The Business Times, Weekend Edition, Singapore (January 22-23, 2005) The benefits of green tea have been tricking its way into personal care and beauty products, through a course, tea-drinking is still the most common way in cancer-preventing, antioxidant-boosting, hypertension-lowering, are absorbed into the body.

While the uses of green tea, in its water-soluble form, are being increasingly exploited, a Japanese researcher has discovered how to make green tea catechins oil-soluble.

Catechins oil-soluble, according to Japan-based Motoji Hashiba, 43, are supposed to be stable than the water-soluble version which oxidizes faster. He's the senior product development manager with the international Make Life Better corporation, represented in Singapore by Unicity.

Catechins is a kind of tannin found in green tea leaves, which has 100 times more antioxidants than Vitamin C, 25 more times Vitamin E and twice the benefits found in red wine.

"Because catechins are normally water-soluble, I guess nobody has thought of extracting it by oil before," he says when asked how he came about developing the patent process he calls CoCo Green.

Basically the process of extracting oil-based catechins follows the same process of water-based catechins. The green tea leaves are steamed, dried and grounded into powder. But while the water yields the water-soluble catechins, to get the oil-soluble catechins, the oil is extracted with the use of medium chain triglycerides.

The extraction process is 10 times more difficult compared to water-soluble catechins, says Mr. Hashiba. The water-soluble catechins are then blended with jojoba oil, squalane from olive oil and natural Vitamin E, to make Green Tea Oil.

The oil has the natural green color and a green tea fragrance as no other fragrances are added to the oil. Because jojoba is used as the carrier oil, the absorption rate is high, and technically the oil-soluble catechins can then penetrate through the skin's lower layers to give moisture and elasticity.

The latest research on catechins show that they have fat burning qualities, while its antibacterial, and antioxidant are well established.

To users have attested to the efficacy of Green Tea Oil, says Caberline Keok, the aesthetician & product consultant for Unicity Singapore. The anecdote recommendations including using the oil to eliminate foot odor, relieving sunburn, and impetigo (a skin infection caused by bacteria), moisturizing atopic dry skin, even fading away spots and freckles.

Users have even applied the oil on pimples and insect bites, and for waistline reduction. But the results are anecdotal for now, with no clinical evidence.

Selling at S$76 for an 80ml bottle, the steep price is due probably to exclusivity of the product. Certain claims of its usefulness however, such as moisturizing the hair, can also be attributed to the jojoba oil (which is also rather pricey) rather than catechins.

With oil-soluble catechins, this now enables even more ways of using green tea so it will be interesting to see what kind of catechin-enhanced products will flow into the health and beauty market in the future.

For queries and distribution, please call Unicity Singapore at +65-6733-3266.

Please click to download the English newspaper version, Chinese newspaper and English Magazine version of these Press Release.