Yerka Kosmetik

Yerka Kosmetik is a German cosmetics company built around a single product: YERKA, a liquid antiperspirant made in Berlin. The brand traces its beginnings to the 1920s, and its website states that the antiperspirant has been "created and produced in Berlin since 1927" [2]. It remains a family-run business, still manufactured in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg, and is sold mainly through pharmacies.

The product has changed little over its history. According to the company, YERKA has always been offered only as a liquid in a glass bottle, rather than as a roll-on or spray — a format it treats as central to the product's identity [4]. Yerka describes the antiperspirant as a long-lasting treatment for heavy sweating, applied at night and rinsed off in the morning.

Yerka's own account places its beginnings in 1920s Berlin, among the city's theatres, cabarets and variety shows. The antiperspirant, the company says, was developed for performers — artists, dancers and stage ensembles who worked under hot spotlights night after night [2]. From that stage world it spread into everyday use as a remedy for sweating. The individual founders are not named in the brand's history.

The founding date carries a documented discrepancy. Yerka's website repeatedly dates the product to 1927, while a German manufacturer-information site records the Yerka Kosmetik GmbH as founded in Berlin in 1991 [6]. The two figures describe different things: 1927 is the stated origin of the antiperspirant itself, and 1991 the incorporation of the present limited-liability company. The brand's own dating also varies a little, noting elsewhere that the product was "developed back in the 1920s" and has been sold under the YERKA name for more than 70 years [4].

Yerka frames itself as an almost century-old brand, saying the antiperspirant has "proven itself on the market ... for nearly a century" [2]. Production has stayed in Berlin-Charlottenburg throughout, and the company presents that continuity — the same product, the same city, the same family — as its defining trait.

The product is made by Yerka Kosmetik GmbH, based at Wielandstraße 26a in Berlin. The company's managing director is Rafael Apélian, and YERKA is a registered trademark of the firm [5]. Yerka describes itself as family-run to this day. No parent company or acquisition history is documented.

YERKA is sold as a 50 ml liquid in a glass bottle and applied with a cotton pad, a few drops at a time, left to work overnight. Its active ingredient is aluminium chloride, which the company says temporarily constricts the sweat glands to reduce perspiration [4]. Yerka states that the formula is free from alcohol, preservatives, fragrances, microplastics, synthetic colourants and animal testing [4].

The company positions the product as a functional treatment rather than a scented cosmetic, drawing a distinction between antiperspirants, which reduce sweating, and deodorants, which only mask odour. It markets YERKA for the underarms, hands and feet and for hyperhidrosis, the medical term for excessive sweating. On the question of aluminium salts — a recurring public concern with antiperspirants — Yerka's guidance cites a July 2020 assessment by Germany's Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), which concluded that absorption of aluminium through the skin is unlikely [4].

Yerka Kosmetik is active. Its website carries a 2026 copyright, the antiperspirant is distributed through pharmacies under current pharmaceutical identification numbers in Germany and Austria, and the company lists a current managing director [5]. No awards, press coverage or controversies specific to the brand are documented.