13 Facts About Ahava

Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories, Limited is an Israeli cosmetics company with headquarters in Lod that manufactures skin care products made of mud and mineral-based compounds from the Dead Sea.

Ahava has flagship stores in Israel, Germany, Hungary, South Korea, the Philippines and Singapore.

Ahava products have been the target of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement because it operates in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank.

Ahava was founded in 1988 as a single stand selling bottles of body scrub to tourists, generating $1 million that year.

In March 2016, under its new ownership, it was reported that Ahava is moving its factory at Kibbutz Mitzpe Shalem to the Tamar Regional Council in order to avoid the EU directives against trade with companies operating in illegal settlements and pressure from the international BDS movement.

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Ahava is one of several Israeli cosmetics companies researching nanotechnology applications.

Ahava operates its own laboratory for cell and organ culture.

Ahava developed a laboratory model for in-vitro NP screening that is employed for studying inflammatory processes using UV- irradiated human skin organ cultures.

Ahava is the only company that has an Israeli permit to extract mud for commercial purposes.

Ahava is licensed to extract mud from the West Bank section of the Dead Sea coast.

Ahava's position is that the facility in Mitzpe Shalem is legal and that there is no recognized right of any people's other than Israel to the West Bank and that the mud is excavated from the Israeli part of the Dead Sea.

Boycott campaigns have been organized by organizations such as Code Pink, which says that Ahava's products come from "stolen Palestinian natural resources in the occupied territory of the Palestinian West Bank", and are produced in Mitzpe Shalem.

In May 2012, South Africa's Minister of Trade and Industry announced new labelling rules for Israeli settlement goods; Ahava was mentioned by name as a company whose goods were fraudulently labeled as “Product of Israel” when their place of origin is the occupied Palestinian Territories.