Tea Tree Oil — from our farm gate to you
Our tea trees grow where their ancestral roots lie — the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Australia, the birthplace of Melaleuca Alternifolia.
Naturally occurring on the verge of swamp land in sub-tropical climates, our tea tree orchards are set in wet, low lying environments replicating ideal growing conditions for this native shrub.
In Australia, tea tree orchards range in location from the mid-coast New South Wales to south east Queensland, up into its northern regions.
While there is an increasing supply of tea tree oil available from other parts of the world, only tea tree oil produced in Australia can be audited under and certified as compliant with the stringent ATTIA Code of Practice. This regulatory requirement means the oil being sold from Australia is of the purest, highest standard on the market.
How it’s grown and picked
Tea trees are grown from seed, a process carried out in specialist nurseries. It takes 3-6 months before the trees are mature enough to be transferred to the field.
Our orchards are planted out at around 25,000 trees per hectare, to create a dense area, filled with leaf.
We keep our fields mostly clear of grasses and weeds by using livestock — they don’t like tea tree so leave it alone.
At harvest time, the trees are around six foot and cut-off almost at ground level. This sounds serious but these amazing trees grow back to be full size again by the following year.
Despite its flourishing prowess, once distilled, each tree will yield less than a teaspoon of oil, which makes them one of the hardest working trees around.
Harvesting and processing
ATTOX farms harvest annually in the dryer months of the year (July-October in our part of Australia), cutting the trees off close to the ground and mulching the biomass.
The entire biomass is then moved through a steam distillation process. The steam penetrates and passes through the leaf carrying the tea tree oil with it. It then travels through a heat exchange where it is cooled to form a liquid. As oil is lighter than water, the tea tree oil floats to the top.
It is skimmed off and after filtering and additional separation processes, the oil is ready for market.
The remaining tree tea biomass is put to good use. Highly desired as a quality mulch product by the local gardening fraternity, much of it is also returned to the ATTOX orchards to give back to the soil that gave to it.
A naturally good exchange — something we know all about here at ATTOX.
