Good afternoon, everyone. We're excited to welcome International Flavors & Fragrances back to CAGNY, especially Chief Financial Officer Michael DeVeau, who is representing his team. That includes CEO Erik Fyrwald, celebrating his daughter's wedding, and several business unit heads who are here with us today. We're very lucky to have them. Please join me in thanking IFF for sponsoring dinner tonight, which looks absolutely spectacular. For decades, IFF's products and systems have added critical value to many of the presenters here today in many consumer companies all around the world. In one year on the job, Michael and his team have taken equally critical steps to rejuvenate the shareholder value machine . They prepared the balance sheet and executed a disciplined capital allocation strategy, including portfolio optimization through divestitures.
More importantly, they're driving productivity by implementing a new operating model and key process transformation, proven principles that are already working for IFF. Michael, welcome. Thank you, and take it away.
Great. Thank you, John, and thank you for CAGNY for having us again. Appreciate the warm introduction. Before we begin, I do want to extend the invitation to dinner tonight. It's... I think it's been three years or four years since we actually hosted a dinner here. It's an awesome time for us because you hear us speak about certain things, but we have to bring to life later on. So if you can make it, it'd be fantastic to everybody do it. Maybe just very, very quickly, in the cautionary statement, real quick, the non-GAAP reconciliation. A reconciliation of our non-GAAP measures to our GAAP measures can be found on our website. So if you have any interests or questions, please look there. Really excited to tell the IFF journey story of where we are today versus where we were a couple of years ago.
I did bring some friends with me today, so maybe just quick formal introductions. Yuvraj Arora leads our Taste division, Leticia Goncalves leads our Health & Biosciences division, and Ana Paula Mendonca leads our Scent division, and Michael DeVeau on the end, leads Investor Relations for us. So I'm going to go pretty quickly, and then I'm going to turn over to them because they're the main part of it of the story. But I do want to start for people that are newer to the IFF story or want to get a refresher to it. Really want to leave a couple of key points. One, we are a strong and highly diversified business, and so when you think about our industry, it is attractive, there's high barriers to entry, steady growth, good margins overall. The value proposition of our story is really strong.
You know, we represent 1%-5% of the cost of a product, but we're 50% of the reason why consumers purchase a product. They like the taste and smell. That's the reason why they're, they're buying. We're in the business what I consider is essentials, right? So in an environment where there's a lot of volatility, diversification matters. So if you look at the bottom of the chart, you can see 4 divisions, Food, Beverages, Taste, Scent, Health & Biosciences . We're going to focus on the 3 today, but it's pretty balanced across the board. By market, you can see it's about 50% developed markets, 50% emerging markets, different growth dynamics that the team's going to touch on, but an important factor when you think about the overall diversification.
And then all of you here have been here all week, so there's a lot of multinational, CPG companies. A lot of them are big customers today. That's about a third of our business, but we have two-thirds of our business that are mid-sized, local, regional, smaller players, players, and private label. Really good when you think about the growth dynamic, right? And so from a diversification aspect, very, very strong. Strategic progress. We've been on a little bit of a journey. We went through an acquisition phase, a little bit of a divestiture phase, and but I'd really like... Let's anchor back the last two years, two or three years, and we've had a lot of great strategic progress overall.
There's a lot on the slide, so I'm not going to cover, but there's three to me that stand out, and I think actually, John did a very good job at summarizing it. First, it's really about what we did to strengthen the business, and I'm going to go through this in a minute, but it's how do we think about the reinvestment aspects in OpEx and CapEx to get us to be a long-term, profitable, growth, sustainable platform? We've also changed a little bit of the operating model, so these individuals actually have full accountability, everything from sales to even down to cash flow. So they have end-to-end accountability, which is super important when we think about the execution dynamic. We've also had a lot of work on portfolio optimization.
We've divested about 11 companies and 11 businesses in the last couple of years, and with the use of those proceeds, improved our capital structure to what I'd say is where it is today, and hopefully, it's trending lower over time. But more exciting, as I joined a year ago in this role, specifically, a renewed focus on returns, cash flow generation, super important for me because it feels like it's bringing me back to days where it's about discipline choice. The more choices we make, the better return philosophy that we have, the better the business will become longer term over time. Let me quickly unpack, and I realize there's a lot on each one of these slides, so I broke it up in OpEx, CapEx over the last couple of years.
