Who makes laundry smell nice? Meet the professional 'noses'

Straits Times

23-07-2025

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Junior perfumer Lyu Shangyun smells a smell strip which is used to evaluate fragrances at Symrise in Holzminden, Germany.
HOLZMINDEN, Germany – In the laboratories of German fragrance and flavours giant Symrise, a citrus scent clings to the lab coats of trainees – 'noses' who are learning the art of making things smell good.
These busy heroes of the world of smells and aromas shape the connection millions of consumers have with everyday items.
While at high-end perfume labels, olfactory artists create scents for luxury body sprays, Symrise's experts work on everyday products that might range from mint-flavoured toothpaste to barbeque chips.
Smell, a powerful sense that can trigger emotions and memories, and aroma often decide which food or beverage, cleaning or personal hygiene product ends up in the shopping cart.
At Symrise's headquarters in Holzminden, a quiet town south of Hanover, each day at the company's in-house perfumery school begins the same way: sniffing out scents from dozens of tiny bottles while blindfolded.
'It's just like tuning a musical instrument before you play,' said Ms Alicia De Benito Cassado, a 32-year-old former professional pianist from Spain.
Her career switch into scent development was a natural step: she made her own perfumes as a teenager to match the poetry and music that she wrote.
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'For me, not everything has to smell good,' she said. 'The horror of smell also helps us discover ourselves.'
But commercial clients demand something different, Ms De Benito Cassado added. 'In the end, we need to create scents that are strong, beautiful, powerful – and affordable.'
Professional sniffers
Being a 'nose' is a full-time job and comes with a three-year training programme.
The smell of a fabric softener can be composed of 80 compounds, far more than in a premium body perfume, and the best noses can make out over 1,000 different odours while blindfolded.
Mr Lyu Shangyun, 31, came from China to study at the school and says that a professional sniffer can get by with knowing about 500 scents.
Being able to break down odours into their chemical components is key.
'As a kid, I just smelled jasmine or gardenia as flowers,' he said. 'Now, I recognise the chemicals: it's a blend of many elements.'
Students weigh ingredients down to the milligramme, mix, smell, and start over, often by replicating existing smells to understand their structure and then innovate from there.
'When developing perfume, it is very important that several people smell it,' said 56-year-old master perfumer Marc vom Ende, head of the school.
'We all perceive smell differently.'
Washing machines for testing perfume oil formulas at Symrise's test facility in Holzminden, Germany.
PHOTO: AFP
'Nose has the final say'
Pleasant smells cannot come at any cost, and the rules of the game change over time.
Lilial, a chemical once prized for its floral and sweet Lily-of-the-Valley notes, has been banned in the European Union since 2022 over fears it can cause skin irritation and damage the reproductive system.
Fragrances applied directly to the body have stricter regulations than detergents, said 27-year-old South African trainee Attiya Setai.
'We're more restricted in raw materials and must replace banned ingredients with new compliant ones,' she said.
Tastes also vary across global markets, with Mr Lyu pointing to the example of Chinese shampoos that sell well with a young clientele there but would struggle in Europe.
'Something old-fashioned in one country can be new elsewhere,' he said.
Cost also enters the equation.
Symrise extracts aromatic compounds from wood resin, a by-product of the paper industry, in a move 'that makes both economic and environmental sense', said Mr vom Ende.
It is hard to be a nose.
About 500 perfumers work in the industry and 80 of them at Symrise, which has a workforce of 13,000.
The company markets about 30,000 products to clients ranging from confectioners to pet food manufacturers and suncream makers.
Symrise's competitors include DSM-Firmenich, headquartered in both Switzerland and the Netherlands, as well as Givaudan, another Swiss firm.
Artificial intelligence increasingly plays a role, with computer programmes predicting which fragrances will hit the mark.
Still, the machines cannot – yet – smell, even if they can understand speech and read text.
'We're supported by AI,' Mr vom Ende said. 'But the nose has the final say'.