Sea Buckthorn is a very sturdy plant which adapted to various rough conditions across the world. In Europe you can find it from the cold and sun delicate wild areas of Sweden to Romania's extreme summer-winter differences.

The fruits have been used extensively as health improving food over the centuries but, recently, there is more and more interest into scientifically studying its benefits for both internal use and cosmetic use. The results are astonishing and they reveal a great potential to this antioxidant rich fruit. Sea Buckthorn is making its entrance to the superfood, antioxidant rich industry.

One specific and unusual fact about Sea Buckthorn is that this plant produces two types of fixed (fatty) oils at the same time. Both can be extracted by cold pressing, one from pressing its dry berries and the other by pressing its seeds. This can also be found in Avocado and just a few less known plants.

Sea Buckthorn fruit oil is very rich in beta-carotene (provitamin A) and Palmitoleic acid (a very important skincare Omega-7 acid). It actually contains so much beta-carotene that it has a dark orange colour after we press it at Wild Carpathia Organics. The seed oil contains less beta-carotene because we wash the seeds before pressing but it is very rich in Alpha-linolenic (Omega-3) and Linoleic (Omega-6) instead. Customers are asking us why can't we extract both fruit and seed oil at the same time by pressing whole dry berries. Technologically this is not possible due to the density difference between seed and pulp. When pressing the whole berries, we extract the oil but the seeds remain intact in the resulting cake. We always cold press seeds separately to extract their precious fixed oil.

Both Sea Buckthorn fruit and seed oils are very complex and they are packed with almost 200 bioactive constituents including fatty acids, vitamins, phytosterols, antioxidants, flavonoids, fruit acids, phenolic compounds, mineral salts, tannins, pectins, amino acids, sugars, etc. No wonder they get more and more attention from the cosmetic industry!