Inside IFF: Where Nature, Biotech and AI Converge in Fragrance

Read the full  2026 Fragrance Leaders & Newsmakers issue here.

*Commentary courtesy of IFF

• 2025 sales: $10.9 billion
• Headquarters: New York

IFFAs a global leader in taste, scent, food ingredients and biosciences, IFF creates sustainable, high-performance solutions that make a meaningful impact for customers, consumers and the planet.

Today, technology is reshaping fragrance not for its own sake, but in response to fundamentally changed expectations for speed, sustainability, performance and compliance. Brands want faster cycles, consumers want more responsible products, and regulators expect higher standards—all at the same time.

For IFF’s Scent business, three technology families are particularly transformative: biotechnology, digital and AI-enabled tools, and next-generation sustainable manufacturing. The impact lies not in each technology on its own, but in their end-to-end integration—from molecule design to industrial scaleup. 

Below, leaders from IFF Scent—Ana Paula Mendonça, president, IFF Scent; Charbel Bouez, senior vice president of Scent R&D; and Valery Claude, senior vice president of Scent Digital—share how IFF is helping customers succeed in a faster, more regulated, sustainability-driven world.

Leading the Natural Way with Continued Investment

Commentary by Ana Paula Mendonça, president, IFF Scent

"Expanding our site in Grasse was a deliberate choice," says Ana Paula Mendonça, president, IFF Scent. "It was not just about capacity, but about reinforcing a long-term commitment to naturals that are responsibly sourced, scientifically mastered, and creatively inspiring."IFF

If I step back, what defines the past year is our indisputable leadership in naturals, built on a unique ability to take craftsmanship from Grasse to the world, and bring the world back to Grasse to continuously enrich perfumery’s future.

At the heart of this is LMR Naturals. Expanding our site in Grasse was a deliberate choice. It was not just about capacity, but about reinforcing a long-term commitment to naturals that are responsibly sourced, scientifically mastered, and creatively inspiring. With the new pilot hall, our perfumers, agronomists, and scientists have more room to experiment, scale, and innovate, while protecting the integrity of the ingredients.

In parallel, our partnership with Reservas Votorantim in Brazil reflects how we think about the future of naturals. Working in one of the world’s most important biodiversity regions requires patience, rigor, and humility. It allows us to explore new olfactive territories responsibly, while protecting ecosystems and securing long-term access to ingredients. Together, LMR and Brazil signal something very clear: naturals are not a legacy topic for us: they are a pillar of future leadership.

We also remain committed to advancing innovation at the intersection of performance and sustainability. Envirocap, our biodegradable encapsulation technology, is designed to deliver long-lasting scent performance in fabric care while reducing environmental impact, with a scalable platform that extends across categories, including beauty and home.

Biotechnology has become a powerful, creative and industrial engine for us. By combining biotransformation, fermentation, and enzyme catalysis with deep bioscience expertise, we can design ingredients with exceptional precision, consistency, and scalability, while reducing reliance on scarce natural resources. Importantly, this does not come at the expense of olfactive quality.

Ingredients like BioTropicalia build on familiar signatures while offering new facets and more responsible production routes.

Digital tools and AI accelerate learning and iteration, helping teams explore a broader creative space and move more efficiently from concept to formula.  And in manufacturing, sustainability is no longer incremental. At Benicarló, Spain, our on-site green hydrogen facility demonstrates how industrial excellence, scale, and environmental responsibility can move together.

Finally, we continue to invest in co-creation with customers, where creativity thrives. The Perfumery Art Studio in Dubai reflects the Middle East’s growing importance as a creative and commercial hub and provides an open space where our teams and customers work side by side to translate cultural insight into fragrances that feel modern, relevant and meaningful.

"[I]n manufacturing, sustainability is no longer incremental," says Ana Paula Mendonça, president, IFF Scent. "At Benicarló, Spain, our on-site green hydrogen facility demonstrates how industrial excellence, scale, and environmental responsibility can move together."IFF

An End-to-End Sourcing Operating Model

For IFF, the question is not whether naturals should be sourced responsibly, but how responsibility can enable creativity at scale. Our answer is a distinctive end-to-end operating model in which sourcing and procurement, science, perfumery, sustainability, regulatory and commercial teams operate as one integrated system. This approach allows us to move beyond risk management and compliance.

