What You Are Buying

How a Nila Lump Is Made

Plant nila is made by steeping Indigofera tinctoria leaves until fermentation releases the pigment precursors. The liquid is agitated to oxidise it, the pigment settles as a dense blue sediment, and the drained paste is pressed into cakes that harden as they dry.

The result is dense and matte outside, with a deep, slightly greenish blue through the body of the cake.

Plant Lumps and Mineral Lumps

We supply both, and label which is which on every spec sheet and bag.

Botanical Origin Plant nila lumps

INCI: Indigofera Tinctoria Leaf Powder

Botanical, organic-certifiable through a certified chain, colour shifts at high pH. Right for natural, hammam and heritage ranges.

Mineral Origin Mineral nila lumps

INCI: Ultramarines, CI 77007

Ultramarine pigment compacted into lumps — brighter, cleaner and far more stable across pH. The right material when shade consistency matters more than a botanical claim.

Our Grades

Grade A — Select Whole pressed cake, deepest colour, clean glassy fracture. For premium skincare and brand-led ranges.

Grade B — Standard Cake and large stone, strong colour, clean to slightly granular fracture. For general cosmetic manufacture.

Grade C — Mill Stock Mixed stone and fragment, good colour, granular fracture. For soap, bulk masks and high-volume grinding.

Every grade ships with its lot number, material type and matching INCI. Material outside a band is re-graded, never blended upward.

Why Buyers Choose Lumps Over Powder

Four Commercial Reasons

You control the particle size A cold-process soap maker and a serum formulator do not want the same grind. Buying lumps means milling to your own specification rather than accepting whatever mesh the supplier last produced.

Better value per kilo of pigment You are not paying for a mill run. If you already have milling capacity in-house, lumps are the cheaper route to exactly the same material.

Longer stability in storage Less exposed surface area means slower oxidation and less moisture pickup, so lumps hold their colour strength longer than the same material ground and bagged.

Simpler to hold in volume Lumps need less careful storage than fine powder, which matters when you are holding several hundred kilos against a production schedule.

Who Buys Lumps

Contract manufacturers with in-house milling, who would rather set their own particle size than work around somebody else's.
Soap makers working at volume, who typically want a coarser grind than most suppliers keep in stock and find it cheaper to produce themselves.
Brands who prefer to mill in small batches, so the powder going into a product is always freshly ground.
Distributors holding stock against forecast orders, for whom lumps are simply the more practical thing to store.

Request lump pricing →

Order Nila Lumps

Milling — Yours or Ours

Ship as lumps and mill in-house with full control over particle size and grinding schedule.

Or tell us the mesh and the application and we mill to order, with the line cleaned between runs and between plant and mineral material so nothing carries over from the previous batch.

Some customers split it — lumps for the grades they use regularly and have set up for, milled powder for the ones they run occasionally and would rather not retool for.

Packing and Storage

Lumps ship in kraft-lined bags inside fibre drums. Store sealed, cool and dry, away from direct light and humidity.

Nila is a pigment and marks concrete, grout, cloth and skin on contact, so handle it with gloves and plan the area where it gets opened.

Minimums and Ordering

Minimum order quantities vary by grade and form — send us your requirement and we confirm the minimum alongside the price. Every shipment carries a lot-specific Certificate of Analysis, Safety Data Sheet, Certificate of Origin and packing list, with the lot number tracing back to a specific production batch.

Tell us the grade, the volume, whether you want the lot milled, and the market you sell into. We quote against the real requirement rather than a list price you would have to negotiate down.

Moroccan Nila Lumps (Nila Zarqa) — Unground, Graded, Sold by the Kilo