From field to fragrance: Givaudan's House of Naturals is taking shape in Grasse

Givaudan will spend CHF 55 million, about €60.3 million, to build a natural-ingredients processing plant on a derelict industrial lot in Grasse. The company announced the project on February 17, 2026, with an opening date set for the first quarter of 2028, according to Cosmetics Business.

The site, called Campus 52, will process more than 100 natural perfumery ingredients, including Rose de Mai and jasmine grown in the region. It will absorb the work currently split between Givaudan's Mouans-Sartoux and Vallauris facilities, pulling raw-material processing, an innovation lab and perfumer workspace under one roof on 2.7 hectares of land, per Personal Care Magazine.

The plant is the production anchor of House of Naturals, a program Givaudan built around four functions: agronomy, innovation, operations and perfumery. Maxence Billas leads the program. The structure matters for a company sourcing flowers that are harvested by hand and processed within hours of picking, where supply contracts with individual growers take years to negotiate.

The land has its own supply-chain history. It was an industrial site run by Biolandes, a company that started in the Landes region distilling pine needles before expanding into flower and plant extraction. The plot sat empty after Biolandes closed the operation in the mid-2000s, according to Le Journal des Entreprises. Givaudan plans to rehabilitate seven of the disused buildings, converting them into an aroma-design center and a perfumery museum. Albert Vieille, the Grasse-area essential-oils producer Givaudan acquired in 2019, will occupy most of the former factory floor.

Campus 52 also marks a return. Givaudan's predecessor Roure operated in Grasse for over a century before shutting down its natural-ingredients activity there in the aftermath of the 1991 Givaudan-Roure merger. Givaudan's own account of that timeline places the exit in the late 1980s, a discrepancy the company has not resolved publicly. Either way, the plant closes a gap of roughly three decades during which Givaudan processed Grasse-grown materials elsewhere.

During that gap, dsm-firmenich built the infrastructure Givaudan is now replicating. The rival company's Naturals Center of Excellence in Grasse has held certification since 2015 and processes more than 80 raw materials, totaling 500 tons a year, into over 800 natural ingredients, according to Cosmetics and Toiletries. dsm-firmenich also holds exclusive Rose de Mai grower agreements covering more than eight hectares, locked in through a 2020 partnership with the local cooperative Coop SCA3P. Robertet, the family-controlled Grasse house with close to €850 million in 2025 revenue, is the other established naturals buyer in the region. A newer entrant, Cosmo International Fragrances, is building its own production plant near Robertet's historic site, putting three companies in active competition for the same supply base at the same time.

That supply base is thin and getting thinner. Perfumery know-how in the Grasse region earned UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status in 2018, a designation that recognizes cultivation and raw-material processing skills passed down through local families, per UNESCO's listing. The number of independent flower growers in the area has fallen since then. About 30 of them now belong to an association called Les Fleurs d'Exception du Pays de Grasse, which is pursuing a protected geographic indication for Grasse absolutes to shore up prices and supply. Chanel and Dior hold their own exclusive jasmine and rose agreements with local families, which means four large buyers, Givaudan included, are now drawing from a grower pool that trade groups describe as shrinking.

Givaudan frames Campus 52 as part of its push toward 4 to 6 percent organic growth through 2030, a target CEO Gilles Andrier has repeated in recent earnings calls. Fragrance and Beauty, the division that will run the new plant, posted like-for-like growth of 5.9 percent in the first quarter of 2026, with fine fragrance up 9.6 percent, while the company's Taste and Wellbeing segment lagged behind, according to Boerse Express. The plant construction is set to begin in mid-2026, on a lot where Biolandes once stacked crates of pine needles waiting for distillation.