So going back from 2024 to 2026, you'll see we're spending about $150 million in operational expenses, a reinvestment in the business, a big focus. We haven't done that in many, many years, and that's really around innovation, R&D, and commercial capabilities. Again, you're going to hear that and more. This is all supported by a culture of productivity, and so a lot of this is being driven by a lot of self-efficiencies that we're driving within costs to ESG, right? To making sure we're funding this, not only to support the reinvestment aspect, but keep to the bottom line element. At the same time, over the same period, we increased our CapEx spend, and so you can see 2024 is 4%, 2025 is 5.5%, 2026, it should be around 6%. This is really around capacity expansion.
Leticia is going to explain some of that when she goes through her side from the Health & Biosciences of it, but also network optimization and digital transformation to bring IFF to the next stage as we think about profitable growth. We did all of that over that same period of time and through 2026, we hit the top of our guided range by delivering 4% top line, 10% EBITDA growth. That's an algorithmic view of our business. We should be in these ranges as we think about our go-forward basis, when we think about these three core businesses. And so please, Scent, H&B not only drive the bottom line performance, but also driving the top line piece to it. Food Ingredients was another big piece of the margin story.
So since 2023, they've actually expanded margins about 500 basis points, just shy of 14% when we finished 2025 overall. It's about volume growth, volume leverage. Growth, super important business. As we grow our business through those reinvestments, the incremental margins are between 30% and 35% EBITDA margins, so there's nice leverage in them. At the same time, supporting that is really around the strong productivity effort we're trying to drive. Over that same period of time, we've also looked at the portfolio and we've optimized it up for higher value, higher return, higher growth, higher margin businesses. And so I just, as a point of reference, divested about 11 businesses, really sharpen the strategic focus, simplify the portfolio overall.
But if you look back at the businesses we divested, the average gross margin of the business is about 29%, versus our year-end 2025 average, about 36%. And so we're really, again, thinking about scaling our portfolio to higher gross margin businesses over time. Using the proceeds, which is about $6 billion of proceeds related to these 11 divestitures, allowed us to adjust our capital structure. And so when you think about the capital structure, today, we're in a much stronger, more flexible balance sheet than we were just 3 years ago. And so you can see here, we were at 4.5 times in 2023. And then through the divestitures and the improvement in operational performance, we've shown about 130 basis points improvement in our net cash and credit-adjusted EBITDA to about 2.6 times.
Again, hopefully trending lower over time. At the same time, we authorized the share buyback program. First time in six years, seven years, we actually had an authorization to do a share buyback of a $500 million authorization. It is a dilution call , so at minimum, we're looking to offset dilution, but the intrinsic value of the business is, or the share price could not be intrinsic value. We will purchase more because we think there's upside in there. Go forward strategy, and then I'll turn it over to the businesses. If anything, I'll leave you with winning with a focus. It's about winning the right markets with the right customers. It's about being done through innovation. The more we talk about innovation, the more we bring innovation to customers, the more we'll win as a business.
Targeting high return opportunities to take older bets with better return profiles will drive, obviously, top line growth, but also a margin premium as we continue to grow. And then we're going to maximize the portfolio towards the high-value businesses. And so if the businesses are good and they're strong margins, we're going to make sure we invest behind them and get additional growth. And if there's areas that they're fixed, that they're underperforming, we're going to try to fix it, and if we can't fix it, we'll utilize it. So this is going to be all supported by what we say is people, process, and digital transformation. So maybe I'll call up Yuvraj to speak to taste.
Thank you, Mike. Good afternoon, everybody. It's a pleasure to be here with all of you today. My name is Yuvraj. I have the privilege of leading our taste division at IFF. My background is actually in CPG, and I've spent the bulk of my career with companies, with roles in marketing and general management around the world. When I joined IFF a little less than three years back, I actually joined as the president of our Nourish division, which was a combination of our taste and Food Ingredients , businesses. In 2024, I led the separation into two separate internally reported segments, as is today, taste and Food Ingredients . And since then, I've taken over the leadership of the taste business. A business that I've increasingly fallen in love with, and I say this for three reasons.
