Key points
•TTI is a 50-year-old company specializing in nicotine flavor development, serving categories including e-cigarettes and oral nicotine products. With a dual focus on flavor artistry and scientific rigor, TTI operates manufacturing facilities in the U.S. and Italy, supporting global formulation and compliance needs.
•Flavor is not just about appeal—it is a critical enabler of harm reduction. The success of reduced-risk products depends on being acceptable to consumers.
•Flavor preferences vary significantly across regions. Global brands must localize their offerings, while tightening regulations are driving “compliance-friendly” innovation.
•Nicotine pouches are among the most technically challenging products to flavor. The next stage of flavor innovation will be driven by advances in nicotine delivery technology.
•Nicotine flavor development is evolving into a fusion of science and art. While AI can support the process, human flavorists remain at the center of innovation.
[By 2Firsts，Taco Tuinstra]This year marks the 50th anniversary of Tobacco Technology Inc. (TTI). Founded in 1975 by Duke Cassels-Smith, the company has evolved into a global supplier of flavors for e-liquids, shisha, cigarette, cigar, oral tobacco and modern oral pouches, among other products.
Headquartered in Maryland, USA, The TTI family of companies today includes E-LiquiTech (an e-liquid manufacturing company), Emerald Green Technology (flavoring solutions for the cannabis industry) and TTI Flavors in Assisi, Italy (a full-scale flavor manufacturing facility).
In addition to celebrating half a century in business, TTI will be highlighting its products and services at the InterTabac exhibition in Dortmund, Sept 18-20.
As an official media partner of InterTabac, 2Firsts spoke with TTI CEO George Cassels-Smith to learn about the company’s milesstones, its embrace of next-generation products, and TTI’s strategy in an increasingly competitive and regulated business environment.
Exclusive Nicotine Focus
2Firsts: How have competitive dynamics in the flavor business changed since 1975, and what makes TTI stand out today?
George Cassels-Smith: Since TTI is—and always has been—a flavor house exclusively for the global recreational nicotine industry, the dynamics of our business have necessitated changes in our 50-year history in response to the evolution of the industry, including in traditional tobacco and non-tobacco nicotine alternatives.
Two things that make TTI stand out today are our dedication to tobacco (and now nicotine) flavoring exclusively, and our transformation to identify new tobacco and nicotine delivery options by understanding and addressing the science and technology associated with these new products.
TTI separates itself from its competition by the depth of our knowledge of these unique nicotine products. TTI is where art meets science in all markets and genres of tobacco/nicotine products; we make customers’ products outstanding and unique.
Grasping the Science
2Firsts: How great was the learning curve in expanding your portfolio from flavors for traditional tobacco products to flavors for next-generation products such as e-cigarettes? Which traditional tobacco skills carried over easily, and which ones did you have to master?
Cassels-Smith: The learning curve to expand our portfolio of flavors for traditional tobacco products to next-generation products is different for each type of tobacco products. It is easy to make attractive vaping products using food-grade flavorings; however vaping products use heat or other technologies to aerosolize the nicotine, flavorings and humectants into the appropriate size aerosol particulate to be inhaled for deep lung absorption.
Any joker can make a good-tasting vapor, but do they optimize the nicotine bioavailability for the consumer? Does the poor-quality vape product that tastes good give an aerosol that eliminates hazardous chemicals and impurities? Do these products consistently taste the same from batch to batch? Is the [manufacturer of] poor-quality products understanding subsequent reactions in the e-liquid, reactions with the device, shelf-life and stability of the product?
All genres of tobacco products require an understanding of the science behind the different use patterns and deliveries to the consumer. The flavorist must restrict the inclusion of certain ingredients and focus on stable, non-injurious ingredients that are compatible and repeatable to optimize the performance and give the consumer the best experience consistently.
The traditional flavor development to meet the needs of the customers and consumers carried over well but TTI had to develop the understanding of the processes involved in the nicotine and flavor delivery to optimize both in a manner that minimized exposure of consumers to materials that are injurious. TTI has invested in acquiring the expertise to address these concerns.
Customization Required
2Firsts: Which nicotine products are the most challenging to flavor, and why?
Cassels-Smith: All tobacco products are more difficult to flavor correctly than they appear because there are matrix effects that have to be considered, and customization is required. Each unique product has different requirements for success in the market and safety for the consumer.
If it was easy there would be no need for our company to celebrate 50 years of dedication to our industry. Surprisingly, nicotine pouches are very difficult to flavor; manufacturers must avoid subsequent reactions, staining and good shelf-life while delivering nicotine in a reproduceable manner.
Understanding Markets
2Firsts: TTI has evolved into a truly global supplier of flavor products. Do flavor preferences differ significantly geographically?
