The Reason Behind Pairing Sea Buckthorn Oil and Thymoquinone

Live from SupplySide Global 2026, Nutritional Outlook’s Nicholas Jacobus speaks with Mit Metah, executive vice president Unibar, about the launch of ElaQuin, a new ingredient pairing sea buckthorn oil and thymoquinone aimed at women’s healthy aging, hydration, and beauty. In the conversation, Metah explains the clinical rationale behind combining the two ingredients, how the formulation addresses needs specific to perimenopause and menopause, and how ElaQuin connects to Bellaneo, Unibar’s melanin-inhibiting cosmeceutical ingredient set to launch in 2027.

Nicholas Jacobus: Unibar is launching ElaQuin, a new pairing of sea buckthorn oil and thymoquinone, aimed at women’s healthy aging, hydration, and beauty. What was the reason behind pairing these two ingredients?

Mit Metah: We had done some clinical work looking at putting the two products together, and what we found was a really interesting synergistic combination. That by combining both products, we got an enhanced benefit from an anti-inflammatory perspective. So when you look at you know NO inhibition as a measure of anti-inflammatory, we saw some very interesting results, which we got excited about. Women's health is a really fast-growing category. We're seeing women basically looking for better natural solutions for perimenopause, menopause. So both of these ingredients really serve very interesting functional benefits for that perimenopause, menopause stage. So we love the idea of kind of putting this together to be able to offer this to women. The combination of sea buckthorn andthymoquinone really makes sense because the sea buckthorn is rich in omega sevens, which really improves hydration and helps with vaginal support, andthymoquinone basically offers an anti-inflammatory benefit, which includes also managing cortisol stress Levels.

Jacobus: Why does this ingredient aim to support women’s healthy aging, hydration, and beauty categories in particular and how does it connect to Bellaneo, Unibar’s skin-hydration ingredient?

Metah: So one of the things that we really listen to women, and we've asked them what are they looking for, and the feedback we've gotten from women, moreover, is we want to age naturally in a nourished way, and how do we help them do that? And so the the real cause and the the sort of driver for helping them with this was as women age and start to reach perimenopause and menopause, they suffer from issues like dryness or hot flashes at night or inability to sleep well. And so we said, can we provide them something that does that? And you know, when we came up with this formulation, what we also realized was that you know women really care about their skin and they want elasticity and moisture. And so the sea buckthorn element with the omega sevens provides both the hydration as well as elasticity for the skin, and the thymoquin basically helps with the anti-inflammatory piece. So as you age, right, you want your skin to look good and you want to feel good and you want to be able to sleep better. Which we all know that better sleep leads to you know better natural and overall health going forward. With respect to your question about Bolanio, so Bellagio is actually in our cosmeceutical line, and that's a different molecule completely, and it's another attempt for us to meet women's needs. So what Bolanio is is essentially a melanin inhibitor. It's a topical serum. It's molecular ingredient that you can put on your skin, and it helps with melanin inhibition. And the reason melanin inhibition is important is because as we age, whether it's pollution or sun and a lot of exposure to the sun, you get dark spots on your skin, and so that's essentially the melanin coming into your skin in your pigmentation. So Bolano is a very nice topical that you can apply onto those dark spots and inhibits the melanin, which then helps you know reduce the depth and the darkness and the complexity of those spots, and so we're very excited about introducing that also as our first ingredient for cosmetics in 2027.