Pioneered by our team, the unique supercritical extraction process of Totarol™ means no living Tōtara trees are touched. Totarol™ can be extracted from dead heartwood, negating the need to cut down live trees. In fact, in the beginning, Totarol™ was sometimes sourced from old fence posts, wharf piles, and foundation blocks but nowadays we source only from fallen Tōtara trees from the forest bed. The fallen Tōtara is abundant throughout New Zealand, meaning the stock is almost infinite.

This group were intrigued by the fact that Tōtara wood was used for Maōri carvings, canoes and fortification, and by early European settlers as a building material, and seemed to survive environmental attacks and degradation. The Tōtara wood had proved to be virtually unblemished after hundreds of years of use. After in-depth testing, it was discovered that the Bioactive Totarol™ located in the heartwood of the tree was the magic ingredient at play. Hyperganic Biogroup (formally Mende Biotech) was formed in the late 1990s to harness this unique New Zealand ingredient and commercialise its amazing properties, for use across personal care, and human and animal health.