From tropical butters to fermentation: what cocoa & shea tell us about the next era of beauty ingredients
In cosmetics, butters are more than a marketing story. Cocoa butter and shea butter bring texture, glide, melt profile, and a comforting sensory signature that formulators rely on across skincare, haircare, soaps, and balms. But behind the “natural” label sits a growing reality: tropical butters are increasingly exposed to supply, sustainability, and reputational risks, and those risks are becoming harder to separate from procurement decisions.
What’s really happening in cocoa and shea supply chains, why it matters for cosmetics manufacturers, and how fermentation-derived lipids (like what we develop at ÄIO) offer a complementary path forward?
Cocoa butter: high sensory value, high land-use risk
Cocoa is a tropical crop strongly concentrated in West Africa, and cocoa expansion has been repeatedly linked to deforestation and land-use change in key producing regions. That matters for beauty because cocoa butter pricing and availability are tightly coupled to the chocolate market and to agricultural volatility: weather extremes, disease pressure, and farm economics. When supply tightens, cosmetics competes with food for the same raw material pool.
What this creates for cosmetics buyers
- deforestation exposure (and scrutiny) if origin traceability is weak
- compliance pressure as the EU moves to enforce deforestation-free due diligence for commodities like cocoa (with a cut-off date and geolocation requirements)
- price volatility driven by climate change induced agricultural shocks and global food demand (which beauty can’t control)
Shea butter: agroforestry roots, but growing pressure points
Shea is different. The shea tree (Vitellaria paradoxa) is native to Africa and is widely associated with parkland agroforestry systems, rather than large-scale plantations. Shea trees are long-lived and take years to reach meaningful fruiting age, an important structural reason supply is not “instantly scalable.” That agroforestry basis can make shea a powerful ingredient for livelihoods and landscape resilience, but increasing demand also exposes bottlenecks.
In traditional shea supply chain, a major footprint driver is not the tree itself, it’s processing energy, traditionally reliant on firewood for steps like boiling, drying, roasting, and clarification. At the same time, parklands face ongoing pressures (charcoal, land conversion, and changing rainfall patterns). In East Africa, reporting highlights how deforestation and woodfuel economics can intersect with shea tree loss and landscape degradation.
What this creates for cosmetics buyers
- scope 3 uncertainty: footprints vary dramatically depending on processing methods and energy sources
- long-term supply fragility: with current trends of falling tree-densities and increasing dryness in growing region, some studies expect significantly lower shea nuts yields in the long term
Where fermentation-derived (ÄIO) lipids fit in
Fermentation doesn’t replace everything overnight. But it offers something tropical agriculture cannot: industrial controllability. That reliability matters if you are formulating at scale and need predictable inputs over years, not just the next purchase order.
Fermentation-based lipid production can be:
- feedstock-flexible (using locally available carbon sources/side-streams where appropriate)
- geography-agnostic (not limited to tropical climates)
- independent of seasonal yield swings, and
- designed for consistent quality, batch to batch
Traditionally, “performance” meant sensory feel, stability in a formulation, and price per kilo. Now, supply-chain stability, traceability, and deforestation exposure are becoming part of performance too, because they determine whether an ingredient can be used reliably, compliantly, and without reputational surprises.
ÄIO’s perspective: building lipids that scale with world’s needs
At ÄIO, our mission is to create alternatives to agricultural fats and oils to reduce the unsustainable demand growth leading to ecological degradation .
We’re developing ingredients with real-world formulation needs in mind:
- sensorial performance
- stability and consistency
- and a supply model that can scale without expanding tropical land use
If you’re buying cocoa and shea today, the question isn’t “good or bad.” It’s: How do we keep the sensory benefits, while reducing supply and reputational risk? A realistic strategy many manufacturers are exploring is to strengthen due diligence on tropical butters (traceability, deforestation-free evidence, processing energy improvements), and pilot fermentation-derived lipids as partial replacements or performance enhancers in selected SKUs, especially where you want more supply certainty and stronger traceability.
Cocoa butter and shea butter have earned their place in cosmetics. But the world around them is changing fast: regulation, climate volatility, and public scrutiny are turning supply-chain risk into a formulation risk. Fermentation-derived lipids aren’t just “a sustainable option.” They’re increasingly a risk-management tool, and a way to keep innovation (and manufacturing) resilient as beauty moves into its next decade.
ÄIO’s ingredients are designed for just that: showcasing that with science we can end the destructive relationship between human consumption and ecological degradation and create a future where innovation and nature can thrive together.
