Jojoba Oil (Simmondsia Chinensis): A Wax Ester Emollient Profile

Jojoba oil gets marketed like every other carrier oil, sitting on a shelf next to sweet almond and grapeseed, but it's actually not an oil in the chemical sense at all. Almost every other "oil" in a formulation room is a triglyceride, three fatty acids hung off a glycerol backbone. Jojoba is a liquid wax ester, a long-chain fatty acid bonded to a long-chain fatty alcohol, with no glycerol involved. That structural difference is why it behaves so differently on skin and in a formula, and it's worth understanding rather than just repeating the marketing line about it "mimicking sebum."

The basics

INCI name: Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba) Seed Oil CAS number: 65997-27-3 Function on a filing: typically listed as an emollient or skin-conditioning agent

The plant itself is a desert shrub native to parts of North America, and the seed is pressed for its oil, which stays liquid at room temperature despite technically being a wax.

Why the wax ester structure matters practically

Triglyceride oils are broken down by lipase enzymes and by oxidation more readily than wax esters. Jojoba's ester bond is more resistant to both, which is the real reason it has a longer shelf life than most plant triglyceride oils and resists rancidity better under normal storage. That's a genuine, mechanistic advantage, not just a marketing claim, though it's still worth running your own stability check on a finished formula rather than assuming the raw material's resilience carries over unchanged.

It also means jojoba doesn't feel like a typical "oily" oil on skin. It absorbs without the same greasy after-feel you get from something like coconut oil, and it doesn't gum up the same way over time in a formula, which is part of why it shows up so often in facial oils and serums where texture matters.

Formulating notes

• Jojoba blends well with both triglyceride oils and other wax esters, and it's commonly used to soften the feel of heavier butters like shea or cocoa butter in balms.
• It has a naturally high oxidative stability, but that doesn't mean a finished product containing it is exempt from needing its own antioxidant (like tocopherol) if other ingredients in the formula are more oxidation-prone.
• It's non-comedogenic by most commonly cited ratings, which is part of its popularity in facial and acne-adjacent product lines, though "non-comedogenic" is a cosmetic claim you should be able to support, not just repeat because it's common industry language.

Filing considerations

On a notification, jojoba oil is filed by its INCI name, Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba) Seed Oil, with the concentration or concentration range you use in the finished product. It's not typically flagged on prohibited or restricted ingredient lists in the markets Cosmetic Comply currently covers, but restricted lists change and vary by market, so always check the current version of the relevant list rather than assuming last year's status still holds.

One thing worth double-checking with your supplier: some jojoba oil is sold hydrogenated, which changes both its INCI name (Hydrogenated Jojoba Oil, a different CAS number) and its physical properties, since hydrogenation turns the liquid wax into a solid. If you switch suppliers or batches and the incoming material behaves differently in your formula, confirm you're still getting the same INCI form and not an unannounced substitution.

A quick reference table

Attribute	Detail
INCI name	Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba) Seed Oil
CAS number	65997-27-3
Chemical class	Liquid wax ester (not a triglyceride)
Typical function	Emollient, skin-conditioning agent
Physical state	Liquid at room temperature
Common use level	Varies by formula, often 1-100% in oil blends and up to a few percent in emulsions

The filing itself is straightforward

Once you know the INCI name and CAS number, jojoba is one of the easier ingredients to list on a Canadian Cosmetic Notification Form, since it's a single, well-recognized botanical entry with no supplier blend to unpack. That's part of why tools like Cosmetic Comply are built around matching whatever name is on your ingredient list, whether it's the INCI, a trade name, or shorthand, back to the correct CAS number automatically, so you're not hunting down details like these one ingredient at a time.