The majority of vanilla grown today comes from Madagascar – right off the shores of East Africa. Symrise explores the heritage of vanilla and how it has expanded into one of the most popular sweet tastes in the world.
Vanilla has been known beyond the boundaries of Central America for many centuries. Since it was discovered, it has developed into the most popular universally-liked sweet taste direction now mainly grown in Africa. The majority of vanilla grown today comes from Madagascar – right from the shores of East Africa.
The food industry uses vanilla in manifold sweet and, sometimes, savoury applications. Children and adults treasure it alike.
Back in 1874, the world looked and tasted differently. Vanilla was considered to be as precious as gold, due to its time-consuming pollination by hand as well as the fact that it was only grown in certain parts of the world. But this was to change with Wilhelm Haarman and Carl Reimer who laid the foundation of the modern flavour industry and of the company Haarman & Reimer, a predecessor of the German Symrise AG.
It was found by these two masterminds that the vanilla flavour, or vanillin, could be synthesised from coniferin. Many other approaches followed to secure a reliable and cost-effective raw material base.
Within recent years, the trend has started reversing and the demand for fair trade and organic qualities is constantly gaining momentum. Therefore, more and more companies source their vanilla from Africa. Symrise too, has stopped deploying the original technique and has switched its focus to Madagascar. But what are they doing differently?
They try to understand the needs of all participants in the vanilla chain. For instance: what do the successful farmers in Madagascar need to grow their crop and to lead a decent life?
To help them, Symrise does not source its vanilla beans from local trade companies, but directly from about 6 000 small farmers and their co-operatives in Madagascar. This is how a company as far away as Holzminden, in the heart of Germany, has taken new paths to involve itself directly within the largest and most important cultivation area for bourbon vanilla.
To achieve this, the company integrated its vanilla sourcing and founded its own local company – Symrise Madagascar. So far, no other flavour house has done anything similar. Symrise Madagascar do not need to include distributors, processors, exporters, importers and extraction companies. Only vanilla beans and extracts from traditional cultivation find their way into the plant. No crop from monocultures gets involved. By engaging itself with the origin of vanilla production in such an intense way is how Symrise has laid the foundation for its sustainability model.
Responsible sourcing means directly supporting the farmers. Symrise Madagascar has entered into partnerships with several organisations to be able to purchase the vanilla beans directly from the farmers‘ co-operative without the inclusion of distributors.
In the northern region, Sambirano, the Association pour le Dévelopment de l’Agriculture et du Paysannat du Sambirano (ADAPs), represents about 2 000 small farmers. They sell their whole vanilla harvest to Symrise and both parties benefit. Symrise receives top quality raw material and full transparency from the blossom to the bean. And the farmers, well they know that Symrise will buy their entire harvest, thus guaranteeing their income and increasing their standard of living.
Symrise also works with FANAMBY which means ‘challenge’ in Malagasy. This non-profit organisation wants to improve the standard of living for the rural population and at the same time preserve the country’s biodiversity. It supports the farmers in growing BIO and Fair Trade-certified vanilla. It yields prices well above market value and the surplus that they distribute among the farmers and their communities for non-profit projects invested in the protection of biodiversity in equal shares.
The German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) has ambitions to partner with and for Symrise and they have developed a model that sources raw material responsibly and exceeds fair trade standards.
Production looks different at Symrise too. The production plant in Madagascar produces extracts for various applications in different qualities. This needs well-trained employees and state-of-the-art equipment. Blanching, sweating, fermenting, drying, quality control, analytics – everything is done in Madagascar, thus keeping part of the value creation in the country.
Because North America and Europe, in particular, consume natural vanilla flavourings and extracts with an upward tendency, the effort certainly pays off.
Oliver Nembach, global competence director of vanilla at Symrise, stated that, ‘We have developed an approach that covers and ameliorates all aspects of the value chain – from farmers, via production, to customers and consumers. Because we feel passionate about vanilla, we constantly challenge ourselves to take our vanilla solutions to the next level. Our long history in vanilla combined with our unique taste competence helps us develop solutions that meet both the farmers’ right to lead a worthy life and consumers’ preferences. With our brand Simply Vanilla, we have created a platform for vanilla flavourings and extracts and specialties such as Fair Trade and BIO/organically-certified vanilla extracts and supplies suitable solutions for current demands of the market.’
