Jojoba oil – produced from the seed of the Simmondsia chinensis plant, native to Southern California and north-west Mexico – has long been touted for its stability and hydration properties, and Israeli manufacturer and supplier Jojoba Desert said these properties had risen in relevance.
With safety, stability and hydration top of the beauty agenda because of the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis, Dr. Anna Aharoni, R&D manager at Jojoba Desert, said jojoba oil was a strong choice for beauty manufacturers.
“Adding it to soaps and hand creams will be very significant because of the advantage of the moisturising properties of jojoba oil for our dry hands. I’m thinking about jojoba in this application – mainly for moisturisation, hydration and improvement of skin barrier,” Aharoni told CosmeticsDesign-Europe.
“…It’s a very good emollient; it soaks very well into the skin due to the structural similarity compared to human sebum. It provides good and deep hydration,” she said.
Whilst jojoba oil was not yet as widely used as argan oil, Aharoni said that, in time, the cosmetics industry would become more aware of the qualities of jojoba oil.
Highly stable with ability to stabilise other oils
Aharoni said jojoba oil had long been known for its stability – with a typical shelf life of around three years – and studies conducted by Jojoba Desert over the years had shown it to have a much higher oxidation stability compared to other vegetable oils like olive, sweet almond, argan and avocado.
“It’s about chemical structure,” she said. “…We know that jojoba oil contains some vitamins, like vitamin E, so probably the presence of vitamins inhibits the development of oxidation in the material.”
Findings from the company’s research also showed jojoba oil improved the stability of other vegetable oils when blended in at 10%; stability improved most for avocado oil, olive oil, argan and grapeseed oil.
This presented an interesting opportunity for beauty manufacturers to increase the shelf life of oil-based formulations that featured other oils as the dominant ingredient, Aharoni said.
Jojoba innovation – hair care complex launched
Whilst jojoba oil was most widely used in premium skin care, because of its higher cost, Aharoni said there was also potential to use the oil in hair care formulations, especially in blended form.
This month, Jojoba Desert launched a hair care complex created from a blend of jojoba oil and hemp seed oil for use in formulations to restore, condition and protect hair and scalp. The company said it could be used to create versatile rinse-off and leave-in hair care products that dealt with “most hair care woes”.
