Shea Butter Specifications and Certificates of Analysis: A Guide for Formulators

Last updated: September 2026

What is a certificate of analysis for shea butter?

A batch-specific laboratory report. A certificate of analysis for shea butter is a document from a testing laboratory that reports measured results for one specific batch, such as free fatty acid, peroxide value, moisture and insoluble impurities, usually against the limits of a named standard. Baraka's shea butter, handmade by the women of the Konjeihi Women's Enterprise Centre in Ghana's Upper West Region, is tested batch by batch by the Ghana Standards Authority, and each batch's certificate is available on request.

The certificate, often shortened to COA, is the document a formulator, a soapmaker or a small brand should ask for before buying shea butter in quantity. It replaces claims with numbers. For the wider picture of what shea butter is and how people use it, start with Raw Shea Butter Benefits: Complete Guide to Skin, Hair, Baby, Pregnancy, and DIY. This guide stays on the technical side: what the paperwork says, how to read it, and what it can and cannot tell you.

What a shea butter certificate contains

Certificates differ in layout from one laboratory to another, but a useful one carries the same core information. As a matter of established practice, look for each of these:

• The batch identity. A batch or lot number that matches the label on the butter you receive, so the results belong to that butter and no other.
• The laboratory. Who did the testing, and whether that laboratory is independent of the business that made or sells the butter.
• The standard. The named standard the results are compared against, with its limits printed alongside the results.
• The test methods. Which method was used for each measurement, usually an ISO or equivalent reference method.
• The results. A measured value for each parameter, not a tick or a word such as "pass" standing on its own.
• The dates. When the sample was taken and when it was tested, so you can see how recent the results are.

The four measurements that describe quality

Four measurements tell a buyer most of what they need to know about the condition of a batch. Baraka's Shea Quality and Grading notes set out what each one indicates, and they are the four that Ghana's national standard for unrefined shea butter uses to sort butter into grades.

Under that standard, grading runs on the weakest parameter, not the best. A batch that is strong on three measures and weak on the fourth takes the lower grade, which is why each value on the certificate deserves a look on its own.

The measurements that confirm identity

Four further measurements confirm that the fat is what it claims to be: saponification value, iodine value, refractive index and unsaponifiable matter. A fatty acid profile adds a fifth check. An unexpected profile, particularly elevated lauric acid, can indicate that something cheaper has been blended in, since lauric acid is not among shea butter's main fatty acids. Typical published ranges for these values are set out under shea butter specifications for cosmetic formulation.

Who issues the certificate, and why it matters

A certificate carries weight when three questions have clear answers: who tested the butter, against what published criteria, and using which test methods. If all three can be answered, the results are checkable. If any one cannot, the paper is a description rather than a verification.

Baraka's shea butter is tested by the Ghana Standards Authority, a statutory body and a member of both ISO and the African Organisation for Standardisation, against Ghana's national standard for unrefined shea butter, using ISO methods. Baraka does not test its own butter and issue its own certificate. The limits in that standard are published, the methods are named, and the laboratory did not produce the butter.

How to read a shea butter COA, step by step

1. Match the batch number on the certificate to the batch number on the butter or the delivery note.
2. Find the named standard, and check that it covers the kind of butter you bought, for example unrefined shea butter.
3. Check that a test method is named for each parameter, and that the testing was done by a laboratory independent of the seller.
4. Read each result against its limit, one by one, rather than looking only for an overall verdict.
5. Look at the peroxide value and the test date together, and think about how long the butter has been stored since.
6. Check the identity values and any fatty acid profile for anything out of the ordinary, such as a noticeable amount of lauric acid.
7. File the certificate with your own batch records, so any product you make can be traced back to the butter that went into it.

A certificate, not a letter grade

Many listings describe shea butter with a letter, most often "Grade A". Grade A is not a universal or official standard. In most listings the letter has been applied by the seller rather than issued by anyone, and on its own it tells a buyer nothing that can be checked. The certificate of analysis holds what the grade was meant to summarise, so it is the document to ask for. How the different grading schemes compare is covered in Shea Butter Grades Explained: A, B, C, and What Matters for Formulators.

A grade is also a property of a batch, not a permanent feature of a product. Because grading is assigned per batch from measured values, the grade for any batch of Baraka's shea butter belongs on that batch's certificate, and nowhere else.

