ALME SOAPS
April 15, 2022 / FW LUXE / by: Kristyn Truong
Creative handmade soaps made with love. Alme Soaps are not only mesmerizing on the outside but their contents are pure and organic natural ingredients. The soap blends are vegan friendly with the help of using natural essential oils to provide a rich blend of diverse scents. The soaps are made by the cold press method, which does not contain any added chemical detergent that will strip natural oils or irritate your skin.
The creator of these beautiful creations is Francis van Wyk. She started her love for soaps when she stumbled on a youtube video about making organic soaps. This was the beginning of her new journey. It started off as a new hobby that she decided to try and shared her creations with friends and family. Francis has her Master's degree in Chemistry, so that was definitely helpful when she decided to experiment with unique blends of essential oils and scents, which ultimately led her to sell her handmade soaps at markets and fairs.
Francis received overwhelming feedback from her community, where they genuinely loved her products' quality and still had the benefits of store-bought soap. She decided to take on the opportunity to launch Alme Soaps in Qatar right before the pandemic hit, which alternatively increased her sales as people wanted environmentally friendly and healthy alternative soaps for their skin.
The base soaps contain a combination of plant-based oils: olive oil, castor oil, organic coconut oil and organic shea butter. These ingredients have remarkable benefits keeping the skin moisturized and silky soft. To add to the oils, she then proceeds to add additional oils like avocado oil, sweet almond oil, argan oil etc. to create specific soap properties. During the process of soap making; the oils are mixed with lye and water to create a soap mixture that is put in a mould to go through a process called saponification. This process takes about 24-48 hours. With this method, the soaps are cured for 4-6 weeks, ensuring pristine quality and moisturizing soaps.
Francis believes that everyone can play a small part to be eco-conscious and use sustainable alternatives to preserve our environment and planet for future generations. As a start, the ingredients used are 100% natural, eco-friendly and biodegradable, so that everything will naturally decompose and will not disturb environmental cycles. The same goes for her using sustainable packaging that is super cute.
““As people become more and more environmentally conscious, it is important for businesses to move away from single-use plastic packaging. At Almé Soaps we try to do our part by using mostly paper-based packaging and labelling for all our products.” ”
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