If you have looked into using essential oils, you have probably noticed that essential oils are quite expensive.
Essential oils are becoming more and more popular, but the pricing only continues to go up.
There are many reasons behind the fact that essential oils are continuing to increase in price.
Here are the top ten reasons essential oils are so expensive.
Why Are Essential Oils So Expensive?
1. Therapeutic Value
Essential oils provide therapeutic value, and that is a major reason they are so expensive.
People like to use plant-based products to help them improve their health and wellness.
With essential oils, you can alleviate some of your difficult health symptoms simply by adding these into your life.
There are various health issues you may have which essential oils can help you with.
Essential oils have been known to help with stress and anxiety.
Considering most people have plenty of stress and anxiety in their lives, this is an excellent benefit of the oils.
Of course, there are medications available for those with stress and anxiety, but they have some side effects some people won’t want to deal with.
With essential oils, you won’t have to worry about this as much.
Another reason people use essential oils is to help with headaches and migraines.
Headaches and migraines can be debilitating.
They can leave people unable to work or function all that well.
Some find that using peppermint oil can help to get rid of these headaches.
Another very common use for essential oils is for sleep and insomnia.
When you suffer with sleep troubles and insomnia, you will start to experience even more health issues.
Luckily, there are some studies showing that lavender oil can help people who lack sleep.
Of course, with essential oils, most of the results of these studies are not proven.
They are more just recommendations, but many people are finding them to be beneficial.
Inflammation is something that can also cause even more health issues in people.
There are studies being done which show that rosemary oils are helping with inflammation.
Inflammation can be a difficult thing to fix without the use of medication.
You will have to be patient and see if the essential oils are actually working to help you feel better.
2. Storage
Not only do you need large fields to grow the plants to be used in the essential oils, but you will also need room to store everything.
Once the plants are harvested, they are not going to be able to get warm.
Although an essential oil manufacturer will sometimes dry out a plant, they need things fresh when they are received.
This means they will need to make sure they have cold storage, just like a flower distributor would need to have.
This type of storage is costly not just to build but to maintain as well.
The cold storage units need to have access to electricity, and considering the thousands of plants that will need to be stored on a daily basis, this is going to add considerable cost.
The shelf life of a plant used in an essential oil is going to be very similar to the shelf life of a vegetable or fruit that is grown.
The sooner it can get in the end user’s hands, the better it is for everyone involved.
3. Shipment
As we have mentioned, not all essential oil sellers are the ones who are actually manufacturing it.
The more times you need to ship a product, the more expensive it is going to be.
For instance, if a farmer grows plants for essential oils, he will then need to ship them to the essential oil manufacturer.
Once the manufacturer makes the product, it then needs to be shipped out directly to the client or to a retailer.
Each time the essential oil needs to be transported, you are going to see an additional cost added to the product.
The best possible solution is to find a local manufacturer who grows and produces their own essential oils.
Not only will you likely get a better deal, but you are going to be supporting local business as well.
These are two very good benefits to finding a local shop to purchase from.
4. Pure vs. Fake
Unfortunately, there are many essential oils out there that claim to be real, but they are not.
Real essential oils are pure plant products.
Fake essential oils may have some plant product in them, but then they will be mixed with other ingredients.
As soon as you mix with other ingredients, the essential oil has filler in it, and it will not be nearly as good as the pure product.
It can be difficult to tell what a pure essential oil is and what is fake.
Companies are having to spend more and more money on packaging and solutions to make sure people know their product is real.
These added costs are, unfortunately, coming back to the consumer.
However, knowing you have a product in your hand that is a pure essential oil should give you some peace of mind regarding the product and why it is good for you.
5. Difficult Plants to Grow and Maintain
There are lots of different types of plants that are used for essential oils.
You have probably heard of some of the major ones like lavender and lemon, but there are many more.
Some of these plants are easier to grow and maintain than others.
If you end up purchasing an essential oil made from a plant that was difficult to grow, chances are you will spend quite a bit more money.
Some of the different types of plants used to create essential oils include the following:
- Lavender
- Rose
- Chamomile
- Peppermint
- Sandalwood
- Tea Tree
- Jasmine
- Lemon
- Bergamot
Not all farmers are going to be able to produce and grow all of these plants.
Therefore, if you want to start extracting essential oils, you are going to have to deal with a number of different suppliers.
Since these suppliers will be located in all different areas of the world, they are going to have to ship their product.
These steps will increase the cost of the essential oils and cause the end retailer to charge more and more.
As you will see, when we talk about essential oil yields, you need thousands of plants just to get a single bottle of oil.
Although essential oils are expensive, when you think of the fact that there are thousands of plants in one small bottle, the pricing may make a bit more sense to you.