First is, flavors are embedded in consumers' daily lives through all the products, food and beverages that they consume throughout the day, around the world. Secondly, flavors are critical, the primary driver of consumer preference and liking, disproportionate to the physical presence they actually have in the product, which is a great value proposition for us. And thirdly, we have a long-term structural tailwind as our customers innovate and renovate to meet evolving consumer needs, which is great, for our business. So we'll take a look at a snapshot of our business. We operate a segment that is a great combination of scale and growth. The flavors market is estimated at $16-$17 billion, growing 3%-4%, which is again, a great market to play in.
IFF delivered $2.5 billion in net sales last year in 2025, with a 19% EBITDA margin. I must say here that we actually delivered market-leading growth of 4% top line organic and 10% EBITDA sales growth. We have a global presence with our R&D application and manufacturing sites around the world, catering to a large number of customers across diverse categories. Mike already alluded to it. We have an amazingly diversified business across any vector, beverage categories, geographies, when you take developed or developing markets, or customer size, a lot of multinational, small and emerging brands, to actually small players in emerging markets. It's a balance that we are proud of, and we strive hard to maintain and strengthen as we move forward. So where does IFF Taste stand out?
First of all, we have leading positions, one or strong number two positions in critical markets like India, Indonesia, and the U.S. Second, we believe we have a leadership position in modulation, which is a critical technological platform, and I'll talk a little bit more about it in a minute.... We have been using AI for a while now, and strengthening our efforts there, not only in flavor development, where it has a great application, but in things like concept development, where we can help reduce our customers' innovation development timelines, and sometimes by eliminating market research. We have a distinct go-to-market model called Tastepoint , especially in North America, to meet the needs of smaller tier and emerging customers and brands. So these are some things that we feel are competitive advantage for us. Market and consumer trends.
Actually, I'm not going to spend too much time on this, because over the past three days, every company has spoken about exactly the same trends. In fact, all those companies happen to be our customers, and we thank them for their business and partnership. I'll, I'll just take a, a couple of examples here, particularly in the health and wellness area. One is GLP-1, and we've seen a lot of talk about it. We believe that GLP-1 is and will be the most powerful force impacting food and beverage consumption, not only in the U.S. but around the world. We have invested a lot in this area in terms of consumer and sensorial studies and work, and we have teams across our business units, Health & Biosciences , Food Ingredients , and taste.
We're co-creating concepts and co-creating products with our customers to meet needs of these kind of consumers. The second example, there is a revolution happening in the beverage category. This one particularly skewed to North America, but you can see signs of it elsewhere as well. We've all seen alcoholic beverages on our decline, and beverage consumption is shifting towards different occasions and needs. On an average, an American can have 57 beverage moments in a week. It's a giant market, and these occasions are shifting to more functional benefits like hydration, energy, protein, and increasingly health. So we are pivoting in that direction as well. I'm going to take this opportunity to invite you all to Food & Beverage booth later at dinner today, where you can interact with the team and go deeper into these two specific areas.
Now, how we address these needs and evolving consumer needs, whether it's from consumer, from a consumer standpoint or from a regulatory standpoint, is through our innovation programs. We have two kinds of innovation platforms, the stakes that you see on the right side. Three remaster programs around critical flavor tonalities: citrus, vanilla, and meat. Citrus, as you can imagine, a very, very important tonality in beverages. Vanilla is a foundational flavor profile, particularly relevant to dairy. And then meat, very important for soups, bouillon, noodles in Asia and Africa, which is a large segment over there. So we have, specific programs aimed to develop solutions and, further taste profiles in these areas. And then we have our Re-Imagine program. Re-Imagine Delivery, which helps us meet the needs of our customers in different applications.
Re-Imagine Origins, which houses our program around clean label, as well as critical commodity replacers and extenders like before. But the practice program that we have is Re-Imagine Wellness, and that's around modulation. So what is modulation? Modulation is basically we have a set of tools, technology and solutions that help maintain and sometimes even strengthen the taste profile, even as you reduce things like sodium, salt, or fat in a food or beverage, or as you add things like protein, fiber, and whole grain. The good news for our business is that the good stuff tastes bad, and the bad stuff tastes bad stuff tastes good. This is a great statement for our business, and modulation as a technology is now a valuable part of the business and has grown double digits for the last five years and in 2025.
So this is an area where we continue to invest in different technology, to help our customers. Which brings me to my last chart around how will we continue driving value creation for taste at IFF? I'm a big believer in disproportionate focus behind areas that offer high growth potential or areas where we might be underdeveloped or underleveraged. So across the vectors that you see on the chart, we have made those choices, to grow us forward. In terms of geography, we have identified six geographic clusters, U.S. and combination of high-growth markets, which will drive more than two-thirds of our growth going forward, all index growth from these markets. I'll just take an example of Africa. While everybody talks about China and India, and they are very, very important, Africa is the next frontier.
