Since 2002. Southport, Queensland.
Twenty-three years
on the Australian bench.
VKA® Australia is an Australian operation, run by Australians in Southport, Queensland. We have been developing flavours here since 2002. Behind us sits the VKA group, one of the long-standing flavour houses in the region. That combination is the point.
We will read it inside one business day. No contract to start a conversation.
‘The flavour that lands here has to be built here, by the people who eat it.’
Our Story
Twenty-three years on the Southport bench.
Victor Koh founded VKA in a Singapore lab in 1971. He'd trained at the top European flavour houses, then come back across the equator to build a flavour science of his own. By 2002 he'd been making flavour for thirty years. That year, he travelled to Australia.
What he found surprised him. He'd visit a Queensland orchard and the fruit on the branch was better than the fruit he'd ever worked with. A Tasmanian mountain pepperberry on the bench was as serious a sensory note as anything he'd evaluated in his career. A macadamia farmer was treating his crop like a winemaker. Australians, he saw, ate the way they lived. Close to the source, close to the season, and unforgiving of anything that wasn't right.
A flavourist who'd spent three decades developing for European palates understood it immediately. Australia appreciates naturals at a resolution he hadn't met in any other market. He decided the bench had to be in Australia, the team had to be Australian, and the sourcing had to come from Australian land wherever it could. That year, he founded VK Aromatics Australia in Southport, Queensland. Twenty-three years on, the bench is still there. Behind us, the wider VKA group has been in flavour since 1971. By Australians. For Australians.
Milestones
How the work got to Southport.
Australia first: the Southport bench in 2002 and twenty-three years of custom flavour work for Aussie and Kiwi makers. The group lineage sits behind it.
2002
VKA Australia established. Southport bench opens.
VKA Australia opens its bench on the Gold Coast, in Southport, Queensland. The Australian flavour house begins on a site it still works from today: development, applications, and manufacturing under the one roof.
1971
The foundations, behind us.
Behind the bench, the original flavour-science work begins in a Singapore lab opened by Victor Koh. The formulation discipline started there still shapes how we tune a brief today.
1985
Regional manufacturing, behind us.
Regional manufacturing footprint grows, putting production closer to a significant regional food and beverage market and broadening the supply network the Australian work later draws on.
1995
Regional library deepens.
Regional work builds out across the wider group. The group's flavour-science library deepens. The bench Australian briefs will later draw on starts to take its shape.
2002
Group R&D centre opens, behind us.
The same year VKA Australia begins, a dedicated R&D centre opens behind us, with analytical instrumentation and a sensory evaluation suite. The science done there still feeds the work we apply on the Southport bench today.
2018
Sharper formulation tools.
Investment in sharper formulation tools and faster prototyping, applied to how Australian briefs move from first read to finished profile in the application kitchen at Southport.
Today
Australia's flavour house.
VKA Australia operates from Southport, Queensland, run by an Australian team. Twenty-three years of Australian flavour, custom flavours for food and beverage makers across Australia and New Zealand, with the wider VKA group sitting behind us.
Bring us a brief
The bench is in Southport. Bring us a brief.
New product or reformulation, our Australian team is ready when you are. Send what you have, even rough. We will read it inside one business day and tell you what we would do next. No contract to start a conversation.
Read inside one business day. No contract to start.