CocoaFoundry

23/09/2026

Nobody buys shea butter for softness. They buy it for what it does at a percentage.

Talk to anyone who formulates a body butter or a balm and the conversation is about numbers: shea at seven, at fifteen, at thirty. Too much of any solid butter and the finished product feels heavy and draggy. Too little and it has no body at all. Where the line sits is the formulator's call, and it moves with every recipe.

What we can do is tell you exactly what the ingredient is. Our shea butter is Grade A, unrefined and wild harvested in Ghana. Unrefined means it keeps its natural scent and its ivory to light yellow colour, and it breaks into a soft fibrous crumb rather than a hard block. Family run, direct from Ghana, and the same origin every time you order.

If you formulate, what percentage of shea do you run in your best seller? Drop it in the comments, we read every one.

Read more on the shea page: https://cocoafoundry.co.uk/products/shea-butter?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=shea-percent-2026-09

22/09/2026

Buyers have been asking us the same thing lately, in four different ways: is the testing per batch?

It is worth separating two documents, because they answer different questions.

The certificate of analysis is issued for the batch. It reports what that batch measured: fat content, moisture, ash, pH, fineness and the microbiological panel, plus free fatty acids on the cocoa mass. When you order, the certificate for the batch you receive is available on request, by email, to you as the buyer.

Separately, our cocoa mass and natural cocoa powder were tested for heavy metals by an independent laboratory on sampled lots. Cadmium came back below 0.3 mg/kg, lead and arsenic below 0.1 mg/kg. That is a lot result, and we say so, which is why it sits on its own document rather than being folded into the batch certificate.

Two documents, kept apart, each saying exactly what it measured. Single origin Ghana, one partner facility in Tema, so the paperwork describes one supply chain rather than a blend.

Which of the two does your QA team ask for first? We would genuinely like to know, because it tells us which one to lead with.



https://cocoafoundry.co.uk/pages/wholesale?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=coa-vs-lot-2026-09

20/09/2026

Most cocoa mass on the market is a blend of origins. Ours is not.

This is single origin Ghana. Fermented and sun dried at origin, roasted, then milled into mass at our partner facility in Tema. One origin, one facility, one batch at a time.

The reason that matters is cadmium. West African cocoa runs lower in it than South American, and on the batch we tested ours came in below 0.3 mg/kg. When your own buyer asks for the number, you have it, and the certificate of analysis is there on request.

From 100g pouches to 25kg boxes, held in Essex, dispatched within one working day.

The product tag has the full spec and the price.

Buy single origin Ghana cocoa mass, also sold as cocoa liquor. 50 to 55% fat, cadmium below 0.3 mg/kg, COA on request. UK stock, 100g to 20kg, 25kg quoted.

20/09/2026

If your cocoa powder came out darker than the last batch, the first thing to check is whether it was Dutched.

Dutching, which you will also see written as alkalising or alkalized, treats the cocoa with an alkali. It pushes the colour darker, sometimes almost black, and takes the edge off the acidity. Natural powder has had none of that done to it, so it stays lighter and more reddish-brown and it keeps its own acidity.

That matters most when you are matching a finished product back to a previous run, and it matters in the bowl too, because natural powder reacts with bicarbonate of soda where Dutched powder generally does not. Two powders can carry the same name on a spec sheet and behave differently.

We supply natural non-alkalised only, from single origin Ghana. There is nothing else on powder to confuse it with.

Full specification here: https://cocoafoundry.co.uk/products/natural-cocoa-powder?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=non-alkalised-2026-09

Or email [email protected] and tell us what you are running.

16/09/2026

Our cocoa butter still smells of cocoa, and that is not an accident.

Most cocoa butter sold into the trade has been deodorised. Steam, then a clay treatment, and the scent and colour come out with it. It makes the butter neutral, which suits some formulations perfectly well.

We do not do that. Ours is unrefined and undeodorised, so it arrives pale yellow and smelling of what it is. Chocolatiers notice it in the finished bar. Cosmetic formulators notice it the moment the lid comes off.

Single origin Ghana, pressed at our partner facility in Tema, certificate of analysis on request.

