Video: Irish beef cattle producing key ingredient for new skincare range
While Irish beef cattle are known worldwide for their high quality and green image, their role in producing skincare products may be less well known.
Agriland recently paid a visit to a new start-up company based in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford that uses a product derived from Irish beef cattle as the key ingredient in their new skincare range.
Mihael Sanko is the founder of Ancestral Cosmetics, a new premium skincare range using beef tallow as the key ingredient.
He explained to Agriland what the brand is and how it came about.
Mihael said: "Ancestral Cosmetics is a natural brand making cosmetics from beef fat here in Ireland.
"We use the pure Irish beef fat that we process here in-house to make products like face cream, body creams, deodorants, and other skincare products."
Mihael said that the business venture started in 2023 in the kitchen of their house with the help of his wife and four kids.
"We started just making products for our family and then we saw this as an opportunity," the Ancestral Cosmetics founder said.
"I think the big step for us was when we discovered beef tallow - or beef fat - as an ingredient that you can actually use in face creams."
"Tallow is very compatible with human skin, and it's been used in skincare for thousands of years.
"We said 'Ireland has the best beef, Ireland has one of the highest-quality beef fats in the world, and beef and meat in general' so we asked ourselves, 'Why is no one doing the skincare from this high-quality beef tallow?'
"So we decided to start with that and one thing led to another."
He said that the business idea "started to turn from a kind of a side hustle, more into a business".
With just two people working in the business at the start, the huge level of interest in the market has seen their workforce now grow to over 20 staff.
"So we started making more and more, as much as we could in the house, but eventually we overgrew the kitchen, and we had to get a proper facility," Mihael added.
In 2024, Ancestral Cosmetics started employing people and created a company, which is how the business has got to where it is today.
Mihael said: "Tallow is very similar to human skin, which makes it very compatible as a skincare ingredient.
"100 years ago, most of the soaps and creams would have been made from tallow, and in the last 50 years or so, it kind of went away to more plant-based ingredients and plant-based products.
"But right now, tallow is becoming more and more popular because people are interested in what older generations of people used."
All products produced by Ancestral Cosmetics are hand-made.
The process begins with beef fat sourced from beef cattle produced on local farms.
Mihael explained: "Essentially, what comes in is raw fat which we then process. We do it in a way that we remove all the impurities from the fat. We melt the fat here and we create tallow and then the tallow is our main ingredient.
"We combine it with products like beeswax, Irish honey, olive oil, and other ingredients to create different types of products. We create everything here in house.
"Everything is handmade and every step of the process is completed by hand. We still try to make it the same way I did in our kitchen back in 2023 - just at a bigger scale."
Mihael believes that the beef tallow sourced from Irish cattle is unique because of the predominantly grass-fed diet of Irish cattle.
He said: "The fat stores nutrients but it can store toxins as well, so the diet of the cow is very important. Grass-fed cows are much higher quality - as they are for meat and for consuming - the same thing goes for the fat.
"That's why I think Irish beef fat is amongst the top in the world when it comes to quality, and that's why we are delighted to be in Ireland and to be able to make the product here."
