$1.1m grant for pearl perfume

A Perth-based luxury goods company has been given a $1.1 million grant to commercialise the world's first perfume made from pearls.

Essential Oils of Tasmania, a subsidiary of Perth-based Atlas Pearls and Perfumes, will use the grant from Commercialisation Australia to build a plant in Tasmania to extract ingredients from South Sea pearls for their fragrant properties.

Atlas chairman Stephen Birkbeck said its salty, floral pearl perfume, Ayu, was designed by Parisian master Michel Roudnitska, whose father Edmond was the legendary creator of some of the world's most famous fragrances, including Dior's Eau Sauvage.

Mr Birkbeck discovered the pearl fragrance in 2008 while on his cattle farm in Denmark in the South West. He researched how to extract proteins from pearls in a bid to use more of the harvested oyster, which had previously been discarded.

"I came across it be accident really," he said.

"I was smelling it and because I used to be in the perfume industry, I thought, wow."

Read entire story about $1.1m grant for pearl perfume here.