An Egyptian village perfumes the world with the scent of jasmine
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As soon as the night falls, Iman Muhanna, a young Egyptian farmer, puts a lamp on her head, and begins to collect jasmine flowers that smell like a few kilometers from her village of Shubra Balloula in the Gharbia governorate, where more than half of the paste for the extraction of jasmine perfume is produced in the world.
"We collect jasmine from childhood, and harvesting starts from midnight until eight or nine in the morning of the next day ... depending on the livelihood," Muhanna told "Agence France-Presse".
The jasmine season runs from June to November.
After replacing the lamp with a hat to protect it from the rays of the morning sun, Iman explains: “Collecting jasmine is a task that needs intense focus. We collect blossoming flowers. As for the closed (or dates), they are left for the next day. ”
According to the statistics of the International Federation of Oil and Perfumes Trade (IFEAT) in 2015, Egypt and India are the main producers of about 95% of the aromatic jasmine paste in the world.
In Egypt, more than 90% of the Jasmine farms are located in the Gharbia governorate, in the cities of Qutour and Basion, and the villages of Shubra Baloula, where most of them are concentrated.
On a narrow dirt road surrounded by green jasmine fields studded with white flowers, farmers and collectors of jasmine congregate in Shubra Baloula early in the morning with trolleys loaded with cages of jasmine flowers in front of the doors of the "Fakhry Aromatic Oils" factory that receives most of the governorate's production.
Inside the factory, director and engineer Badr Atef monitors the delivery and weighing of jasmine flowers. “Currently, there are about 1,000 acres of jasmine in the area,” he says.
He explains that Egypt's production of jasmine paste during the season of aromatic flower cultivation is about five tons, and the share of an honorary factory is about three tons.
Atef relates that Fakhry was the first manufacturer of essential oils to be established in Egypt. Its owner Ahmed Fakhry was the first to introduce the jasmine tree to Egypt in the sixties, and brought it from the city of Grasse in France, where he was studying.
Grasse is located on the Mediterranean coast and is known for growing flowers and plants used in perfumery.
A Fakhri factory extracts the aromatic paste from flowers in addition to crude jasmine oil.