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Givaudan is a global leader in the creation of flavours and fragrances, serving a wide range of industries including food, beverages, personal care, and home care. With a rich heritage spanning over 250 years, the Swiss-based company combines creativity and innovation with advanced science to craft unique sensory experiences that connect with consumers worldwide.
In November last year, the company opened its Innovation Hub in Dubai to cater to South Asia, Middle East, and Africa (SAMEA) region
The state-of-the-art facility brings cutting-edge technology and a focus on health-forward ingredients to deliver exceptional flavours and functional products tailored to local preferences.
Here, Olga Bezukladova – regional innovation head at Givaudan Taste and Wellbeing, shares more details about the hub and the company’s work in the food and flavours space.
Could you elaborate on the strategic vision behind Givaudan’s Innovation Hub which opened in November last year in Dubai, and how it enhances Givaudan’s capabilities in the South Asia, Middle East and African (SAMEA) region as part of the broader global ecosystem?
The new Givaudan Innovation Hub, the latest addition to Givaudan’s global innovation network, represents a strategic evolution for the SAMEA region. Strengthening our capabilities and commitment to the region, it integrates increased autonomy tailored to local operations while remaining an integral part of the global organisation.
This hub also serves as a powerhouse for food and beverage creations, tailored to regional preferences with the latest tools and expertise. Additionally, it acts as the driving force behind Givaudan’s innovation pipeline in the region, ensuring its products perfectly align with consumer and customer needs.
The facility also features a state-of-the-art show kitchen and laboratories with capabilities in flavour creation and application, sensory evaluation, and food science.
What role will the Consumer and Sensory Insights (CSI) centre in Dubai play in tailoring products to local and regional preferences, and how does it complement Givaudan’s other consumer insight centres worldwide?
As Givaudan’s innovation hub is based in Dubai, it was necessary to have a full-fledged consumer and sensory lab with the highest global standards. This was important not only to bring the voice of consumers early in the food and beverage creation process but also to drive consumer-centric innovation that is relevant for the region.
Givaudan’s leadership team was very keen on having consumer and sensory hubs around the region to manage the different consumer needs and to be closer to our customers and consumers. With that, there are three fully equipped and resourced centres in Dubai, Mumbai and Johannesburg.
The new laboratories and Consumer and Sensory Insights Centre (CSI) in Dubai meet global standards, accelerating the creation and delivery of new products. This results in a reduction in the time it takes for customers to introduce new products to the market, swiftly transforming consumer desires into tangible product offerings.
Givaudan’s pioneering technologies like ATOM and VAS sound transformative. Could you share more about these innovations and how they support Givaudan’s global mission of enhancing taste and aroma while aligning with regional needs?
Aligned with our company’s 2025 strategy and intent to lead the way in digitalisation, pioneering tools like ATOM and VAS open new doors to creative development and can dramatically cut the time to market for new products. For example, the Virtual Aroma Synthesizer (VAS) was invented to speed up flavour creation and eliminate inconsistencies in descriptive language. Today, it has evolved immensely and allows for a faster generation of concepts, with ‘real-time’ flavour creation, as well as a high level of interaction between customers and our teams in what we call co-creation sessions.
Thanks to the newer and smaller VAS Air, the technology has become much more portable and easy to set up not only for co-creation with customers but also for consumer testing. Working with the VAS helps us to identify consumer preferences towards certain flavours. We can see that in multiple icons such as strawberry or vanilla flavour in a specific market across SAMEA. We pinpoint these nuances and then use these findings to co-create winning products.
ATOM is the latest addition to an ecosystem of digital and AI tools that allow Givaudan teams in all regions of the world to streamline the end-to-end creation process from conception to rollout. Building on over two decades of research, ATOM uses artificial intelligence (AI) and data science techniques to generate new options and insights aligned with consumer preferences, enabling us to co-create game-changing new food experiences.
Early projects using the tools have been highly successful. For example, we used ATOM in recent developments for our key partners in North Africa. The tool helped to eliminate the extensive trial and error process and come up with the best winning solution based on consumer feedback, our expertise and internal knowledge.
The Innovation Hub features state-of-the-art facilities like a show kitchen and specialised laboratories. How do these spaces support Givaudan’s co-creation efforts with clients, and how does this approach differ from traditional product development?
Givaudan’s Innovation Hub integrates a fully-equipped Consumer and Sensory Insights (CSI) centre, a co-creation suite, and state-of-the-art technical laboratories.
The CSI centre enhances consumer-centricity through comprehensive product evaluation, real-time data analysis, and sensory evaluation booths with specialized air handling systems to prevent cross-contamination, allowing us to be ahead of the latest trends in the industry when it comes to consumers’ expectations in food and beverages.
The co-creation suite is a dedicated space where our proprietary digital tools like the Virtual Aroma Synthesizer (VAS) and ATOM are utilised, along with an industrial kitchen and multifunctional spaces outfitted with advanced video conferencing and interactive screens. The room was designed to facilitate seamless collaborations with customers for real-time product refinement and faster market readiness, enabling us to deliver innovative solutions that meet the latest trends & surpass consumer expectations.
Complementing this room is a cutting-edge show kitchen that facilitates collaboration between our flavourists, chefs and customers to nurture creativity and co-create exceptional food experiences.
In parallel, the technical laboratories we have in-house feature well-equipped spaces for flavour creation and application, emphasising global standards in food safety and environmental sustainability, and ensuring an optimal working environment that prevents cross-contamination when prototyping for the next innovation.
Beyond taste and aroma, Givaudan also explores solutions in areas like functional foods and natural ingredients. How does this Hub contribute to advancing Givaudan’s research in these areas, and are there any key trends you’re excited about?
Year after year, we are witnessing consumers become increasingly health-focused, emphasising a demand for functionality and natural ingredients. As a response to that and to other pressing and changing market conditions, we have realigned our portfolio to better reflect how, through our expanded product offering and capabilities, we support customers to deliver future-facing food experiences that consumers value.
Anchoring our flavour, taste, natural functional and nutritional capabilities around the concept of food experiences enables us to link what we do with the benefits that consumers expect from the food, beverages and nutraceutical products they consume.
Lastly, Givaudan has a strong history of global partnerships and collaborations. Are there any new partnerships in the SAMEA region, particularly those involving local universities or research institutions, that are advancing your mission in taste and wellbeing?
Givaudan has a strong history of fostering partnerships that enhance our mission in taste and wellbeing, particularly through our front-end innovation (FEI) program. The programme is designed to explore new ideas and technologies that can lead to breakthrough products. By partnering with academic institutions, we gain access to cutting-edge research and insights that are crucial for developing innovative flavours and health-focused solutions. We have also developed a broad network to find and accelerate disruptive food technologies.
These platforms are continuously scouting and incubating potential areas of innovation in the food and beverage industry. Our front-end innovation platform has facilitated exceptional partnerships with leading accelerators, including MassChallenge (Switzerland), MISTA(San Francisco), Bits x Bites (China), FoodTech HUB Latam (Brazil) and top VCs leading the way in the foodtech industry. Since the creation of SAMEA in 2021, we are in the process of creating similar partnerships in the region.
