Sheabutter (Karite, Shea Butter) is nowadays used by most of cosmetics laboratories in France, Europe and in the U.S.A. This natural raw material is perfectly controlled in its applications.

The two extraction processes, which are the crushing and the extraction by solvent, are less known by the users. It is nevertheless a point that purchase departments, formulators and persons in charge in laboratories should study very carefully.

For cost reasons, most of fatty contents are obtained by chemical extraction using hexane as solvent. The advantage of such process is that the percentage of fatty subtracts is maximum; this is a reliable chemical process at the lowest cost.

The use of Shea Butter in chocolate industry has standardized this method. In the industry, nobody cares about it because shea butter is sought as a substitute for cocoa butter and not for its active principles. When Shea Butter has been recognized for its intrinsic properties for beauty care, the first users have required a butter without any solvent: the mechanical crushing has given a pure and natural butter with all its intrinsic properties. But this method do not allow to extract the total amount of the butter from the nut; the quantity is less than by solvent extraction. Therefore the price is higher.

The laboratories are not all concerned by this problem and nowadays some prefer the price of butter extracted by solvent to the quality of the butter extracted by crushing. A better information on the manufacturing processes is therefore necessary.

If some preparations, particularly hairlotions, do not require a butter with all its intrinsic properties, most of beauty care users should insist on a «  crushed » butter. It must be pointed out that in the native countries where the butter is used as anti-inflammatory, the butter extracted by crushing is the only one used by consumers.

The manufacturer has to specify the extraction method for a better user’s information.