A recent investigative report by French outlet Orient XXI has found that Moroccan women producing argan oil are paid up to three times less than the legal minimum wage, while multinational companies take most of the profits at the end of the supply chain.
Titled “Argan Oil: Moroccan Women Exploited, Multinationals Enriched,” the report said consecutive years of drought have changed the sector’s structure, with market shares moving from 80% for cooperatives and 20% for private firms in 2008 to a fully reversed situation today, where many cooperatives have become only subcontractors for large companies.
“We’ve become service cooperatives. They bring us the fruits, and all we do now is crack the nuts,” revealed Fatima, president of a small cooperative in Agadir.
Read also: How Morocco’s Argan fuels a $62 million Israeli business and became a scientific experiment
The report revealed that large companies rely on Moroccan women producing argan oil as members rather than employees, a status that is supposed to give them a share of profits.
Yet, this structure excludes basic labor protections like a minimum wage, social security, and severance pay, allowing them to offer lower prices than private companies with salaried workers.
The investigation, conducted by journalists Julie Chaudier, Juliet Ferguson, and Alice Facchini, also found that women in cooperatives are paid per kilo of kernels, getting between MAD 25 (€2) and MAD 50 (€5), while it takes about a full day to produce one kilo, compared with a legal agricultural minimum wage in Morocco of over MAD 97 (€9) per day.
It argued that companies benefit from low costs and full legal flexibility, as well as “the fair trade image linked to cooperatives,” and also indirectly access support from international development aid and the Moroccan state due to their social role.
The investigation revealed that “most companies also rely on wholesalers who supply argan fruit to women in small villages, where they crack the kernels at home for only MAD 20 per kilo, a practice done outside any legal framework.”
It said that while women and cooperatives are involved in production, most profits go to large trading companies and cosmetic laboratories.
Last autumn, it highlighted that argan oil was exported at €45 per liter by the most competitive companies and up to €72 by smaller cooperatives.
But at the same time, it sold “to consumers at €120 at Aromazone, €400 for Melvita from the L’Occitane Group, and €1,130 at MoroccanOil, noting that “the raw material price accounts for just 3.9% to 60% of the final retail price.”
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