Shea butter specifications for cosmetic formulation: what to specify and why

Identity, processing and measured values. Baraka's unrefined shea butter, handmade by the women of the Konjeihi Women's Enterprise Centre in Ghana's Upper West Region, is specified for cosmetic formulation the way any cosmetic fat should be: by its identity, by how it was processed, and by the measured values on each batch's certificate of analysis. A useful specification names the INCI, states whether the butter is unrefined or refined and whether any solvent was used, and sets out the quality and identity parameters a formulator needs to check before a batch goes into production.

A specification is simply the written description a formulator buys against. It saves arguments later, because a batch either matches it or does not. Sourcing questions for soap work in particular are covered in How to Source Shea Butter for Soap Making: A Buyer's Guide.

Baraka's shea butter at a glance

Typical published ranges for the identity values

The identity values below come from published analyses of shea butter, not from a Baraka certificate. They are here so a formulator knows roughly what to expect; the values for a particular batch are the ones on that batch's certificate. Where the published figures differ, the range they span is given.

• Saponification value. Most published analyses of West African shea butter report figures in the region of 170 to 200 mg KOH/g, including a study of butter sold in Tamale, northern Ghana, and a 2024 study of roasted and boiled shea nuts on ScienceDirect.
• Iodine value. Published values mostly fall between the low 40s and the high 50s. A 2014 review in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition puts the average of reported values at about 51, and a later study of improved shea butter found about 53.
• Refractive index. About 1.46 in several published studies, including the 2024 ScienceDirect study.
• Unsaponifiable matter. Unusually variable, reported anywhere from a few percent to above 15% depending on origin and processing, which is far more than most vegetable fats carry.

Free fatty acid, moisture, peroxide value and insoluble impurities are not given as ranges here, because the limit that matters is the one printed on the certificate beside each result, from the standard the batch was tested against.

What "unrefined" means for your formula

Unrefined means the butter has not been refined, bleached or deodorised after extraction, and unlike most label terms it can be checked by looking and smelling. Unrefined butter keeps its natural colour, somewhere between cream, ivory and pale yellow, and its earthy, faintly smoky scent. Refined butter is white and odourless. Filtering removes particles; it does not remove colour or scent.

For a formulator, that colour and scent carry into the finished product. A formula built around a white, scent-neutral base will behave differently with unrefined butter, and a formula built to show off a natural ingredient will usually want it. The label terms themselves, including raw, pure and food grade, are unpacked in REFINED VS UNREFINED SHEA BUTTER: WHAT'S IN A LABEL?.

Practical notes for formulation

• Water-free or water-based. Shea butter is water-free, so a formula made only of butters and oils needs no preservative when it is kept dry. As soon as water goes in, as in a lotion or cream, the formula needs a preservative.
• Starting ratio for a body butter. A common starting point is 50% shea butter, 30% cocoa butter and 20% liquid oil, by weight, adjusted from there for firmness and feel.
• Weigh, do not measure by volume. Solid butters pack unevenly in a cup or spoon, so every amount in a formula is best recorded by weight.
• Soapmaking. The saponification value is what lye calculations rest on, so a soapmaker working to tight margins should check it on the certificate. Why shea earns a place in the soap pot is covered in Why Use Shea Butter in Soap ? Tips and More!.
• Record the batch. Note the batch number of the butter in every production record, alongside its certificate.

Buying for production

Baraka's shea butter is sold in bulk sizes for makers and formulators, as well as in smaller sizes for testing a formula first. The butter this guide describes is Baraka's Raw Shea Butter, the unrefined butter every specification on this page is built on, handmade in Wa and supplied with its batch certificate of analysis on request. It sits in Baraka's butters collection alongside cocoa and kombo butter, and makers building a full formula can combine them through Baraka's ingredient bundles.

Shea butter fatty acid profile: what it contains and what it means

Mostly stearic and oleic acid. Shea butter's fatty acid profile is dominated by stearic acid, which is saturated, and oleic acid, which is monounsaturated; together they typically make up around 85 to 90% of the total, with smaller amounts of linoleic and palmitic acid and a trace of arachidic acid. In West African shea butter, which is where Baraka's butter comes from, published analyses find stearic acid prominent, which gives the butter its firm body. The exact profile of any one batch is a laboratory result.

