Shea Butter and African Black Soap

Fair Trade ~ Unrefined ~ 100% Pure & Natural

Agbanga Karite - African owned wholesaler of Unrefined Shea Butter & African Black Soap

Kpangnan - African Butter Tree (Pentadesma butyracea)

Kpangnan, pronounced "pie-nya," has been sold in the USA as "golden shea butter" or "yellow shea butter," in fact it is from a completely separate species of tree. Read more below and click on each picture for a larger view.

Since the African butter tree grows in the dense gallery forests along rivers and streams, gathering the fruit can be quite time consuming and challenging.

Agbanga Karite members display the golden shea butter fruit they have gathered

Once the fruits have been gathered, they are taken to the stream to open them, remove the kernels, and wash away the pulp before transporting the kernels to the farm or home to be dried in the sun. Kpangnan is extracted using similar traditional techniques as are used to extract our unrefined shea butter. Follow this link to see a slide show on how we produce our unrefined shea butter.

Kpagnan information page 1 | 2 | Purchase Kpagnan

Wholesale Shea Butter