Thirty-year-old Ferrah Reguia, has a bachelor’s degree in biology and two masters: a Euro-Maghreb master’s in process engineering, and one in life sciences and phototherapy. She justifies selecting these fields by saying that she is “very interested in the benefits of plants and their valorization in medicine and cosmetics.”
Her thesis subject in 2015 focused on the extraction and the valorization of prickly pear oil, during which, the idea of a green enterprise came to her mind.
“Seeing all these non-used plants in [my] region, I started my research to study the extraction capacity of this fruit and its health benefits,” says Reguia.
What she discovered reassured her main idea: this fruit offers multiple possibilities. The advantage of this fruit is that it can be entirely utilized, starting with the fruit, to the flowers, and the leaves. Reguia then started a process of extracting its vegetable oil, that is of interest for health and cosmetic sectors for its anti-aging and moisturizing properties of the skin as it is rich in essential fatty acids. The oil of prickly pears is extracted by applying cold pressure and without any chemical treatment.
It is also used to reduce the amount of waste that happens while extracting. What remains after the extraction can be easily transformed into seed meal, which is also used in the sectors of agro-food and cosmetics.