Bano

Bano is an Austrian line of natural remedies and skincare whose core range, sold under the Arlberger name, consists of ointments, gels, creams and bath oils. It grew out of a pharmacy that the pharmacist Josef Bano opened in the western Austrian tourist town of St. Anton am Arlberg in the late 1970s, where he developed his first salves during the quieter seasons [2]. Today the brand is one of two product lines of BANO Healthcare GmbH, a family company run since 2009 by his daughter, Eva Bano, which also owns the Viennese pharmaceutical brand Rösch & Handel [3].

The brand's signature product is the Murmelin sport and joint salve, made with marmot oil, an animal fat that the company says has been used in the Alpine region for centuries. Bano presents its products as natural remedies "in Apothekenqualität" (in pharmacy quality) and says they are sold in more than 30 countries. The brand remains active, with recent product relaunches and trade-fair appearances planned for 2026.

The family's involvement in the trade predates the Austrian business. According to the company's own history, Erzsébet and József Bánó ran a drugstore in the Hungarian town of Mezőtúr in the 1930s. Their son Josef developed an interest in chemistry there, went on to study it, and in the late 1970s founded a pharmacy in St. Anton am Arlberg, a small town in western Austria. Eva Bano gave the same account in a 2017 trade-press interview, saying that the company "was founded in the 1970s by my father, Josef Bano, as a pharmacy in St. Anton" [9].

St. Anton is a tourist town, and the pharmacy's slower seasons gave Josef Bano time to experiment with raw materials. The products that came out of this work included the Murmelin salve, an arnica gel (Arnika Gelee) and a Schwedenbitter herbal bitters. They were first sold under the name "Mag. J. Bano, chemisch – pharmazeutische Präparate", roughly "chemical and pharmaceutical preparations by J. Bano". As demand grew, a separate production site was opened in Zams, and the products were sold in Italy, Switzerland, Sweden and France.

Eva Bano later explained how this early export pattern came about. Because St. Anton draws many foreign visitors, tourists who bought the products during their holidays would ask for them to be shipped to their home countries, and distribution followed that demand. She also said the company had always had a presence in Hungary because of the family's Hungarian roots.

Josef Bano died at the end of 2008, and in 2009 his daughter, Ing. Mag. Eva Bano, took over the brand rights and the product range [2]. In the 2017 interview she said her own background was in real estate, and that she began a complete restructuring of the business on taking over. One of the main changes was replacing the independent sales agents who had promoted the range with the company's own field sales force, which engaged more directly with healthcare settings.

A new production site followed. The company's history dates the conversion of a former Buschenschank, a traditional wine tavern, in the town of Hartberg into its new production facility to 2010 [2]. The 2017 interview gives 2011 as the year the Hartberg plant opened [9]. The two dates may simply describe the conversion and the start of operations. The company hired its first employees in 2011.

From 2012 the company handled the distribution of Rösch & Handel, an older Viennese pharmaceutical brand, through its own field sales force. In 2014 it took over the Rösch & Handel brand itself. The business was renamed BANO Healthcare GmbH in 2015. In 2016 it began exclusive distribution of DALLMANN'S and WICK cough sweets in Austrian pharmacies and health food stores, and in 2017 its production was certified under ISO 13485:2016, a quality-management standard for medical devices. In 2021 the company redesigned its entire market presence.

Bano belongs to BANO Healthcare GmbH, a family-owned company whose registered seat is in St. Anton am Arlberg, with an office in Baden. The company describes itself as "zwei Marken unter einem Dach" (two brands under one roof): BANO Naturprodukte, the natural-products line that carries the Bano name, and Rösch & Handel. An Austrian pharmaceutical-industry directory also lists ApoCare, a range of herbal food supplements, among its brands, and gives the company's size as 15 employees in Austria with an export share of about 30 percent [10].

Rösch & Handel has a longer history than Bano itself. Its roots go back to 1890 and the Viennese pharmacy "Zur Mutter Gottes", where it began under the name Gimborn & Zifferer [8]. In the 1950s a Dr. Handel joined the business and renamed it Rösch und Handel. Its products include the wart treatment Warzin, EST Essigsaure Tonerde, Helopanflat and glycerin suppositories. In 2014 BANO acquired the brand rights and the product range, and says it has since focused on modernising the line.

