Origena
Opening

Every batch
carries a signature.
We read it.

Origena screens the authenticity and geographic origin of French aromatic and medicinal plants in minutes, and confirms them through reference methods. What a brand calls origine France becomes a measured, documented fact.

Fine lavender in flower, side-lit against darkness
Lavandula angustifolia · near-infrared
1100 nmHaute-Provence2400 nm
The gap

A premium the market cannot check

Lavender is the most documented adulteration case in the essential-oil sector. Substitution with cheaper lavandin and with synthetic linalool and linalyl acetate has made the Haute-Provence chain hard to trust for any brand that stakes a claim on French origin. The gold standard, GC-MS, is slow, destructive and lab-centralised, so rigorous verification sits outside routine procurement.

A tied bundle of fine lavender beside glass vials of pale gold essential oil on limestone
Plate 01Fine lavender and distilled oil — the material an origine France claim rests on.

The economics keep it going. When authentic material costs several times more than the adulterant, the incentive to substitute never goes away. The spread below is the whole opportunity in one number.

27%
of commercial samples adulterated, in a peer-reviewed study of a related aromatic compound
Plants 13(2), 2024
49,200t
of aromatic and medicinal plant material imported into France each year, worth about €223M — more than twice export value
FranceAgriMer
27,500ha
of lavender and lavandin declared in France, concentrated in a small, well-mapped set of basins
FranceAgriMer, PAC 2024
Farm-gate valueper kg · 2024
Lavandin sits at about €13/kg, inside a documented €10–15/kg crisis range. It is the workhorse crop — and the cheap substitute that makes fraud pay.
≈10×
the spread between the two. Exactly the premium a verified origin credential defends.
The instrument

Watch a batch go through

Verification has to be fast enough to sit inside procurement. Fast spectroscopy handles volume, recognised reference methods resolve the hard cases. Scroll — the panel runs the batch.

A glass vial of essential oil beneath the sensor head of a benchtop spectroscopy instrument
Plate 02A sample under the reader. Tier 1 returns a result in minutes, without destroying the batch.
Stage 01 · Intake

A batch arrives with a claim attached

A consignment of essential oil arrives with a stated species, basin and harvest. Origena records its identity and takes a non-destructive sample. Nothing is assumed and nothing is destroyed.

Sample held · identity recorded
Stage 02 · Tier 1

Near-infrared and Raman, in minutes

The sample is screened against the reference envelope built from known-authentic material. Most batches fall inside it and clear immediately. This tier carries the volume at low marginal cost per screen.

Result in minutes · non-destructive
Stage 03 · Tier 2

Deviation escalates to reference methods

A trace that leaves the envelope is flagged, not judged. It escalates to GC-MS and isotope-ratio MS at a certified partner laboratory, where the reference methods settle it. The laboratory cost is passed through.

GC-MS · IRMS · certified partner
Stage 04 · Passport

Compliant material leaves with evidence

The batch receives a digital passport carrying its screening result, composition profile and origin evidence — the substantiation a cosmetic origin claim needs under Regulation (EU) 655/2013, built to feed the EU Digital Product Passport.

Claim-ready · machine-readable
Specimen OR-LAV-0001 Awaiting sample
1100 nmReference envelope2400 nm
Digital batch passport
OR-LAV-0001
Issued
Species
Lavandula angustifolia
Origin basin
Haute-Provence · AOP
The library

The asset is the dataset

The instruments are commercially available to anyone. What cannot be bought is Origena's provenance-anchored reference library: spectra and composition profiles tied to contracted, geolocated French cultivation sites whose chain of custody runs from field to instrument.

Aerial view of lavender parcels forming precise rows on a Provence plateau
Plate 03Lavender parcels on the Provence plateau. Sites are geolocated before any sample enters the library.
CONTRACTED ROUTEGeolocated parcelcontract signedSealed samplechain of custodyInstrumentNIR · RamanSignature+ origin recordOPEN-MARKET ROUTEBroker lotorigin assertedBlended drumhistory lostInstrumentNIR · RamanSignatureno recordSAME INSTRUMENTTrainableJoins the library as a labelled example, and sharpens every later reading.Not trainableThe same curve teaches nothing — nobody knows what it measured.
Plate 04The hardware is identical on both routes. Only one of them yields a measurement that can be learned from.

Provenance under control

Seeded from known-authentic material — through CRIEPPAM and contracted pilot growers whose sites are geolocated before any sample enters it. Never from open-market material a rival could also buy.

Origin, not only composition

Built to answer terroir-level questions: not merely whether a sample is lavender, but whether it is Haute-Provence AOP lavender from a specific production basin. A harder and more valuable problem than binary fraud detection.

It compounds

Every verified batch from a contracted grower sharpens the model and makes the next passport more credible. Protected as a trade secret, the dataset widens the barrier to replication as the business grows.

The numbers

Sized from the ground up

Every figure is built from unit data — French production volumes, 2024 farm-gate prices, per-batch fees — never from a slice of the €35.6bn cosmetics sector, which is context and nothing more.

TAM · global
≈ €1.2bn
Botanical authentication and traceability, plus the premium origin-sensitive aromatic supply where verified origin adds value.
SAM · France
≈ €65M
French-origin aromatic supply to cosmetics and perfumery, plus the verification spend attached to it. A throughput value.
SOM · four years
≈ €4M
Realistic cumulative capture over the permit horizon — about 6% of SAM. A focused beachhead, not a reach.
Year 1Year 2Year 3Year 4
Throughput is not revenue. This is the transaction value routed through Origena — about €4.0M cumulatively across four years. Origena earns on top of it, never all of it.
The buyers

Brands without fields

The luxury houses solved sourcing by buying farms in Grasse and Provence. Mid-tier brands buy on the open market and cannot prove what they bought. That is the demand Origena serves.

Three unbranded glass cosmetic bottles on a white plinth against a deep navy background
Plate 05Finished formulations — the origin premium verification defends.
The arc

Four years, de-risked

Aligned to the La French Tech Visa permit horizon. Each phase is funded by traction from the one before it.

The founders

Three mandates

All three co-founders hold C-level functions with a mandat social in the French entity. Select a plate to read the mandate.

For France

A national asset, defended

France's cosmetics sector is a core contributor to the national trade surplus, and it rests on the integrity of its origin claims. Origena defends that credibility analytically and operationally.

2×

Import substitution

France imports more than twice what it exports in aromatic and medicinal plants. Origena builds a traceable French supply chain against that imbalance.

13

Qualified jobs

From five people to about thirteen over four years — analytical chemistry, data science, quality, operations — in the Drôme, Provence and Grasse.

100%

R&D in France

Reference-library development, model training and protocol design run entirely on French territory, eligible for the CIR and CII.

48%

Certified lead held

France concentrates roughly 48% of COSMOS-certified products worldwide — a lead that depends on credible natural sourcing.

Intake

Submit a batch, or open a conversation

Brand partnerships, grower collaboration, investment or press. Tell us what you need and we will come back to you.

Based in
South-east France — Drôme, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, Grasse
Response
Within two business days
Thank you — your message is on its way. We will be in touch shortly.
Origena — origine France, verified.