Marula oil is the new ‘miracle’ in the cosmetics industry. Communities who have known about its magic properties for ages are trying to make sure they cash in on the new boom.
For thousands of years, celebrations in Southern Africa would not have been complete without marula beer. The marula tree, which grows wild throughout the region, has cultural and ritual importance, inducing fecundity and contact with ancestral spirits.
In more recent times, Marula liqueur is sold at duty-free shops and thousands of foreign tourists take it home as a sample of a true South African product.
But marulas have uses far beyond beer and liqueur. Marula oil is the new “miracle oil” in the cosmetics industry. It is rich in antioxidants and has excellent natural stability. It can be used as a moisturiser to rapidly improve skin hydration. Thousands of years ago, South Africans knew about this property of the fruit as well. “There are many legends about the marula. For instance, people believe that if they tie the nut around a baby’s neck, he will sleep peacefully,” says Girlie Njoni, production manager of Marula Natural Products (Pty) Ltd, based in South Africa’s Limpopo Province.
“Traditionally, the fruit is used for beer. But the leaves can be used to cure stomach ailments and the root and the bark, almost every part of the tree, is used as traditional medicine. For instance, the bark can be used to cure infertility. “There is proof that people were using the marula tree and its fruit as far back as 10 000BC. Archaeologists have found wooden pestles and mortars that were used to break open the nuts.
“The kernels were widely used for a very long time to preserve meat. In the time before fridges, after an animal was slaughtered, people would rub the kernels on the meat and then hang it in the sun to dry.
“This is where we got the idea to sell the oil to the cosmetics industry. If the kernels can be rubbed on meat to preserve it, then the same can be done to human skin as well.”
The marula project was started by the Mineworkers Development Agency (MDA) to reskill rural people affected by retrenchments on the South African mines.
The MDA was launched in 1982 and the marula project in 1995. The MDA is the major shareholder in the marula project, now registered as Marula Natural Products (Pty) Ltd.
“We buy the fruit from communities when it is in season, from January to March, and we employ people to extract the fruit pulp,” explains Njoni.
“This year, we introduced mechanisation for the first time to increase the yield. We separate the peel, juice and stones. We employ 50 to 60 people during the season.
“The pulp is frozen and we market it in that state to processors. We sell the fruit as well.” Marula pulp has four times the vitamin C content of oranges, making the juice healthy as well as tasty.
In order to create ongoing work for the women involved in the project, the marula stones are then returned to the communities, where they are cracked open over the rest of the year at the women’s leisure. The kernels inside the stone are rich in protein. The kernels are sold back to Marula Natural Products, which cold-presses them to extract the oil.
“We supply kernels to about 2 500 women in 42 villages in Limpopo Province. They determine themselves how much money they want to make,” Njoni says. “Depending on how many kernels they crack, they can earn between R800 and R1 000 a month. We buy the kernels weekly. Only 15% of our income is from the sale of the fruit and its pulp, the rest is from the kernels.” The business has been profitable for the past three years. This year it sold three tons of oil and realised more than R500 000. It also sold 10 tons of pulp.
“We could have sold more pulp, but our largest constraint is harvesting mechanisms. We want to grow more trees to get more volume, but we need to involve more communities,” Njoni says.
Marula Natural Products is developing one product at a time. The juice is successful, and the project is busy planning the next product.
“We need to prove the medicinal qualities of the tree scientifically first before we start marketing it. The Body Shop is a potential market for the oil, and talks are currently under way with them,” says Njoni. “We have tried to develop a beer, a jelly and a number of other things. We will only market what is commercially viable and can continue to be produced by the women in the villages. We will be defeating the aim of the project if we develop products that require only mechanisation to extract.
“We have to get the right balance with mechanisation. To what point do we mechanise without taking away the jobs and income from the women? We don’t want profits only, this business was set up as a social welfare project. How do we balance an increase in our yields with social development?
“We definitely have the ability to take entrepreneurial risks, to use our inner strength and willingness to go further. We have brought women out of poverty, our project is working.
“What we have shown the women is that their own environment can produce something – which has been undermined for so long – and turn it into an income-generating venture. All we are doing is adding value to resources that exist in our communities and making them marketable.
“Our natural resources are getting depleted – even gold mines are closing down. If you begin to commercialise a natural resource, the first question you have to ask yourself is, how am I going to sustain my business and regenerate the resource?” The project has started a programme in orchard management, but the communities do not own enough land to plant marula trees on a large scale. Instead, people are encouraged to plant two or three trees at their homesteads, so that if one tree gets depleted they have something to fall back on.
“We are also trying to determine the rate of depletion of existing trees. One exciting development is that we can now train our people to turn the male tree into a female – only the female bears the fruit,” says Njoni.
“This project is not about having a lot of money in the bank, it is about the women in the villages sustaining themselves. The initial aim is getting food on their plates every day, then clothing for themselves and their families, and then maybe building a house. Then the rest will follow.”