On Saturday, February 15, we celebrated the completion of a brand new distillery at our Highland Flats Tree Farm with a special ribbon-cutting ceremony. This new, state-of-the-art distillery is fully automated and uses the most advanced technology available, modernizing the essential oil production process to be more efficient and effective than ever!
Before the official ceremony took place, guests were treated to a first look at the new distillery during a personal tour led by Young Living Founder and CEO D. Gary Young. Gary explained how the distillery would streamline the distilling process.
After the tours, Gary and other Young Living leaders officially opened the distillery for use during the ribbon-cutting ceremony. To cap off the event, Gary led a discussion on the power and potential of essential oils. Many attendees remarked that they were inspired by Gary’s passion and expertise and by the new distillery’s cutting-edge technology.
Transcript by Deb
Hello. We’d like to welcome everybody to this special conference call straight from Highland Flats, Idaho, home of a brand new Young Living distillery. My name is Jared Turner. I’m the Chief Global Sales Officer for Young Living, and it has been a special treat for me personally to be able to witness seed to seal firsthand. Without further adieu, I’d like to pass the time and this call over to Gary Young. He’s got some words he’d like to share with the field, and we’ve got some special guests here with us as well. There’s a group of distributors from around the world who’ve shared in this experience including three Diamonds, Sherry LaMarsh, Savina Davida and Jim Powell. So Gary, without further adieu, I’ll turn this call over to you.
Thank you, Jared. It’s good to be with everybody this afternoon. It is fun here in the northern panhandle in Idaho. For those who are not familiar with where we are, if you look at a map, we’re 25 miles south of the Canadian border at a little location called Highland Flats near Naples, Idaho south of Bonner’s Ferry. It’s been snowing here the last three days. It’s been beautiful and it’s covering up the dirt and the mud. Of course, when the conifer trees get snow on them, those that have seen it know how beautiful it is. Those that have seen pictures always wish they could experience it. Well, your wishes could be fulfilled because all it requires is an airplane ticket and a phone call to let us know when to pick you up at the Spokane Airport. You can come and see it live for yourself and be part of one of the history-making times for Young Living.
It’s been quite remarkable since we have been building the operation out since early last summer, starting with building a reservoir for the containment of runoff water to provide water for he distillery, and then building the distillery in a different design and a whole different application than what we’ve had in the past because winter comes to the northern part of Idaho earlier in the Fall and leaves late in the Spring. We always work with the snow and cold, freezing rains. It makes it difficult to get the perfect conditions that I have always requested or desired to have, and that’s to be able to have dried chips to distill. This is our 16th year now of harvesting trees. For 15 years I’ve trucked the chips from the Highland Flats region here all the way to St. Mary’s, 125 miles and offload them onto an open cement pad that’s subject, naturally to the wind and the snow and the freezing rains and weather. We’ve distilled in St. Mary’s, and our coldest temperature we’ve distilled in down there over the past 15 years has been 26 below zero. The average temperatures the last 10 years have been around 0 – 10 below. That doesn’t last very long. We get about 3-4 days and nights of real cold; but then we’ll have several weeks of about 0- 10 above. This winter’s been quite mild. We had colder weather before Christmas, which was unusual for this part of our country. Since Christmas, it’s stayed above 10 degrees. We’ve had temperatures up as high as 36 degrees, and as I mentioned, we’ve had snow the last couple of days. We work out in the weather regardless.
