Our field trip to a fragrance manufacturer and what we learned while we were there.

Courtesy of mushypony.com

Did you know that the fragrance oil behind your perfume most likely came from the same place that makes your kitty litter smell sweet? Those “pure essential oils” you’ve read on the label are actually a naturally occurring, complex mixture of aroma compounds. That’s just one of the many things we learned today at Compagnie Parento Ltd., a fragrance manufacturer located right here in Toronto. In fact, we followed our noses all the way around the plant!

“Orange peels are pressed in order to get orange oil. Same goes for lemon oil, grapefruit oil; those are some pure essential oils that we use for many of our products,” says V.P. of sales and operations, Justin Quigg, “and this [seen below] is an old soap plodder that takes raw soap pellets mixed together with water and titanium oxide, and crushes them into long strips; like spaghetti, which then get pressed together into a soap bar.”

Courtesy of mushypony.com

“The most expensive machine here is our Gas Chromatogram/ Mass Spectrometer, the bread and butter of our entire company,” he continues (pointing to an HP printer of sorts), “it allows us to duplicate our scents. We can extract fragrance components out of existing products and break them down into single chemicals; allowing us to recreate an odour for mass-production. It’s a very expensive piece of laboratory equipment, but even then, nothing compares to the human nose. At the end of the day, it’s our basic sense of smell combined with the ancient art of perfumery that we rely on most.”

Courtesy of mushypony.com

As we continued walking, we stumbled upon some massive barrels [seen above] which apparently contain all of the finished scents, ready to be shipped to various corporations for shampoo, lotion, detergent, litter, and yes – perfumes.

Courtesy of mushypony.com

These medicine bottles are filled with all of the raw essential oils, synthetic oils, organic oils, and mixed oils used as the basis for each product. As you can tell, there are thousands of them. “If you dabbed some of this on you, you’d smell for days,” says Justin. “There’s only a small amount found in perfumes which is then mixed together with water and alcohol. And it’s amazing the price difference between that and a bottle of lotion found in a dollar store. That’s branding for you.”

XoXo
– The Cowgirls