Paper presented at the IFEAT Int. Conference in Cape Town

HACCP certification of only two of the eight companies that are known to produce buchu oilregularly.The Future of the Industry – challenges and opportunitiesFrom a buchu oil production point of view, especially the observed and further expected growth inavailable plant material volumes – as well as the greatly improved degree of sophistication in oilproduction, analysis, processing – the future looks promising.There are, nevertheless, serious challenges facing the industry as a whole. The largest concern is theexplosive rate at which plant material / oil production is set to increase in the near future, juxtaposedagainst a sluggishly growing traditional oil market. To ensure ongoing stability and growth in thebuchu oil industry, marketing, pricing and raw materials must be managed with utmost care andresponsibility.As buchu oil has historically been treated as an expensive niche flavour and fragrance raw material, itsapplication in formulations has been very limited. With the increase in volumes of buchu plantmaterial, there is no doubt that demand / supply forces will cause the price for buchu oil to decreaseover the next few years. How quickly the flavour and fragrance market for buchu oil can respond interms of increased usage is unknown at this stage.The potential uses for buchu oil are legion, as again demonstrated by G. Mosciano’s panel evaluationof buchu oil in the most recent issue of Perfumer and Flavourist [11] . Should the supply of buchu oilsurpass the demand by quite a large margin, the oil price will be placed under such pressure that acrash in the buchu oil price may occur. In the long run such a situation will be in nobody’s bestinterest. Responding to sudden decreases in the plant material price, and fearing a crash in the plantmaterial price, buchu farmers have already threatened to hold back their plant material in order torealize higher prices. Although this is no solution to the problem for any of the affected parties, andcertainly adds to previous perceived instability in the buchu oil market, it will most probably be ashort-term effect re-alignment. As the raw material supply stabilizes it is up to the end-users of buchuoil, together with inputs from suppliers (who in turn require support from farmers) to find a healthysupply / demand price scenario for buchu oil on the long run. With the promise of still larger volumesof oil coming to the market in the near future, with a potential for huge further growth, and theplethora of applications buchu oil may be used for, the eventual outcome for buchu oil may be anextremely positive one indeed.Ever tightening restrictions viz. the pulegone contents in finished consumer products affects the use ofbuchu oils, all of which contain pulegone in varying (2 - 50%) amounts. The use of natural buchusulphur fractions, in which the ratio of the flavour-active sulphur compounds (cis/trans-8-mercapto-pmenthan-3-oneand cis/trans-8-acetylthio-p-menthan-3-one) to pulegone is greatly increased, is aneffective and proven measure to decrease the amount of pulegone in finished products that require orwill benefit from buchu oil’s unique flavour / fragrance contribution.Matthias Esterhuysen is Technical Director of Puris Natural Aroma Chemicals(Pty) Ltd, a company that specializes in the production of buchu oil and theisolation of its unique aroma constituents. He obtained his Ph.D. in chemistry atthe University of Stellenbosch in 2002 and then spent a year as a post-doctoralfellow at the Philipps University in Marburg, Germany. Matthias joined Puris in2003 and has focused on the commercial implementation of buchu oil chemistry.108