Welcome to Lanocare

The seeds of Lanocare were sewn some 18 months ago when we first became aware of the unique properties of Lanolin and how it can be used as a lubricator and rust inhibitor.  In fact this was nothing new.  Lanolin has been used for that very purpose for hundreds of years and some simple market research revealed a number of commercially available rust proofing products in the UK and Worldwide based on lanolin.

However deeper analysis of these products did reveal a concern.  Whilst many purport to be environmentally friendly, their green credentials are in fact questionable.  Often they are based on Naphtha or other hydrocarbon compounds derived directly or indirectly from crude oil.  By definition use of fossil fuels as a basis for these products is not sustainable.  What’s more concerning is that in so doing carbon is released into the atmosphere that would have otherwise been locked away in the ground from prehistoric times.

We thought there was a better solution and set about trying to find it. Working with specialist chemists, we set a simple brief – to create a product that will outperform the competition and is made solely from ingredients that are renewable.   Lanolin which is derived from sheep wool is pretty straight forward and we were able to specify a form of it that is created as a waste product of another industrial process.  The rest of the ingredients where a little more tricky!  With perseverance and lots of false starts we were eventually able to solve the problem and create a product that is truly sustainable.

The ingredients used in Lanocare are extracted from a wide range of commonly grown crops – none are mined or extracted directly or indirectly from petro-chemicals.  Being crop based, Lanocare is fully sustainable and does not consume resources that cannot be replaced.  Moreover, the crops used in its manufacture actually absorb carbon from the atmosphere as they grow.  Clearly this is not the whole picture and there are number of elements in the supply chain which have carbon foot prints.  It is, however, a good start and Lanocare is working closely with its partners to help address these other elements.  We will share more information on this work in other posts.

The environmental concern however was just one side of the coin.  The other was that our products had to perform and they do.  Independent corrosion tests confirm Lanocare to be ahead of the game as a natural rust inhibition and lubricator.   Indeed, both our spray and grease outlast their main competitors with our LG40 grease showing no detectible deterioration even after 1,000 hours of continuous salt spray. 

LS20 spray and LG40 grease are the first of a suite of lanolin based products we will be launching.  Development on the next one is well underway and we look forward to announcing its launch.