This world-leading skincare has a small but mighty local ingredient
A Barossa Valley entrepreneur claims she is disrupting the beauty industry using an Australian-first technique to extract its high-end ingredient.
Truffles. A pricey, high-end fungi often valued at around $3 per gram, is at the centre of a South Australian skincare line by Sabina Kelley.
Sabina tells how she originally began supplying her coveted, hand-harvested Barossa Valley black and white truffles to high-end local restaurants around seven years ago.
But then the idea for her skincare line, Truffèlle Australia, gained traction after she stumbled upon peer-reviewed research on truffles and skin health.
“Once you read something and see something, it’s really hard to unsee it,” she tells CityMag.
Now the Flaxman Valley entrepreneur wants to pioneer the use of truffle bioactives in anti-ageing formulas for women aged 40 and over after being “frustrated with products not working” and learning more about ingredients used in mainstream skincare.
“I wanted to disrupt the industry,” she says.
“I really want to start a movement where we are looking at what we’re putting on our skin – one in two people have cancer in their lifetime. Diseases are just on the rise… You have to start looking around- like, what am I actually using?”
Sabina now focuses more on the fermented truffle peptide cream she describes as a “world-first”.
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“We definitely are the first… we’re the world’s first in the bio-fermentation process of the truffle extract,” she says.
“That’s what we wanted our chemist to do… come up with the most effective technique to get the truffle extract as potent as humanly possible.”
Truffèlle uses hand-harvested Barossa truffles grown in a rare microclimate inside a 35-million-year-old meteor crater in Flaxman Valley.
Each formulation combines sodium hyaluronate, peptides, and superfruit antioxidants with Australian Black Truffle bioactives.
Sabina invested a six-figure sum to develop new extraction methods and undertook long-term trials with her chemist and formulator to get the mix right.
“I wanted to put the product over profit, and if that meant spending a fortune making the cream, then I was willing to do that,” she said.
“I’m just sick of things not working.”
She says the chemist’s ingredient panel elevated the range beyond traditional anti-ageing formulas.
“She developed a superfruit complex… goji berries, green tea, Sacha Inchi… she’s gone all out for the antioxidants,” Kelley said.
“It’s cutting-edge science and that’s exciting.”
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A key focus, she says, was avoiding hormone-disrupting or harsh preservatives commonly used to create long shelf lives in skincare.
“We only make 5000 jars, and that’s worldwide,” she says.
“They’re not sitting on the shelf for three years… We only use glass, so we don’t use any plastic… better for the environment, better for everything.”
The debut collection features two products: The Cream, which blends bio-fermented truffle with botanicals and Australian superfruits, and The Eye Cream, which pairs Black Truffle Extract, peptides, and Retinol with Shea Butter, Caffeine, and Vitamin E. And they are not cheap, retailing in the hundreds of dollars.
For Sabina, the project became about more than skincare and shows how much innovation there is in SA.
“It really is about changing women’s and everyone’s health for the better,” she says.
“I love the fact that we’re these little farmers at heart.
“We were the first people to produce truffles in the Barossa… I really believe the Barossa is going to be known as a truffle region very soon.”
Truffèlle is currently available exclusively through the brand’s website, with international expansion plans underway for the United States, Asia, and Dubai.
Sabina says she hopes the launch earlier this year encourages consumers to question what they apply to their skin.
“I really am truly on a mission,” she says.
“I really want to eventually get a foundation going where I can give back, and all the proceeds from Truffèlle will benefit women and their children who are going through tough times,”
“It’s not about money. If you’ve got a really good why… it drives you every day.”