The simple reason why we do this in the winter time is the trees manufacture oil in the winter time at a greater consistency and volume simply because the oil works like an antifreeze to the tree. You’ve heard me refer to oil as the blood of the plant, and truly it is. During the summer months, the oil goes down into the root system of the tree to help absorb and convert the minerals and nutrients that come in through the roots. Then, it sends that through the veins in the trunk to co-mingle with the carbon dioxide in the air and the sunlight, the electromagnetic energy from the sun to help produce oil during the summer; but it’s a very small amount. The oil’s responsibility is for feeding the tree and preserving the tree just like we tell you the oil works for the immune system for the plant. The oil is a preservation agent for the tree. So, in the winter time, the oil migrates from the roots up the trunk of the tree, into the limbs and branches and out into the needles. It literally does prevent the tree from freezing and exploding through the cold months of the winter. The tree will produce much more oil during the winter months than during the fall, spring or summer months. It does make it a little more difficult when you’re battling with freezing cold, not only because a lot of bodies don’t like being out in the cold. Equipment breaks down much more frequently in the cold than it does in the summer time. That tests a man’s patience when he has to lay under his equipment at 20 below and put a track back on. We’ve done that multiple times in the past. That’s part of it.
Why did I build the distillery here? It’s been a large undertaking. One of the reasons is that I designed it different. I wanted to build completely enclosed all parts of the installation, meaning that where we unload the chips. Right now we have a truck bay that’s 52 ft. wide and 85 ft. long with a 16 ft. ceiling that is completely insulated and heated, the first ever to be built in the world of its kind where I can back the semi in and unload on a heated floor. The cement floor, which is 8 in. of concrete has 2 in. of Styrofoam underneath it, and between the Styrofoam and the concrete are hydronic tubes that liquid mix antifreeze and propylene glycol is pumped through these tubes that coil through the floor and produce temperatures up to 80 deg. It radiates up through the chips keeping the chips warm, but the main reason is to melt the ice and the snow out of the chips. Then we’ve got big steam fans overhead that blow steam the full length of the 85 ft. truck bay plus the condensing and distillation area that keeps the room actually quite warm. That was for the purpose of just getting the chips dryer, bringing them up to ambient temperature because when we’re distilling chips at 20 below, they’re going into a stainless steel container. Then we put 280 deg. of steam to it and it creates a lot of reflux or condensate in the bottom of the cooker. It takes longer for the steam to break through the chambers. It’s been amazing because we started distilling Ponderosa Pine yesterday. We’ll let some of our distributors share some of their feelings about that. It’s the first time in history to my knowledge that Ponderosa Pine has been distilled. It’s the first time I’ve distilled it. I’ve always desired to, but we didn’t have it on our farm. One of the local neighbors wanted the land cleared, and that’s what we’re doing now. It has a lot of Ponderosa Pine, more mature trees. It’s been beautiful.
So, as we start distilling as we did yesterday, the steam broke through the chips and we had what we call passover. That’s when the steam and the vapors first come out of the top of the chips, come through the swan neck into the condenser. Then we have break which is when the oils break through the molecule pockets and actually comes into the condenser to the separator. That happened in 27 minutes yesterday where when we’ve distilled at St. Mary’s over the past 15 years, the quickest I’ve ever seen it come over has been and hour and 5 minutes. Average is generally an hour and 15 minutes. So the boiler has to work twice as hard at high fire, which burns 90-120 gallons of diesel an hour at $5.00 a gallon and people want to know why oils are expensive. We’re very excited because we’ve cut 40 minutes of high fire temperature off by having our chips warm and in a closed in environment where the kettles are also warm. They’re at ambient temperature of 70+ deg. It makes a huge difference. Its like we’re distilling in the summer time.
We’ve done some other things that are very exciting here at the Highland where we’re located that we would love to share with all of you and have all of you come and see because #1…not only have we built a distillery that’s very different and unique to the world in the sense that trucks can back in and unload in an closed in bay, the floors are heated, the bay floor is heated and the condensing floor is heated. We’ve also built out a full gymnasium attached to the distillery. We have cisterns underneath the gymnasium floor where the floor water goes into the cisterns where we can capture that for future products that are going to be I might say, coming at convention and you’ll just have to make a little note of that and wait until then. Then the floor water is pumped from there over to the camp into a beautiful gazebo with three hot tubs so the folks here can bathe in the floor water. We filled one hot tub last night with Ponderosa Pine and I’ve got to say that I was kind of disappointed last night. I went into the gazebo and there wasn’t a single person in the tub. I thought everybody would be in there last night bathing. You’ll have to ask them why they didn’t get in the tub last night and bathe in that beautiful floor water. Ponderosa Pine water is just absolutely spectacular.
