Our shea butter comes from a women’s cooperative in Ghana. These empowered women harvest the nuts by hand and process them to produce some of the highest quality shea butter in the world. Shea nut trees, known as the vitellaria, can take 10 - 15 years to start bearing fruit and it can take as long as 30 years before full production is attained. Each tree can produce as much as 45 kilograms of fruit every year, and each piece of fruit can contain as much as 400 grams of dry shea nut seeds that are used to produce shea butter. Once the shea nuts have been harvested, the shea butter is extracted manually to retain its fatty acids, antioxidants, and vitamins for optimal benefits.The nuts are washed, sorted for quality and dried in the sun. Next the nuts are crushed, roasted, and then milled into a paste. The paste is then mixed with water to form shea oil. This raw oil must be boiled down to remove impurities, expel water and sanitize the oil. Once the oil cools, it solidifies into yellow shea butter. Sustainably grown and processed.