Robertet has been crafting fragrances, flavors, and natural ingredients for nearly 180 years. It’s built its business on precision, traceability, and deep expertise in natural raw materials – qualities that matter as much in modern manufacturing as they did in the company’s earlier years. What does not scale as easily is the network infrastructure required to support a multi-continent operation where robotic production, real-time data exchange, and AI-driven initiatives all depend on highly reliable connectivity.
That challenge is becoming increasingly common across manufacturing, where networks are expected to support not only enterprise communications, but also plant operations, cloud environments, regulatory requirements, and data-intensive innovation strategies.
To address that need, Robertet selected GTT Communications to provide secure networking across its 50 sites, spanning Europe, the Middle East, North and South America, and Asia, including China. The deployment will support what Robertet’s CIO Guillaume Castel (News - Alert) calls describes as a broader transformation from an international artisan business into a more globally integrated innovation company.
The technical foundation is GTT’s Managed SD-WAN with Security Service Edge, deployed in a high-availability architecture. The environment combines dedicated internet access, broadband, Ethernet, and MPLS connectivity to improve resilience across Robertet’s global operations. Running on GTT’s Tier 1 IP backbone and managed through the GTT EnvisionDX portal, the network is designed to deliver secure, optimized connectivity between manufacturing operations, enterprise systems, and cloud platforms, including Azure and Oracle (News - Alert).
“Managed SD-WAN and SSE from GTT will be the foundation of our Group’s transformation from an international artisan business to a global company driving the future of fragrance, flavor and natural ingredient innovation,” said Castel. “GTT’s services will enable us to maintain the highest standards of quality and traceability for our products across markets. The GTT EnvisionDX portal, Professional Services and 24-hour support will enhance our worldwide operations, keeping us agile, flexible and efficient.”
The operational stakes are high – higher than one might think for a company in the fragrance and flavor industry. Robertet’s production environment includes robotic systems that mix ingredients at precise moments to achieve specific sensory outcomes. In that context, network downtime does not just slow operations, it can affect process consistency and product quality.
Beyond resilience, the network is intended to support three connected transformation priorities. Real-time integration between production systems, ERP, and business intelligence platforms is expected to improve regulatory compliance and operational visibility across the product lifecycle. IT/OT segmentation is meant to help protect manufacturing systems as operational environments become more connected. The infrastructure will also support Robertet’s growing AI initiatives, including NaturIA, a project designed to assist perfumers and flavorists by surfacing compositional and sensory data to enhance creativity and support ingredient traceability.
This is just another proof point highlighting how widely AI is being applied beyond the sectors that usually dominate technology headlines. Perfumery and flavor development have historically been rooted in craft, expertise, and intuition but, as companies look to augment those disciplines with richer data and pattern recognition, they need the underlying infrastructure to move information reliably and securely across a global organization. That is part of the role this network investment is intended to play – and it’s the same reason so many other companies are getting deeper into AI.
“Our Envision platform and professional services secure and simplify the management of complex, global enterprise infrastructures,” said Tom Homer, Division President Europe at GTT. “This aligns perfectly with the needs of leading manufacturers like Robertet, who leverage digital transformation to drive scale, consistency and global delivery capability.”
For GTT and other providers, the Robertet deployment highlights how enterprise networking projects are increasingly tied to broader priorities, like as operational resilience, cloud transformation, compliance, and AI enablement. Investments like this are an infrastructure investment designed to support all of those ambitions at once.
Edited by
Erik Linask