Then we have a decanting room where we take the oils in and we do the filtering process. Then the oils go from there into what we call a batching chamber where they’re put into a big tank that has a slow agitator that rotates to stir the oils and mature them just like a fine wine. All stainless steel. During this time we pull samples right from the separator while we’re distilling as we did yesterday. Then we just walk right upstairs to the fourth, now I want you to remember this, the fourth Young Living laboratory. We have a laboratory in Ecuador many of you are familiar with. Naturally, the largest one is in Utah. We have one in St. Mary’s and now we have just built another laboratory here and equipped it with a beautiful GC dual column. All of the distributors here last night got to watch the new Ponderosa Oil being analyzed right while we were distilling. Pretty remarkable. We also did something else. We built a large training conference room right beside the lab for the Shivers so they can have classes of every kind. We set up the analytical laboratory with a large enough room that we had 14 or 15 people in it last night being trained in the chemistry of essential oils. Very, very exciting! All of this for all of you.
One more thing that we’re really excited about. We have built the first computer operated distillation system in the world here at highland. We actually have three things…a closed in distillery, completely encompassed. #2, we have the largest extraction chambers in the world here consisting of 21,000 per chamber and third, the computerized distillation system. I stated working on this project eight years ago. Finally, with the help of Sun Lee and our engineers in Young Living, they were able to take my dream and develop it into a reality. We’re extremely excited about this because as I go and tell the stories throughout the world, I can’t be everywhere to teach distillery operators how to listen to the sound, ramp the steam at the right time and maintain the right temperatures and pressures, going through the extraction chambers, the separators and condensers. We did do a prototype of the distillery in Utah and then we moved it here after getting it developed there.
So, those that come to the harvest this winter will get to see the first computerized distillery in the world. We’re pretty excited about it. So those are some of the things that we’re proud of and excited about. With that, now I’m going to turn it over to our distributors that are here and let them share with you their experiences here in the frozen north basking in the sun. We’ll hear first from one of our Diamonds, Savina Davida who journeyed here all the way from Toronto, Canada and braved the cold. So here’s Sabina.
My goodness, Gary that was quite a description. One of the first thoughts that occurred for me being out there with you watching the trees literally being chopped and then going through the chipper, yesterday was an experience for me operating that chipper. Totally a new experience being out there, and I just marveled at every single step of what you have orchestrated in order to produce this little bottle of oil. It really is. For me it was just amazing for me to be standing there, and I was just marveling and reflecting on all the steps that go into producing a bottle of oil. From that experience, I had the opportunity to drive back in the loading truck and come back to the distiller and then see that process and going through that experience of witnessing the unloading and helping with that, and then of course, loading the first cooker. That was an awesome experience! I was just like this little child with their eyes open looking and observing, especially when that oil came through. The smell was just so unique, so unusual. As you can see, I’m wearing my flower, I have a pine because I just love the feel of that pine, the Ponderosa Pine, long needles, an unusual sort of look to it and the smell is unique from what we’ve been seeing with the other conifer trees. Just seeing it bubble up, the oil coming through the water; but before we got to that, I just want to comment to the experience of loading the cooker and stomping and really getting that down packed in. It actually became a fun experience with a number of other distributors jumping in and just stomping and really expressing our feelings of appreciation and gratitude. They certainly felt that right when we were chopping the trees, just my gratitude to the trees and Mother Nature that provides so much for us. It’s just that awe about it. Getting back to the cooker, we were just stomping and packing it in and I asked Travis, “What’s the reason for stomping and packing it in. He was able to explain to all of us the importance of that so that the steam rising through the cooker doesn’t go through certain areas where it will be more concentrated and could cause scorching of the plant material. So I thought that was really critical and really well explained to us. So we stomped it. We made sure it was really stomped; and then of course, the cooker lid being closed, clamped and then we rushed downstairs to witness the rest. So, it’s been very interesting, most interesting, and I don’t even think that’s the word to even capture the experience of the many jobs that we’ve all participated in. I also am appreciative of the group of the distributors here and I really want to thank them for who they are and for the expression of who they are, their sincerity and their dedication to what we have done together as a group. We just participated, we just helped each other, we saw something that needed to be done and we went to work. Most importantly, Gary, I have so much respect, love and care for what Gary truly has produced. There is no other company that goes to the extent that Gary truly has gone to. To be a witness to it is absolutely surreal. Sometimes I had to pinch myself. This man is for real. He is going through each of these steps. I encourage people to come and experience the winter harvest for that specific reason…to actually witness and be part of the experience.
