Natural vs hulled sesame seeds: which grade fits your product.

What is the difference between natural and hulled sesame seeds?

Natural sesame keeps its seed coat; hulled sesame has had it removed. Everything else follows from that one difference. Natural (also called unhulled or whole) is the workhorse grade. It goes whole into oil crushing, and it goes to the tahini and halva plants that hull the seed on their own line — standard tahini is made from hulled seed, because the coat is bitter and darkens the paste, so the hull comes off somewhere regardless of which form was bought. Hulled is washed, dried and de-coated to a uniform white seed, and it goes wherever the seed is visible in the finished product — bakery topping, burger buns, confectionery and seasoning blends — and to paste plants with no hulling line of their own.

Two things are worth correcting early, because both cost buyers money. Hulled is not a higher grade of natural — it is a different product with a different risk profile. And natural is not the cheap option; it is the correct option for roughly two-thirds of the industrial uses this seed is bought for.

How do the specifications compare?

Side by side, against the grades we offer from Nigeria. The differences that matter are admixture, moisture and the microbiological line — not the headline purity figure, which both grades can hit.

Why does hulled sesame carry a Salmonella specification when natural often does not?

Because hulling is a wet process. The seed is soaked to loosen the coat, de-hulled, then dried — and a food that is wetted and re-dried is a food that can be re-contaminated between those two steps. That is why our hulled specification carries Salmonella absent in 25 g tested per lot, and the natural specification does not carry a microbiological line at all.

This is not a theoretical concern for anyone importing from Nigeria into the EU. Nigerian sesame sits in Annex II of Regulation (EU) 2019/1793 for Salmonella at 50% frequency — meaning half of consignments are checked, and entry additionally requires an official certificate from the country of origin, sampling-and-analysis results and a CHED. Annex II is materially stricter than Annex I, where an origin faces increased checks but no certificate requirement.

The scale of it is worth stating plainly. A query of the European Commission's RASFF Window on 31 July 2026 returned 267 notifications naming sesame with Nigeria among the countries of origin. Salmonella accounted for 201 of them — roughly three in four — and documentary or certificate failures for another 43. Chemical hazards, combined, accounted for about 4%. Whatever else you audit at origin, audit the microbiology and the paperwork.

Positions in that instrument move. Ours was re-verified on 13 August 2026 against the consolidated text applicable from 30 June 2026, and Nigeria's entry had not changed. Article 12 requires review at intervals not exceeding six months, so confirm the current position at each shipment cycle rather than trusting any page, including this one.

Does hulling increase oil content, and should a crusher buy hulled?

No, a crusher should not buy hulled. Removing the coat raises the measured oil percentage of what remains, which is why our hulled grade specifies 50% minimum against 48–52% for natural — but the coat that was removed was mass the crusher already paid for, and hulling adds a processing step, a yield loss and a price premium to recover both. The oil gained does not pay for the hull removed.

The same logic decides tahini, and it decides it differently for different producers. Standard tahini is made from hulled seed, which is why hulled appears on our tahini application list. A producer buying natural is not making a mistake either — but the reason is usually that they hull it themselves, and only occasionally that they want a wholegrain paste, which is darker and more bitter than the hulled kind. The question is not which grade is better. It is whether the hull comes off on your line or your supplier's, and which your customer's expectation of colour was built around.

Which grade does your product need?

Work down this list; the first line that matches your product is your grade.

1. 01The seed is visible in the finished product — bakery topping, burger buns, breadsticks, confectionery, furikake and seasoning blends. Buy hulled.
2. 02The seed is crushed for oil. Buy natural. Buy the highest purity you can justify, because admixture is mass you pay for and cannot crush.
3. 03The seed is ground for tahini or halva. Either works, and the deciding factor is the colour and body your formulation was built around. Ask for samples of both before you re-specify an existing product.
4. 04The finished product is retail-facing and a single dark seed is a complaint. Buy colour-sorted — our sortex premium grade, which is natural seed taken to 99.5% purity by optical sorting rather than by hulling.
5. 05You are unsure, or you are buying against a customer's specification you did not write. Send us the specification. Most requirements can be met at origin, and the wrong grade bought correctly is still the wrong grade.

How does the choice change what arrives in the container?

Hulled ships lighter. Natural sesame in 50 kg bags loads about 19 MT into a 20ft FCL and 26 MT into a 40ft; hulled in 25 kg bags loads about 18 MT and 25 MT respectively. Bagged sesame stows at roughly 1.7–1.8 m³/MT, so a 20ft container cubes out well before it reaches its weight limit, while a 40ft weighs out against the ISO payload ceiling instead — which is why a 40ft is not simply two 20fts.

The practical consequence is that the grade decision moves your minimum order. One 20ft FCL is approximately 19 MT of natural or 18 MT of hulled, and any per-MT price comparison between the two grades that ignores the tonne of difference per container is comparing the wrong numbers.

Packing differs too. Hulled is offered in multi-layer paper as well as PP, and paper is the usual choice where the seed goes straight into a food plant. Natural ships in new PP as standard.

What should you specify when you enquire?

Six lines settle a quotation, and leaving any of them open is what turns a two-day quote into a two-week one.

• —Grade — natural, hulled or sortex premium, and the purity you buy against.
• —Quantity, in MT or in containers, and whether it is a single shipment or a programme.
• —Destination port and Incoterm — FOB Lagos as standard, CFR or CIF on request.
• —Bag size and marking, if your plant or your customer requires a particular one.
• —The analysis basis your contract runs on, and which laboratory's result is final.
• —Any destination-market limit you are held to that is stricter than the specification above — an EU official certificate, a Japanese residue screen, a customer's own microbiological standard.

How current is this page?

The specifications are our published contract grades and are confirmed per contract against the lot shipped. The EU position was verified against the consolidated text of Regulation (EU) 2019/1793 applicable from 30 June 2026, re-checked on 13 August 2026; the next revision is due around December 2026. The RASFF figures are our own query of the RASFF Window public database on 31 July 2026 — reproducible, but not official Commission statistics.