In the aromatherapy market you will be familiar with the essential oil botanical name, as it is this botanical you are purchasing the oil from. Just because a bottle of essential oil may say ‘Lavender Oil’ you should be careful that you are first buying an essential oil and not a fragrance oil/blend and that it’s the correct botanical species to deliver the therapeutic properties you believe this oil will provide you with. In this case Lavandula angustifolia.

At a consumer level this can be confusing as many individuals are unaware of the industry that supports their aromatherapy beliefs and its close association with the flavour and fragrance markets where creativity is what sets one company apart from another. Perfumers and chemists alike are wizards at understanding what makes a particular odour and what constituents build a particular oil and with this same ‘creativity’ essential oils may not always be what it says on the label.

Checking is becoming more and more difficult as not only does technology help catch these ‘creative’ sellers but it also assists people in using the same technology against those trying to do the right thing. So how can you be confident as a consumer when there’s a multi-billion dollar market supporting this creativity for your premium priced product?

Actually that’s our first point – price! How is it one bottle of 10ml Lavender Oil can be one price and another be five times the price. It’s not always the case but it can be an early indication that you often get what you pay for!

If you find your lavender oil is the cheapest on the market then it probably isn’t lavender. It will smell like lavender, look like lavender and some unscrupulous marketing people will tell you all about the benefits of lavender on the label – but it won’t work. Why, because it isn’t lavender!

Finding a true botanical supplier can be hard as most brand owners do not have the luxury of producing their own oils from their own plantations and instead they buy their oil which has changed hands a number of times through the supply chain. With each transaction you run the risk of the essential oil becoming something else – maybe blended or diluted to go that little bit further or meet the expectations of the buyer that prices should always be lower.

Not even the largest aromatherapy brands can offer this reassurance (even if they say they do) so they must put their faith in a supplier who’s position in the market, and therefore their responsibility, is to grow, distil, test and supply the marketplace with pure, unadulterated, true botanical essential oils and this is what Ultra and our group of companies are here to do.

We don’t offer Essential Oil Grade 1,2,3 or A,B,C as we’ve seen them called. We don’t offer just ‘Natural’, ‘Reconstituted’, ‘WNO’ (with natural oils) or ‘Synthetics’. We have just one standard quality for each botanical and each origin and that is what comes directly from the distillers. Mother Nature gives us our oils, how it is supposed to be!