Essential oil extractor developed for Tarlac folk

People of Anao, the smallest town of Tarlac, have reason to be happy these days.

An essential oil extractor has been specially designed for them to boost the town’ booming ylang ylang (Cananga odorata) industry.

Although small in area (2,500 hectares), Anao can boast of a profitable essential plant oil business.

Consider: about 10,000 ylang ylang ("ilang-ilang" in Filipino) dominate the town’s landscape.

(Ylang ylang, often dubbed as "the world’s most relaxing essence," is one of the most valued of the aromatic oils, not only because of its delicate fragrance but also for its therapeutic properties.)

The transformation of Anao into "ylang ylang country" began in 1989 when the local government initiated the establishment of plantations of the cash crop to augment the people’s meager income from rice and corn.

In no time, the residents were planting seedlings in their backyards and helping care for the trees and government had planted in public orchards. They harvested the first mature blooms five years later and sold these to the Anao Ylang Ylang Primary Cooperative, which operated an oil extraction plant.

In turn, the oil was sold to Bioessence, a major beauty products and spa company. To this day, Bioessence is the cooperative’s sole buyer.

Cooperative president Rogelio Felipe said the town’s ylang ylang trees produce annually 2,400 kilograms of flowers, which yield 27 liters of oil valued at P10,000 per liter.

Things further brightened when the Los Baños-based Department of Science and Technology-Forest Products Research and Development Institute (DOST-FPRDI) developed a 100-kg capacity steam distillation machine for the cooperative.

"This is an improvement on our old oil extractor," Felipe said, as quoted by FPRDI’s Rizalina Araral. "It uses less wood fuel and requires only one operator instead of the usual three, because it has a lifter that makes it easier and safer to load and unload the flowers in the trays and into the machine."

FPRDI engineer Belen Bisana also said: "The FPRDI unit consumes less water and yields more oil than the old one. With the improvement, there is an overall increase in net profit of about P1,300 per batch of flowers processed." – RAF