An age-old passion
The Egyptians have been passionate farmers since millennia. Already in Antiquity, they discovered the plants for medicinal purposes and they quickly understood that this power had to be extracted and concentrated
to be efficient.
The essential oils were mainly produced in Egypt by the process today called “enfleurage”, a type of extraction by solvent, which used, at that time, animal fat.
A distillation technique also seems to have been used around 3500 BC. BC, as it is testified by special pots found in excavations archaeological.
This age-old passion continues and survives the passage of time and the change of civilizations.
A story of three generations
We are producers of essential oils located in the governorate of Gharbiya, in the Delta of River Nile, well known for its production of Jasmine Basilic, Neroli, etc… For 3 generations we cultivate the bitter orange tree, our specialty, as well than other plants used for production
Our family history began in the 1960s with Ali and his wife Samira with their children, who started as farmers, collecting and selling jasmine flowers and bitter orange for other distilleries.
Then we decided to create our own distillery, subsequently, in 2018, Mohy’s sons decided to renovate the family business and it was the moment to use the modern technology that help developing the environment, for exemple, purchasing new distillery equipment from Germany.
Today, we can say with pride, without hesitation, that we produce essential oils and absolue with the highest quality and following the ISO standard.
Our production : from field to Flacon
Our cultures combine agricultural practices biological and ancient:
✓ Diversified organic farming system. There presence of several species in the same field.
✓ Alternating rows of plants Geranium with those of garlic or trees of Bitter orange and Jasmine shrubs for example
✓ Prevents, attacks from most common plant pests that otherwise could spread throughout the field. Of Furthermore, weeding is carried out entirely at the hand.
✓ Geranium fields and other crops, are protected from the wind by rows of trees (Bitter orange, Mandarin tree…).
✓ Irrigation of fields is carried out by flooding, an ancient practice traditionally also used in Spanish Andalusian region, where it was introduced by the Arabs in the 8th century.
Gathering
To produce essential oil and absolute, we picks the flowers grown in our fields, with the help of our family and others seasonal employees.
The bitter orange flowers are entirely harvested by hand. This is a long task and arduous, which requires a lot of patience and dedication: like the lemon tree, the bitter orange tree has thorns protecting the flowers, which makes the quite laborious hand collection.
After the collection, it is usually necessary to remove, one by one, the leaves which have been accidentally harvested with flowers.
Finally, the flowers must be quickly distilled, so to extract and capture all their components volatile, allowing the production of an oil high quality essential.
Steam distillation
Once harvested, the flowers are placed in a distillation tank, where the steam produced through a boiler passes through the flowers, bringing with it the aromatic components previously trapped in plant matter.
Then, the steam, enriched with components aromatic plants, leaves the reservoir distillation and passes through a coil, where the temperature is cooled, allowing the steam condensation. Water and oils
essential thus produced are brought together in a Florentine separator.
The distillation process is extremely delicate: the pressure of the steam, the temperature and distillation time must be carefully balanced and well monitored to obtain high quality essential oils quality.
The extraction of the absolute
Another method for extracting the essences of flowers is extraction by solvents (Hexane).
Being very fragile when steamed, the flowers of Jasmine are first mixed with hexane (the solvent), forming the concrete, a mixture solid of wax and oil. Then, the absolute is extracted with ethanol from concrete.