One-fourth of the world's population is going to reside in Africa. It's the single largest, youngest population, because the average age of an African is 19 in that continent. Per capita consumption is on the rise, urbanization, middle class. There's an explosion happening in processed foods and food and beverage categories over there. We are underdeveloped in this continent, and we are making investments and efforts to increase to our fair share and beyond. In terms of categories, again, we've got a widespread section of categories, but we believe there are a few specific ones that will drive disproportionate growth. Lifestyle or functional beverages is perhaps the most important of them. Dairy, in particular, yogurt and dairy drinks with protein are going to be a very, very important area.
And then, meat tonalities in soups, bouillon, and noodles for the emerging market population growth. In terms of focus on innovation, I already talked about modulation. That is our prime primary focus area in terms of innovation. And then last, in terms of customer base, we've again identified three geography channel clusters that will drive disproportionate growth. The first is distribution in Asia, with a focus on getting to tier two, penetrating tier two and tier three towns in markets like India, Indonesia and China. These are the towns that are actually driving the growth for these markets. I often joke that Shanghai is no longer an emerging market. Shanghai acts like a developed market. It's a tier two and tier three towns that are the most important there. Second, food service in North America, increasing on the out-of-home consumption.
You've heard that multiple companies talk about that. And third, private label, particularly in Europe and increasingly in North America. We believe that the choices that we have made, along with the capabilities that we've already demonstrated and we are investing behind, will help us continue driving market-leading growth and help us meet our financial goals of mid-term, mid, mid-single digit top-line growth and high single digits EBITDA growth. So in summary, we operate in a great, healthy, attractive, sizable, scalable segment. We have demonstrated market-leading growth, and our commercial pipeline is strong, and we are investing in the right strategic areas that will help continue driving growth and creating value for IFF. Thank you. I'm going to hand over to Leticia, the President of our Health & Biosciences division.
Thank you, Yubi. So it's a pleasure to be here with you today. As I was introduced, I lead our Health & Biosciences business for IFF. Joined the company almost a year ago. I'll be celebrating my first year in a couple weeks. Really, really excited about the opportunities that we have in front of us to really deliver an amazing business that drives science and innovation to market. Our business is really a crucial engine behind how IFF delivers value to bio innovations every day. We harness science to shape life and well-being through bio innovation across five unique industry segments: food biosciences, human health, animal nutrition health, green processes, and home and personal care. What I love about this business, all those five segments have growth opportunities, and they are very diversified. Not only that, our products touch billions of consumers' experiences every day.
One out of three probiotic supplements contain IFF probiotics. One out of three yogurts globally contain IFF cultures. 80% of all laundry wash products contain IFF enzymes, just to name a few. Our product science core impact is translating to a robust and profitable business platform that is, that is here not only to drive scale, but also scope. Let's talk a little bit about it. We serve a $12 billion-$20 billion market, and it's growing 2.5% per year. Even though 2.5 seems small, in fact, it's growing. It's growing even bigger. It's increasing the target addressable market that I'm going to talk in a few minutes. We operate at scale and scope. We just finished a very strong 2025, with $2.3 billion in sales and 15% EBITDA.
We have over 7,000 customers, 4,000 employees, and 38 sites that cross over R&D applications and manufacturing. We have a very balanced exposure with a good mix of product portfolio and market segments and global footprint. Most of our business is in Europe and North America, but good news, we are growing twice as fast in emerging markets, especially Asia and Latin America. What makes us special? What really differentiates IFF Health & Biosciences? What makes us win in the market? Simple thing. First, is a world-class bioscience capability, from discovery to a scale innovation engine. We are not just inventing new things, we are innovating at scale with partners in the market. We are category leaders, being number 1 or number 2 in probiotics, cultures, and enzymes.
We compete with a full system approach from our broad portfolio, our deep partnerships, our technical expertise, and our leading talent. They really bridge science to co-innovating with customers and partners to differentiate solutions in the market. I've been with many customers in my first year, and it's amazing where there's one customer saying, "We love your people, we love your science, and we love co-innovating with you." That's pretty powerful. These are all relevant advantages when consumers are changing fast. I'm going to go quickly here because you already heard this through the last few days, and Yubi already touched some of this, too. But there are three specific trends that are helping shape our growth strategy for Health & Biosciences . One, health and well-being amplified.
