Where rose fields once shaped the landscape, fragrances and flavours are now created for customers all over the world. Leipzig-Miltitz is far more than a production site: it is where an entire industry has its roots. In 1879, Schimmel & Co. set up the industry’s first industrial research laboratory and, together with the future Nobel laureate Otto Wallach, developed testing standards by which essential oils were traded worldwide. In the GDR years, the site was the heart of the cosmetics and flavour industry. Since 1993, Bell has carried this tradition forward through technology, innovation and research, in close partnership with Leipzig University and backed by the knowledge held in the Schimmel Library’s 30,000 or so volumes. Discover almost 200 years of fragrance and flavour across three eras.

It all began with trade. In 1829, a druggist and a pharmacist opened a business in Leipzig selling medicinal drugs. Hermann Traugott Fritzsche paved the way into industry. From 1854 onwards, he turned the company into a producer of essential oils, relying on science rather than secret recipes. With the industry’s first industrial research laboratory and in close collaboration with the future Nobel laureate Otto Wallach, Schimmel & Co. developed processes and testing standards that became the benchmark worldwide. In 1901, the company moved into its new works amid the rose fields of Miltitz. Expropriation in 1948 brought the Fritzsche family’s era to an end, but the site’s capacity for innovation endured.

Almost every shampoo, cream and aftershave in the GDR carried a fragrance from Leipzig. The Kombinat Miltitz brought together nearly all of the country’s cosmetics manufacturers. In the 1980s, it supplied large parts of the soap, perfume and detergent industries, as well as much of the flavour industry, with aroma chemicals and flavourings. The close ties to science remained: the works and Leipzig University researched new processes together. Where shortages of foreign currency and raw materials set limits, the chemists in Miltitz developed solutions of their own. When the end of the Soviet Union swept away its markets, the site still had the expertise it had built up over decades.

On the other side of the Atlantic, a company with a history all its own had been making a name for itself. Founded in Chicago in 1912 by flavour chemist William M. Bell, the William M. Bell Company supplied ice cream parlours, grocery stores and soda fountains with its flavours. In 1968, Edward N. Heinz acquired what was then a small business with just two employees. Through targeted acquisitions, he built it into a broad-based manufacturer of flavours and fragrances, trading as Bell Flavors & Fragrances since 1979.

In June 1993, a new chapter began at this historic site with 65 employees. Targeted investment transformed the former Schimmel works into an internationally active manufacturer of fragrances and flavours. The plant was modernised, and research and development expanded on the existing expertise. The Schimmel Library, with around 30,000 volumes, was restored and made accessible once again.

Today, around 340 people work at one of Europe’s large and modern production sites. The logistics centre completed in 2017 is one of Bell’s largest single investments in Germany. The site remains closely tied to Leipzig, whether through joint research with the university, which has long since extended to artificial intelligence, or through the “Leipzig Duft”, a fragrance created for its home city.

From Leipzig, Bell is connected through subsidiaries from the United Kingdom and Dubai to India and Vietnam, carrying the tradition of Schimmel & Co. into the future.