Frutarom Brand Guidelines: A 1933 Haifa Bay Extract Plant, Absorbed Into IFF in 2018

Two industrialists from the Netherlands and a plant in the dunes.

Frutarom began as an extract plant on the shore of Haifa Bay. English Wikipedia says it was established in 1933 by Yehuda Araten and Maurice Gerzon, two industrialists from the Netherlands, who built their first plant in an almost desert-like stretch between Haifa and Acre, making it one of the earliest industrial enterprises in the country. Hebrew Wikipedia fills in the story: Araten, a chemical engineer trained in the Netherlands, visited in 1928 to look at sites, then raised money from investors in England and the Netherlands, among them the Dutch banker Jacobus Kann, H. B. de Leeuw and the chemist Chaim Weizmann.

Building began in 1933, and the cornerstone was laid early in 1934, Hebrew Wikipedia says. The main production hall was designed by the architect Adolf Rading, with a corrugated roof meant to suit the climate of the bay, and the plant was first known by a Hebrew name, Tamtzitz. Araten and Gerzon ran it together as joint general managers.

The early business was extracts from plants and fruit, distillation and separation, and raw materials for the food and toiletry trades. Most of the output was meant for export to Europe, according to Hebrew Wikipedia, because the local market was thought too small; by 1937 about 15 per cent of production was sold locally. When exports stopped in 1939, Hebrew Wikipedia says, the plant turned to the local market, with a vitamin C concentrate made from citrus fruit, a carob syrup used in place of imported sugar and an orange-juice concentrate.

From subsidiary to listed acquirer.

After the war Frutarom changed hands more than once. In 1952 it became a subsidiary of the newly founded Electrochemical Industries (Frutarom) Ltd, English Wikipedia says, and in the second half of the 1950s new investors took control and Araten left, according to Hebrew Wikipedia. By 1973 ICC Industries, the chemicals group owned by John J. Farber, had become the controlling party of the electrochemical group and of Frutarom; Hebrew Wikipedia adds that Farber bought out the remaining Israeli investors in 1977.

The company looked abroad from 1990, when it bought a small American company. In 1996 it was separated from the electrochemical group and listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, taking the name Frutarom Industries Ltd that year, and in February 2005 it added global depositary receipts on the main market of the London Stock Exchange, English Wikipedia says. It described its business in two divisions, flavours and fine ingredients.

Growth came mostly by acquisition. In 2004 it bought IFF’s operations in Switzerland, Germany and France, a deal Hebrew Wikipedia describes as the start of its international expansion. The same source counts 20 acquisitions between 2002 and 2012 and 32 more from 2012 to February 2018, 13 of them in 2015; the largest was the Austrian company Wiberg. In 2014, Hebrew Wikipedia adds, Frutarom joined the TA-25, the index of the largest companies on the Tel Aviv exchange. Others included Protein Technologies Ingredients in Russia in 2013, the Montreal flavour maker Investissements BSA in 2015, the Irish company Redbrook in 2016 and the Israeli biotechnology company Enzymotec in 2017. In January 2016 Global Cosmetics News reported that Frutarom had bought half of Algalo, an algae business based on a kibbutz, for use in cosmetics and food ingredients.

One episode reached the wider public. In February 2009 New York City officials traced a recurring maple-syrup smell that had drifted over the city since 2005 to a Frutarom plant in Hudson County, New Jersey, which processed fenugreek seeds, English Wikipedia records.

Design and documentation.

Flavour and fragrance houses sell to other companies, so their public identity is built for buyers, investors and future staff more than for shoppers. Their websites tend to divide the business into a few lines: flavours for food and drink, fragrances for fine perfumery and consumer goods, and ingredients sold in their own right. Mane groups its pages under flavours, fragrances and ingredients, for example, and Robertet adds natural raw materials and natural actives.

Creation is shown through people and places. Houses publish pages on their perfumers and flavourists, their training schools and their creation centres: Mane describes a perfumery school where apprentices train for at least two years, and Robertet lists a New York creation centre opened in 2006.

Natural materials are the other recurring story. Houses around Grasse lean on the region’s flower and plant heritage and on extraction methods: Robertet frames its sourcing as “Seed to Scent,” from the field to the finished creation, while Mane presents named extraction technologies and, in 2026, an experimental garden. Sourcing pages often pair those stories with certifications and supplier assessments, stated in the companies’ own words.

Ownership is part of the identity too. Some houses stress family control and independence; listed ones publish regulated announcements on shareholders and acquisitions. Robertet, listed in Paris since 1984, set out a change of shareholders in November 2024, and Mane’s change of chief executive in February 2025 kept the group in family hands, WWD reported. This guide sets out what can be checked about each house: who founded it, who owns it and what it says about where its materials come from.

A name folded into IFF.

Frutarom’s life as an independent company ended in 2018. On 8 May 2018 Global Cosmetics News reported that IFF, International Flavors & Fragrances, had signed a definitive agreement to buy Frutarom, with the backing of John Farber, Frutarom’s chairman and the head of ICC Industries, its largest shareholder. IFF announced on 4 October 2018 that it had completed the acquisition, in a release carried by Business Wire. The combined company kept its headquarters in New York and a presence in Israel, IFF said, and from that day Frutarom’s ordinary shares were no longer listed in Tel Aviv or London.

Today Frutarom is a chapter in IFF’s history rather than a trading company in its own right, and its old shares no longer trade. Its story is one of steady change of owner: a Dutch-financed extract plant of 1933, a subsidiary of a chemicals group from 1952, a listed acquirer from 1996, and a business folded into a larger American flavour house after 2018.

For a design guide, Frutarom shows how a company built through dozens of acquisitions can itself become one. Compare IFF, its owner since 2018, and Treatt, a British extracts maker that also changed hands in a takeover. For this guide we use a bay teal, a sand and a citrus peel with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Frutarom’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.