Consumers are prioritizing healthy living, from eating less sugar, eating more protein, taking more probiotics for gut health, and that all being amplified through GLP-1 users as well. Bio revolution across the value chain, from regenerative agriculture on the farm to bringing bio ingredients and bio materials to new consumer products. And the third one is, all of that is great, but given the economic uncertainty, consumers and customers are looking for affordability, supply chain resilience, and performance all together. So there is no one that is more important than the other. All three matter, and we need to bring all of them without compromise. How do we convert those plans into focused innovation with impact? Let's get into our innovation portfolio. Our innovation platform drives measurable consumer value and customer differentiation.
We invest $220 million per year in R&D. That's roughly 9% of our annual turnover, and 34% of our revenue comes from new product launches in the last five years. That's pretty powerful. So for example, we have a great innovation platform around enzymes for cold and quick wash with superior fabric cleaning care. Oh, my gosh, if you can get all of that, that's amazing. Clean and better, right? It can be quick wash, cold wash, and superior cleaning care in our fabrics. The other one is how we're expanding enzymes from chicken and pig into cow. And imagine how many cows are in the world to feed, so that's a great opportunity. Better solutions for metabolic, immunity, and digestive health, and bringing a comprehensive approach to really address all those health needs. Higher yield in our biofuel production.
You know, with the huge trend for biofuels, we are helping the bio to produce many production. Those are some examples, but something that we get excited every day at IFF, that's the most exciting platform we have in innovation, DEB. Designed Enzymatic Biomaterials is a first-in-the-world, high-performing, biodegradable material coming from polysaccharides. That allow us to expand the tent on over $60 billion bio-based market opportunity. Every 5% market share translates into $3 billion revenue for DEB. Good news, we are already commercial with a couple products in home and personal care, but that's just the beginning. We are now expanding to many new applications into multiple adjacent markets that are today polymers. And we're not doing this alone.
As we're building the science and applications, we are already doing this with partners like Kemira and BASF to make sure that we can get faster to the market. I hope all of you will be able to join our dinner tonight, because you'll be able to see some of our innovation, including DEB, which is one of our safer there. Bringing it all together, we are creating long-term value. We are also creating short-term value. In order to maximize growth and profitability in the next few years, here are four areas of priorities. First, earn the partner of choice with our customers. We get the big winners in the market, not only the existing ones, the new ones that are going out. We're also revitalizing our North America health business by building our market capabilities into new e-commerce customers, as well as new innovation.
We are working to innovate faster and better by seeking bigger bets with existing strategic partners and also using AI to accelerate our ability to innovate from discovery to utilization. Digital biology is one of the areas that we're doing AI as an example. We are expanding capacity for both enzymes and cultures to not only capture, you know, the market demand today, but it's accelerating to the future. We are also driving an end-to-end chain optimization to balance cost and quality and optimize margin in our supply chain. And all of that only possible because we do have our one high-performing growth-minded team is what's driving the biggest difference in our business. I'm really passionate about our people.
In summary, we are committed to grow faster than the market and improve our margin, targeting low single- to mid-single-digit growth in our sales and high single-digit growth in our EBIT in the next few years. I fully believe with our highest of people and good partnership with our customers, we'll be able to achieve that. Thank you. Now with that, Ana?
The next slide. Hi, everyone. I'm Ana Mendonça, as Mike introduced me before, and I have the privilege of leading the Scents division for the past 2 years, but I've been part of IFF for 30 years now. Yes, 30 years. It's a great journey, and we really, I'm very passionate to this business, as I am today, as it was 30 years ago. As we are delivering in our purpose every day in this business with our leading science, our leading perfumers, to help make the life of consumers better every day, to create enjoyable moments. Scents is a core part of IFF's identity. It's a strong driver of growth and profitability. It is a resilient business, and we've been delivering 22 consecutive quarters of growth, even through the major transformations that Mike mentioned, earlier.
