At Jurlique, we take a slightly spiritual and holistic approach to creating our skin care products. It all starts on our biodynamic* farm in South Australia’s Adelaide Hills – a place chosen as the purest place on Earth thanks to its unpolluted air and optimum climate. It’s an approach to farming that uses the sun, moon, stars and planets to bring about balance and healing, treating the farm as a living organism – one that’s self-contained and self-sustainable.
Through biodynamic farming, we can sustainably produce healthy, powerful plants that harness, activate and enhance the energy of Nature; we then extract this using our exclusive Bio-Intrinsic™ method. These extracts allow us to utilise the power of these plant in our products and, we believe, create the best possible formulations for your skin.
WHAT IS OUR BIO-INTRINSIC™ METHOD?
Our exclusive Bio-Intrinsic™ method is an alchemistic process that involves three stages, where all the powerful ingredients from plants and herbs are extracted and the essence and life force of the plant is captured.
This method is a modern interpretation of the ancient ‘Spagyric’ process thought to have been originally invented by the Renaissance Physician and Alchemist Paracelsus in the 15th century.
‘Spagyric’ derives from the Greek words 'spao' and 'ageiro', roughly translating to ‘separate’ and ‘combine’. Sometimes called plant alchemy, this process involves separating the three basic principles of a plant (essential oils, organic liquid extract and mineral salts), then reuniting them to create a form more potent than the original plant. Within alchemy this was considered a more spiritual and holistic way of creating plant-based medicines, with the belief that the plant’s essential oils are the plant’s soul, the percolated liquid is the plant’s mind and the mineral salts are the plant’s body.
Jurlique co-founder Jurgen Klein took these principles and through taking advantage of modern science and equipment, modified it to create a method unique to Jurlique. It’s a process that’s been a part of Jurlique since we began in 1985 and we continue to use it today.
THE THREE-STEP BIO-INTRINSIC™ PROCESS
This isn’t a quick fix, done in a large laboratory. It can take up to a week for a plant to go through the three steps of Bio-Intrinsic™ extraction and the whole process is all done by hand by just two people at our Farm.
Step 1: Purification
The first stage of the process is Purification, which involves steam distillation - steaming our dried herbs to gently lift and release their delicate essential oils, nutrients and liquids.
Step 2: Intensification
This stage involves percolation (the process of a liquid slowly passing through a filter). The wet herb and condensate from the distillation are combined with a liquid solvent mixture, which is then circulated through the herb bed for a period of one to two days. Out comes a percolated liquid made up of the plants’ compounds.
Step 3: Ashing
The final stage of the extraction involves drying the plant material used in step two and burning it to an ash to capture their bare trace minerals and salts that are so important in our products. We then mix the raw ash with water and natural citric acid heated to 80°C and stir it for an hour to allow the water to absorb the minerals and salts. We pass it through a very fine filter and out comes a clear liquid we call ash extract.
The extracts from all three steps are then combined.
THE BENEFITS OF THE BIO-INTRINSIC™ METHOD
At Jurlique, we believe that the whole plant is always greater than the sum of its parts. Through the Bio-Intrinsic™ method, all parts of the plant (mind, body and soul) are reunited, and the active ingredients and antioxidants are delivered to the skin. These extracts create a final product of magnified intensity, powerful enough to enhance the beauty and healthy look of the skin.
*Certified biodynamic by the National Association for Sustainable Agriculture, Australia. Jurlique’s products and farm are not certified of affiliated with Demeter® USA or Demeter International.