Tiroler Steinöl

Tiroler Steinöl is an Austrian family company based in Pertisau on Lake Achensee, in the Tyrolean Alps, that mines its own oil shale and turns it into a dark, sulphur-rich oil used in skin care, hair care, bath products, medicinal ointments and veterinary care. The business traces its origins to 1902, when the mineral collector Martin Albrecht sen. identified oil shale above the western shore of the lake [2]; English and German Wikipedia give the same year for his discovery [12]. The company is run today by the Albrecht family's third and fourth generations, trading as Tiroler Steinölwerke Albrecht GmbH & Co KG.

The name is both a brand and the traditional name of a substance. "Tiroler Steinöl", literally "Tyrolean stone oil", has been used in Tyrolean folk medicine for centuries, and other producers have made shale oil in the region. The Albrecht business is the one tied to the Bächental deposit in the Karwendel mountains, which the family still works by hand and machine at 1,500 metres. The company writes its name as a registered trademark, TIROLER STEINÖL®.

Oil shale had been worked in Tyrol long before the Albrechts arrived. According to English Wikipedia, deposits around Seefeld were used from 1350 until 1964. German Wikipedia describes how the oil was traded widely in the Middle Ages by travelling oil carriers and medicine peddlers, and how, in 1576, Archduke Ferdinand II granted the alchemist Abraham Schnitzer the right to produce it in the Inn valley. A local legend held that the oil was the blood of Thyrsus, a giant killed in battle by the giant Haymon, which is why it was also sold as "Dürschöl" [13]. Industrial stone-oil production in the area began in 1845 at Scharnitz, and the Seefeld oil later gave rise to Ichthyol, a trademarked sulphonated shale oil first marketed from 1884. That product and the Seefeld producers are separate from the Albrecht company.

Martin Albrecht sen. was born in 1876. The company describes him as an outdoorsman and a keen mineral collector who knew that farmers in the upper Inn valley had dug a dark stone since around 1350 and used the oil from it to treat people and animals. His aim, in the family's telling, was to find his own seam of oil shale in the Karwendel range and make the remedy available to everyone.

His search brought him to Lake Achensee around 1900. In 1902 he found dark brown rock at the Seeberg, near the Gaisalm on the lake's western shore, and identified it as oil shale. He opened a small mine there and named it the "Mariastollen" after his wife, Maria. By 1904, working underground with two miners and simple tools, he was breaking the stone by hand and smouldering it in graphite crucibles, which produced the first Tiroler Steinöl at Lake Achensee.

The Seeberg seam was small, so Albrecht kept looking. In 1908 he found a much larger deposit in the Bächental, a remote side valley of the Karwendel, at 1,500 metres; the company puts its potential at an estimated 7 million tonnes. He began building the first stone-oil works there the same year, carrying materials over narrow footpaths from Achenkirch across the Gröbner Joch and felling the timber on site.

Accounts differ on which of these dates marks the start. A 2013 travel feature states that the oil was "first discovered by Martin Albrecht in 1908" [14], the year of the Bächental find. The company itself dates the discovery to the 1902 Seeberg find, as do both Wikipedia articles. This article follows 1902.

The early decades were marked by setbacks. In 1916, when Martin Albrecht sen. returned home from the front in the First World War, he learned that his wooden works in the Bächental had burned to the ground. The family believes lost hikers had sheltered in the locked building and lit a small fire to keep warm. He rebuilt at once, and the new works, now fitted with retort kilns, went into operation in 1919. In 1917 a powder avalanche swept the remaining Seeberg plant into Lake Achensee. As the deposit there was almost exhausted, it was never rebuilt.

A more personal blow followed. While restarting a cooling machine he had just repaired, a seal gave way and ammonia coolant sprayed into the founder's face, destroying the sight in both eyes. The company's family history dates the accident to June 1924 [2]; a teaser on the company's own blog says he had been completely blind "since 1925" [10]. His four children were aged between 8 and 14 at the time. To keep the family afloat, his sister-in-law, remembered as "Steinöl Liesl", ran the Bächental works with two miners and the children. The founder stayed on as an adviser and, according to the family, spent hours breaking oil shale by hand to make it ready for the kiln.

