and people with different origins came together within Givaudan.

In Japan, Givaudan began introducing its products through agents in the 1920s, and established Givaudan Japan K.K. in October 1973. Following the group-wide merger in 1991, the Japanese company merged with Roure in 1992. The group’s overall development and the establishment of its businesses in individual countries each have their own chronology.

Research into plant scents, and how perfumers use it

Akigalawood and Bois Impérial

Givaudan’s Akigalawood is a fragrance ingredient made from a fraction of patchouli oil that had previously been outside the perfumer’s palette. A fraction is a portion of a raw material obtained by separation. Enzyme-based biotechnology transforms it into an ingredient whose woody facets recall patchouli and agarwood, alongside a peppery spiciness.

By 2014, Akigalawood was already in commercial use in a men’s fragrance in Brazil. A material derived from patchouli could now offer facets reminiscent of agarwood. Processing a botanical raw material into a different form adds scents that the original plant alone cannot readily express.

Bois Impérial Eau de Parfum by Essential Parfums provides a concrete example of its use. Givaudan perfumer Quentin Bisch placed Akigalawood at the centre of the composition.

I created this fragrance around a precious and extraordinary wood : Akigalawood.
Quentin Bisch

The bright opening of Thai basil and Timut pepper is layered with a strong woody, spicy outline, alongside patchouli oil, vetiver and Ambrofix. The choice goes beyond using a new ingredient for its own sake: its relationships with the surrounding materials develop its character into the heart of the perfume.

Givaudan presents Akigalawood as one of its captives, proprietary ingredients used in its own creations. Ingredient researchers expand the tools available; perfumers turn those tools into a particular scent. That exchange can be traced within a single perfume.

ScentTrek: capturing a scent without picking the flower

Extracting essential oils or absolutes is only one way to understand the smell of a plant. Roman Kaiser spent many years working with headspace technology, which captures the scents a plant releases into the surrounding air. Givaudan’s ScentTrek work analyses natural scents and reconstructs them using their constituent components.

Kaiser studied the scents of orchids, lotuses, trees and rarely flowering plants in many parts of the world. Rather than gathering large quantities of flowers to make an ingredient, this approach identifies the composition of their scent and translates it into something a perfumer can use. Here, too, the study of natural scent connects with its re-creation through a combination of fragrance materials.

blossom[lab]: taking the laboratory to the source

Research into natural fragrance ingredients also depends on where plants are processed and the condition they are in. Givaudan’s mobile laboratory, blossom[lab], houses analytical and extraction equipment in repurposed shipping containers that can travel by truck or ship to the places where ingredients are grown. Freshly harvested plants can be processed on site to test new extraction methods and assess quality.

Launched in June 2024, House of Naturals brings together agronomy, research, production and perfumers. It links work with farmers and suppliers, the development of extraction methods, reliable ingredient-production processes and evaluation by perfumers. Expanding the palette of naturals requires attention to every stage, from growing the plants to using the resulting materials in a formula.

In February 2026, Givaudan announced an investment of CHF 55 million to build Campus 52, a natural-ingredient research and production centre in Grasse. The plan likewise centres on bringing researchers and perfumers closer together, connecting the possibilities of natural raw materials with creative work.

Training perfumers and passing on knowledge

Givaudan’s perfumery school draws on two traditions: the Roure training programme begun by Carles in 1946, and the Givaudan school established in Vernier in 1968. The schools merged in 1992, then moved to Argenteuil in 1997 to be closer to the working perfumers. A Singapore campus opened in October 2015.

During the four-year course, students memorise around 500 ingredients, re-create the scents of plants in the garden, and study accords and classic perfumes. An accord is a cohesive scent formed by combining several ingredients. Visits to ingredient-growing regions, international placements and guidance from experienced perfumers also connect material knowledge with creative practice.

This is an in-house programme for training the company’s perfumers, with entry through the selection process advertised on its official careers website. It works differently from a school with general student admissions. For a closer look at education within the company’s history, see the dedicated article on Givaudan’s Perfumery School.

Becker’s phrase “welcoming the unexpected” describes a creative practice that goes beyond accumulating knowledge. The techniques for processing flowers, the chemistry that creates new fragrance ingredients, and the experience of perfumers who know how to use them: Givaudan’s work lies in passing on all three and putting them to work in the next perfume.