Iberchem has successfully implemented its latest digital innovation, VITA, into its business operations to accelerate growth within the natural fragrance market.

VITA is a resourceful digital assistance tool that enables the naturality of fragrances to be determined in alignment with the ISO16128 criteria. Providing naturality data with greater speed, precision, and accuracy,  VITA answers the increased market demand for natural fragrances. This digital innovation equips perfumers with extensive knowledge to aid their creative process, ensuring the development of natural fragrances without compromise.

To learn more about how VITA is advancing natural scent creation at Iberchem we have sat down with Paola Armengol, Global Regulatory Manager at Iberchem, Guillaume Audy, Director of Corporate Communications and Sustainability at Iberchem, and Thomas Espinasse, Perfumer at Iberchem.

Why was VITA created? How does it help Iberchem to meet nature-conscious consumer demands with precision and accuracy?

Paola Armengol (P.A.) – VITA is Iberchem’s debut launch into the digital sphere, designed to accelerate Iberchem’s growth in the natural fragrance industry. This digital innovation was created for three primary purposes:

• To empower our perfumery and creative teams to independently explore the naturality of their new creations.
• To effectively automatise naturality checks for all our formulas.
• To disclose accurate and reliable information regarding the naturality of our fragrances.

New consumer trends are clearly indicating a need for transparency of information regarding natural products. VITA helps Iberchem to meet this nature-conscious demand as it unveils accurate naturality data swiftly, meaning natural consumer requirements are easily satisfied.

How would you like VITA to advance Iberchem’s progression in the natural fragrance market?

P.A – VITA holds great potential for Iberchem as we develop further within the naturals market. We have already seen great progress as VITA enables 100% natural and 100% natural origin fragrances to be created at a faster pace under the ISO16128 criteria giving Iberchem a competitive advantage in the realm of natural fragrances.

How does VITA help to build transparency for Iberchem’s natural ingredient portfolio?

Guillaume Audy (G.A.) – VITA is a good example of how Iberchem is aligning itself with Croda’s Corporate Strategy of delivering growth through the combination of innovation and sustainability. The data regarding the naturality of our formulations has always been made available to our customers. In other words, we’ve always been transparent. However, thanks to VITA, we can now act faster and have more agility. With this new digital tool, the naturality of a formula can be delivered with a simple click. VITA will greatly benefit our perfumers, allowing them to be more efficient at the time of creating a scent.

What do you think the future holds for Iberchem in the realm of sustainability as they continue to work with digital assistance tools?

G.A. – VITA is our first launch of a digital assistance tool of such scale. The benefits of using new technologies to advance faster our sustainability program are clear. It may be too soon to call it artificial intelligence, but it is definitely our intention to make progress in this direction. This is why we are now working on extending the use of VITA to other formulation concepts such as upcycled or biodegradable fragrances.

How does VITA help to ease the creative process for perfumers and ensure you meet nature-conscious customer requirements with simplicity?

Thomas Espinasse (T.E.) – VITA is really easy to use. It has been a great step forward for quickly determining if our new fragrance creations respect different naturality requirements as requested by our clients. This time gain is priceless. Moreover, the naturality data is crystal clear ensuring perfumers can make any necessary changes promptly and effectively to their natural formulation.

How does VITA inform your decisions when constructing your creative palette for fragrance formulation?

T.E. – VITA has proved essential in helping perfumers understand their palettes better. VITA has helped me to refine my ingredient portfolio further as I can now easily discover which ingredients would be unsuitable even before I evaluate their olfactory impact on the perfume. This ability to filter ingredients and easily clarify which ingredients are suitable means the creation process is easier for perfumers as we construct our creative palette.

As a perfumer, how has this digital assistance tool changed your creation habits?

T.E. – Implementing this user-friendly, digital tool helps us as perfumers to become increasingly knowledgeable about the materials we are using in our natural formulas. Thanks to VITA it now doesn’t cost perfumers almost any time to see if a new fragrance complies with our clients’ nature-conscious needs. Consequently, we have now easily adopted a new way of working, which is efficient and effective.

It is clear VITA is advancing fragrance creation at Iberchem as it eases the working methodology of perfumers. Not only does this ensure speed and precision for natural scent creation, but it also ensures increased transparency as naturality data is easily available. The digital tool has already begun to transform the efficiency of business operations at Iberchem, and by stepping further into the digital assistance realm, Iberchem is able to explore new prospects made achievable by VITA. To learn more about this digital tool, click here.