The search for better tasting products is a never-ending pursuit for food and beverage companies. Their quest brings many of them to Grasse, France, where Cargill operates one of its many flavor facilities around the world. The Grasse facility is the largest plant in Cargill’s flavor business, working with many well-known brands on products ranging from flavored waters to chips, chocolates, liqueurs and even cough medicines. Secrecy is part of the process here, since customers provide Cargill with their base secrets in order to develop flavors for them.

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Teams of expert flavorists, product application and sensory specialists work with the very essence of flavor by first determining a customer’s needs, then creating and blending extracts from thousands of raw flavor materials and essences at the Cargill plant—ultimately resulting in a successful recipe. To safeguard proprietary flavors, the formulation is broken into parts and no single production person assembles an entire recipe. In addition, an ingredient-mixing robot nick-named Roxane is used in the plant, equipped with 600 different raw materials that are mixed as the robot moves along its conveyor belt. 

Almost all flavors are blends and a single flavor may have as many as 200 different ingredients. The process is both art and science. Ultimately the goal is to create “the secret inside” a great food or beverage product…and give companies a competitive advantage in their marketplace. An end product, created through collaboration, that helps them achieve their recipe for success.

This is how Cargill works with customers.