CPL Aromas, the largest ‘fragrance-only’ fragrance house in the world has created an internal group of specialists to sniff out the best essential oils around the world. The scheme ensures not only quality but authenticity, consistency, traceability and sustainability when sourcing materials.
The first challenges for the newly formed 'Specialist Naturals Team' took the team of 8 people to Bulgaria and then to Turkey for the 2018 Rose Oil harvests. The team comprises people from the Group’s Purchasing, Perfumery, Analytical, Quality Control, Formulation Management and Regulatory departments.
Nick Moore, Global Purchasing Director for CPL Aromas, said: "The Specialist Naturals Team has been formed as part of our new strategy for the purchasing of our most critically important essential oils. The aim of the team is to form strategic partnerships with selective suppliers at origin who can provide us with the very best quality essential oils, and who can supply us with materials of consistent quality and quantities. The benefit to the suppliers is that they receive our loyalty and commitment ensuring their growth alongside ours. We are proud to show our customers how closely we work with our key raw material suppliers, how we have full traceability on the oils we buy and how our strategy provides us with a sustainable supply of our natural oils".
The aim of the team is to form strategic partnerships with selective suppliers at origin who can provide us with the very best quality essential oils
The fact-finding trips enable the specialists to follow the entire process from picking of the roses in the fields through to distillation and extraction of the rose oil. Rose oil can be adulterated and so an important aspect of the journeys was to educate every member of the team on how to determine pure and genuine oils and how best to test the samples received. As rose oil is such an expensive product – currently selling for €6,750 and €8,000 per kilo– there is much scope for adulteration of materials and even more incentive for perfumers and buyers to scrutinise it closely. Harvests this year (2018) are much improved following poor weather conditions in 2017 which led to poor cropping. Nonetheless, prices for this precious oil are always at a premium.
Decisions are being made now as to which rose oils will be purchased for the creations of the future. The other material which will undergo similar detailed attention this year is lavender oil. Nick Pickthall, COO of CPL Aromas, said: “Our customers value the specialist expertise offered by CPL Aromas at every level of the fragrance creation process and this initiative enables us to provide a further layer of expertise to meet their briefs in an exacting and creative way".