According to Eva Bano, the acquisition moved the company from natural treatments into pharmaceutical products and opened the way into hospitals. In 2017 she described the result as "both a natural product and pharmaceutical company, with both sides of the business feeding off each other's developments and successes." She added that the company's field sales force had led contract manufacturers to ask BANO to distribute their brands as well, an arrangement she called a "win-win" because established names helped open pharmacy doors for its own products. Besides DALLMANN'S and WICK, the company distributes LABISAN cold-sore and lip-care products.

The Bano line is presented under the tagline "BANO Naturprodukte in Apothekenqualität". The company says it combines "Apothekenqualität mit der Verwendung natürlicher Rohstoffe" – pharmacy quality with the use of natural raw materials – and that many of its formulas are based on traditional home remedies. It names three core values: naturalness, with traditional raw materials from the Austrian Alps; tradition, summed up in the line "Wir sind von gestern und stolz darauf" ("we are from yesterday and proud of it"); and the combination of medicine with home-remedy recipes.

The company says its herbs and raw materials are quality-checked on purchase, come from long-standing suppliers and are used in pharmaceutical grade. Its raw-materials page profiles the plants and substances behind the range, from calendula and arnica to dwarf pine oil, thyme and marmot oil, often with notes on their traditional uses.

The positioning has shifted over time. In 2017 Eva Bano said the company had redeveloped the Bano range because consumer expectations of natural cosmetics had changed over the years.

Bano is a pharmacy brand rather than a beauty-counter label. The company says its products reach pharmacies, doctors, hospitals, clinics, health food stores and private households in more than 30 countries. It also runs its own online shop. In the 2017 interview Eva Bano said online sales mattered more for visibility than for turnover, and that about 90 percent of them came from abroad, often from former holidaymakers who could not find the products at home.

The Arlberger line forms the cosmetic core of the range. Its main products are:

- Arlberger Calendulin Ringelblumensalbe, a marigold ointment described as skincare with allantoin and vitamin E - Arlberger Murmelin Sport- und Gelenkssalbe, a salve for muscles and joints and for use after exercise - Arlberger Arnika Gelee, a cooling gel for use after sunburn and on insect bites - Arlberger Latschenkiefercreme, a dwarf pine cream - Arlberger Ölschaumbäder, a set of oil foam baths, alongside a sauna oil

The wider Arlberger range also includes products that are not cosmetics, such as a cough syrup, a deer-tallow cream intended to help prevent blisters and bedsores, medicinal oil drops and fruit-juice gummies. The company names marmot oil, arnica extract, thyme oil, mint oil and calendula oil as its key natural ingredients.

Marmot oil is the most unusual of these. In 2017 Eva Bano explained that marmots live across the Alps, particularly in western Austria where they are hunted, and that the oil is obtained by rendering the animals' fat [9]. She said the oil naturally contains cortisones that act against inflammation and ease pain when applied to aching muscles and joints. Because of this animal-derived ingredient, the Murmelin salve is not vegan. A German retailer page notes that the salve also contains menthol, arnica extract and dwarf pine oil, and that it has been produced by the Bano pharmacy in Arlberg since the 1970s [11].

The company states that its products are free of parabens and silicone oils [1].

Where the products are made is described differently by different sources. The company's website says production takes place in Hartberg, and that the facility is certified to ISO 13485:2016 and audited every year [3]. In the 2017 interview, however, Eva Bano said the larger-selling products were made at scale by contract manufacturers, while the Hartberg site produced smaller-quantity items and silver nitrate sticks used for chemical cauterisation [9]. Where that contract manufacturing takes place has not been stated publicly.

Apart from the ISO 13485 standard, no third-party certifications are documented. The company's website displays the logos of Quality Austria, IQ-Net, ICC Austria and the Austrian pharmaceutical industry association Pharmig.

Bano is active. As of 2026, the company's news page reports a new cooling variant of its Rubilind muscle and joint roll-on with menthol and peppermint oil, capsule relaunches of the ApoCare supplements and of Helo-Acid, new appointments in international sales and quality management, and a pharmacy tour of Munich and Vienna that the company described as its first such appearance in Germany [7]. It also lists planned appearances in 2026 at trade fairs including APOkongress and the PKA Science Days. The company maintains accounts on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook.