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Organic avocado

For delicate skin and fair trade.

Delicious, healthy, nutritious: the avocado is an important raw material in the food industry. Thanks to its valuable fatty acids and vitamins, it is also popular as a nourishing ingredient in cosmetic products - but its ecological impact is devastating. Especially in Central and South America, avocado cultivation often means monoculture, deforestation, high water consumption and poor working conditions. We have something against that: Avocados from our partner LIMBUA are good for the skin - and good for the world.

In harmony with people and nature.

At LIMBUA, cultivation, harvesting and processing are carried out consistently in harmony with people and nature. The region around Mount Kenya offers ideal climatic conditions and sufficient natural rainfall; additional irrigation is not necessary. At the foot of Africa's second highest mountain, organic avocados grow together with organic mangoes and organic macadamia nuts in mixed cultivation, in so-called agroforestry systems. What sounds newfangled is actually the traditional and sustainable farming system in a rural region. Around 5,000 independent small farmers participate in LIMBUA. If you include their families, organic farming in harmony with nature feeds around 25,000 people.

100% traceability.

We have been working closely with our partner LIMBUA since 2015 - initially on organic macadamia nuts, then the “Organic Avocado Project” was added in 2016. As traditional as the cultivation is, the traceability of the harvest is modern: the entire path of the avocado can be traced digitally. So-called “field officers” pick up the avocados from the farms and weigh the harvest on site using mobile digital scales. The farmers identify themselves using a fingerprint and at the same time confirm the weighing result. The money goes directly to your cell phone via a mobile payment system, where the receipt of payment is immediately displayed. Further transport takes place in boxes that have a barcode on them. This means it can be determined at any time – even during processing in the factories – where the fruit comes from.

Processing in your own country.

With the support of Dr. Hauschka has also been taking place in Kenya since 2021, the last step in the value chain, the processing of avocados into oil. Contrary to the common practice of building large production facilities, LIMBUA has factories at several locations in the immediate vicinity of the cultivation sites. This means that the transport routes between cultivation and further processing are short and ensure freshness, quality and low CO₂ emissions. Since 2021 we have been using the organic Fair for Life certified avocado oil produced by LIMBUA itself in Dr. Hauschka products.

Big advantage of further processing in Kenya: People are more closely involved in the value creation process. Most of the employees in the factories come from farming families in the surrounding region, who process their own raw materials in this way. You learn new processing techniques and build up valuable know-how in the country. This creates a variety of jobs: simple jobs that only require manual labor and also those that require food technology or agronomic expertise. This offers many young people the opportunity to stay in their homeland - even if it is in the country.

Fair for Life certified.

Responsible for purchasing all raw materials for Dr. Hauschka Kosmetik is naturamus GmbH, an independent subsidiary of WALA heals GmbH. Naturamus, like LIMBUA, is certified with the “Fair for Life” seal. As a particularly demanding fair standard, the seal stands for a socio-ecologically sustainable value chain from the origin to the final product. In addition, naturamus supports the Fair For Life Fund managed by LIMBUA with a surcharge of 5 percent on the purchase price. In recent years, the fund has been used, for example, to purchase school books and notebooks for children from financially disadvantaged families or to procure new seedlings and organic fertilizers.

LIMBUA's commitment radiates far into the region: people experience that value creation remains in Embu, that training and further education are actively promoted and that there is price continuity for the sustainably grown avocados. This is where the real main prize lies.