Respecting Tradition, Supporting Communities
At Deluxe Shea Butter, we work with women’s co-operative groups for the processing of our organic and fair-trade Shea butter. Traditionally it has been the women who go and pluck or gather the shea nuts. The women sometimes have to travel as far as 17 kilometres on foot, and carry bags in excess of 40 kg on their heads while carrying their children on their backs. Working within the Shea trade is in many cases the only form and sole source of income for these women and their families.
The Deluxe Extraction Process
- Shea fruits/nuts are harvested – mature/ripe nuts fallen from Shea trees are gathered by women and piled.
- A thorough inspection is done, and matured dry fruits are separated from those that are going bad. Normally, the nuts that have had their pits or the sweet part eaten or taken off are cleaned and kept.
- The nuts are then boiled and sun dried for a few hours on traditional drying mats.
- The nuts are dehusked to get their kernels – this involves the nuts being pounded in a mortar or ground on a grinding stone, and then sent to a grinding machine to be ground to a very smooth powder. Due to the labour intensive process involved, women normally come together at this stage to help.
- After the nuts are ground into a smooth powder, water is boiled and the powder stirred in slowly and kneaded by hand (hands are washed with clean water) to form an emulsion to separate fats. As the stirring and kneading continues, lukewarm water is added in 15 to 30 minute intervals.
- After a while, the butter starts to form at the surface, and the women carefully collect it with their hands. The collected butter is placed into a different pan, on low heat, to liquefy again. The above process is repeated until the women are sure that no impurities (that is, traces of the husk) remain.
- The butter/oil is collected and double filtered into a pan and left to cool down to a thickening point before packaging. The unrefined Shea butter is packed and ready for export.
Supporting the Women of Ghana
Here at Deluxe Shea Butter, it’s the people behind the product who make it all happen. Our fair trade products are a direct result of giving members of the Ghanaian communities a fair go with a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.
