IFF's CoolTek™ technology has been a global success story and a product that is helping IFF win in the marketplace. Not only has CoolTek been extremely successful in oral care products and chewing gum, these cooling flavors have generated new product lines like the breath films that have become so popular.

"All the major companies are working on products using these cooling flavors,” said Tom De Biase, Director Global Technical Business Development—Sweet Products. “These cooling materials are very unique because unlike a flavor, where it can be hard to realize exactly what a customer wants when they ask for a ripe strawberry, it's very easy to measure the amount of cooling. When you place a candy or film in your mouth, it’s easy to tell if it's cold or not. The fact that we can actually measure the cooling effect has had a fair amount to do with our success.”

Another factor in CoolTek's success is the ability to control the cooling—both the amount and when it is experienced—depending on the end product. For example, with a toothpaste you may want up-front cooling to help obscure the taste of the product base, but with a chewing gum you may want the cooling to be delayed so the consumer experiences it after chewing the gum for a half hour.

This ability to provide measurable results directly affects consumer sales as evidenced by the fact that this new category of “intense” products is growing at close to double digits. De Biase points out that products using CoolTek actually deliver on their promises of making breath ice cold or fresh and often exceed consumer expectations.

IFF began developing proprietary cooling molecules in the mid to late 1990s. Historically, the only way to achieve a cooling sensation was with the use of mint or menthol. But the menthol “burn,” aroma, and flavor was often unpleasant and made it impossible to use these ingredients in non-mint flavor systems like fruit, dairy, indulgent, and savory. CoolTek molecules solve this problem by stimulating cold receptors in the mouth without the use of mint or menthol, providing a clean, refreshing, energizing taste and feel that can invigorate any flavor.

This technology was originally marketed in the oral care and confectionery categories, where it was an immediate success. In fact, IFF couldn't make enough of these products, which is one reason why CoolTek was not marketed in other categories until 2002 when the global flavors marketing team began to promote the technology in the beverage category.

June Montanari, Beverage Marketing Manager—North America, and her team created a customized CoolTek promotion to demonstrate IFF's capabilities in cooling flavor technology to beverage customers. CoolTek is used in several types of product concepts—fortified flavored water, iced tea, kids' juice, and an energy drink—and presented to the customer in a CoolTek cooler.

Because the specific needs of the beverage market vary by country, the beverage teams in each region have customized the flavors and beverage concepts they present to their customers. For example, the Latin America marketing team included orange and lemon powdered drinks and a grapefruit isotonic sport drink in their region’s promotion. South Brunswick Senior Food Technologist Joy Merritt spent time in Europe helping the beverage team there customize the flavors for their market. The resulting promotion features only the Nature Identical version of CoolTek in iced tea, juice, flavored water, and an energy drink.

Another promotion, led by Kathy Moreau, Category Marketing Manager, is planned for this year targeting IFF's sweet goods and oral care customers. Ray Guerry, Vice President, Applications Technology—Fragrance, and his team are also exploring the use of CoolTek in fragrance products.

“What we've found from talking with sales and technical people worldwide is it’s given them a new reason to get involved with projects,” said Brian Grainger, Director Flavor Creation—North America. “If a customer wants to use IFF's cooling technology, it gives us an opportunity to get the whole flavor. This technology has enabled us to be involved in a much wider variety of projects.”

“We believe this is not a niche business that will go away soon,” De Biase said. “The search for new cooling materials is an ongoing project in R&D. We have a staff constantly working on synthesizing and evaluating new materials.”