CPL Aromas Brand Guidelines: The Pickthall Brothers’ 1971 Fragrance-Only House

Two brothers and a fragrance-only idea.

CPL Aromas was founded in 1971 by two brothers, Michael and Terry Pickthall. The company gives that origin on its own website, and the Bishop’s Stortford Independent repeated it in September 2025. The register of companies at Companies House shows the main trading company incorporated on 16 November 1971 under the name Contemporary Perfumers Limited; it became C.P.L. Group Limited in April 1989 and took its present name, CPL Aromas Limited, in June 1994. The letters in the name are a remnant of that first title.

The house makes fragrance and nothing else. It calls itself an independent, “fragrance-only” house, and it describes itself as the largest fragrance-only fragrance house in the world, a claim it makes on its own website and that the charity CAFOD repeated in 2025. Its products are fragrance concentrates, the blends that brand owners put into perfumes, personal care products and household goods, as the Bishop’s Stortford Independent and the trade title BeautyMatter have both described them.

Growth came in stages. English Wikipedia’s timeline lists a European manufacturing site at Brixworth, in Northamptonshire, from 1990, together with the start of CPL Aromas Far East; the purchase of H.E. Daniel Ltd and new operations in Germany and the United States in 1991; a flotation on the London Stock Exchange in 1994; and, in 1995, the purchase of Du Crocq Aromatics in the Netherlands and Daniel Blayn in France. Companies House today lists the main company as a private limited company with its registered office at Brixworth, and a holding company, CPL Aromas (Holdings) Limited, incorporated in 1999 and given that name in 2007.

The family remains in charge. The company’s leadership page names Terry Pickthall as president and co-founder, Chris Pickthall as chief executive and Nick Pickthall as chief operating officer; on its history page Chris and Nick describe Terry and Michael as their father and uncle. CAFOD called it “a family business for the Pickthall family” in 2025.

Concentrates, technologies and factories abroad.

CPL Aromas sells into four application areas, its website says: fine fragrance, personal care, home fragrance and home care. Around them it presents a set of branded technologies. English Wikipedia dates the launch of AromaCore to 2015; the company’s current list includes AromaCoreBio, AromaFusion, AromaHydro, which it presents as a water-based fragrance technology, AromaSpace and AromaWellness, along with products it calls EcoBoost and SuperBoost. Its website also lists themed events under names such as Blumenhaus, Deleitopia and Wonderstate.

The company has built factories abroad. Cosmetics Business reported in May 2009 that CPL Aromas Inc, of Somerset, New Jersey, had completed the purchase of the fragrance business of Hagelin and Company and would move that production to a new purpose-built facility in New Jersey. Gulf News reported in May 2015 that the company had opened its first Middle East factory, in the Jebel Ali Free Zone in Dubai, to make fragrance concentrates for the Gulf states, India and North Africa; before that, its products for the United Arab Emirates had been made at its factory in Britain. The paper said the company also had factories in Hong Kong and South America and creative centres in Dubai, the United States, Germany and France.

Expansion continued in Asia and Spain. BW Confidential reported in March 2022 that CPL Aromas would open a new headquarters for its Indian business in the Lower Parel district of Mumbai and a new factory in Asia, which the company said would be its sixth factory and its largest; the year before it had opened an office in Quezon City in the Philippines and a creative centre in Guangzhou, China. In July 2023 BeautyMatter reported that it had acquired Global Fragrances Labs, a Barcelona fragrance maker launched in 2010, and folded it into CPL Aromas Spain at El Prat de Llobregat.

The company now lists more than 900 employees in 22 locations, with operations from the United Kingdom, the United States and France to Colombia, India, China, Vietnam and New Zealand, serving customers in over 100 countries. It sums up its aim in a line it calls its essence: “Infusing happiness through scents.”

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 family house in Hertfordshire.

CPL Aromas is based in Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire, according to the town’s newspaper, the Bishop’s Stortford Independent, which in September 2025 described it as a global fragrance house with 22 sites worldwide and more than 850 employees. Its registered office is at Brixworth in Northamptonshire, according to Companies House, the site English Wikipedia names as its European manufacturing facility.

Independence is part of how it presents itself. Among the values on its website are “family pride” and “independence,” the latter explained as “We alone decide our future.” The company sets out a formula — “We bring success to our customers through innovative fragrances, outstanding service and a human touch”, and a page devoted to its perfumers.

Charity is a visible part of its story. CAFOD, the overseas aid agency of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, marked 25 years of partnership with CPL Aromas in September 2025, dating the first donation to September 2000 and saying CPL staff had run the London Marathon for the charity since 2007. English Wikipedia also lists the company as a co-founder of the College of Fragrance for the Visually Impaired and a participant in founding a perfumery college run by India’s National Association for the Blind. On sustainability, the company says it aims for carbon-neutral operations across its direct emissions and purchased energy by 2030.

For a design guide, CPL Aromas shows how a family name, a single category and a plain set of values can carry a business across more than 20 countries. Compare Treatt, another British supplier to the flavour and fragrance trade, and Expressions Parfumées, a fragrance creation house in Grasse. For this guide we use deep blue, mist and a dusty rose with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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