Perfume - manufacture |
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Perfume Manufacture - There are two types of manufacturing operation in perfumery. The first is the manufacture, by distillation, expression, enfleurage, maceration, extraction, etc., of the essential oils and attars, "concretes and absolutes, pomades and tinctures, together with the manufacture of all the many synthetic preparations, which provide the primary fragrances used by a 'nose' in creating a perfume. Many of the factories where this work is done will be adjacent to the fields or plantations where the plant materials are grown, because such materials may need to be treated as soon as they have been collected if their full fragrances are to be preserved. It follows that these factories will be found all over the world where fragrant materials are harvested. The second operation is the comparatively simple process of assembling and blending together all the oils and essences of which a perfume is composed in accordance with the formula for that perfume devised by the 'nose' who has created it. These ingredients will be mixed to form a concentrate which is left for several weeks until everything in it has blended completely and matured. The concentrate is then diluted in alcohol to its required strength as an extrait, eau de parfum, eau de toilette or eau de cologne and left in copper containers to blend for a further few weeks. It is then ready to be bottled. The design and manufacture of fragrance is now a very large-scale international business. A wide range of toiletries and other household items, from cosmetics, shampoos and soaps to aerosols, deodorants, furniture polishes and lavatory cleaners, now have fragrances added to make them more acceptable and hence to improve their sales. Equally important are flavourings, often derived from the same ingredients, for today's food manufacturers rely a great deal on artificial means to give their mass products an improved or simulated taste. The manufacture of perfume may be but a small part of the business of many of the score or so of large fragrance and flavouring manufacturers now operating. Among the bigger of such firms may be mentioned International Flavours and Fragrances (IFF), the largest company of all, and Quest International, the second largest, a British company based in Kent. The fragrance manufacturers have their own perfumers and can create a fragrance and produce it through all its processes of manufacture to the ready-for-snle product. The main companies specializing in the creation and manufacture of high-quality perfumes are IFF, Roure (formerly Roure-Bertrand-Dupont) and the Swiss-based companies Givaudan and Firrninich, Between them these four firms make around 60% of all the quality perfumes now marketed. The large perfume houses have their own 'noses' and manufacturing facilities and may even own acres of land, perhaps around Grasse, from which to produce their own ingredients such as rose and jasmine. Some, like Chanel, have exclusive contracts with growers. But many distinguished perfume houses now obtain their perfumes under contract arrangements from a fragrance manufacturer, and when a fashion house or similar such business decides to add a perfume to its products it will almost invariably obtain it either from a fragrance manufacturer or from a perfume house with its own manufacturing facilities. Thus, Dior, Yves St Laurent, Paco Rabanne, Nina Ricci, Calvin Klein and Givenchy, among many others, have all had perfumes made for them by Roure, and companies such as Gres. Puig, Balenciaga, Revillon, Leonard, Caron and Coty have used IFF. In the world of perfumery the importance ol these fragrance manufacturers, anonymous and almost unknown to the general perfume-using public, is thus considerable.
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