about us

The origin of Odournet is a one man start-up in 1980, called Project Research Amsterdam. During the launch project on the impact of mushroom composting odours its founder, Ton van Harreveld, identified many opportunities to improve the measurement technique, and set out to innovate olfactometry. This led to the development of the first computer controlled olfactometer, Olfaktomat, in 1987, in collaboration with Neomat, where the inventors Teunissen van Manen developed software and hardware. Meanwhile, PRA continued odour assessment consultancy projects, which led to the establishment of PRA BV as a company, when co-founder Frans Vossen joined the company on 3 February 1989. Within years the team grew to over a dozen people. 
 
After surviving seismic changes in the Dutch odour regulation system in 1993, including the financial fallback that followed, the company became Odournet, with a first international branch in the UK. The olfactometers were now developed by an internal R&D team. Further branches were established in Belgium, Spain, France and Mexico. The driving force behind this geographic expansion was to seek growth of our team to a sustainable size, while remaining focussed on our specialism of environmental odour assessment and consultancy as well as odour measurement. 
 
In 2010 Odournet merged with ecoma GmbH and Olfatec GmbH, after the teams of all companies realised that they would be more effective
in sustaining innovation after merging the talents and ideas
of its teams. 
 
ecoma’s origins were very similar, going back to 1976, with an initial 
focus on instrument development initiated by pioneer Heinrich Mannebeck,
the father of modern olfactometry in Germany. ecoma became the leading
supplier in the world with the TO series olfactometers. 
 
OLFAtec was founded in 2001 as an ecoma subsidiary with the focus on
sensory product & material testing being the first company in the world
accredited for an ILC EN 13725 testing scheme.
  
Odournet group aims to maintain its world leading position as a supplier of
olfactometry equipment, environmental odour management consultancy 
and to expand its activities in sensory analysis of products and materials.
Odournet aims to grow to a team size of about 100, to ensure that our
specialist staff can find career opportunities at all levels within the Odournet
group.