A Northland businesswoman will release a secret natural skin-care formula on the open market after shunning the chance of a multi-million dollar deal with an international cosmetic company.
Living Nature founder Suzanne Hall, of Kerikeri, has developed a natural preservative system for skin-care products which has attracted interest from Estee Lauder,as well as the internationally renowned Body Shop.
The system is free of chemicals and synthetics which are commonly added to skin-care products to stop mould growing.
Unlike some other products, Ms Hall's system does not contain parabens - preservaties which overseas research has linked to breast cancer tumours.
It was stumbled across by Ms Hall - a chemist and beauty therapist - after she produced a gel which contained flax gel, manuka honey and manuka oil.
Ms Hall likens the significance of the research to that in the 1950s which linked smoking and lung cancer.
Accordingly, Estee Lauder was extremely interested in her preservative system and approached Ms Hall last year following her visit to an American trade fair.
Talk of a multi-million dollar deal ensued, until Estee Lauder decided to try and crack Ms Hall's secret itself.
The company still had not worked it out, she said.
Instead of taking up the obvious opportunity to strike an exclusive deal and make millions of dollars, Ms Hall hopes to have formulas available commercially in about four months.
The decision to make the preservative system widely available was not difficult, as she had never been in the business for the money.
"If the world has got safe cosmetics ... that's what I'm about," she said.
Over the next few months, Ms Hall will develop different blends of the formula which companies can then apply to the various products they produce.
It is a complicated process which Ms Hall's recent busy schedule - "I haven't been in the lab for a month" - has not allowed her to complete.
"I've still got a lot of testing to do to make it commercially viable," she said.
The company employs 46 staff from its State Highway 10 Kerikeri base, and has an annual turnover of about $10 million, with a branch in the process of being established in the United Kingdom.
Already, Living Nature supplies about 2900 German health shops.