Cassels-Smith: Flavor preferences in tobacco products do have nuances associated with their geographic territories. Although some flavors have many universal acceptance qualities, each market, like each individual consumer, varies depending on many characteristics including flavor. Since no market only prefers one offering, manufacturers desire a diversified portfolio of acceptable flavors.
From our inception in 1975, TTI has had more sales globally than in our domestic market in the USA. As a global company we have focused from Day 1 on understanding and catering to a diversified market with valuable insight into every market. TTI has the unique ability to identify new tobacco products in markets and to enable distant manufacturers to help develop those products for their domestic markets by incorporating their unique flavor preferences for success in their markets.
Strategic Expansion
2Firsts: What prompted TTI to open a flavor manufacturing facility in Italy? Has the factory lived up to expectations?
Cassels-Smith: In 2022, TTI expanded its manufacturing footprint to Assisi, Italy to help bifurcate its production and to serve as an insurance policy for tariffs and natural disasters, as well as reduce logistical costs and issues for our customers. We now offer a substantial portfolio of flavors from both locations with the ability of our customer base to choose the facility to service their orders.
TTI Flavors Italy continues to grow in volume and profitability and to enhance our growth in almost every market outside of the USA. Assisi is also strategically located to service Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia Pacific. The facility has enhanced our stability and reach during a year with tariff instability.
Enabling Compliance
2Firsts: How do you help customers adapt to growing flavor restrictions? Please provide example of successful projects.
Cassels-Smith: TTI has always assisted our customers by creating custom signature flavorings with a focus on global acceptance for taste preferences and formulation approval. We strive to follow all regulations globally and create flavor profiles that can endure ingredient disclosures and political restrictions.
Since we sell all product genres in all markets to both large and small customers, we understand safe ingredients and safe profiles for all our end markets. Examples would be menthol substitutes and pod-based tobacco flavor for vaping. We refrain from using popular ingredients that are not beneficial for the toxicological profile of the finished product.
TTI also has a history of reproducing its existing flavor profile while removing ingredients that the customer wishes to remove from its formulation and replacing them with easily disclosed and understood formulations. TTI has the ability to create novel formulations that meet the organoleptic and regulatory requirements of our customers.
Enabling Transition
2Firsts: Please comment on the contribution of flavors to tobacco harm reduction.
Cassels-Smith: We believe that flavors have been—and will continue to be—extremely important to help consumers adapt their nicotine consumption path to less harmful products.
Tobacco consumers are very loyal to their preferred tobacco brand, and they need to be wowed to switch to a less harmful alternative. The dramatic shift from combustible nicotine to the cleaner and safer alternative has been facilitated by the flavoring of properly designed next-generation products.
The new future is that you can use some of these new products for over 100 years or smoke cigarettes for one year and receive the same toxicity. Flavors facilitate this conversion.
New Alternatives
2Firsts: Are there any signature flavor blends in pipeline that you’re particularly excited about?
Cassels-Smith: I am excited about all the flavoring systems that we develop; we custom create just under 2,000 flavors a year to match with an existing or soon-to-be-introduced product. We do not sell flavors “off the shelf;” we only sell unique bespoke flavoring systems for our customer’s needs. As a corporate policy, we do not ever discuss our customer base, nor the products that we have flavored, but I can tell you we have been working on awesome products that recreational nicotine users will have great new alternatives in the market coming soon.
The Human Factor
2Firsts: What emerging technologies are on your radar? For example, do you expect AI to play a role in flavor creation?
Cassels-Smith: I am always excited about technologies that provide cleaner nicotine, better bioavailability of active ingredients, more consistent dissolution curves of active ingredients and better shelf-life and stability of finished products. I am sure that AI will play a role in the above technologies and that it will have a lesser role in helping design flavoring systems to enhance the finished products.
AI can assist our flavoring artists to make more efficient flavoring art, but I am not ready to switch from humans to machines at this time. We do consider AI as a tool to help our flavorist be more efficient.
Continuous Improvement
2Firsts: TTI’s anniversary is testament to the company’s resilience. What has been the secret of your success, and what will it take to remain successful in the ever-stricter regulated flavor business?
Cassels-Smith: TTI celebrates its 50th anniversary this year because the industry is always developing better products and we have a proven track record of our contributions to those successes. We are as much of a product development team as a flavor house.
Our success is uniquely tied to our customers’ success, and we do our jobs very well. We have grown over these 50 years by becoming more knowledgeable and proficient, something I strive to repeat for the next 50 years.
Our industry needs stronger allies as we continue to provide nicotine to a population that enjoys nicotine’s benefit but wishes to avoid any detriment associated with its enjoyment. I view TTI as an integral partner to our customers in the creation of consumer-acceptable reduced harm products.