In 1930 the second generation, the siblings Ernst, Hans, Martin and Josef, took over the Bächental operation. Getting the oil out of the valley was hard work. It was carried several times a day in 20-litre cans strapped to wooden back frames up to the Gröbner Joch, about 300 metres higher. There it was poured into 200-litre barrels and stored until the snow came, when sledges took it down to Achenkirch and horse-drawn carts brought it on to Pertisau.

The brothers gradually mechanised the route. In 1938 they built a small cable car from the works to the Gröbner Joch. In 1939 they bought a single-cylinder Deutz diesel engine, which powered a compressor so that blasting holes no longer had to be struck by hand. In 1946 they assembled a 1.5-kilometre material ropeway from used parts, running from Achenkirch to the Gröbner Hals.

Fire struck again in 1957. The oil was then cleaned by heating it in a kettle over an open flame to drive off water. During one distillation it was overheated, boiled over, ran down into the flames and ignited. The blaze spread to the surrounding buildings, and the works burned down for a second time. Ernst, Martin jun. and Sepp rebuilt it.

Access improved in 1972, when an access road to the works was built together with the Austrian Federal Forests, allowing cars and lorries to reach the valley; the cable cars were taken down in the following years. In 1985 the family reopened the Maria mine at the Seeberg, buried since 1917, as a show mine for visitors. It closed again in 2002 because of official requirements and upkeep costs. In 1987 the third generation, Hermann, Günther and Alexander Albrecht, took over the business.

The 2000s brought new investment. The family opened the Tiroler Steinöl Vitalberg, a visitor museum in Pertisau, in 2003; German Wikipedia notes that its centrepiece is a working smouldering plant. In 2006, after years of trials and with help from an engineering firm, the company commissioned a newly designed kiln. According to the company, it raised the plant's efficiency from about 40 per cent to more than 85 per cent. In 2011 the Bächental was connected to the public grid in a joint project with local farmers and the regional utility TIWAG, and in 2012 the kiln was switched from gas to electricity. In 2015 the old office and warehouse building in Pertisau was demolished and replaced by a new headquarters on the same site.

Tiroler Steinöl has remained in the hands of the family that founded it. The company describes the business, Tiroler Steinölwerke Albrecht GmbH & Co KG, with sites in the Bächental, Jenbach and Pertisau, as having always been purely family-run [11]. German Wikipedia likewise records that the Bächental deposit is still mined, on a small scale, by the fourth generation [13].

The company lists its management as Manfred, Alexander and Bernhard Albrecht, representing the third and fourth generations; other family members work in production, customer service and administration. A separate company, Tiroler Steinöl Vitalberg Betriebs GmbH, runs the museum and shop in Pertisau. No acquisitions, outside investors or corporate parent are known.

The whole range is built on a single active ingredient. Tiroler Steinöl presents its oil as defined by its high share of naturally bound sulphur, and describes its products as hand-made regional specialities that stand apart from mass-market body care. The company names the natural, unaltered quality of its products as its first priority. It also frames its work in regional terms: one of its stated aims is to carry "a piece of Tyrol" to the outside world and, through its products, promote the Achensee area. Its tagline is "Alpiner Balsam für Körper und Seele" ("Alpine balm for body and soul").

Small scale has long been part of the story. The 2013 travel feature quoted the operation as having "deliberately turned its back on the offer of mass production and worldwide exports" to protect the product's authenticity and quality [14]. The same piece noted that mining, heating, bottling and labelling all took place within about 10 kilometres of Pertisau, and that only around 200 tonnes of shale came down the mountain each year. The company's current account of its distribution is broader, as described under Current status.

