Firmenich Announces Sustainable Innovation Partnership with Jungle: Launches World First with Muguet Firgood™

Partnership explores vertical farming to help produce unique and exclusive natural perfumery ingredients

GENEVA, Dec. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Firmenich, the world's largest privately-owned fragrance and taste company, is proud to announce a new partnership with the French start-up Jungle, strengthening the Group's sustainable innovation capabilities and leadership in natural ingredients. Muguet Firgood™ is the first ingredient developed through this collaboration for the luxury perfume market, and the first-ever commercial extract safely obtained from the lily of the valley flower.

The strategic partnership builds on Firmenich's pioneering Firgood™ natural extraction technology and Jungle's unique capabilities in vertical farming, growing crops in vertically stacked layers for reduced land and water use. By combining their respective expertise, the partnership is designed to explore innovative and sustainable new avenues for naturals in perfumery that are respectful of natural resources.

The two companies have successfully developed a commercially viable product cultivated through clean and highly efficient vertical farms and extracted using Firgood™, Firmenich's proprietary and revolutionary sustainable extraction technology.  

The result is Muguet Firgood™, a pure and 100% natural ingredient with fresh and authentic notes never obtained before. Lily of the valley is known in perfumery as one of the most iconic "silent flowers", a flower that yields no essence. It is the first time in the history of perfumery that an extract of this flower has been captured with a safe and sustainable process, offering a completely new olfactory profile with genuine tonalities.

"Our strategic partnership and joint expertise with Jungle on sustainable technologies now makes it possible for our perfumers to capture and harness the genuine natural scent of this exquisite flower to the benefit of our customers and of consumers," said Julien Firmenich, Vice President Product Strategy and Promotion. "Muguet Firgood™ is a truly rare and precious ingredient."

"Jungle is thrilled to successfully break into the perfume industry. This project with Firmenich has strengthened our protocols and expertise in cultivating plants, in our vertical farms, for their enhanced biological activity," added Gilles Dreyfus, President and Co-founder of Jungle. "We are now well positioned to support the cosmetics and nutraceutical industries by providing safe, local and reproductible plant extracts."

Muguet Firgood™ will be a captive ingredient intended for the fine fragrance market. Part of the Firgood™ collection within Firmenich's Naturals Together™ platform, this breakthrough ingredient is a unique and extraordinary addition to the company's creative Perfumery palette and reinforces Firmenich established leadership in naturals.

Leveraging this privileged relationship going forward, Firmenich and Jungle will look to uncover other innovative and sustainable territories to shape the most exciting pipeline of exclusive naturals for the fragrance market.

About Firmenich

Firmenich, the world's largest privately-owned fragrance and taste company, was founded in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1895 and has been family-owned for 126 years. Firmenich is a leading business-to-business company specialized in the research, creation, manufacture and sale of perfumes, flavors and ingredients. Renowned for its world-class research and creativity, as well as its leadership in sustainability, Firmenich offers its customers superior innovation in formulation, a broad and high-quality palette of ingredients, and proprietary technologies including biotechnology, encapsulation, olfactory science and taste modulation. Firmenich had an annual turnover of 4.3 billion Swiss Francs at end June 2021. More information about Firmenich is available at www.firmenich.com.

About Jungle

Jungle is a French company that grows plants for the food, perfume and cosmetics industries in vertical farms. We combine R&D on plant growth and technology to reveal the flavors and active compounds of our plants. Jungle, with a headcount of 30, most of them agronomic engineers, sells its plants to retailers and companies willing to secure new and alternative procurement of plants without pesticides. The company raised its Series A funding of €7 million in February 2021 from Founders Future and Demeter Partners.

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