Dubai \u2013 When you go to Dubai for business or vacation, the time to buy a souvenir for friends and family tends to be a moment of questionable choices. An unsuspecting tourist may end up taking a product made in China, Vietnam or Indonesia from the souvenir shops that offer a whole world of trinkets from magnets to card decks, decoration objects, shot glasses, stuffed animals, pens and t-shirts.<\/p>\n
The options of products made in the United Arab Emirates are few and turn out to be the best. One is the camel milk soap by The Camel Soap Factory (TCFS). Sold in the Duty Free, gift shops, and supermarkets, the product is sustainably handmade with local, natural, high-quality ingredients, with no chemicals or dyes, no palm oil, and zero waste.<\/p>\n
The soaps are beautiful and fragrant in the right measure; the Arab world usually has extremely intense scents \u2013 poor noses! Besides being a UAE-made gift, the soap is one licensed product of the Expo 2020 to start in October in Dubai.<\/p>\n
This ANBA reporter was in the camel milk soap factory in Dubai Silicon Oasis technology park last February and followed the soap manufacturing process. Founded in 2013, the company owned by South African expatriate Stevi Lowmass has grown by an average of 90% a year and can now produce 100,000 soaps a month.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a lovely product of the Middle East and one of the few products for tourists made in Dubai, and as far as we can they are made with local products, with a minimal environmental footprint,\u201d said the company\u2019s marketing manager Dave Esmonde-White, who accompanied ANBA during the tour.<\/p>\n
The main ingredient<\/strong><\/p>\n The frozen and pasteurized camel milk is delivered to the factory from a local farm around 80 kilometers away. \u201cWhen you think milk, you think cows, but the camel milk process is very different. The camels stay with their offspring, suckle them and, if the female camels aren’t happy, they don\u2019t produce any milk,\u201d White said. The milk is kept frozen for a health issue.<\/p>\n The idea to work with camel milk was Lowmass\u2019, who wanted to use a local, different product in her soaps. \u201cWe now know that the came milk makes wonders for the skin and general health. It\u2019s denser and saltier; it takes getting used to. When you think that the camel lives in an inhospitable environment, you get that the camel milk is full of nutrients, proteins, vitamins and minerals,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In addition to being great for the skin and health, the camel milk is good for those with cow milk allergies, too. \u201cThe cow milk has two proteins that can cause allergies, while the camel milk has none. They say the camel milk is considered the most similar to the human milk,\u201d White says.<\/p>\n The preparation<\/strong><\/p>\n The marketing manager said that the soap manufacturing process is like cooking or baking. The camel-milk base is mixed to vegetable oils in a specific manner. The soap bars have 25% to 30% if camel milk in their composition. The vegetable oils used are coconut oil, olive oil, shea butter, and more.<\/p>\n The entire process is manual. The mix is put into a mold as a large soap block. It rests for around a day until it hardens, and then it\u2019s manually cut into soap bars. The bars are stamped one by one with the camel logo and the batch goes to a resting room, where they remain for six weeks until they cool off and dry.<\/p>\n