Crown Chemicals Pvt. Ltd. (a 50:50 joint venture between the Anthea Group and French multinational DRT) has, after years of in-house research come up with a synthetic variant of Piperonal manufactured from phenol. The product is white in color and is offered in a fine-crystalline/powdery form. The purity is almost 100%, which is responsible for the clean cherry/almond/vanilla note, free of by-odors. The Company is hopeful that the increasing use of its synthetic product will put an end to the widespread destruction of sassafras forests around the world

Introduction:

Also known as the oil of sassafras, Piperonal or Heliotropin is an extract of the sassafras tree that has been used for decades in the manufacture of flavors, fragrances and pharmaceutical drugs.

Piperonal from Sassafras Oil:

Natural Piperonal is a derivative of safrole, a naturally occurring aromatic biochemical obtained from botanical sources such as Cinamomum petrophilum and Sassafras albidum.

In both Brazil and the People’s Republic of China, loss of trees by felling for oil production has been considerable. As mentioned earlier, concern over this led the Brazilian government to introduce regulations limiting the felling of sassafras forests.

In China too there has been large-scale deforestation which has reached a point where there are hardly any sassafras forests left in China. Currently the only forests which are being tapped for this resource are in certain countries of South-east Asia, namely Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos. Here too there is rampant deforestation and it is only a matter of time before this resource is completely depleted.

Piperonal from a synthetic source:

For several decades researchers in the F&F industry have been trying to find a commercially viable, synthetic route to manufacture Piperonal. The reasons for this are manifold:

• Environmental destruction caused by the felling of sassafras forests.
• The sassafras tree is largely a non-renewable resource, which means that natural Piperonal will one day be unavailable, or will be priced at a level where it is unviable for use in flavors and fragrances.
• The traditional method of extracting sassafras oil is extremely damaging to the environment.
• Historically unstable prices, which prevents perfumers from using this product at high dosages in functional flavors and fragrances.

Crown Chemicals Pvt. Ltd. (a 50:50 joint venture between the Anthea Group and French multinational DRT) has, after years of in-house research come up with a synthetic variant of Piperonal manufactured from phenol. The product is white in color and is offered in a fine-crystalline/powdery form. The purity is almost 100%, which is responsible for the clean cherry/almond/vanilla note, free of by-odors.

The Company is hopeful that the increasing use of its synthetic product will put an end to the widespread destruction of sassafras forests around the world.