Two sources underpin the figures below: a 2004 study by Maranz and colleagues in the journal Agroforestry Systems, which compared shea butter from across the species' range, and a 2014 review by Honfo and colleagues in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, which gathered published analyses from many studies. A Rutgers University study of West African shea butter reports figures inside the same ranges.

The main fatty acids at a glance

The ranges are wide because shea butter is not one uniform product. The Honfo review reports oleic acid anywhere from about 37% to about 61% across all the studies it gathered, with stearic acid correspondingly lower where oleic is high. The highest oleic figures come mainly from East African butter, which the table above does not cover.

West African and East African shea

Where the butter comes from shapes its profile more than anything else. A 2005 study of 150 shea butter samples from Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Uganda, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, found stearic acid dominant in West African butter and oleic acid dominant in Ugandan butter, and a 2013 study in Agroforestry Systems of 456 trees from Senegal to Uganda found the same split between western and eastern regions. The Rutgers study reports East African butters from Chad and Uganda as higher in oleic acid and lower in stearic acid than West African butters.

In practice, that makes East African butter softer and West African butter firmer at the same room temperature. Baraka's shea butter is made in Ghana, in West Africa, so a formulator should expect the firmer, more stearic character, while checking each batch's own figures where they matter.

How the fatty acids are arranged

Fatty acids in a fat are mostly bound in triglycerides, three fatty acids on a glycerol backbone. Published analyses agree that shea butter's main triglycerides are stearic-oleic-stearic (SOS) and stearic-oleic-oleic (SOO), and that their proportions shift with where the butter comes from. That is part of why two shea butters with similar headline figures can still feel different in a formula. Composition and melting behaviour are covered in more depth in The Chemistry of Shea Butter.

The unsaponifiable fraction

Beyond its fatty acids, shea butter carries an unusually large unsaponifiable fraction, the part that does not turn into soap when the butter is saponified. Published analyses describe it as including triterpene alcohols and their esters and tocopherols, and the 2005 regional study found the triterpene share varying by country. For a soapmaker, the unsaponifiable fraction is the part of the butter that passes into the finished bar unchanged. For a formulator, it is one more reason the certificate's unsaponifiable figure is worth reading.

What the profile tells a formulator

• Hardness. More stearic acid means a firmer butter; more oleic acid means a softer one. Adjust the harder and softer fats in a formula to suit the batch.
• Keeping. Shea butter is mostly saturated and monounsaturated, with only a small polyunsaturated share; stored properly, it keeps 2+ years.
• Authenticity. A profile far outside the usual ranges, particularly with noticeable lauric acid, is worth querying with the supplier before the batch goes into production.

Why does unrefined shea butter vary batch to batch?

Because it is natural and unrefined. Unrefined shea butter varies from batch to batch because it is made from a wild harvest of nuts whose makeup differs from tree to tree, region to region and season to season, and because nothing in the process strips out colour, scent or natural variation to make every batch the same. Baraka's shea butter is unrefined and made by hand, so its colour, scent and texture shift between batches, while every batch is still tested against the same national standard.

Variation is what a natural material looks like when it has not been processed into uniformity. Refining would make shea butter uniform, and it would also remove the colour and scent that mark it as unrefined in the first place.

Where the variation comes from

• The trees. Shea trees are wild, and published studies across Africa, including the 2004 and 2013 Agroforestry Systems studies, find real differences in fatty acid makeup between regions and populations. Nuts are gathered from many trees at once, so each batch reflects the mix that went into it.
• The season. Colour shifts with the season and the nuts, as Baraka's Shea Quality and Grading notes record, and the weather in a given year affects the harvest.
• Handling of the nuts. How the nuts are dried, stored and how quickly they are processed shows up in the free fatty acid and moisture figures on the certificate.
• The processing itself. Traditional processing involves roasting the nuts and boiling the fat. A 2024 study of shea nut pre-treatment on ScienceDirect found that roasting and boiling times changed measured values such as acid value and peroxide value, and earlier work by Mbiapo and colleagues set out to measure how traditional treatments of the seeds and kernels influence butter quality.

