Essential Oil Production Methods: How Truly Great Oils are Made
The governing principle of production: Preserving all of the oil's therapeutic properties
Modern Essentials:
Learn how you can safely and effectively use aromatherapy to take charge of your health.
More than just a commercial concern.
At dōTERRA®, the first concern is not the commercial aspects of marketing essential oils, but people. The men and women who founded the company came to respect the healing power of the oils while working for another essential oil company. But, as the quality of oils at that company began to decline and they felt the need to leave, their love for the oils led them to search for truly high quality oils. What they found surprised even them, and they fell in love with essential oils all over again.
"It was," they said, "like discovering aromatherapy all over again."
From its beginning, rather than defining the bottom line in purely monetary terms, ultimately sacrificing everything to that, dōTERRA® has made it its mission to offer only the finest quality oils, containing the most active, and widest array of therapeutic constituents possible, regardless of cost.
Sourcing from trusted producers: Where it all begins
While some essential oil companies emphasize the size of their farms and distilling operations, where they can control every phase of production, the fact is that they can actually produce only about 2% of the oils they sell. The rest must be sourced from other producers.
At dōTERRA®, the sourcer uses the knowledge she gained while working for one of the largest essential oil companies in the world to find the highest quality oils available anywhere. Working with trusted producers from around the world, every batch of oil is produced according to the highest standards and independently cross tested, using mass spectrometry and gas chromatography, to ensure both extract purity and composition potency. This assures you that any of the dōTERRA® oils you buy are both free of contaminants and contain the active compounds, at the right levels, to guarantee safety and effectiveness.
dōTERRA® works closely with a global network of leading essential oil chemists and growers, to select botanicals of the correct species, grown in the ideal environments and carefully harvested at the right time. The aromatic compounds of the plants are skillfully extracted by experienced distillers and subjected to chemical analysis, to ensure purity and composition. Because of this, dōTERRA's certified pure therapeutic-grade® (CPTG®) essential oils represent the safest and most beneficial oils available in the world today.
Equally stringent standards of safety and efficacy are applied to all of dōTERRA's Essential Wellness products. Guided by its Scientific Advisory Board, dōTERRA® uses only top development and manufacturing partners, who maintain GMP certification and enjoy industry reputation for superior innovation and quality. Each dōTERRA® product is guaranteed to exceed customer satisfaction and performance expectations.
Proper farming methods: a critical first step
The production of a great essential oil begins with growing high quality herbs for distillation.
On the farms, the species of herbs grown is carefully selected, making sure that only those cultivars that produce the highest quality essential oil are used. For example, the lavender must be the authentic Lavandula angustifolia, which yields an oil low in camphor and rich in lavendulol and lavendulol acetate (the constituents believed to be the key to lavender's therapeutic action).
These plants must then be grown on land that is uncontaminated by chemical fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides or herbicides, and away from pollution sources such as nuclear plants, factories, interstates, highways or heavily populated cities. The soil should also be conditioned with an advanced mix of enzymes, trace minerals and organic bio-solids, to build and maintain the soil, since plants lacking in certain minerals and nutrients yield oils low in therapeutic value.
And, the land and crops must be watered with pure water. Municipality treated water, or secondary runoff water from residential and commercial areas, can introduce undesirable chemicals and residues into the plant and its essential oil.
Distilling the oils: In the traditional way, to preserve the quality of the oil
To produce a high quality essential oil, the herbs must be distilled fresh. This is critical to the production of highest-quality oils, because the essential oils in the plants are very volatile, and any delay in distilling them means that precious oil constituents are lost to evaporation. Before harvesting, highly skilled managers monitor the percentage of the plant in bloom, the time of day for cutting, the amount of glucose (or bric in the plant) and many other factors critical to top quality therapeutic-grade oil production.
Despite the cost, compared to the practices of commercial distillers, it is critical to take care to preserve all of the fragile aromatic constituents of its essential oils during the distillation process:
Distilling Operation
→ Plants are steam-distilled, in small batches for extended periods, using low pressure and low heat; the traditional method of distillation, used for centuries in Europe.
→ No solvents or synthetic chemicals of any kind are used or added in the distillation process.
→ The cookers are constructed from metals that will not react with the oils, chemically altering them and harming their therapeutic properties.
Independent analysis of the oils to assure you of top quality
When sourced , each batch of the essential oils is analyzed at an independent laboratory, cross tested, using mass spectrometry and gas chromatography, to ensure both extract purity and composition potency.
No cutting corners to make oils more cheaply
Producing pure, therapeutic-grade essential oils is very costly. The methods required are time- and labor-intensive, and it often requires several hundred — or even thousands — of pounds of raw plant material to produce a single pound of essential oil. For example,
- it takes three tons of melissa to produce one pound of oil. Its extremely low yield explains why it sells for $9000 to $15,000 per kilo.
- It takes 5000 pounds of rose petals to produce one pound of rose oil.
It's not hard to find cheaper essential oils, but you would have to travel the world over to find any that are even close to the quality of dōTERRA®.
