Quality Assurance
Empower Village is committed to providing a
consistently high quality product.
We have followed the lead of the women of Burkina Faso, utilized their traditional methods and techniques, along with technological advances available to them, to systematize our company-wide processes, so that step-by-step our efforts result in the exact outcome each time: organically grown, unrefined, pure shea butter of "first grade" / "grade A," the best quality available.
We oversee the production of our shea butter on all levels, from inspection and approval of each instrument involved in the process, to official processes taught to employees, to use of standard tests to ensure purity and high quality.
We utilize the Laboratoire de Technologie Alimentaire, a shea butter quality testing laboratory in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, to analyze our shea butter. The laboratory tests for:
- Free fatty acid
- Peroxide value
- Moisture content
- Insoluble impurities.
Standards for these tests were approved August 30, 2005 for unrefined shea butter, to be officially adopted by all eight Union Economique et Monétaire Ouest Africaine (UEMOA – West African Economic and Monetary Union) countries on January 1, 2006. UEMOA standards for grading unrefined shea butter are as follows:
| UEMOA Standards for Unrefined Shea Butter |
| Parameter |
1st Grade |
2nd Grade |
3rd Grade |
| Free fatty acid (%) |
0 to 1 |
1.1 - 3 |
3.1 - 8 |
| Peroxide value (mEq) |
0 to 10 |
11 - 15 |
15.1 - 50 |
| Moisture content (%) |
0 to 0.05 |
0.06 - 0.2 |
0.3 - 2 |
| Insoluble impuriteis (%) |
0 to 0.09 |
0.1 - 0.2 |
0.3 - 2 |
|
Empower Village’s consistently "first grade" shea butter is tested by the shea butter testing laboratory in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso:
Laboratoire de Technologie Alimentaire
03 BP 7047, Ouagadougou 03
Tel: +226 31 53 21
Email: dta@fasonet.bf
We will also engage in a continuous quality improvement process in which we will consult experts in the field and regional and international standards entities, such as ProKarité, to ensure product value and quality, improve processing techniques, learn about use and maintenance of improved processing equipment, and realize "best practices" in shea butter production.