What varies and what should not

Colour alone never proves that shea butter is authentic, unrefined or of good quality. It varies naturally with the nuts, the region, the season and the processing, so it is one sign among others. The certificate is where what can be checked is written down.

How Baraka's butter is made

Baraka's shea butter is traditionally processed by women's producer groups at the Konjeihi Women's Enterprise Centre in Wa, in Ghana's Upper West Region. The nuts are cracked, roasted, milled to a paste, kneaded with water and boiled so the fat separates, then cooled and filtered, and no solvent, alkali, bleaching earth or deodorising is involved at any stage. How that compares with industrial production, and who benefits from each, is set out in Handmade vs Factory-Made Shea Butter: Quality, Value, and Who Benefits.

Baraka has worked directly with the Konjeihi women for over 15 years, and that long relationship is what makes a batch traceable back to the people who made it. Baraka's Social and Environmental Impact Report sets out what the relationship means for the women, their families and their communities.

Working with batch variation in production

Formulators who use unrefined shea butter plan for variation rather than fight it. Soapmakers buying in quantity will find more on choosing a supplier in How to Source Shea Butter for Soap Making: A Buyer's Guide. These steps are established practice among small-batch makers:

1. Ask for the certificate of analysis for every batch, and keep it with your records.
2. Make a small test batch of your formula with each new batch of butter before scaling up.
3. Keep a retained sample of each butter batch, labelled with its batch number and date.
4. Adjust the proportion of harder and softer fats slightly if a batch is noticeably firmer or softer than the last.
5. Tell your own customers that natural colour and scent vary, so the variation reads as a sign of an unrefined ingredient rather than a fault.

Where a batch arrives grainy after a warm journey, that is a matter of how the fat cooled, not of the batch itself, and it can be melted and cooled quickly to set smooth again.

What We Know and How We Know It

How Baraka's shea butter is made and tested, what each certificate measurement indicates, and the guidance on letter grades, colour and label terms come from Baraka's own product documentation, its Ingredient Facts and its Shea Quality and Grading notes. The contents of a typical certificate, the formulation notes and the steps for managing batch variation come from established practice among people who formulate with natural butters.

The fatty acid ranges, the regional differences between West and East African shea, the main triglycerides, the unsaponifiable fraction and the typical identity values come from published research, and each figure on this page is one that at least two sources agree on, given as the range they span. None of these published figures is a measurement of Baraka's butter: those are on each batch's certificate.

Researched sources: Maranz and colleagues, 2004, Agroforestry Systems, on fat composition across the shea tree's range; Honfo and colleagues, 2014, Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, a review of shea butter's chemical properties; Di Vincenzo and colleagues, 2005, Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, on regional variation in 150 samples; a 2013 study in Agroforestry Systems of fatty acid variation across 456 trees; a Rutgers University study of the quality characteristics of West African shea butter; a study of shea butter from Tamale, northern Ghana, in the UDS International Journal of Development; a study of improved shea butter quality published in PubMed Central; a study by Mbiapo and colleagues on traditional treatments of shea seeds and kernels; and a 2024 study of shea nut pre-treatment published on ScienceDirect.

Disclaimer

The information in this article is for general education. It reflects traditional use, reported experience and, where noted, published research. It has not been evaluated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or Health Canada. Baraka products are cosmetics and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease or medical condition. Always patch test a new ingredient, keep products away from the eyes and out of reach of children, and speak to a qualified healthcare provider about any skin or health condition. Individual results vary.

A note on the traditions in this post: the practices described here come from conversations with, and time spent among, the community members and cooperative partners we work with in West Africa. We share them as anecdotal, first-hand impressions — not as verified fact or expert accounts. These traditions vary from family to family and region to region, so what follows is indicative rather than definitive. We offer it with respect and humility: to share a little of what we've encountered, not to speak for these communities or claim any authority over their traditions.

About the Author

Wayne Dunn is the founder of Baraka Impact and a former Professor of Practice in Sustainability at McGill University. He holds an M.Sc. in Management from Stanford and has spent over 15 years working directly with the Konjeihi Women's Enterprise Centre in Ghana's Upper West Region to source traditionally made shea butter and natural oils. He shares DIY skincare recipes and ingredient guides designed to be made at home with real ingredients — and sourced with full transparency about where they come from.