From Lampung Forests to Your Shelfs

A daily ritual with a longer story

Hold an Ara Essentials bottle to the light and you will not see a factory first. You will see a path that begins in Lampung’s social forests, where families tend plots their grandparents walked. Our brand exists so this journey is not invisible. We want every wash and every scent to connect your routine with a living landscape and the people who care for it.

Lampung is one of Indonesia’s leaders in social forestry. As of March 2024, the Provincial Forestry Service reported 381 social forestry approvals covering 206,086 hectares managed by 93,344 households. Those numbers are not abstract. They are the scale that allows responsible value chains to take root and reach cities across Indonesia.

Why build a brand, not sell raw materials

Selling raw materials leaves most value elsewhere. Indonesia’s beauty and personal care market was projected around IDR 158 trillion in 2025. When community harvests are linked to a brand with modern quality and safety standards, more value stays in villages and the case for keeping forests standing becomes stronger.

Ara Essentials partners with farmer groups in Pesawaran and collaborates with the Forest Management Unit KPH Pesawaran and local cooperatives. The province has been rolling out Integrated Area Development for social forestry, combining coaching, enterprise guidance and market access so producer groups can move from raw to refined. This public backbone turns training and supervision into momentum for real businesses.

We focus on non timber forest products or NTFPs. In FAO terms these are often called non‑wood forest products or NWFPs. They include goods of biological origin other than wood, derived from forests and trees outside forests. In plain words, they are things like candlenut, nutmeg and cardamom that can be harvested without cutting a tree. Research communities and agencies have shown that well‑managed NTFPs can improve smallholder income while encouraging sustainable management.

Quality and compliance you can verify

Production follows Good Manufacturing Practices and a quality management system aligned with ISO. Finished formulas are registered with BPOM (Indonesia’s Food and Drug Authority). Consumers can verify registrations through BPOM’s official product check portal. This is how a formula that begins in Lampung meets the safety and consistency standards your skin deserves.

Indonesia’s FOLU plan, which stands for Forestry and Other Land Use, sets a national direction for forests to be a net absorber of greenhouse gases by 2030. The plan is anchored by a Ministerial Decree and an operational roadmap. Community‑based value chains like ours matter because they reward careful harvest cycles and make standing forests more valuable as forests.

What this means for you

When you choose Ara Essentials you support a chain that begins with a farmer who knows the grove, a cooperative that pays fairly, a quality system that respects your skin, and a forest that remains alive for the next generation. Beauty should not ask a forest to shrink. Prosperity should not push families away from home. Ara Essentials ties those beliefs to practice, from forest to your shelf.

Follow each ingredient from forest plot to finished bottle:

The people behind your shampoo

Lampung social forests, global impact

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