The story of Young Living’s essential oils begins in greenhouses, where herbs like peppermint, spearmint, clary sage, melissa, thyme, Roman chamomile, and lavender are planted. The herb “starts” (young plants) are nurtured under regulated humidity and temperature levels to encourage optimal growth. The greenhouses have a two-tiered planting system that allows them to accommodate 4 million plants at once! When plants reach a height of about 2 inches, they are placed in "hardening houses" where they can adjust to the outside climate slowly, increasing their chance of survival. The herbs are then planted in the Young Living fields.


In the fields, the Young Living herbs thrive in rich soil and are watered by a solar-powered linear sprinkler system. Because Young Living employs organic farming practices, they don't use pesticides or commercial herbicides on their plants.

To keep weeds in check, workers use a natural blend of oils including pine oil and cinnamon. In late July, harvesting begins. After the crop is cut by a harvesting machine called a swather, the foliage is processed by a hay chopper and loaded into a waiting truck or wagon. From here they are taken to the nearby distillery.


At the distillery, herbs freshly harvested from the fields are loaded into large vessels and steamed to extract their fragrant essential oils. To protect the high quality of the oils, Young Living uses low-pressure, low-heat technology. Their specially designed stainless-steel vertical distillers are a proprietary design patterned after ancient distillation practices used in Europe, India and Egypt.

The distillation process begins with softened, purified water evaporated in two gigantic boilers. The hot steam passes through control valves into stainless steel vessels, which hold up to 12,500 litres of fresh herbs. The valves are monitored to ensure that the proper amount of steam is released for the particular herb being distilled.

At zero pounds of pressure, steam rises slowly through the densely packed raw material, heating the herbs uniformly. The plants release essential oils, which are carried upward in the rising steam. Care must be taken to avoid overheating, which can burn the oil and release unwanted byproducts.

The resulting steam/oil mixture is captured in the top of the vessel and piped directly into a condenser, where large amounts of cold water cool the tubes, allowing the steam to condense. Gravity does the rest of the work. In a device called a separator, the oil floats to the top and is easily drawn off the water surface. The men working the distillery know the batch is finished when oil ceases to accumulate. The essential oils are then poured into glass-lined containers and transported to their processing centre where the oils are packaged in protective amber glass bottles.

Similar to a home garden where each plant yields a different amount of fruit, each batch of essential oils yields differing quantities of oil - even when the crop harvest, plant maturity, and moisture content are the same.

Once the essential oils are distilled, they are carefully tested for purity, and samples are sent to independent laboratories in order to verify results.

By paying such meticulous attention to the harvesting and distillation of their organically grown herbs, Young Living is able to produce one of the finest therapeutic-grade essential oils available in the world today.

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