A lemon myrtle farm in Far North Queensland has retooled its entire operation to meet the growing demand for hand sanitiser and cleaning products in the wake of coronavirus.

Lemon myrtle has natural antibacterial, antifungal and antimicrobial properties. To keep up with a spike in customer enquiries, Australia’s largest producer, Australian Native Products, has shifted its entire Mareeba production from turning 95% of its harvested lemon myrtle into dried leaves to distilling 100% of the crop into lemon myrtle essential oil.

Lemon myrtle essential oil can then be used as a natural antibacterial in hand sanitiser and cleaning products. The farm expects to produce more than 300kg of lemon myrtle oil between now and June.

CEO James Gosper can discuss the installation of the new still and how the farm has reworked its entire crop away from drying to distilling. As a whole, the company is working to make use of the bi-products of lemon myrtle. They have developed manufacturing processes to extract hydrosol from the plant which can be used in fragrances, as well as microfibre which they hope to market into body scrubs and cosmetics.