As you can see on the image, Scents is present in consumers' lives 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. It's a powerful driver of emotion and civilization. I was at ACI, the American Cleaning Institute Summit, two weeks ago in Orlando as well, meeting with our main customers. The energizing piece of the conversation is that our customers are prioritizing innovation and product superiority to drive volume growth. And Mike mentioned this before, is a small matter , but a powerful one, that fragrance is small share of the formulation cost of the end product, and it has a disproportionate share on place, brand equity, and value creation. I'm going to the business overview. The Scent business achieved $2.5 billion in sales, 2025, with 21% EBITDA margin. We have a robust, broad, and expanding and growing business.
If we look at the breakdown by business, we have a healthy and resilient portfolio. One out of four consumer products contains IFF fragrance. Nearly one out of three perfumes sold in the world were created by IFF. We have the largest fragrance portfolio in regions across synthetic and natural. When you look at the breakdown by geography, despite our strong U.S. root heritage, more than 80% of our revenue is generated outside North America, and we have a strong position in emerging markets, in Latin America, in Greater Asia, and as you can see, our largest revenue is coming from Europe, Middle East, and Africa.
And if you look at the breakdown by customer, at the end of the day, fragrance is a business by customer intimacy, and we have this incredible culture at IFF of customer customer simplicity, and our global footprint from the creative centers, the application centers, and the R&D centers allow us to serve customers at scale, as well as delivering locally relevant preferences for growth. So where do we stand out? As I said, we have consistently growth ahead of the market, grown, sorry, ahead of the market, and we are market leaders in prestige fine fragrance based on our legacy, but I will tell you later, we have identified new growing geographies that have helped us deliver tremendous growth in fine fragrance.
I don't know if you know, but IFF invented the fragrance encapsulation nearly two decades ago, based on our brilliant science, working with our perfumers, identifying an unmet consumer need. And that has really been very instrumental to our leadership position in fabric care. In those last few years, scent boosters is a new format that is driving a lot of value in the fabric category, and we have a very strong position there. IFF is the indisputable leader in naturals. We acquired LMR, stands for Laboratoire Monique Remy in France, back in 2000, and is a full ecosystem of solutions in naturals. We have scientists, we have perfumers, we have agronomists, we have creators, all focused on developing a really strong pipeline of natural ingredients. We hold positions, as I mentioned earlier, in Latin America, leading positions in Latin America and in Asia.
I agree with you, there are, you know, geographies that are also maybe out Asia, but for the Scent business, it's a huge growth market. We count on penetration of new categories for the Asian consumers, and that's going to grow, and we can capture value on that. Those are two of the most attractive growth markets between fine fragrance and our fragrances as well. We have, over the past two years, unlocked a strong and exciting commercial and innovation pipeline, and the focus now is conversion into sales. Our teams are really, really focused on that those goals come. AI for Scent is not really changing dramatically the model, it's basically becoming an enabler for helping efficiencies.
I give you an example. Our perfumers spend time on formulation, for example, for regulatory reasons, such as we call CMR classification, CMR classification, and we have a really good foundational system there that can help our perfumers save time on those, let's say, mechanical activities and focus on growing the business and unlocking value. And of course, gonna help us on our productivity goals, inefficiencies and augmenting creativity, as we're always looking for unexpected combinations of ingredients to bring new solutions, and AI can help us there as well. It's a journey, and we're at the beginning of that journey. And I have to say, as said as well, that behind these achievements, I have an exceptional, talented, passionate team of perfumers. We have some of the leading master perfumers of this industry, with, I think, this being one of our competitive advantages.
Perfumers make a difference in the Scent business. They really bring the science and creativity together to unlock growth. So we talked about market trends. I think for me here, it's a mix of trends that are challenging the Scent industry and trends that are really creating amazing new opportunities. And the industry is changing rapidly, and our customers' needs are changing rapidly as well. We all talked about the shift to clean label, sustainable solutions. That creates tremendous regulatory pressure in the Scent business from a fragrance ingredients analog perspective. So we're working, of course, fiercely on that. On the other hand, new generation, Gen Z, and the new generations coming, they are driving the need for personalization of fragrance, huge ritual. If any of you have kids between 12 and 16, I know, I think you know what I'm talking about. They're going crazy on fragrances.
