How Shea Butter Is Made: From Tree to Skin in Eight Steps

Unrefined shea butter is made by hand in eight steps, from a fruit that falls from wild trees in the West African savannah to a butter that sets in a bowl. No step uses solvents, and most of the labour is women's. This is how the shea in every Shea Butter Market product is made by the women of the Tapko Widow's Group in Kperisi, near Wa in Ghana's Upper West Region.

1. Gathering

Shea trees (Vitellaria paradoxa) grow wild across the shea belt from Senegal to Uganda; they are not planted, and a tree takes decades to bear well. The fruit ripens and falls in the rainy season, and it is gathered from the ground, mostly by women and children, in the early morning.

2. De-pulping

The fruit's sweet pulp is eaten or removed, leaving the nut. The pulp is food during the lean season; nothing is wasted.

3. Boiling and drying

The nuts are boiled briefly to stop germination and then sun-dried for several days, which also keeps the kernels from going mouldy in storage.

4. Cracking and sorting

The dried shells are cracked open and the kernels sorted by hand. Discoloured or damaged kernels are discarded here; this sorting is one of the biggest differences between good butter and poor butter.

5. Crushing and roasting

Kernels are crushed and then roasted over a fire. Roasting develops the nutty, faintly smoky scent of unrefined shea and makes the fat easier to extract.

6. Grinding

The roasted kernels are ground into a thick brown paste, traditionally between stones and today often with a small diesel mill shared by the community.

7. Kneading and separating

The paste is kneaded with water, by hand, for a long time. As it is worked, the fat separates and rises as a grey-white foam that is skimmed off. This is the most physical step in the process and the one that most decides the yield.

8. Boiling, skimming and setting

The skimmed fat is boiled to drive off water and remove remaining solids, skimmed clean, and poured into containers to cool. As it sets, it becomes the ivory-to-yellow butter that ships to us: unrefined, unbleached, and smelling of the fire it was roasted over.

What changes after this point

For most of the shea sold in the world, the butter leaves the village for a refinery, where it is bleached, deodorized and filtered into a white, odourless commodity (see why most shea on shelves is bleached). Ours does not. It is shipped as made to our studio in Shawnigan Lake on Vancouver Island, where we whip it, blend it, and formulate the products we sell under our own name and make for other brands.

Why it matters who makes it

Every step above is labour, and most of it is women's labour. Buying directly from the group that does the work, at a premium to the market price, is the difference between a supply chain and an extraction chain. We have bought from the Tapko Widow's Group since 2003 and fund education for the widows' children with two percent of our net profit; the story of how that began is in One Village, Since 2003. Makers who want this butter for their own products can buy it in bulk on our artisan supply page.

Frequently asked

Is shea butter made with chemicals?

Unrefined shea is not; it is made with fire, water and hand labour. Refined shea is processed afterward with clays, steam and sometimes solvents to make it white and odourless.

Why does unrefined shea butter smell smoky?

Because the kernels are roasted over a wood fire before grinding. The scent fades on the skin within minutes and is a sign the butter has not been deodorized.

Why does the colour vary between batches?

Harvest, roasting and the trees themselves vary from season to season. Identical colour every time is the signature of bleaching, not of quality.