Thank you Sabina. We’d like to hear from Sherry LaMarsh now.
I too, wanted a chance to really thank Gary for following his passion and for really having the dedication to stick with it with all the things that he’s been through. It’s so cool to come here. Gee, I had to leave 45 below to come to winter harvest and get warm. It was pretty cool to see everybody whether you were from Texas or from Canada to come out here and the camaraderie that everybody develops. You want to see Gary? You want to see your team work? Come out here and sit across the table. It’s not like convention where you’ve got how many thousands of people and you wave at somebody across the hall. This is much more intimate. You get to say what you feel. You get to experience the land. You get to experience Mother Nature in all of her finest whether you’re in mud, whether you’re in ice, whether you’re in snow, but it doesn’t matter because everybody’s helping each other. I think that energy is in the oil just as much as Mother Nature’s energy. It’s not that commercial place that you think of someplace far away. I’d like to encourage everybody to come and bring at least three of your team. You’re going to get the most from your team when they understand and when they start sharing with their people what’s going on here. It’s magic, Guys.
Thanks Sherry. That was great. I’m going to pass the phone around to some of the other distributors that are here. Jim, would you like to say something?
Hi there. This has been an exciting week. I’ve come to harvest up here ever since we started Highland Flats I think, or somewhere around there. I’ve lost count. Never have I experienced or witnessed harvesting oil like last night for the first time…first time in a distillery, first time for that piece of equipment. It was like birthing of a child, I guess. I’m not sure, but it was just incredible. There was a lot of activity, there was a lot of motion going on. Of course, we had no idea until it actually appeared, what it was going to look like, what it was going to smell like. When it started coming out, that was just like Heaven…one of the freshest smelling oils that I’ve ever smelled. Just a whole different level. After some applied it to their skin, it got even better. It was just incredible. We’re anxious to hear from the big lab in Utah what all is in there, but right now we’re really impressed, and we’re happy to be here. It’s been a good week. A good team, and we’ve gotten a lot done so far.
Thanks Jim. Travis Ogden would also like to share some words.
