It is a fair question, and it deserves a straight answer rather than the word “premium”. A litre of cold pressed oil costs noticeably more than a litre of refined oil from the same shelf, and the difference is not margin or marketing. It is mostly arithmetic — the same sack of seed produces less oil when you press it the slow way, and nobody goes back for the rest.
Here is where the money actually goes.
Less oil comes out of the same seed
This is the biggest single reason, and it is the one nobody advertises. Oil extraction is a numbers game: how much of the oil in the seed do you manage to get out?
A screw press working at speed and temperature typically leaves somewhere around 4 to 8 per cent of the oil behind in the cake. Run the same press slowly and cool — which is the whole point of cold pressing, because heat is what drives off the aroma compounds and changes the oil — and you leave more behind than that. Hexane extraction, by contrast, can strip the solids down below 2 per cent.
So a mill that solvent-extracts gets close to every drop. A mill that cold presses does not. Same seed, same price paid for the seed, fewer litres to sell at the end. That gap has to show up somewhere, and it shows up on the bottle.
Nothing is recovered afterwards with solvent
In a conventional edible oil plant, pressing is only the first step. The cake that comes off the press still has oil in it, so it goes to a solvent extraction unit where hexane dissolves out what the press could not reach. That recovered oil is then blended back into the stream.
We do not do that step, which means the cake leaves our press with oil still in it. That is a deliberate cost, not an oversight — and it is the single clearest difference between how our oil and a refined oil are made. We have written out the full list of what we leave out in cold pressed vs refined oil: what actually changes.
Refining is a cost — but it buys the refiner something back
It would be easy to say refining is expensive and leave it there. It is not that simple, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
Degumming, neutralising, bleaching and deodorising do add plant, energy and labour cost. But they also buy the refiner three things that are worth a great deal at scale: a much longer shelf life, a completely neutral and consistent taste from batch to batch, and — crucially — the ability to use cheaper, lower-grade or mixed seed, because the process strips out whatever would otherwise have given it away. A refinery can buy at the bottom of the market and still ship a uniform product.
We cannot. Unrefined oil tastes of exactly what went into it, which means the seed has to be good enough to taste. That constraint costs money long before the press is switched on.
Small batches and a shorter clock
Refined oil is built to sit. It can be made in enormous runs, warehoused for a year or more, and moved whenever it is convenient. Every bit of that is cheaper per litre.
Unrefined oil is the opposite. We press in small batches, we tell people to use a pack within three to six months of opening, and stock that sits too long is stock we would rather not sell. Small runs mean more changeovers, more cleaning, more handling and less of the efficiency that comes from making one thing for a week straight. It also means the oil reaching you was pressed recently, which is the trade you are paying for.
Filtering, not stripping
There is one more quiet cost. Because we do not bleach or deodorise, we cannot use processing to fix an appearance problem. Our oil is settled and filtered only, which is why it arrives darker, smells of the seed and leaves a little sediment at the bottom of the bottle. Every one of those is a thing a refinery would have removed, and removing them is also what makes refined oil look identical in every bottle. We explain why ours does not in why our oil looks darker, smells stronger and leaves sediment.
What the extra money buys — and what it does not
Being clear about this matters more than selling you another litre.
What you are paying for is a process: seed bought directly from Karnataka farmers, pressed mechanically at low temperature, with no hexane, no bleaching, no deodorising, no preservatives and no blending. What you get for it is flavour that survives the journey, an oil that tastes of its seed, and the ability to know exactly what was and was not done to it — our FSSAI licence number, 1122632300006, is on every label so you can check the maker yourself.
What it does not buy is a cure for anything. Cold pressed oil is cooking oil. It is not medicine, and anyone selling it to you as medicine is telling you something they cannot back up. If a brand's reason for charging more is a health promise rather than a process, that is worth noticing.
How to pay less without going back to refined
Three things genuinely help.
- Buy the bigger pack, up to a point. Our cold pressed groundnut oil is ₹360 for 1 litre and ₹1,750 for the 5 litre — ₹350 a litre. The 15 litre tin at ₹5,250 works out at the same ₹350 a litre, not less. So there is no reason to buy 15 litres unless you will genuinely finish it; the 5 litre gets you the same rate with a shorter clock.
- Match the oil to the job. You do not need your most expensive oil for everything. Groundnut handles frying; keep the niger oil for the dishes where its flavour is the point.
- Store it properly. The most expensive oil is the one that goes rancid before you finish it. Capped, out of sunlight, away from the stove.
If you want to see how the pressing itself works, marachekku and gaana: how a wooden oil press actually works covers the machine. The full range and all pack sizes are here, and if you are in North Karnataka, our Kalaburagi delivery page lists what we send where.
Frequently asked questions
Is cold pressed oil always more expensive than refined?
Effectively yes, for the reasons above — lower yield, no solvent recovery step, smaller batches and better seed. If you find an unrefined oil priced like a refined one, the sensible question is which of those corners was cut.
Does paying more mean the oil is healthier?
It means less was done to it. We do not make health claims about our oil and you should be sceptical of brands that do. What you can verify is the process and the licence.
Is the 15 litre tin cheaper per litre than the 5 litre?
No. Across our range the 15 litre tin is priced at the same rate per litre as the 5 litre. Both are cheaper per litre than the 500 ml and 1 litre bottles. Buy the size you will finish while it is fresh.
Why is niger oil the most expensive oil you sell?
It is grown in much smaller quantities than groundnut or sunflower, the seed is tiny and the yield per kilo is low. Nothing about the pressing is different — the seed is simply scarcer.
Is cash on delivery available?
No. All orders are prepaid.