Opportunity to invest in world’s most expensive raw material

The hope of getting an attractive return is what propels most individuals to choose from the wide array of investment choices available today.

It is a difficult decision for those who wish to save for the future with the dream of getting a comfortable nest-egg for retirement, or to meet the needs of children who may require an expensive higher education and other expenditure.

The emerging option that is now favoured by farsighted investors is commercial forestry. It is not only beneficial to planet Earth, making the world lush and green, but more importantly it helps to mitigate global warming by reducing greenhouse carbon emissions and the investors are able to reap a bountiful harvest in eight years.

Sadaharitha Plantations, the leader in commercial forestry in Sri Lanka and has won the Gold in National Green Awards, manages over 2,000 acres of forest plantations of sandalwood, teak, mahogany, rambutan and agarwood. The species that has the most potential for investors who wish to preserve the environment while saving for the future is agarwood.

Sadaharitha Chairman Sathish Navarathna said: “We have a portfolio of over 26,000 long-term customers in Sri Lanka while a new segment of investors are emerging rapidly from overseas as well, especially for Agarwood which is better known as ‘Wellapatta’ here. There is a high demand internationally for Agarwood chips and oil which are used for the world’s most expensive brands of perfumes. Investors everywhere are eager to take advantage of the opportunity this provides.”

Navarathna further added: “Agarwood, especially high grade Agarwood resin is the world’s most expensive raw material worth US$ 50,000 per kilogram. agarwood oil fetch US$ 30,000 per kilogram. The market for agarwood is enormous because only about 60 percent of the international demand is currently met. We have 344 acres of Agarwood and are expanding this further via our out-grower system to meet the emerging demand for agarwood.”

Sadaharitha also focuses on conducting research on enhancing the production of agarwood resin. The company has the patent within Sri Lanka for the use of an advanced proprietary technology called CA-Kit developed in USA and the expertise to manage this technology to promote the production of the resin in agarwood. A unique property of the species is that it develops the resin naturally as a defense mechanism, when the tree is damaged. The resin cannot be developed by artificial means; hence agarwood is more expensive due to low yield from plant material and typical human involvement in processing.

The price the resin fetches depends on its quality, so research is primarily focused on enhancing both production and quality of the resin. Sadaharitha is collaborating with the National Research Council of Sri Lanka and the University of Sri Jayewardenepura and also Wescorp, one of the largest entities to supply aromatic wood to the international market, to conduct research.

While agarwood oils and chips are essential for the manufacture of world renowned, expensive branded perfumes, it has other uses as well. It is used as a raw material for the production of incense, certain aphrodisiacs, and in Chinese medicine for the treatment of cirrhosis of the liver and lung and stomach tumors. Another reason why agarwood is expensive is because it is an endangered species. Certain Agarwood species are protected worldwide under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) of Wild Fauna and Flora as well as by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).