Hello everyone. It’s been an awesome week up here. I haven’t been here the entire week, but I wanted to share some additional insights from my perspective of this experience. The first day I arrived, we immediately went out to the field and started cutting down trees even though it was night time. Thank goodness all of the heavy equipment have good lights on them so we could see what we were doing. We came back, had late dinner and it’s been a long day already for everyone. What was really impressive to me and is really valuable to everyone here is that Gary takes the time to sit down for an hour to hour and a half and educates everyone on his company, on our products, on his travels this last year. That was so amazing to me to see Gary and his willingness to give of himself , to impart his knowledge and his tireless efforts to do that. It would have been so easy for him to go back to his cabin after eating and get a good night’s sleep, but he continues to do this every week for the distributors that are up here. It’s impressive; and if you don’t make it up to our winter harvest, please make it up to one of our other harvests. We have harvests going year round, so there are plenty of opportunities for you to come and participate in the seed to seal process yourself and learn about the quality that Young Living invests in. One other thing that I wanted mention. Gary was a little humble when he talked about the computerized distillery that we have. Not only is it computerized so that Gary doesn’t have to be here every time and maintain the same quality; but he can now log in here and be here virtually from his phone. He can monitor what’s going on with the distillations. He can see visually what’s happening from the webcams, and he can monitor exactly the different temperatures and dynamics of the distillations. He change it on the fly from his phone from anywhere in the world. It’s pretty incredible how high tech we’ve become, and there’s nothing else like it in the world and it’s really fun. Everything up here is really topnotch right now, so I encourage you to come and check it out. Before I pass it here to Alan Chen. I wanted to say, and some of you have seen my Facebook post, I walked up on Gary to get him to come to dinner last night and he was sitting on a barrel of something. A barrel of oil, sitting there staring at the oil coming out of he separator, out of the condenser and I wish I could have read his mind at that instant. You could see and feel the passion he feels and his obsessive drive to achieving a high standard of quality. When you have other essential oil companies coming and talking to you, ask them where their labs are. Ask them where their distilleries are, where their farms are, where are their analytical chemists, where are the millions of dollars that they take out of their profits to invest in these ventures. They don’t have it. We do, and that’s because of this quality standard. Its truly amazing to work with Gary and to see this every day. We at corporate are 100% aligned with Gary in preserving this standard of quality. I’ll pass this on to Alan. Introduce yourself too, Alan.
Hello, I’m Alan Chen from _____Minnesota. I am an observer from a user’s point of view. My wife is a distributor. I’ve always told our children that the most important part of a building is the foundation. The foundation is something that you don’t see unless you have a rare invitation to look at the construction project and go down below the surface and see what is taking place. I would assure you that the foundation of this organization is well laid. It’s got a firm foundation, its vision is strong, its goals are high and its services are universal. I would encourage you to consider some kind of an opportunity to give back, to serve, to be here to participate and to learn from others what can be learned in the field. Not very often does a person experience trust at this level where you can be an executive, a surgeon, you can wear a suit or scrub pants and lay that up and drive a tractor or operate a chipper or a skid loader. All of those titles are laid to rest as one becomes part of a team. The final thing I’ve told our children is that there’s no I in team. This is a strong team organization where people from all walks of life really do get the privilege to meld together and become one.
Thank you, Alan.
Wow Dr. Chen. I can’t say you stole the words right out of my mouth, because that was wonderful. That’s a hard act to follow right there. My name is Billie and my husband Joe and I came from Texas. From a very humbling standpoint, we’re fairly new at the distributorship. We didn’t know what to expect and my husband, Joe was telling his friends that he was going to Idaho to make oils out of potatoes. That was like the joke with all of his buddies, so I can’t wait to hear what he goes back and tells them. This has been a wonderful, unbelievable, lifetime experience to see what Gary Young and his vision has done with God’s creation. It’s very humbling to be a part of this man’s dream, his vision and excellence. I’ll just end with that. It’s a fabulous, lifetime experience. Thank you.
Thank you, and I must note that Billie is Silver not in six, but in five months. Nice work there, Billie.
This is Elna. I’m married to Alan and I’m almost speechless at what we have experienced. I have oils on my walls at home, and I had no clue what it took to get those oils in the bottle. So, my standard of respect has just been exponential. The manpower, the equipment and the horses even to go out in the field and cull these ___, it’s just WOW! My eyes just keep going buggy because of what I’ve been experiencing. So if you haven’t ever considered coming to one of these events, put it on your calendar. You’ll not go home the same person. Gary, I can’t tell you how much I have revered you from the past, but I’m just blown away. Thank you very much for your dream, and I’m honored to help bring your dream to fruition.
