How Is Shea Butter Made?

When you love something, you immerse yourself in it, whether intentionally or not. This has been the case with me and unrefined shea butter.

From very early on, my vision for sourcing shea butter directly was so that I could use the best quality shea butter possible in our own products, and also make that same quality available locally to other natural skincare creators, soap makers, retailers and wholesalers in South Africa.

Before Isivuno Naturals became what it is today, we were already using shea butter in our family business, O’live Handmade Soaps.  I had been buying shea butter locally, but I often found it unsatisfactory, inconsistent, or simply refined when I was specifically looking for good unrefined shea butter.

After a while, I knew I had to understand it better.  I did not want to keep buying something so important without really knowing where it came from, how it was made, and what made one batch better than another.  So in April 2018, I set off to Ghana on my first sourcing trip.

With air ticket and visa in one hand, and yellow card in the other, off I went to West Africa to meet the women who make this “Women’s Gold”, as shea butter is often known.

I was going there for a very practical reason.  I wanted to source directly from the source, but I also wanted to learn.  At that stage, I knew shea butter as a user, soap maker and supplier, but I was still lacking the deeper knowledge of how it should be made and what really determines quality.

That trip changed the way I understood shea butter.

What I did not realise before going to Ghana was that shea butter is not necessarily made by the same people who pick the shea nuts.

These are often two separate livelihoods. Some women collect shea nuts and sell them into the open market.  Other women specialise in actually making the butter. There is nothing wrong with that system, but it does mean that the person making the butter may not always know exactly where the nuts came from, how long they have been stored, or whether they were dried properly before storage.

This matters because shea butter made from fresh, well-handled nuts will not be the same as shea butter made from old or poorly stored nuts.  In the Ghana heat, nuts that are not dried well before storage can go mouldy, especially when they are stored in piles and the correct facilities are not available.

For me, this was one of the biggest lessons in quality control.  Good shea butter does not start when the butter is being kneaded. It starts much earlier, with the quality and handling of the nuts.

We have been privileged to work with a supplier that empowers a network of women nut pickers, trains them, and buys from them.  This means the nuts are handled with quality in mind from the beginning, and our shea butter can be traced back to the nuts and the communities where they came from.

Once the nuts have been collected, dried and sorted, they are washed, crushed and roasted.  This is one of the stages where experience really matters.

Roasting has to be done properly.  If the nuts are under-roasted, the butter may not process well.  If they are over-roasted, it can affect the smell, colour and quality of the finished butter.

I still remember the heat from that trip. Northern Ghana was scorching hot, around 38°C, and I struggled with it.  Yet the shea queens were there, working in that same heat, roasting shea nuts over fire to produce shea butter.

That stayed with me.

It is one thing to talk about “traditional production” from a distance.  It is another thing to stand there in that heat and watch the amount of work that goes into it.

After roasting, the nuts are milled into a thick paste.  This paste is the starting point for separating the fat that becomes shea butter.

At this stage, the process may look simple from the outside, but it is not.  Every step affects the final butter.  Shortcuts show up later, either in the smell, texture, shelf life or overall quality of the product.

This is why I always say that shea butter processing may look easy, but it has a certain rhythm to it.  It is a long process, and it needs to be followed properly.

The kneading stage is one of the most fascinating parts of shea butter production.

The paste is kneaded with water until the fat begins to separate.  Watching this happen in person was amazing.  There is a rhythm to it, and there is real upper-arm strength involved.  It is not a gentle stirring motion.  It takes energy, timing and skill.

The women work the paste until the butter begins to separate and rise.  This is knowledge that has been passed from one generation to the next, and you can see that in the way they work.  It is not just about following instructions.  It is about knowing how the paste should feel, how it should move, and when it is ready.

One of the most important lessons I learnt in Ghana was the role of clean water in producing good-quality shea butter.

Clean water is absolutely essential during the washing and separation stages.  If unclean water is used, microbes can be introduced into the butter, and this can affect the quality and shelf life of the finished product.

This is something many customers never think about when buying shea butter.  They see the butter, but they do not see the water used to make it.

The difficult reality is that many villages do not always have easy access to clean water even for drinking.  Buying clean water to produce shea butter can be a luxury many small producers cannot afford.  This is one of the reasons it is so important to buy shea butter from a trusted supplier who understands the production process and knows where the butter comes from.

Good shea butter is not only about the tree. It is also about the nuts, the water, the handling, the storage and the people behind the process.

Unrefined shea butter is a natural product, so some variation is normal.  Colour, aroma and texture can vary slightly from batch to batch depending on the nuts, the season, the roasting, the water used, and the way the butter was processed.

This is one of the reasons I am careful not to judge shea butter only by colour.  A beautiful-looking butter is not automatically good butter.  The quality starts much earlier than what we see in the bucket.

Good unrefined shea butter should be made from healthy nuts, processed with clean water, handled properly, and stored well before it reaches the buyer.

Shea butter is often called Women’s Gold because of the important role it plays in the lives of the women who produce it.

All handmade unrefined shea butter is made by hardworking women whose livelihood often depends on shea production.  Some collect and sell the nuts. Others make the butter.  For many families, this work helps provide income for food, school fees, household needs and daily survival.

What touched me most was seeing that this work is not only economic.  It is also knowledge passed down through generations.  The women learn from other women.  Mothers, daughters, aunties and grandmothers all form part of this chain of knowledge.

When we buy shea butter, we are not just buying a raw ingredient.  We are buying something that carries labour, skill, culture and history.

One of the reasons I went to Ghana was because I wanted to know.  I wanted to know who was making the shea butter.  I wanted to understand how it was made.  I wanted to know what makes good butter good, and what makes poor butter poor.

For Isivuno Naturals, traceability matters because quality cannot be checked only at the end.  By the time shea butter is already in a bucket, many important decisions have already been made.  The nuts have already been collected, dried, stored, roasted, kneaded, cooked and filtered.

If you do not understand that chain, it is very difficult to understand the butter.

That first sourcing trip helped me see that sourcing directly was not only about price or supply.  It was about relationship, quality and responsibility.  It was about knowing where our shea butter comes from, and being able to supply it with confidence.

Today, our shea butter is fully traceable from the shea nuts collected in northern Ghana to the butter we import and supply here in South Africa.

Before I went to Ghana, I knew I loved shea butter.  I knew it was beautiful in soaps and skincare products.  I knew it was one of the ingredients I wanted to build Isivuno Naturals around.

But after seeing the process for myself, I respected it differently.

I understood the amount of fruit needed.  I understood the heat.  I understood the strength and rhythm needed to knead the butter.  I understood why clean water matters so much.  I understood why the quality of the nut matters long before the butter is made.

Most of all, I understood that good shea butter does not happen by accident.

It is the result of good nuts, proper handling, clean water, skilled processing, careful storage and hardworking women who know exactly what they are doing.

That is why we continue to take shea butter sourcing seriously.

Recommended internal links:

• What Is Shea Butter?
• Unrefined Shea Butter
• Yellow Shea Butter
• Refined Shea Butter
• Yellow vs Ivory Shea Butter
• Shea Butter FAQ