Scenting success: Sensegen’s biotech solutions for fruit and floral perfumery
14 Nov 2023 | Sensegen
With the saturation of synthetic fruity and floral scents in modern perfumery, Sensegen presents an eco-conscious solution based on biotechnology. Angelique Burke, Sensegen’s VP of Fragrance, focuses on the challenges and environmental consequences of extracting molecules from natural ingredients, and explains how biotechnology enables the creation of novel and authentic fruit and floral fragrances.
Hello.
Welcome, Angelique to Personal Care Insights interview.
My name is Viya Patel, acting editor at Personal Care Insights.
Today, we will be discussing fruit and floral scents and perfumery, focusing on the challenges of extraction from natural ingredients and how biotechnology provides a sustainable alternative.
It's great to have you today.
Could you please introduce yourself?
Hi Elvenia, I'm glad you're having me.
My name is Angelique Burke, and I'm VP of fragrance at Sensogen.
Thank you.
So tell us, how do you incorporate fruit and floral ingredients into perfumes?
So, interestingly enough, the very vast majority of fruit and floral extracts in perfumes currently are synthetic, and they're also extremely important because fruity floral olfactive directions are by far the most favored and preferred direction from consumers right now.
Mhm.
And so moving on, like, what are some of the main difficulties in sourcing and extracting these natural ingredients, and how do they affect the quality and sustainability of products?
That's a, that's a really good question, and, and I'm glad you're asking because Sensogen is the first fragrance house that's exclusively dedicated to providing natural flavors and fragrances.
And as I was saying earlier, because The market is so demanding for, fruity and floral extracts.
How do we, do both?
And in order to go into detail, I feel like I have to separate between natural florals and natural fruity extracts.
Florals, I think is a little easier.
Because everybody has heard of the essential oil of lavender, for example, of rose, of jasmine, so we can put, we can understand where they're coming from.
But you're asking about the difficulty in sourcing those products, and when you think about jasmine, for example, it's a little small flower, and It's easy to think that we need a lot of those flowers to extract oil to make this essential oil, and you can see that you would need very vast fields, large acreage of those flowers in order to get enough, and that's, it's, that's gonna have an impact on the sustainability.
So traditionally, a lot of the, those extracts are actually synthetic, petrochem based, because.
Of inconsistent supply, because you can have issues with the weather, for example, just the quality may not be consistent, so that's, that's the first big issue.
And that impacts florals.
In terms of fruity extracts, it's even trickier because fruits don't really lend themselves as readily to be extracted just like, florals can be.
So really, it's hard.
There's no essential oil of strawberry, for example, no essential oil of peach or mango, and another, another issue is that a lot of those fruit extracts, they're very water soluble, so you can maybe use them.
In flavors, but fragrances, they're very often oil soluble, and you, you just can't incorporate, fruity extracts.
So again, we're coming back to the same issue as the the origin of those ingredients has to be synthetic.
Mhm.
Another issue with the natural extracts is the regulatory and the impact, the contents of allergen or sensitizers, for example, because when nature makes, let's say an essential oil of lavender, you have the components that make it smell like lavender, but there's also a whole.
Amount of other molecules coming from that essential oil that may not contribute to the fragrance, but might have an impact on on the skin and might, you know, give people allergies or sensitization.
So that's that's also an issue with natural extracts.
Mhm.
So, maybe you already touched upon this, but can you elaborate after outlining these challenges, how does Sensogen overcome them and using biotechnology and other processes?
Yes.
So the beauty of biotechnology, is that, we, we, you might have heard the word precision fermentation or molecular engineering.
And that's what biotechnology does.
So we were talking about lavender, who the essential oil might bring you a lot of different ingredients, but thanks to precision fermentation, we are able to do to create just the one molecule that will give you the smell of lava.
Vendor or making a few of the molecule, but we don't have to make the whole series of all the ingredients that make up the essential oil.
That way we can put aside the allergens, but still have the olfactive components that give us the smell that we're looking for.
Oh, and then, what that does, because I realized I didn't answer earlier, you were asking me the, the impact of, using natural extracts on quality and sustainability of products.
So the impact that, using natural essential oils had on quality was that sometimes the, the quality is not necessarily very consistent because of the, issue with the, the climate and the, the, the different type of crops.
But when you do those molecules by fermentation, you have a much better control on the consistency of the quality of those molecules, so that allows us to have constant quality in our finished product.
And also a better environmental impact because we don't have to have all the essential oils that have such a heavy burden on the environment.
Mhm.
And so, how does biotechnology enable you to create novel and authentic fragrances?
Right.
So that's the, that's the other, positive part, of biotech.
The other exciting part of biotech, which actually makes Sensogen, put Sensogent in such a, a great position because we have a very special partnership with our, , research partner Conogen, who does, the biotech work for us.
And there's really 22 avenues.
There's the, the part, so I was telling you about rose essential oil and jasmine, so we know which ingredients make those essential oils smell a certain way.
And we're able to recreate those molecules by biotechnology.
So definitely we have this authenticity because biotechnology mimics the the chemical path that nature does and makes those molecules exactly the same way nature does.
So definitely the way we make molecules by biotechnology is the exact same way that nature makes them.
So it doesn't get more authentic than this, than this.
Now novel is the really fun and exciting part because sometimes we smell molecule that have been made by biotechnology, but which the fragrance industry might not have been using because there was other synthetics that are currently being used and so nobody really spent time researching, naturally made other molecules.
But because of that special relationship that we have, as as because of the endeavor that we've decided to follow to make only natural fragrances.
We smell those natural molecules, and we decide like, hey, we could use this, let's try this because this reminds me of a violet smell or this reminds me of a mango smell, and , let me put it in a mango fragrance and see how it comes out.
Mhm.
And so looking ahead to the future, what are your visions and goals for natural perfumery?
So, , it's a, it's a big vision, you know, everybody talks about their carbon footprint right now.
Everybody is very sensitive to their impact on the planet and the What we see with biotech is that we want to reduce this footprint to a fingerprint.
We can really minimize that impact on the planet.
So that's that's really our big.
Our big desire and the purpose and the natural consequences to this is that we can help the fragrance industry move away.
From its over reliance on synthetic petrochem based molecules, because, you know, these resources are, are slowly but surely dwindling.
So we need to find a way to, to get out of this.
So we, we're hoping to lead the way and, and chart a path that's going to be sustainable for and natural for all.
Those are some important points you have made on fruit and floral fragrances.
Thank you so much for sharing, Angelique.
You're welcome.
Thanks for having me, Vena.