Thank you, Elna. We also invite you to come to spring planting to see how we are a sustainable, green company and how we really respect the cycle of life there. One other piece of advice that Sherry LaMarsh had is for the ladies out there. If you want to get your husbands or boyfriends more engaged with your business, bring them up here. Let them work on one of Gary’s tractors, work on the DC bulldozer. They’ll have a great time. It’s a camping experience. It’s really set up like a logging camp. The food is amazing…home cooked meals. I promise you after working on these big toys and eating this good food, they will be 100% involved with your business.
I’m going to pass the phone now to anyone else who would like to share. Jeffrey Riley also from Toronto.
My words are few and my thoughts are deep. Gary’s dreams are contagious as we see them become a reality. That love for us and for the future of the world’s health is his prime objective ____willingly, lovingly giving back their love to our Creator and to all creatures Gary loves. So folks, get your butts out here.
I love that. Get your butts out here. Here you go, Gary.
Thank you Jared and everyone for participating and sharing your feelings with each and every one that will hear this message. I’m appreciative for each and every person that comes here because as Sherry mentioned, the intimate opportunity is very different than convention. In convention when we’re dealing with thousands of people, it’s impossible for me to get to meet people, to get to know them on a personal level. At best, it’s a hug, it’s a kiss on the cheek, a handshake or whatever as you walk across the stage and we honor your achievements and passing by in the hallway between sessions and things like that. It’s wonderful, but it’s not the same as working side by side, and the winter time because of the harshness of the weather, it brings a part of a person out that you don’t see, at least I believe you don’t see. It makes a person, it builds and sharpens the character of a person that’s really rich. I’ve watched it for 16 years now we’ve been doing this and we’ve had people come. Melvin Nettle was the first distributor to come and help me 16 years ago, and this will be the first year that he is not with us. He’s basking in the sun in Ecuador having a much more enjoyable climate experience than we are up here in the frozen north. Needless to say, it’s great because I get to see and sit at breakfast, lunch and dinner with these folks and we get to talk and visit while we’re working, while we’re distilling and loading the extraction chamber or unloading it. It’s just a wonderful time, and I get to watch each person, I get to hear of their dreams and their love, feel their spirit. So it’s a tremendous blessing for me to be able to connect on a much richer level. What we’re doing has never been done in the world before. Young Living is a world leader, there’s no question about it, and we always will be. When I was in Somalia two months ago, I looked around me and it was quite interesting. I didn’t see a single CEO from another MLM company, and certainly no oil company in Somalia in Puntland in the mountains looking for frankincense while I was there. I’m quite sure of that because the chief of the tribe of Shimbiris in the mountains, and actually the entire village celebrated my arrival there. I couldn’t understand why. The sultan that took me there told me the reason why was that I was the first foreigner that had ever come to visit their country and their village. It was quite a humbling experience, but people ask why I do this. Why do I spend money building a distillery? Why don’t I just put that money into marketing? There’s a lot of companies out there that will spend their money on marketing, and marketing hype and fancy labels and campaigns, and that’s OK; but just keep in mind that generally companies that will do that are trying to cover something up. We are about raising the spiritual awareness and the consciousness of the people of this world, and the only way you can do that is with pure, God-created substance. You don’t adulterate it, you don’t tamper with it, you don’t mess with it, you do it pure. I know I get accused all the time or said that I don’t do what I do. All you have to do is be here, and you’d find out for sure. These folks that have been here, and those that have been here in the years past know that what Young Living does is real. We don’t adulterate anything, and I will not. Jacob and Joseph used the oils the same as I do and the same as you do. I use oils everyday internally as well as externally. I’m not going to put something in my body that’s going to defile it, and that’s why I go do the work that I do. When I go in and I pull an oil off the shelf, it’s not because I made a separate little batch and set it aside just for Mary and the boys I. We use the same oils that you all use, and that’s why we put the energy into it. So, I welcome all of you to come and see and visit and experience. We’ll feel your spirit until then. Thank you and God bless you all in this new year.