The Sweet Scent of Innovation: How Robots help Sacheerome Perfect the Art of Fragrance & Flavor Making
Eight years ago, when Delhi-headquartered Sacheerome began to accelerate its operations to increase its production capacity, it started using specially designed robots to accurately measure out thousands of aromatic ingredients used in creating formulas for flavours and fragrances. Beginning its journey in the early 1900s, the company is a leading manufacturer and supplier, adding fragrances and flavours to some of India’s best-known food and toiletry FMCG brands.
As robotics becomes more and more sophisticated, it has created a plethora of opportunities for automation in the manufacturing industry. Today, it is finding several applications in the fragrances and flavors industry enhancing productivity, quality control and safety measures, leading to improved operations and customer satisfaction. Robots can not only perform repetitive tasks with utmost precision, but also ensure the efficiency of fragrance and flavor production.
Tasks such as mixing ingredients, measuring quantities, and packaging finished products can be performed with the same level of consistency for each batch. This automation further leads to reduced errors and improved overall quality.
The Journey of Sacheerome
It was in 2015 when Sacheerome announced the opening of India’s first automated and robotic fragrance manufacturing plant, aimed at accelerating digital transformation and innovation. The facility boasts a fully automated robotic manufacturing unit, a state-of-the-art R&D lab, temperature controlled storage facility and a super-fast sampling unit that is at par with the best in the world.
In addition to a team of 24 perfumers, flavourists and 10 evaluators, the firm has deployed three robots at its facility in Okhla, Delhi that allow seamless production at a speed that traditional sampling methods cannot match.
Given that even a slight variance of 0.002 mg in the final formulation can impact the creation of the final fragrance, companies like Sacheerome began using robotics to blend fragrances to achieve the highest degree of accuracy, precision and consistent product quality.
At present, Sacheerome is equipped with high-speed dispensing and a production capacity with sizes ranging from 10gm to 10MT. Further, the company is planning to get six more robots for their upcoming facility at Greater Noida.
Says Manoj Arora, Managing Director and Chief Perfumer, “We are constantly looking for new ways to leverage technological developments to enhance the way fragrances and flavors are created. Innovation has always been at the heart of Sacheerome’s strategy. Backed by deep consumer insights, scientific research, new technology and the principles of conscious perfumery, the thought behind introducing robots is to keep transforming the way products and brands deliver new sensorial experiences and superior benefits for consumers.”
Sniffing out the future of flavoring & perfumery
In the world of fragrances and flavors, a new scent or flavor traditionally gets created manually. While most Indian players are still dependent on manual mixing and blending processes, the need to adapt to technology is necessary to remain accurate and match the quality of their counterparts. It is much more efficient to use automated mixing when assembling batches of samples for clients. Sacheerome’s automatic dispensing and compounding robotic machines with high-precision valves ensure high quality. Moreover, the fragrances are deposited in a temperature-controlled storage facility with nitrogen-filled controlled storage tanks to avoid oxidation.
This unique, state-of-the-art and advanced robotic solution for sample & production has increased the company’s production capacity to 15000 MT per annum, almost tripling their production. With manual labour involved, there will always be downtime. But using robots has led up to an 80 percent reduction in manual effort for Sacheerome. This is interesting especially when a study from a UK-based market research company Vanson Bourne showed that 23 percent of unplanned downtime in the manufacturing sector occurs because of human error.
Talking of Sacheerome’s facility, Manoj Arora shares, “Our production facility is open 24/7, which gives us a much higher capacity to cater to a large number of clients. Taking help of robots helps us identify the precise dosage a product needs and look at thousands of complex formulas and combinations available in a flash.”
The intuitive system involving robots produces an instant sample with real ingredients and gives the best possible formulation for a new scent, something that traditional methods would never be able to provide. This means they can help batch-produce and come up with new samples in a significantly shorter timeframe. “Ultimately, the usage of robotics not only accelerates the development cycle, but enables faster introduction of new fragrances and flavors to the market, proving to be a game changer for us.” adds Manoj Arora.
