The Tea Tree Oil Information Web Site Harvest festival Eco-friendly harvesting techniques and ethics Harvesting tea tree oil used to be an entirely manual affair, as the swampy ground favoured by the Melaleuca alternifolia made the use of heavy machinery difficult. However, the high expense of such a labour-intensive system made it unpopular, and this led to the establishment of commercial tea tree plantations. The most successful tea tree companies now operate wholly mechanised harvesting and distilling. The oil is found within cells of the leaves, so foliage is cut by a heavy-duty foliage harvester, and fed directly into a mobile vat which is towed to the distillery when full. The vat is then sealed with a lid and connected to a condenser, and steam from a boiler is passed through the tea tree foliage.
Distillation is normally complete within two hours.
In the true spirit of recycling, part of the leaf matter remaining after distillation is used as fuel for the boiler, and the rest is spread on harvested areas as mulch to enable residual nutrients to return to the soil. A 400 hectare plantation would produce an average of 200 kg of oil per day. The tea tree grows extremely fast, and foliage growth is fully regenerated within approximately two years. The tea tree industry has now planted or saved an estimated fifty million trees, and superior plantations pride themselves on chemical-free weed control.