Healingscents sources organic Rosehip Oil direct from Southern Africa.
Our producer shared this story of how rosehips are collected and pressed.
The natural hilly terrain is green and tranquil. Much of the South African area is used as grass lands for roaming cattle from various tribal farmers.
The Rosehip trees grow naturally in various locations around the area. The Rosehip is in season during the fall and so the trees are full of berries.
The rosehips are handpicked by local staff and put into bags. The bags are brought to the factory where they are weighed and the staffs are paid per kg in the bag.
Rosehips are placed on a try and an industrial dryer is used to dry out the rosehips. Once rosehips are dried, they shrivel up and split open.
Inside the dried rosehips are small seeds and that is where the oil is found! The dried and opened rosehips are placed on a conveyor belt to shake the small seeds out of the rosehips. The process will separate the peel from the seeds.
The seeds are collected through the conveyor belt which has a gauze which will only allow the smaller seeds to pass through and land underneath the conveyor belt. The peels will remain on top and will be collected separately Seeds are then placed into a large press which does the expression of the pure rosehip oil.
The rosehip oil is then filtered because it contains high amounts of fatty wax. And the remaining oil is a reddish / golden colour
Once the seeds have been pressed, the “cake” is released from the press which should have low oil content, but some oil does remain. The cake is very well used as charcoal for making fires.