They're making fragrances, they're creating new rituals, they're buying online. They are really changing dramatically consumer behavior, especially on the fine fragrance category. And then there is a growing role for Scent in health and well-being, and that's an opportunity that we are leveraging. I'll talk about this in a second. So the IFF ambition on Scent is to lead the transformation of the Scent industry, given all the rapidly trends that be happening. I want to spend more time here. Our full R&D transformation started late. We routinely align the R&D priorities with our operations. We super, super simplified how we work upstream and downstream in science, and we increased our agility by leveraging the in-house capabilities that we have, while we have selectively formed external partnerships via open innovation. That's a great new mindset from the transformation.
We invested in three innovation platforms you see here. First of all, the first one is Science of Perfumery . Simply said, we have accelerated the build of a differentiated molecule portfolio between synthetics, molecules, and natural molecules. The key here for IFF on that transformation is biotechnology, and that is where we're investing both on transforming existing ingredients or creating new molecules using and leveraging biotechnology. The second platform is Art of Performance , and that's when we take those ingredients and apply to the formulation of our customers and deliver performance. I have one very practical example, and if you join us tonight, you're going to be able to experience this. The new solution that we brought to the market called EnviroCap. Basically, it's a sustainable eco-compliant encapsulation technology.
And what differentiated us here is that we use biopolymers, working in great collaboration with Leticia and the scientists of H&B , to be able to deliver an encapsulation system that is regulatory compliant and is delivering perceivable superior freshness, which is a major requirement for our customers. And that continues to help us reinforce our fabric care leadership position. And the third platform is what we call Science of Wellness . In fact, IFF pioneered in Science of Wellness , many, many years, investing in this space. There is a lot of new consumer needs, and we're designing there a portfolio of Scent technologies to support emotional, physical, and mental well-being. And if you join us tonight, if you are sleep deprived, for whatever reason, we have a for that. Come and see us, it will be an interesting moment.
So those capabilities are actually the enablers that we need for our personal being, more than our fair share. I'm excited about what we have achieved since we started the R&D transformation and very focused investment on those platforms, having EnviroCap, in the case, let's say the proof point that we are back, with technology in fabric care. As I close, for me, it really comes down to clear priorities, to drive growth and margin improvement in the Scent business. I'll start with fine fragrance. As I said, we have delivered outstanding performance in fine fragrance. Double-digit growth every quarter last year, amazing performance from the team. I'd like to say how important the bets are for the Scent business.
Five years ago, we identified Middle East as a potential growth opportunity for fine fragrance, and then we invested in our customer relationships, understanding the consumer, from the younger generation to the mainstream, and we're able to deliver incredible, fantastic, strong growth in the Middle East based on the Arabic perfumery, you know, coming up. Now, they also export countries as Brazil and the US, and that has been one of the growth engines for fine fragrance. So we don't stop there. We're constantly identifying those opportunities. So new geographies, new markets will be the future growth of fine fragrance. In consumer fragrances, our growth has been driven by fragrance led innovation, and probably you heard that from some of our main customers as well. That's what the focus is on the co-creation model, engagement model that we have with the CPG.
As I said earlier, EnviroCap is the proof point, but we also have opportunities to increase our market share in higher margin personal care categories. We newly gain access to more opportunities in personal care with global and regional, and we have built a strong pipeline. Again, conversion to sales is where we're focusing on. And in fragrance ingredients, I'll be honest with you, we're facing headwinds. The industry is facing headwinds in commodity ingredients. Our strategy has been to shift towards high-value specialties with proprietary molecules and continue to invest in naturals. So if you don't remember anything that I said today, just remember three things. One is, for this business is about growth via fine fragrance wins, personal care wins, naturals and high-value specialties.
It's about faster innovation, and I'm really, as I said, very, very excited about the transformation we have started in R&D, and that is enabled by a simplified, streamlined R&D model. A self-funded productivity. I didn't talk to us about productivity, but that's where we, we need to focus to be able to fuel our growth and deliver these opportunities. We have a strong track record in the Scent business, as I said, 22 consecutive years of growth. I'm proud of that, and I'm confident on the outlook that we're sharing with you to achieve the target of a mid-single-digit sales growth and high-single-digit EBITDA growth over time. I-I'm very confident we made the right choices over the past two years.
We have the right team to have a strong, creative, and commercial organization, very much thanks to our R&D organization, and we started rebuilding the momentum again. So thank you for listening to Scent. Mike, what do we do? Back to you or-
Yeah, I think with the little time we have, we're going to take you to the breakout room, please attend the dinner tonight. It looks spectacular. Please join me in thanking IFF once again for their good presentation this morning.