A peek inside an argan oil cooperative

July 2, 2009

As I have come to discover recently, Moroccan women are a special kind of beautiful. I have long studied their indigenous beauty rituals and have found them fascinating, so I jumped at the chance to visit an argan oil co-op while on my visit to Asni. While this isn’t a raw material we currently use at Bella Luccè, I was excited to study it further and have begun to build relationships which will allow us to procure responsibly harvested oil of the highest quality for future product development. A little background, if you please:

Argania Spinoza trees are a hearty species that is native to south Morocco. They have long been utilized by local Berber women and it’s not uncommon to find gifts left under the trees by villagers in recognition and thanks of the role these vital trees play in their everyday lives. Remarkably, the roots of the tree stretch 25 meters deep into the earth, which is more five times the height of the average Argan tree itself. With a life expectancy of 150-200 years, these resilient trees typically provide up to two crops of nuts per annum.

Argan oil is used for both cooking and cosmetic production. Berber women have long used the oil for healing properties and it is often given to newborn babies before they even suckle. It’s said that argan oil has ten times more natural vitamin E than olive oil (which is also native to the region) and ingesting it is reported to help guard again cardio-vascular disease. In traditional medicine, argan is used to treat burns, psoriasis, arthritis, swollen legs and alopecia.

There are approximately 800,000 hectacres of Argan trees in the southwest region of Morocco and each tree produces an average of 10-30 kilos of fruit per year. The region produces between 2,500- 4,000 tons of finished oil per annum, most of it created entirely by the hands of more than 2,000 people working in various argan oil cooperatives in Morocco. Now that you’ve had your math lesson for the day and I have sufficiently clogged your brain with numbers… how about some pictures?

This is Hafida and I; she runs an argan oil coop operated by local Berber women in a village just outside Asni, Morocco. She was the sweetest, dearest thing and (I suspect) a bit of a rebel. Notice the skulls-and-crossbones sweater? Love it.

Hafida taught me the process of obtaining argan oil, which usually involves four women who sit together to form an informal assembly line of sorts. After the raw fruit is harvested, the hard shell is removed by centering the fruit on a large rock and smashing it with a smaller one. Shelled nuts got into a basket and the outer shells themselves later become animal feed (hellooooo eco-friendly!). I even got into the swing of things and cracked a few nuts myself.

A second woman cracks the nut again using the same process to remove the second shell, which is softer than the first, but still not used in the oil processing. This process reveals the inner kernel, where the good stuff is. A third woman roasts the almond-like kernels, as roasting intensifies the naturally nutty flavor. This step is performed for kernels which will be made into cooking oils; however, cosmetic oils do not need require roasting and, thus, this step is skipped. Roasting or not, all kernels are eventually passed to the fourth woman who uses a large circular stone to grind the kernels into a paste.

God bless her- that has to be hard work. If you look closely, you can see the paste dribbling into the large bowl. She inserts a handful of nuts into the opening at the top, grinds in a circular motion, and the paste dribbles through. There is one additional step to this process: the paste is then squeezed by hand to remove the oil. The remaining paste (seen in the basket on the left) is made into black soap, which is used in hammams (traditional Moroccan and Turkish bath houses). Hafida tells me that it takes four women eight hours per day to transform 80 kilos of raw fruit into 8 kilos of actual kernels which then yield 1 liter of oil. Having seen the painstaking process with my own two eyes, I can tell you that I’ll never look at a bottle of argan oil in the same way.

These are my goodies from the visit, as photographed in my hotel room in Dubai (where they’d already been put to good use). The black item on the far left is a traditional kese mitt, used to aggressively exfoliate the skin in hammams. On top of the kiese is a large jar of Amlou, a culinary spread made from roasted argan oil, crushed almonds, honey and a dash of cinnamon. It’s insanely delicious and I plan to smother it onto every piece of bread I can find when I get home. On top of the Amlou is a jar of jasmine hand cream, then a bar of soap and a jar of black soap paste (again used in hammams). The final item on the right is a body oil, scented with neroli orange blossoms, that feels positively divine on every square inch of skin where I have spread it thus far. These cosmetics are also made by local women, with the profits being returned to their village. The whole lot of it costs me 610 Moroccan Dirhams, or just shy of $75 USD.

Bella Luccè does use another raw material that’s native to Morocco: Rhassoul Clay. This super-fine clay comes from deep below the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Utilized for centuries by the ancient people of Rome and Egypt and renowned for its mineral-rich content, Rhassoul deep cleans and detoxifies pores. You can find it in our Sea Kelp & Green Tea Masque. Unfortunately, the Atlas Mountains span far and wide in Morocco and there was no Rhassoul processor close to where we were, but there’s always a next time!

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