AROXA™ defines excellence in professional tasting


Flavour attribute word cloud - off-flavours, taints and positive notes

Our extensive range of certified flavour standards can help you develop the skills of your professional tasters. Rigorous quality assurance means consistent flavour character and strength every time.


Competent, professional taste panels are an essential tool in the production of high quality foods and beverages. In today’s competitive marketplace, the ability to describe the flavour of products in objective terms, and to check their conformance with pre-defined quality standards is increasingly critical to commercial success.



A range of certified flavour standards for a variety of foods and beverages

AROXA™ provides more than 250 certified flavour standards which can be used to test the aptitude of potential new tasters; develop the skills they need; and assess their day to day performance in routine tasting.

We supply a range of 56 certified beer flavour standards, 27 certified cider flavour standards, 30 certified wine flavour standards, 25 certified water flavour standards, 25 certified soft drink flavour standards, and 62 certified multi-purpose flavour standards, together with an extensive range of flavour standard kits. These can be used to generate positive notes, off-flavours and taints in your products, with no need for laboratory equipment or special expertise.

Our Discovery™ range of flavours provides you with an opportunity to contribute to and shape our product development programme, fast-tracking the most useful flavour standards and tailoring them to the needs of your industry sector.

Water flavour standard being added to water prior to evaluation by a professional taste panel

All certified flavour standards comprise food-grade materials which are safe to smell and taste. Each flavour is treated to remove sensory impurities prior to being nano-encapsulated to impart long-term stability.

Each AROXA flavour standard is supplied with an information sheet which gives details concerning the assessment of the flavour note, its flavour threshold, the distribution of threshold values among assessors, the origins of the flavour and its importance to the product.

The concept of utilizing highly pure nano-encapsulated flavours to develop tasters’ skills was first developed by Cara Technology founder Dr Bill Simpson in 1992 while working at the Brewing Research Foundation in England.

Seeing the commercial potential in his invention Bill resigned from his job leading a team of 16 researchers to bring the idea to life and make it available to beverage manufacturers. He founded Cara Technology Limited in 1995 with the aim of building on the work he had done at the Brewing Research Foundation. And in late 1996, with a range of 15 flavour standards for beer, and trial samples ready for evaluation by major brewing companies, he founded FlavorActiV Limited as a sales and marketing vehicle for these innovative materials.



Goodbye FlavorActiV - hello AROXA

For 15 years Cara Technology developed and manufactured flavour standards for beer and supplied them to breweries via FlavorActiV Limited as the company's global sales partner. In 2010 Cara Technology took the decision to supply the market direct and to end our relationship with FlavorActiV. In making a break with FlavorActiV we aimed to expand the application of flavour standard technology from beer and brewing to a much wider range of foods and beverages. The complete range of AROXA™ flavour standards and taster validation schemes was launched in late 2011. Cara continued to supply FlavorActiV with flavour standards until April 2012. While our AROXA certfied flavour standards are manufactured in the same way they have always been, and in the same production facility, we have taken the opportunity to upgrade the quality management activities associated with their production. All materials now undergo extensive physical, chemical, microbiological and sensory tests prior to dispatch.

Today, Cara Technology is a successful small business, employing 30 highly skilled staff in UK and Denmark.

Several hundred long-standing FlavorActiV customers have already moved to AROXA.. They have preferred to stay with the same tried and tested flavour standards they have relied upon for their taster training programmes for more than a decade rather than switch to a more limited range of products made by a less experienced production partner on behalf of FlavorActIV.

In the past 12 months Cara has considerably expanded the use of certified flavour standards in other industry sectors, supplying materials to taste panels with responsibility for evaluation of water, soft drinks, foods, oils, wines and spirits.



The AROXA promise


We want you to be completely satisfied with our products and services. We operate a simple guarantee policy – either we deliver what you need when you need it or we refund your money. No quibbles.


AROXA products are exclusively developed, manufactured, quality assured and sold by:

Cara Technology Limited, Leatherhead Enterprise Centre, Randalls Road, Leatherhead, Surrey KT22 7RY, United Kingdom

Company registration number 2242098 - VAT number GB 492 3199 23



The original. The best. Why settle for imitation?