6. Part of the Plant Extracted
Not all parts of the plant are used in the making of essential oils.
Depending on the type or part of the plant which is used, you will notice that the pricing of the essential oils can differ.
For instance, something extracted from the leaves of a plant can be less expensive than something extracted from tree bark.
Some people will only want these products that are extracted from leaves, and others will want bark.
You will notice, however, that the pricing varies considerably based on the part of the plant used.
The reality is that most of the extraction process is quite expensive, and that is what leads to the higher costs of essential oils.
However, think about having to get oil out of bark as opposed to out of a leaf.
As you can imagine, the process is going to be much more complicated.
Also, as the extraction process gets more difficult and costly, so does the popularity of the product.
These products that are hard to produce and extract are often considered a specialty, and therefore, they will be quite a bit of money to purchase.
7. Certified Organic
Sometimes when you are shopping for essential oils, you will see that some are listed as being certified organic.
A certified organic essential oil is undoubtedly going to be priced higher than the conventional counterpart.
As we have mentioned, the difficulty of growing some of the plants for essential oils can be quite high.
When you add in that the plants are certified organic, the pricing can certainly reach another level.
To earn the distinction of certified organic, there are a lot of steps and a lot of work involved.
The steps include having certain products inspected, ensuring that there are no chemicals or pesticides used, and ensuring the harvesting process remains organic.
For a product to make it as a certified organic material, there is quite a bit of work involved.
Most of the time, people who are interested in certified organic products know that these products are considerably more expensive than others.
8. Overhead
Just like any other business, there is quite a bit of overhead in an essential oil business.
Many of these operations are small scale operations.
What happens with smaller scale businesses is that they will feel the impact of a price change, market change, or crop change in a much different way than a large-scale operation.
The overhead includes things like land, taxes, rent, employees, insurance, marketing, and more.
Although essential oils are very popular, and people are continually looking for new and better ones, individual businesses will still need to market.
The marketing will include creating labels and packaging which appeal to people and are recognizable as well.
The overhead is also going to include the machines and equipment needed to properly extract the essential oils.
Some essential oil businesses are purchasing their plant matter from farmers and then harvesting the oil themselves.
Others are full-scale operations that will grow, harvest, and then process the material on their own.
Whatever type of essential oil business you support, you will notice that there are quite a few overhead costs involved.
These costs allow businesses to keep their doors open.
Without them, you would not have any essential oil to use.
9. Method of Extraction
When the plants are grown and then harvested, the essential oils will have to then be extracted.
If you don’t know much about essential oils, you may not understand that this process is quite involved.
Many essential oils are steam distilled, while others are cold pressed.
There is a lot of science behind this process, and for many years, it was thought that citrus oils should be cold pressed.
The steam-distilled citrus oils are starting to become popular and gain more traction.
The process is, of course, a bit more complicated, so they are more expensive as well.
When you look at purchasing essential oils, you will see that there is often a price difference between the steam distilled and the solvent extract absolute.
The steam distilled generally costs a little more than the absolute because it has to go through a lengthier process when it is being made.
Make sure that you understand the different methods of extraction and how this is going to impact your use of the essential oils.
10. Essential Oil Yields
Essential oil yields are quite low.
This becomes a serious problem for the environment, as well.
If we want to maintain the health of our environment and still create essential oils, the price should remain high.
These should be considered a bit of a luxury as opposed to a commonplace purchase.
To give you a better idea as to why essential oil yields are an issue, let’s take a look at a Rose Essential Oil.
To get just a single drop of an oil like this, you would need petals from about 40 roses.
This is an incredible amount of plant material to only yield a few drops.
Clearly, this is an issue, and one that will have to be closely monitored as the popularity of essential oils grows.
The cost to grow enough plant material to create a bottle or two of essential oil is incredibly high.
To keep up with supply and demand, farmers need massive plots of land and lots of access to natural resources as well.
Certainly, there are some plant products that will not be a good choice for producing essential oils.
The process is going to take way too many plants just to produce one bottle of the essential oil, and therefore it is deemed to be unprofitable.
Navigating the world of essential oils and what it takes to grow, produce, and store them is undoubtedly a difficult one.
Conclusion
Hopefully, you can now see why the essential oils are so expensive.
The process of getting these oils grown, extracted, and shipped to you is quite extensive.
There are many people who have their hands in the process, and each of them needs to be paid accordingly.
The next time you think about complaining about the price of essential oil, try to imagine the fact that it took thousands of plants to produce your one bottle.
This is also why essential oils should be used with caution and used efficiently.
Make sure you are only using the minimum amount needed.
Essential oils should last you quite a bit of time as they are traditionally very potent, and you will get a lot of use for the money you spend.
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