No benchmark; wild-sourced material commanding rising premia while plantation grades expand supply.14Med
Context for Liquidity, not a rating. Definitions → · Themes covering this market are listed at the end of the brief.
Re-checked 5 Oct 2026: no new benchmark, CITES listing change or market data found since the last update. Ratings unchanged.
Wild agarwood is priced by expert assessment with no benchmark, and CITES permits govern trade. Wood and oil can be stored, but authentication is hard and adulteration common. Exit is private and slow.
The Σ grade is ΣΟΦΙΑ's opinion of how practical the asset is to hold. Not a view on return. How it is judged →
The Gulf's own luxury commodity: a resin formed only when an Aquilaria tree is wounded and infected, traded by weight at prices that overlap with gold, and sourced, seven times in ten, from wild populations that are already listed as threatened. There is no benchmark price, no exchange and no reliable production statistic. This page maps what can be verified.
A pathology, not a species.
Agarwood is resin-saturated heartwood produced by trees of the genus Aquilaria (and related Gyrinops and Gonystylus) in response to wounding and fungal infection. Healthy trees contain none. In the wild, a small fraction of mature trees form resin; the rest are felled to find out, since most harvesting, wild or cultivated, destroys the whole tree.3 Trees need up to a decade to reach maturity.3 High
| Form | Use | Where the value sits |
|---|---|---|
| Chips and wood (bakhoor) | Burned as incense; Gulf and East Asian ceremonial use | Graded by resin density, origin and age; the ultra-rare kynam/kyara grade sits at the top |
| Oil (dahn al-oud) | Distilled; worn neat as attar or dosed into fine fragrance | Distillation yield is low; blends with cultivated material are common |
| Powder and exhausted wood | Incense sticks, traditional medicine (TCM, Ayurveda, Unani) | Volume segment; lowest unit value |
Three species, A. malaccensis (Critically Endangered, India/Malaysia/Indonesia), A. crassna (Critically Endangered, Indochina) and A. filaria (Vulnerable, eastern Indonesia and Papua), account for more than 90% of recorded chip and powder trade.2 High
Plantations have solved the volume problem for one species and not for the others.
| Species | IUCN status | Wild-sourced share of trade, 2010–20 | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| A. filaria | Vulnerable | c.97% | Almost entirely wild; eastern Indonesia, PNG High1 2 |
| A. malaccensis | Critically Endangered | c.57% | Assam is the main cultivated source; wild harvest continues in Indonesia and Malaysia High1 4 |
| A. crassna | Critically Endangered | <1% | >99% from plantations, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos High2 |
Since about 2017 the trade has shifted toward artificially inoculated plantation wood as large estates in Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia and north-east India matured.2 5 Cultivated wood is younger, lower in resin density and cheaper; it supplies the oil and incense-stick segments but does not substitute for old wild chips at the top of the market. Med
There is no benchmark. What follows are observed points, not a curve.
| Grade / market | Indicative price | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| Medium-grade chips, India (Assam), early 2025 | ₹1.2–3 lakh/kg (c.$1,400–3,500) | Low retailer source8 |
| High-grade chips, India, early 2025 | ₹5–10 lakh+/kg (c.$6,000–12,000+) | Low8 |
| Top wild chips / kynam | "can exceed $100,000/kg" | Low widely repeated, unaudited7 9 |
| Single kynam lots, Shanghai auction anecdotes | c.$9 m/kg equivalent | Hyp anecdote via Al Jazeera, unverified9 |
| Gold, for scale, at an illustrative $4,000/oz | c.$128,600/kg | Derived $4,000 × 32.15; illustrative, not a live price |
The comparison people reach for, "more expensive than gold", is true only at the very top of the wild grade and false for the plantation material that constitutes most of the physical volume. Rupee conversions above use c.₹86/$ and are indicative. Derived
Four market-research houses give figures spanning more than two orders of magnitude for what is nominally the same market.5 6 10 None publishes a tonnage basis. All are Low confidence and should not be cited as fact. The honest statement is that the size of the global oud trade is unknown and that CITES and customs data disagree by enough to suggest the illegal segment is larger than the recorded one.1
The Gulf as sink, East Asia as connoisseur, Europe as latecomer.
| Market | Role | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Qatar | Largest consumption block; bakhoor and attar are daily-use products across income bands | Estimates of "50% of consumption" circulate but are unsourced Low6 10 |
| Japan, China, Taiwan | Ceremonial and collector demand; kōdō tradition; kynam as an asset class | Highest unit prices Med11 |
| Western fine fragrance | "Oud" as a marketing category since the late 2000s; largely synthetic or trace-dosed | Natural oil c.77% of the oil market by one estimate, but that estimate is itself Low Low11 |
| Gulf houses (Ajmal, Arabian Oud, Abdul Samad al Qurashi, Swiss Arabian) | Vertically integrated: plantations in Assam, distillation, retail | Ajmal is Assam-rooted and UAE-headquartered Med11 |
CITES Appendix II since 2004–05: permits required, enforcement thin.
| Instrument | Effect | Weakness |
|---|---|---|
| CITES Appendix II listing (all Aquilaria and Gyrinops) | Export permits require a non-detriment finding and legal-acquisition proof | NDFs outdated; species often recorded as "spp."; customs and CITES volumes diverge High1 3 |
| India: Legal Procurement Certificate; DGFT notification 52/2024-25 (Jan 2025) | Formalises cultivated-source exports from Assam and the north-east | Re-export of imported wild wood after "value addition" recorded Med4 |
| Malaysia: NDF for wild A. malaccensis 2025–2027 | Quota-based wild harvest with physical inspection | Wild harvest continues for a Critically Endangered species High12 |
| Philippines DENR | Plantation cultivation is the only legal source | Early-stage plantation base Med13 |
For a UAE importer the practical exposure is the same as with gold doré or rough diamonds: origin is asserted at the point of export, not verified at the point of import. A CITES permit proves that a permit was issued; it does not prove that the wood in the crate is the wood on the permit. For an MLRO the relevant questions are species declaration, source code (W wild / A artificially propagated), and whether the exporter's NDF is current. Med
Recurring data points that move this analysis.
| Indicator | Source & cadence | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| CITES agarwood decisions | Standing Committee and Conference of the Parties documents | Whether NDF requirements tighten or species move between appendices |
| Indian cultivated exports | DGFT data; Assam Forest Department, annual | The largest legal cultivated source for the Gulf |
| Kynam auction results | Chinese and Hong Kong auction-house reports | The only public price discovery at the top of the market |
| Synthetic oud in fine fragrance | IFRA and fragrance-house disclosures | Whether Western demand ever converts to natural material |
| Gulf free-zone initiatives | DMCC, ADGM and QFZA announcements | Any move toward a graded tender venue for chips and oil |
Numbered in order of first citation. Oud has few primary statistical sources; academic and CITES documents are weighted over market-research vendors. Sources 14–16 added 23 Oct 2026 for the holding-horizon and exit-depth fields.