By embedding sustainability by design into our innovation platforms and decisions, we protect creative freedom while anticipating regulatory and supply challenges. It also enables perfumers to create with confidence, knowing materials are responsibly developed from origin to application.

Through LMR Naturals, we stay close to origin and build long-term partnerships rooted in trust, science, and shared value, including biodiversity initiatives such as our work in Brazil.

Ultimately, this model exists for one reason: to help our customers succeed responsibly, delivering products that do more good for consumers, communities, and the future of perfumery. This way of working also shapes how we view the decade ahead. As complexity increases, the industry will be tested on its ability to integrate creativity, science, and responsibility at scale, not treat them as separate challenges.

Bioscience As a Tool: a Science-Based Way to Protect Consumer Safety and Create Diversity and Innovation

Commentary by Charbel Bouez, Ph.D., senior vice president of Scent R&D

"As certain ingredients become more constrained, biotechnology gives us a science-based way to protect both consumer safety and creative diversity," says Charbel Bouez, Ph.D., senior vice president of Scent R&D.IFF

Biotechnology has become a critical response to some of the biggest structural challenges our industry faces, from regulatory evolution and supply security to sustainability and long-term creative freedom.

As certain ingredients become more constrained, biotechnology gives us a science-based way to protect both consumer safety and creative diversity. It helps us meet future requirements while preserving the olfactive richness perfumers need to create distinctive fragrances.

Biotech also strengthens supply security by reducing dependency on climate-vulnerable raw materials. What fascinates me is how this energizes our scientists, chemists and perfumers, expanding the creative palette and opening new olfactive territories. It is not about replacing nature, but about working intelligently alongside it, combining science, sustainability and creativity.

Commentary by Valery Claude, senior vice president of Scent Digital

"What excites me most about AI is not the technology itself, but how deeply it is embedded as an enabler across our teams," says Valery Claude, senior vice president of Scent Digital.IFF

What excites me most about AI is not the technology itself, but how deeply it is embedded as an enabler across our teams. AI is helping us move faster (and speed has become cultural) giving our perfumers, evaluators, and scientists more time to focus on what truly matters. AI is not an end in itself, but a means: it enhances creativity, accelerates delivery, unlocks new opportunities, and truly enables new forms of innovation.

A big part of why this works at IFF is our proprietary data foundation. In an industry increasingly striving to build a shared language for scent, our advantage lies in decades of real-world olfactive, formula, and consumer learning captured at scale within IFF. This experience-based foundation is what gives our AI real strength.

Rather than defining AI in abstract terms, we use it very practically: to remove friction from the creative process, accelerate iteration, and support better decision-making earlier. This keeps human intuition, emotion, and storytelling at the center of creation.

On the consumer side, AI helps us decode language, emotions, and preferences across markets; enabling fragrances that are more relevant and culturally resonant. Ultimately, its value lies in strengthening co-creation: moving from insight to solution faster, with a higher chance of success when a fragrance reaches the consumer.

IFF Scent Digital focuses on helping the world feel more; by connecting science, creativity, and consumers through AI-powered scent design.”

Commentary by Ana Paula Mendonça, president, IFF Scent

The industry’s future depends on turning regulation, climate pressure and consumer change into engines of innovation. That belief sits at the core of how we lead IFF Scent, and why my leadership team and I view the growing complexity of the next decade as an opportunity, not a constraint.

The real challenge will be end-to-end integration. Companies that can connect science, creativity, responsibility, and scale into a single operating model will be best positioned to adapt and lead, and this is where IFF Scent is positioned to thrive.

Regulation will intensify, and consumer safety is non-negotiable. The challenge is preserving innovation through science-based, proportionate regulation. Climate change and biodiversity loss will also reshape access to raw materials, requiring investment in regenerative agriculture, biotechnology, and more resilient supply models.

At the same time, we must not underestimate the importance of talent and the human touch. Technology and data are essential, but people turn complexity into meaning. Perfumers, scientists and creators bring intuition, emotion and cultural sensitivity that no algorithm can replace.

I remain deeply optimistic. Fragrance has always lived at the intersection of art and science, and its future will be shaped by how closely we partner with our customers to turn complexity into progress. By working side by side with our customers, combining human creativity with science, data, and responsibility, we co-create solutions that are relevant, scalable, and meaningful for consumers. That partnership, grounded in trust and powered by people, is the true engine of innovation and growth in the decade ahead.