Our OLVE'True™ Shea Butter
sustainable and integrated supply chain in Burkina Faso

Shea plays a very important social and economic role in rural areas. The harvest and processing of Shea fruit is done by women. From May to August, they pick up the fruit once it has fallen onto the ground, and bring them home. They follow several steps to obtain the precious Shea kernels. They remove the sweet and edible pulp of the fruit, in order to obtain the nut, which is then boiled, dried in the sun and shelled. The kernel obtained is sun-dried again before being sold or processed into butter.

“Women’s gold” is thus an additional source of income for millions of women in rural Burkina Faso, and it gives them some economic independence.

OLVEA, along with clients and ONGs, strives for Shea parklands protection and has conducted several projects for the reforestation and protection of natural resources.

By producing OLVE’True™ Shea, OLVEA participates in the protection of more than 72,000 hectares of the Shea Park. In particular, OLVEA has taken part in the Action for Shea Parklands initiative, launched in 2020 by the Global Shea Alliance, which aims to plant more than 10 million shea trees over the next 10 years.

Since 2016, OLVEA and L’Oréal, in partnership with Nafa Naana and Entrepreneurs du Monde, have been supplying improved cookstoves to Shea producers in south Burkina Faso in order to fight against fuel poverty and its consequences on deforestation. These improved cookstoves, used to boil Shea nuts and cook meals in Burkina Faso’s rural households, consume less firewood than traditional cookstoves. These cookstoves generate savings and improve their health, comfort and environmental impact (less wood consumed and less CO2 emissions).

In 3 years, more than 4,200 producers have benefited from this project! A total of 5,370 improved cookstoves were distributed, thus avoiding cutting more than 4,500 tons of wood and reducing the domestic work of these producers by 500,000 hours.

As a result of our numerous environmental actions, we have decreased our greenhouse gas emissions by -42% since 2016 (Shea Life Cycle Analysis done in 2019).

OLVE’True™ Shea‘s supply chain contributes actively to the socio-economic development in West Africa.

For OLVE’True™ Shea fair trade, through its fair pricing policy, OLVEA has set up a purchasing price of the fair trade nuts higher than the market (+3% In 2021).

In addition, OLVEA finances a Fair Trade Development Fund whose objective is to support collective projects such as the improvement of women skills, environmental impact and livelihoods, as well as the supply of new equipments. Between 2018 and 2019, the amount paid to the fair trade development fund increased by +78%.

Thanks to its operations in Burkina Faso, OLVEA has enabled the creation of 64 direct jobs and more than 40,000 indirect jobs in Africa.

Since 2018, OLVEA has also developed an integrated supply chain for OLVE’True™ Sesame (Sesame Seed oil), providing the collectors succeding activities, therefore guaranteeing income diversification and security for thousands of people in West Africa.