In the first nine months of 2021, IFF achieved $8.6 billion in sales, representing 10% growth or 7% on a currency-neutral basis, a strong reflection of the strength of our market-leading platform and the compelling position we have established with our customers as a combined company.
We delivered a 22% adjusted operating EBITDA margin and a combined EBITDA growth of 5%.
We have maintained our robust cost discipline efforts and are entering the fourth quarter with continued financial strength, having achieved $884 million free cash flow or approximately 10% of our trailing nine months sales, driven by strong cash generation.
In North America, we achieved 7% growth across all four of IFF's business divisions, led by high single-digit growth in Nourish and Scent.
In Asia, we experienced a 7% increase in sales led by continued double-digit growth in India as well as a low single-digit growth in China, even amid particularly strong recent market complexities in the region.
Latin America continues to be our strongest performing region and sales growth leader, having achieved 12% growth, largely fueled by double-digit growth in our Nourish and Scent divisions and continued local currency strength.
Perhaps, most impressive is a 7% sales growth that our EMEA region achieved to date, which includes a robust double-digit increase in the third quarter, impressive performance on our Scent and Nourish divisions growth, this encouraging rebound with Scent delivering double-digit growth led by our Fine Fragrance business and Nourish delivering high single-digit growth led by our Food Service business.
Our largest division, Nourish, has been a strong performer throughout the year, achieving currency-neutral sales growth of 9% with broad-based strength from our Flavors, Ingredients and Food Design businesses.
Scent has had a similar strong year delivering 8% in currency-neutral growth to date, led by impressive double-digit growth in Fine Fragrance as well as strong growth in Consumer Fragrance and Ingredients.
While we have seen some margin impact of about 20 basis points in the year, we are proud of how our execution has mitigated much of the negative headwinds, while delivering meaningful growth.
Notably, Fine Fragrances alone has realized 36% growth year-to-date with double-digit growth in Cosmetic Active and continued solid performance in Consumer Fragrances.
At the time, sales profitability expansion of 110 basis points has been led by higher volume, favorable mix and higher productivity.
If you look at the total business, you will see that on a comparable 9-month pro forma basis, the new IFF has realized 9% sales growth over 2019 results.
Nourish is a business that was particularly hard hit through the pandemic, is now strongly growing with sales growth of 9% compared to pro forma 2019 9-month period.
In the first nine months of 2021, we've achieved approximately $40 million in cost synergies, representing nearly 90% of our 2021 cost synergy target with one quarter to go.
I'm confident that we will more than exceed our $45 million year one synergy target.
And I'm encouraged by the continued progress we are making toward achieving our 3-year run rate of cost synergy target of $300 million.
In Q3, IFF generated approximately $3.1 billion in sales, representing a 12% year-over-year increase, primarily driven by the continued double-digit growth in our Nourish division and strong increases in both Scent and Health & Biosciences.
Though our gross margin continued to be challenged by inflationary pressures, it was somewhat offset by our strong cost management focus, which resulted in adjusted operating EBITDA growth of 4%.
And while we had solid year-over-year EBITDA growth, our gross margin was down by 210 basis points as our pricing actions recovered only about 65% of our raw material increases or approximately 50% in the third quarter when we include raw material, logistics and energy increases.
Let me finish on this slide by saying that we achieved strong earnings per share, excluding amortization of $1.47.
In Q3, Nourish achieved 17% year-over-year sales growth or 15% on a currency-neutral basis, driven by robust double-digit growth in Flavors for the second consecutive quarter.
As a result of strong volume growth, price increases and our focus on cost management, Nourish achieved an adjusted operating EBITDA increase of 19% and margin expansion of 30 basis points.
On Slide 14, you'll see that our Health & Biosciences division saw year-over-year sales growth of 7% or 5% on a currency-neutral basis, led by double-digit growth in Home & Personal Care and high single-digit growth in Cultures & Food Enzymes.
As Andreas mentioned earlier, inflationary pressures and higher logistics and energy costs to keep up with the robust customer demand has challenged our margins across our business, with H&B particularly impacted, which drove an operating EBITDA decrease of 12%.
Unpacking this a bit deeper, the bulk or 70% of our year-over-year EBITDA decline came from higher air freight volumes, where we have increased intercompany shipments to manage available capacity.
Our Scent division continues to perform extremely well and experienced strong growth, achieving 10% year-over-year growth or 9% growth on a currency-neutral basis.
This performance was driven by Fine Fragrances' continued rebound, which grew approximately 36%, led by new customer wins and improved volumes.
On a 2-year average basis, Consumer Fragrance remained strong at 9% in the third quarter.
Scent also experienced adjusted operating EBITDA growth of 10%, driven by strong volume growth and favorable mix.
Lastly, in our Pharma Solutions business, we saw a currency-neutral sales decrease of 2% due to continued supply chain challenges related to raw material availability and logistics disruptions, which have made it challenging to meet persistent and growing customer demand.
So far this year, IFF has generated $884 million in free cash flow, with cash flow from operations totaling approximately $1.1 billion.
Year-to-date, we have spent $242 million or approximately 2.8% of sales on capex and expect a significant ramp-up in fourth quarter as our annual spend is traditionally more back half weighted.
From a leverage perspective, we are continuing to make substantial progress toward achieving our deleveraging target, with our cash and cash equivalents finishing at $794 million, including $122 million restricted cash, with gross debt reduced by $446 million versus the second quarter to $11.5 billion due to our debt maturity schedule as part of our deleverage plan.
Our trailing 12-month credit-adjusted EBITDA totaled approximately $2.7 billion, with a 4.1 times net debt to credit-adjusted EBITDA.
With our continued strong cash flow generation, including proceeds from divested noncore businesses, we remain confident that IFF is on track to achieve our deleveraging target of less than three times net debt to EBITDA within 20 to 36 months, post-transaction close.
Just as examples, vegetable oil prices hit a record high after rising by almost 10% in October.
The price of wheat is up almost 40% in the last 12 months through October.
Brent crude prices have more than doubled over the past 12 months to the highest level since October 2018.
In the U.S., natural gas prices are up 100% from a year ago and in the U.K. grew up about 500%.
For example, in the first half of 2021, gross margin was down about 150 basis points, while in the third quarter, we were down about 210 basis points.
For the full year 2021, we are targeting $11.55 billion in total revenue or approximately 8.5% growth, up from the forecast of $11.4 billion or 7% growth that we disclosed in the second quarter.
And as a result, we have further revised our adjusted EBITDA margin to be modestly below 21%, down from approximately 21.5% that was forecasted in September.

Summary:
Let me finish on this slide by saying that we achieved strong earnings per share, excluding amortization of $1.47.
For the full year 2021, we are targeting $11.55 billion in total revenue or approximately 8.5% growth, up from the forecast of $11.4 billion or 7% growth that we disclosed in the second quarter.