We wrote the whole comparison up here, including what deodorising does and when you would genuinely want it: https://cocoafoundry.co.uk/blogs/the-foundry/deodorized-vs-undeodorized-cocoa-butter-flavour?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=undeodorised-butter-2026-09

Working out which one suits your formulation? Email [email protected] and we will talk it through.

13/09/2026

A cocoa nib is a cocoa bean that has been through five things, and every one of them shows up in the taste.

Fermented on the farm. Sun dried at origin. Roasted. Cracked open. Then winnowed, which just means the shell gets blown off and the kernel is kept.

What is left is the nib. Dark, hard, properly bitter, and no sugar anywhere near it. The chocolate flavour people recognise comes from the roast in the middle of that list. Take the roast out and you do not get it.

Ours are single origin Ghana, from COCOBOD certified beans. Cadmium below 0.3 milligrams per kilo, lead and arsenic below 0.1, measured by SGS on the cocoa mass milled from these beans rather than on the nibs themselves.

If you put nibs into bars, into cookies or into a spice rub, and you want a specification you can hand your technical team, tell us what you run. Link in bio, or [email protected]



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Leave it in place afterwards.

13/09/2026

Nobody plants a shea tree for a crop. They grow wild across Northern Ghana and they take years to bear, so shea is gathered rather than farmed.

Ours comes off those wild trees, collected and processed by women's cooperatives who have done it the same way for a very long time. Nuts picked up off the ground, sun dried, roasted, ground, then kneaded until the butter separates out. No solvents, no bleaching, no refining anywhere in it.

That is why it arrives ivory to light yellow rather than stark white, why the colour shifts a little between batches, and why it smells nutty and faintly earthy. Refined shea has had all three of those taken off it. Grade A unrefined keeps them, and if you are formulating, the batch variation is something to plan for rather than something that has gone wrong.

Useful numbers if you are working with it. It softens at roughly 35 to 37 degrees, holds its shape at room temperature, and sits comfortably at around 5 to 15 per cent of your total oils in soap.

One thing we will say plainly. Shea is its own material with its own reasons to use it. It is not a stand in for cocoa butter and we do not sell it as one.

Single origin Ghana, traceable back to the harvesting communities, and the certificate of analysis for the batch is available on request.

Tell us what you are making and the volume you take, and we will come back against it: https://www.cocoafoundry.co.uk/pages/social-enquiry?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=shea-wild-harvest-2026-09

Or email [email protected]

11/09/2026

If you buy your cocoa butter from one supplier and your cocoa powder from another, you are running two origins for material that could have come off the same beans.

Plenty of makers do it, usually because the range grew one product at a time and nobody went back to tidy it up. It is worth going back.

We supply five lines out of Ghana. Cocoa butter. 100 per cent cocoa mass. Natural non-alkalised cocoa powder. Roasted cocoa nibs. And wild harvested Grade A shea butter.

The four cocoa lines are the same beans at four stages. Fermented, sun dried at origin, roasted, then taken apart at our partner facility in Tema. So the butter you add to a bar and the powder you finish it with share a lineage, not just a shelf.

Shea is the exception and we say so plainly. It is its own material, gathered from wild trees in Northern Ghana. It is not a cocoa butter substitute and we have never sold it as one.

What the range buys a buyer is dull and useful. One origin to put in front of your technical team, one relationship to keep warm, and one place to ask when a specification question comes up. On the butter, the mass and the powder, the certificate of analysis for the batch is available on request.

If you are buying cocoa this quarter and something else next, tell us what you run and we will come back on it: https://www.cocoafoundry.co.uk/pages/social-enquiry?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

Or write to [email protected]

08/07/2026

Cocoa is still trading at roughly double its historical norm — and under that pressure a lot of the mass market has quietly swapped real cocoa butter for palm or shea oil and cut the cocoa content. You won't see it announced. You'll see it on the ingredients panel later.

We run the other way: single-origin Ghana cocoa butter, sun-dried, one origin, no substitution, and a certificate of analysis on every batch — the actual lab numbers.

If your product sells on being real chocolate, the butter has to actually be cocoa butter.

Request the COA on any product:

https://cocoafoundry.co.uk

03/02/2026

We are fixing the broken industry.