Côte d’Ivoire expands shea processing capacity

The new unit matters because Côte d’Ivoire is trying to move beyond exporting raw nuts and amandes and capture more value domestically. The country already has about 20 transformation units with installed industrial capacity of roughly 130,000 tonnes of shea kernels a year, but that capacity remains underused.

In the 2025/26 season, formal commercial flows reached 51,697 tonnes, all directed to local processors, equal to about 40% of available installed capacity. Authorities want that to rise to 60,000 tonnes in 2026/27, a target that implies about 16% growth and points to a broader policy push to channel more supply into domestic plants.

The government has already tightened the screws on exports. Shipments of shea nuts and kernels across land borders have been banned since January 2025, and the regulator now says purchases from collectors and traders are reserved exclusively for transformation units until further notice. That gives local processors firmer access to feedstock, but it also reduces flexibility for exporters and informal intermediaries.

For investors, the story is less about the single plant than about the policy regime taking shape around it. West Africa supplies most of the world’s shea, and Côte d’Ivoire is positioning itself to become more than a raw-material supplier in a market used by food, cosmetics and personal-care makers. The country has already exported 14,078 tonnes of shea butter to 13 countries in Asia, Europe and the Americas, showing that processed products have a market.

The next test is execution: whether the new capacity is matched by reliable collections, stronger industrial utilization and enough demand for locally processed butter to justify the investment wave. If the government keeps restricting raw exports while processors scale up, the beneficiaries should be domestic plants and buyers of transformed product; the losers are traders dependent on cross-border flows and overseas processors that rely on West African raw supply.