By Matt, founder of Heli Botanica
The Heli Protocol is the set of three rules every Heli Botanica soap is made to: fewer oils at higher concentrations, each with a purpose; scent from pure essential oils only; and colour only from nature. It exists to keep our bars simple, so that everything in them is there for a reason.
It began as a self-imposed rule Matt, our founder, set while experimenting with his first tallow soaps, mostly to stop himself adding more and more oils whenever a batch wasn't right. It's since grown into the way we make everything.
Why does Heli Botanica have a protocol at all?
Because it's very easy to make soap complicated. When a bar is too soft, you can add another oil. When the lather is thin, another. When the colour is dull, a mica. Before long you have a long ingredients list and no clear idea which part is doing what.
Matt came to soap wanting the opposite: something natural and stripped back, after years of shop-bought soaps that left his skin feeling greasy. The protocol is how that intention survives contact with a workbench. It's the reason both our tallow soap and our vegan soap have short ingredient lists, and the reason the vegan bar took so many attempts to get right.
What is Rule 1, and why fewer oils at higher percentages?
Rule 1: high-concentration hero oils. No cheap filler oils. The lead oil is always more than 50% of the total oils. Fewer oils overall, ideally three, and each must have a purpose. No palm.
The reasoning is simple: if an oil is in the bar, it should be there in a quantity that matters and for a job you can name. Our two bars show how that works.
- Tallow bar: 65% tallow, which does the heavy lifting; coconut, which adds cleansing; sweet almond, which leaves skin feeling soft and fingernails conditioned. Three oils, three jobs. More in inside our tallow soap bar.
- Vegan bar: 51% avocado as the lead, giving a harder bar and a creamier, richer lather; coconut for cleansing; organic unrefined cocoa butter for hardness, longevity and a moisturising feel. More in inside our vegan soap bar.
This rule is also why the vegan bar isn't olive-based. Olive versions needed more oils and additives to reach a decent hardness, which is precisely what Rule 1 forbids. Avocado did the job with fewer ingredients. Palm, meanwhile, was never an option: we consider it unethical, and it contributes to deforestation.
What is Rule 2, and why essential oils only?
Rule 2: scented only with pure essential oils. Zero artificial fragrance and zero fragrance oils.
We want every scent to come from the plants themselves. Essential oils are natural scents extracted from plants, most often by steam distillation. Fragrance oils (sometimes called perfume oils) are different: they're formulations blended in a lab from synthetic aroma chemicals. Both are widely used in soap; we simply prefer to know that every note in our bars came from a plant. We choose and layer our essential oils to smell comforting, invigorating or relaxing in the shower.
Working with essential oils also takes some patience. Cold process changes scents as a bar cures over its six weeks, and not every essential oil lasts. That's why our blends are layered: Coed Du, for example, starts as zesty orange and settles into a zesty patchouli, with pine and orange anchoring it. Our founder's verdict: "more apothecary than 1980s goth". There's more on this in how our soaps should smell.
What is Rule 3, and why colour from nature?
Rule 3: colours from nature. We colour our bars with charcoal, nettle, pink clay and turmeric, which are biocompatible colours from nature. No artificial dyes, no micas, no plastics.
The consequence is a palette that's muted rather than bright, and we think that suits a bar made in North Wales. Each colour belongs to a scent and a place:
- Charcoal for Coed Du, the black wood.
- Nettle for Afon, the river.
- Pink clay for Pridd, the earth.
- Turmeric for Twyni, the dunes.
Our unscented bar, Awyr, has no added colour at all: the tallow version is near white, and the vegan version more cream coloured.
Does following three rules make the soap better?
We'd put it more modestly than that. The rules make the soap clear. You can read our ingredients and see what each one is for. Nothing is there to bulk out a label or to make a bar look brighter than the landscape it's named after.
What we can say is what Matt found when he followed them: a bar that cleans and leaves skin feeling soft. In his words, "as a 50-year-old man I had a skincare routine in one shower that left my skin the softest it's ever been."
Frequently asked questions
What is the Heli Protocol?
It's the three rules every Heli Botanica soap is made to: high-concentration hero oils (ideally three, lead oil above 50%: tallow at 65%, avocado at 51%; no palm), scent from pure essential oils only, and colour only from nature.
Do Heli Botanica soaps contain palm oil?
No. We consider palm unethical and it contributes to deforestation, so no palm is part of Rule 1 of the Heli Protocol, and it applies to both our tallow and vegan bars.
Do you use fragrance oils?
No. Our scented bars use only pure essential oils, which are natural scents extracted from plants, with zero artificial fragrance and zero fragrance oils, which are blended in a lab from synthetic aroma chemicals.
What colours your soaps?
Charcoal, nettle, pink clay and turmeric. We use no artificial dyes, micas or plastics, which is why our colours are muted.
Why does the lead oil have to be more than half of the bar?
So that the oil that defines the bar is there in a quantity that matters. In our tallow bar, tallow is 65% of the oils; in our vegan bar, avocado is 51%.