Award-Winning NZ Beauty Brand Raaie Expands Its Range of Skin Protectors With New Sun Milk Drops SPF50+

New Zealand-made skincare brand Raaie (“ray”) has achieved a lot in less than a year since it first launched.

With its botanical, scientifically backed formulas and shapely packaging, it’s been attracting rave reviews from everyday users, media and beauty industry professionals alike.

It won two gold awards at the prestigious Pure Beauty Awards last year in London, going up against global companies like Lancome and The Ordinary and the likes of Aussie-made Boost Lab Co for Best New Serum and Best New Skincare Brand. It also currently has 40 stockists across Aotearoa, Australia and Hong Kong.

All of this with only two products – until now.

After three years of development, the Sun Milk Drops Tinted SPF 50+ has joined Raaie’s small but high-performing line-up.

It’s a mineral sunscreen that boasts broad-spectrum protection, a soft peach tint that avoids that dreaded white cast (tested on a range of skin tones), and a silky serum-like, reef-safe formula. The rounded bottle is slightly larger than Raaie’s other products and looks just as attractive on your shelf.

Given the brand is built around our skin’s complex relationship with the sun, it makes sense that the next product would be sunscreen. It’s something that Raaie founder Katey Mandy felt passionate about having in the range from the start, but the challenge lay in making it feel exactly how she wanted it to – which was an effective mineral formula that felt like a light chemical one.

Mineral sunscreens are known to be better for sensitive skin, but because they’ve traditionally been quite thick and heavy, even Mandy had been more of a chemical sunscreen fan until she finalised her own formula. “You should see my vanity; it’s covered in all the different sunblocks – every Vogue award … it’s been an obsession of mine,” she tells Broadsheet.

The Sun Milk Drops’ serum-like feel was the goal. “That's why it's taken us three damn years to get here, because we were kind of aiming for the Holy Grail.”

The difference between chemical and mineral (also known as “physical”) sunscreens can be confusing – but Mandy explains it with a shield-versus-sponge analogy. “The mineral SPF is like a shield that will sit on the skin and reflect UV rays,” she says, whereas the chemical SPF is “like a little sponge. So, it actually absorbs the UV rays.”

This is confirmed by dermatologist Dr Shyamalar Gunatheesan in Broadsheet ’s chemical versus mineral sunscreen explainer. Chemical sunscreens are “composed of organic filters … that absorb the UV radiation and then disperse the energy as a release of heat (from the body),” she said. Mineral sunscreens are “made out of inert, inorganic filters which have the ability to reflect and scatter UV rays, thereby preventing the absorption of UV light into the skin”.

New Zealand has the highest rate of melanoma in the world. Peak UV levels in Aotearoa exceed those at similar latitudes in North America by around 40 per cent. Mandy has kept this top of mind with the drops’ ingredients.

The stars are zinc oxide, which protects against UVA; iron oxides to improve protection further and even out the skin tone when applied; niacinamide, which has been shown to improve the skin’s overall texture; and bisabolol – the active ingredient in chamomile – to soothe the skin and top up the antioxidant properties. The product also incorporates a polymer matrix – polymers are commonly used in skincare to protect against pollution, acting like a “second skin” barrier.

While Raaie’s vitamin C serum and retinal elixir are made with native botanicals like rosehip, New Zealand blackcurrants and native sea algae, Mandy has purposefully kept the sunscreen as a top layer that you wear over your other more active skincare. “I just wanted to keep it really simple. Our serums have really small molecules, so they go into your skin and make cellular changes, whereas the role of a mineral SPF is to sit on the surface to create a barrier between your skin and damaging UV rays."

Layering your SPF with your antioxidant skincare underneath is going to increase its protection, says Mandy, because even though it’s a high grade at SPF 50+, it will never be 100 per cent effective thanks to classic human error like forgetting to reapply regularly.

And why not just go for SPF 30? “An SPF 30 protects you from 97 per cent, and SPF 50 protects you from 98 or 99 per cent [of UV rays]. Is that statistically a really big difference? No, but just knowing how vulnerable we are down here, I just wanted the highest level. Because we need it.”

raaie.co.nz