From Sacred Wood to Global Fragrance: Ecuadorian Villages Powering a Brazilian Beauty Giant

When Brazil's Natura sent buyers into Ecuador's Amazon two years ago, they returned with quantities that barely register on an industrial scale — 25 kilos of palo santo oil, 25 kilos of ishpingo. The economics behind those batches, however, were anything but trivial: a single 25-kilo lot of processed essential oil fetched approximately $70,000 for the communities that produced it, which also retained the remaining plant material for independent use. By mid-2026, volumes had already doubled to 50 kilos per ingredient. By 2027, the company is planning something far more ambitious.

Ecuador's Outsized Position in Natura's Andean Strategy

Natura structures its Andean sourcing around four value chains across three countries — and Ecuador alone accounts for two of them. Palo santo, a resinous aromatic wood with a citrus-inflected scent prized in high perfumery, comes from the Bolívar Tello Community Association in Zapotillo Cantón, Loja province. Ishpingo — known locally as Amazonian cinnamon for its warm, spice-like aroma — is sourced through the Fundación Chankuap in Morona Santiago, near the provincial capital of Macas. Colombia and Peru each contribute a single chain, both focused on copoazú, an Amazonian fruit whose seeds are pressed into a cocoa-like butter.

Alejandro Gutiérrez, Natura's sustainability director for the Andean region, told Primicias that Ecuador's edge lies not simply in biological abundance, but in the presence of organized communities with the capacity to process and deliver raw ingredients to commercial specifications. The company's in-house perfumer identified palo santo's fragrance potential early; the years that followed were spent building the supply-chain infrastructure to act on it. Both oils are now incorporated directly into Natura's perfumery lines, with ishpingo doubling as a defining aromatic element in Ecuador's traditional colada morada.

Small Weight, Outsized Value

The unit economics of this supply model are what distinguish it structurally. Rather than buying raw plant material from communities at commodity rates, Natura structures its purchases around finished essential oil — a decision that dramatically amplifies income per kilo of harvest. The company provides the distillation equipment, technical training, and scientific partnerships with local universities to make that processing possible before any commercial agreement takes effect.

A 25-kilo batch of essential oil generated approximately $70,000 for the supplying communities in 2025, reported Primicias, citing Gutiérrez directly. Communities also retained the biomass remainder — leaves, bark, fruit pulp — for parallel monetization. "That is significant added value," Gutiérrez said, "because they still have the fruit, the leaves, and the bark to use." The oil then travels to Natura's Brazilian facilities, where a second refinement stage is applied before the material is blended into fragrance formulations.

Forbes Ecuador first covered Natura's Ecuador sourcing strategy in May 2026, noting that Natura now works with 46 ingredients across 44 communities in Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador — a figure that tracks against the company's own supply-chain expansion targets.

The 2027 Expedition: Mapping an Untapped Frontier

"En 2027 vamos a tener un trabajo muy fuerte en Ecuador," Gutiérrez said — meaning his teams will spend time embedded in Ecuador's jungle to evaluate regulatory frameworks, community readiness, and biodiversity availability for the next generation of ingredients. Three Amazonian palms are on the target list.

Morete, whose fruit pulp yields an oil Natura already incorporates in its Buriti product line in other markets, reportedly grows in abundance in certain Ecuadorian zones. Murumuru has a long track record in South American cosmetics formulation. Patahuá is being weighed for inclusion in the company's Andean regional production line in Colombia. Before any of those assessments can proceed, Natura's field teams — typically drawn from its Brazilian and Colombian operations and stationed with communities for one to two months at a time — must verify that harvest practices leave palm trees standing rather than felling them, and that local governance structures can sustain a formal supply relationship.

Gutiérrez was direct about timing: the full development arc for a new ingredient, from field assessment through chemical validation to commercial integration, typically spans three to seven years. The 2027 expedition is the start of that clock, not its end.

The Equity Question: Who Captures the Value

How broadly community earnings spread remains an open question. Approximately 40 families currently supply Natura across both Ecuadorian value chains — a deliberately modest base, Gutiérrez noted, that prioritizes quality of conditions over scale. An April 2026 OECD report on bioeconomy in the Brazilian Amazon identified equitable benefit sharing as one of three structural priorities for converting regional biodiversity into durable community income — a diagnosis that resonates across the border in Ecuador, where formal bioeconomy infrastructure remains thin relative to the country's ecological richness.

Natura's own track record in Brazil offers a benchmark. A Brazilian community that began delivering 200 kilos of essential oil per year two decades ago now produces 70 metric tons annually — roughly 350 times its original output. The company's standing policy is to forgo exclusivity clauses; suppliers retain the right to sell to any buyer, a position Gutiérrez frames as foundational to genuine trust rather than supply-chain dependency.

At the financing level, Natura issued a $244 million sustainability-linked bond in 2024. Under the structure reported by Bloomberg, the company's borrowing costs increase if it fails to grow its Amazon-sourced ingredient count from 44 to 47 by 2026, and to 49 by 2029.

Ecuador's Biodiversity Edge — and the Race to Monetize It

Gutiérrez described Ecuador as the most megadiverse country on earth per square kilometer of territory — a characterization broadly supported by comparative biodiversity indexes — and acknowledged directly that the country's forest wealth has historically fed informal economies rather than structured supply chains.

Research by WRI Brasil, drawing on input from more than 70 researchers, found that just 13 primary products from the Brazilian Amazon already contribute approximately $2.3 billion in annual GDP — a figure that signals the much larger potential lying dormant across the basin.

For Ecuador's forest communities, the next 12 months represent something close to a leverage point. Natura's 2027 expedition will map what exists; what those communities do before that expedition arrives — deepening their processing capacity and organizational infrastructure — will shape the terms on which any new value chains are negotiated.

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