Lost in the aroma of Old Dhaka's perfumery business
The Mitford Road in Old Dhaka is famous for the perfumery business; it is also the country’s largest year-round hub for fragrances used by toiletry brands, as well as flavours used in bakery items and beverages
As we walked along Mitford Road in Imamganj of Old Dhaka, a blend of different scents hit our nostrils. These aromatic smells were coming from several shops here which sell perfumery chemicals.
The showcases and shelves in these shops were crammed with silver aluminum bottles with identical labels. The shop attendants rarely touch these one litre bottles. When visitors come, they usually bring out glass flacons (small bottles used for perfume) with the samples, open the caps, and let the visitors sniff the yellowish, orange or transparent liquid.
Some of the shop owners said they only sell attar and Ramadan (ninth month of Islamic lunar calendar) is the peak season for sales.
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"From Shab-e-Meraj to Eid-ul-Fitr and one week ahead of the Eid-ul-Adha, sales remain high. During Ramadan, sometimes we even sell attar worth Tk1 lakh in a day,"said KP Arif Ali, proprietor of KPM Perfumery.
Arif is one the grandsons of South Indian businessman Kader Pir Mohammad, who was among the pioneers of the perfume business at Mitford area.
Most of the shop attendants were busy with visitors, mostly importers and retail buyers. Their conversation was peppered with words like CK One, Gucci, Ferrari, Christian Dior, mohini, darbar, sultan, kasturi, jasmine, and kancha bokul. Sometimes, they talked about vanilla, pineapple, orange, lemon, and chocolate.
CK One and Christian Dior may sound like perfume brands, but here, they are actually the names of perfume notes (perfume ingredients).
Although Mitford Road is famous for perfumes, it is also the country's largest year-round hub for fragrances used by toiletry brands, as well as flavours used in bakery items and beverages. (Perfume is used for external use while fragrances are non-edible, and flavours are used in food items)
According to Bangladesh Chemical and Perfumery Merchants Association, aromatic chemicals worth Tk5 crore are traded from Mitford Road every month. Currently, the association has 1,450 members across the country.
Mitford Road-based perfumery chemical business emerged in the early 1960s. At the time, from Armani Street to Imamganj, the entire area was the wholesale hub in Dhaka and the primary mode of transport was through water.
Merchandisers would arrive at the banks of Buriganga River with goods or money. Some of them, mostly manufacturers, would buy stearic acid - the principal component of cosmetics and toiletries - from Chawk Moulvibazar and search for fragrances in the neighbouring areas.
Sensing the potential of perfumery trading, some South Indian businessmen including Kader Pir Mohammad and Syed Ahmed opened shops of aromatic chemicals at Mitford Road.
Syed Ahmed was passionate about ghazal singing, but he also wanted to expand his business. So, he got his younger brother Mohammad Farooq to take up most of the responsibilities.
Farooq was only 19 years old when it happened. But the young and energetic businessman dedicated himself to the trade and eventually, he established the Famous Group of Companies.
Bangladesh Chemical and Perfumery Merchant Association received its registration in 2002. Farooq served as the association's uncontested president until his death on 1 September, 2014.
Farooq wished for one of his successors to gain a sound technical knowledge on perfumery. He sent his younger son Mohammad Nawaz - a graduate of Dhaka University - to study BA in Business and Perfumery at the University of Plymouth. Till now, Nawaz is the country's only higher education degree holder in perfumery.
We spoke to Nawaz to delve deeper into the perfumery business. "Globally, 15,000 to 20,000 types of perfumery chemicals are traded every day while in the Mitford area, the capital of perfumery business in Bangladesh, only 400 to 500 chemicals are traded," he said.
When enquired about the mostly traded chemicals, he said it's a tough question to answer.
"Suppose, you need mohini - the fragrance used by the famous Indian agarbatti (incense stick) brand Darshan. Around 200 chemicals are used in blending the mohini fragrance; there are some chemicals which need to be used only in tiny drops. Buyers don't need to know the names of all chemicals but 'mohini'," Nawaz said.
The Mitford-based traders don't trade in counterfeit chemicals. They import them directly from either Grasse in France, Switzerland, Singapore, or India, he claimed.
How do the traders make orders for their preferred chemicals?
Nawaz explained, "Assume that a detergent manufacturer comes and asks for his preferred fragrance. We send the sample to the principal perfume makers in Europe. The sample is examined by GC-MS (gas chromatography mass spectrometry - an instrumental technique to anlyse, separate, identify, and quantify the complex mixtures of chemicals). Following the analysis report, we place our requirement for import."
"The end users, even many importers of finished perfumes, are only familiar with the brand names. But they don't know from where the brand companies source the aromatic chemicals. They don't even need to know about it," he went on.
Sometimes, these shops in Mitford Road are blamed for facilitating the manufacture of fake perfumes and toiletries. However, the businessmen here strongly disagree with it.
Showing the label of Lux Velvet Touch soap, one trader said, "It is printed here in tiny letters that the soap contains 'grade-2' fragrance of Jasmine. Does that mean Unilever manufactures fake Lux? No. It means the soap doesn't contain the 'premium' fragrance of Jasmine." (Premium, grade-1 and grade-2 are different standards of fragrance with premium smelling the strongest).
The traders also sell lighter blends of premium quality perfumes - directly imported - for mid-and-small-scale industries in the country.
Sometimes, big companies also buy stronger blends of chemicals from them if the requirement is small.
For example, Bangladesh's Square Toiletries often purchases chemicals from Nawaz's company Famous Iberchem Flavours and Fragrance - a joint venture with the Spanish company Iberchem Fragrances of Nature. After returning from England, he established the factory in Tongi, Gazipur in 2003.
"The big companies are concerned about quality. As I run a factory with Spanish standards, I can supply comparatively stronger blends. A neighbouring trader of mine would sell a prototype of the chemicals - imported from India - at a cheaper price. These differences only matter to the industries who use these chemicals as ingredients," he concluded.
Experts like Nawaz can distinguish perfumes by only sniffing them once. But throughout our conversation, we did not hear a single scientific name of the ingredients. According to him, such is this perfumery business; one can run it without knowing scientific terms.
As our interview came to an end, we left Mitford Road with a head full of information, and our shirts giving off a cocktail of perfumes.
