At Siprès, we use only first cold-pressed vegetable oils made from French and Belgian plants.
Vegetable oils are highly valuable for skincare because they penetrate deeply. They help support the skin’s barrier function. They help preserve skin suppleness, maintain comfort and visibly improve radiance.
100% NATURAL VEGETABLE OILS
The oils used in Siprès skincare products are exclusively vegetable oils obtained by cold grinding seeds, pits or nuts. They are not diluted and contain no additives or preservatives.
It is important to distinguish vegetable oils plant-derived from mineral oils petrochemical derivatives.
In addition to being an ecological disaster non-biodegradable ingredients with a high carbon footprint, mineral oils are also bad news for your skin. They give the impression of hydrated skin by creating an occlusive film and therefore limiting natural water loss. In reality, they clog pores creating blemishes and blackheads and do not nourish your skin at all they are inert fatty substances. Their advantages : they are cheap and stable.
You can easily recognise mineral oils in the ingredient list of your cosmetics. They are often found among the first ingredients and under names such as paraffine liquidum, petrolatum, mineral oil, cera microcristallina and so on. Get into the habit of checking the ingredient list called the INCI list of your cosmetics and hygiene products: most conventional cosmetics from the most basic to the most luxurious contain mineral oils. When an ingredient appears in Latin in the INCI list, it is generally a plant extract.
FIRST COLD-PRESSED OILS
All our vegetable oils are “first cold-pressed”. This means they are obtained through a mechanical pressing process, without heating at high temperatures.
This oil extraction process is the only one that guarantees oils that have retained all their qualities in essential fatty acids omega-3 and 6, non-essential fatty acids omega-9 and unsaponifiables vitamins, antioxidants and so on. These are therefore oils of exceptional quality.
In most mass-market cosmetic products, if vegetable oils are used and more often mineral oils are used instead, the vegetable oils are not cold-pressed but hot-pressed. Extracting oil through high heat with refining, solvents and other chemical treatments allows higher yields and neutral products, without scent or colour, with good shelf life and therefore perfectly suited to the constraints of mass distribution. However, the temperatures used completely degrade essential fatty acids and vitamins. These refined oils therefore lose a significant part of their cosmetic and nutritional properties. You will easily understand that these hot-pressed oils also called “refined oils” are much less interesting for caring for your skin.
LOCAL OILS, FROM SHORT SUPPLY CHAINS
Siprès oils also guarantee vegetable oils that do not come from the other side of the world. They all come from plants grown and pressed in France and Belgium, by passionate farmers working on small farms using organic or responsible agriculture.
The local origin of a cosmetic’s raw materials is rare enough to be worth highlighting. Yes, when you read “made in France” or “made in Belgium” on your products, it does not necessarily mean that the ingredients they contain are local. In most cases, it simply means that the product was manufactured in France or Belgium using raw materials that may come from very far away and about which we know nothing, especially regarding the human and environmental conditions in which they were produced.