Money makes the world go round.
Supply and demand is the golden rule in any market and in the agarwood trade demand is growing and the supply is shrinking rapidly.
The demand for bigger pieces of agarwood and darker pieces is huge. When agarwood is at the plantation/hunter stage in the chain certain temptations can arise.
Very often when cleaning wood pieces will break off. This small mistake can mean that a £10,000 piece of wood becomes a £5,000 piece of wood. As a result glue it often used to stick pieces back together.
In many cultures particularly in the Middle East placing a huge wood chip on the burner is a sign of wealth and prestige. This in turn creates huge demand for bigger pieces. I find this difficult to understand myself as it’s all going on a burner anyway.
The same goes with the appetite for the darkest woods. The woods are often painted in order to give the impression of a higher grade. Once again people are crying out for the darkest pieces to show guests and create a big scene at the burner.
It’s our job to filter through kilos of wood with a fine tooth comb and separate any contaminated wood. This as you can imagine is very difficult when buying 50 kilos at a time of wood chips.
At Oudbase we DO NOT sell glued or painted oud chips. We only sell pure agarwood of different grades and prices to suit all pockets.
Visit oudbase.com for more information