The company also connects the oil to deep geological time. It explains that the shale formed about 180 million years ago from the remains of marine plants and animals laid down in the ancient Tethys sea, in oxygen-poor bays where they could not decay. The slanting lines in the brand's logo, it says, represent the angle at which mountain building later tilted these layers. Fossils such as ammonites and belemnites still turn up in the quarry.

Products containing the oil span hair care, skin care, bath and shower products, and items grouped under fitness and relaxation, alongside gift sets and a line of veterinary care. The 2013 feature listed bath oil, shampoo, body lotion, soap, a medicinal salve and a tonic for sore muscles, plus animal shampoos intended to remove ticks and insects. It described the original products as having "a strong, earthy, tar smell" and noted that perfumed versions were also available. The company has since announced face creams made with the oil.

The best-known item is the Original Tiroler Steinöl-Haussalbe, a household ointment that, according to the company, has been registered as a medicinal speciality since 1954 [11]. The company promotes it for complaints of the muscles and joints, for mild inflammation and frostbite, and as a traditional drawing ointment.

The company makes several health claims for the oil itself. It says the sulphur is known for anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties, that the oil can help with muscle and joint pain, and that it is used with success for rheumatic conditions [4]. These are the company's own statements; no clinical studies are cited for them. German Wikipedia describes the oil's traditional uses in Tyrolean home medicine, including for acne, psoriasis, bruises and rheumatism, and its cosmetic use in oil baths, creams, lotions, soaps and shampoos.

Production is seasonal and largely in-house. In the Bächental the shale, wedged between limestone, is exposed, drilled and blasted out, then sorted by hand to remove mixed layers. A gravity ropeway carries it 100 metres down to the smouldering plant, where it is crushed further and tested in the laboratory for oil content. During the summer months, electrically heated shaft kilns are loaded in six-hour cycles. At around 450°C the shale releases a gas that is condensed into oil, which is then filtered and distilled. The spent rock is still pushed to the spoil heap by hand in a mine cart, as in the founder's day. Bottles are filled, closed and labelled by hand. The company describes its self-developed kiln, controlled by a computerised process system, as unique worldwide.

According to the company, its production plant runs on hydropower and on solar power from its own photovoltaic installations [7]. It says most products are filled into recycling-friendly PET bottles, and that shipping packaging is made from recyclable materials based on renewable raw materials. Cartons are produced in neighbouring Bavaria within a 26-kilometre radius, and the green packing chips are made from maize starch and certified compostable under the EN 13432 standard. Where available, orders are also shipped in used boxes from nearby businesses. No third-party certifications of the products themselves are documented.

No awards are documented. Media interest has centred on the family story and the unusual production. The company reports that Ernst Albrecht appeared on Robert Lembke's German television panel show "Was bin ich?" in 1970 [11], and it lists coverage by broadcasters including ORF, ServusTV, Tirol TV, ARTE, Bayerisches Fernsehen, ARD, WDR and HR, as well as Swiss and Dutch television. Among these, it highlights "Der brennende Stein" ("The burning stone"), a report for Italy's RAI by the filmmaker Wolfgang Thomaseth. These accounts come from the company. The independent coverage identified is the 2013 travel and wellness feature by Chantal Cooke, which described the family operation, its hand mining and its range, and mentioned stone-oil baths and wraps offered at hotels in Pertisau.

Tiroler Steinöl is active. The family continues to mine and process shale in the Bächental, and its blog reported repair work at the site after heavy rain in summer 2025. The company sells directly to customers in Austria and Germany through its own online shop and on site at the Vitalberg in Pertisau. It says its products are also stocked by the Interspar supermarket chain, health-food shops, pharmacies, hotels and specialist retailers.

Distribution has widened beyond the picture given in 2013, when the travel feature said the oil could not be found anywhere else. The company now names distribution partners in Switzerland, Italy, the Benelux countries and the Czech Republic, and offers international shipping through a pharmacy in Munich [9]. Its reach remains European, centred on German-speaking markets.