More Than Another Oud Perfume Company: Fragrance du Bois

by: Serguey Borisov

At Esxence 2015, the stand of Fragrance du Bois, a rather new and unknown perfume company, looked very strange. It combined posh gilded and crystal-decorated flacons in gilded glass shelves on one side, and a big chest containing big laboratory glass bottles with blackish liquid on the other side. The blackish liquid was real oud oil—Grade A+, real expensive stuff that deserves a golden bottle.

Soon I realized that this is not just another perfume company from the Middle East that wants to capitalize on some experience about oud oil. It's an eco-conscious company that grows Aquilaria trees (agarwood) in Eastern countries, performs scientific research about oud and makes the business sustainable. An example: for every 50 ml of Fragrance du Bois perfume sold, they plant at least two trees: one teak tree under the project supported by the Thai Royal Family Foundation and one Aquilaria tree on one of their sustainable plantations. Another: they work with local communities, paying them well and providing them with the expertise, knowledge and technical support to cultivate their land in a way that will generate more income. They help local residents with housing and build schools, in service of ethical sourcing. I was delighted to discuss the differences of Fragrance du Bois with the Global Business Development Director of the company, Gary Crates.

Agarwood plantation in Sri Lanka

Gary Crates: As a company, we started privately with the Aquilaria plantations in 2002. We acquired our first plantations in Sri Lanka. We wanted to learn how to cultivate the tree, as it needs very complex treatment to get the precious oil, and just about 5-6% of Aquilaria trees would produce the oil in the wild. So we need to create an organic solution to replicate the process in our sustainable plantations. So in 2008 we started in Singapore and in Thailand. We work with three independent universities, to make a scientific base for it from the biological, chemical and ecological points of view.

Our ambition was to create a sustainable plantation in seven years, to get what takes place in the wild in 50 years. We have been perfecting it ever since 2002. Now we believe our product is consistent—we produce the Grade A+ oil, and every client we supply with oil will have a full certification, and that’s our great difference. So we have authenticity certificates (where we get the wood and the oil), the chemical analysis which is GCMS, the CITES certification showing that we have a legal and sustainable plantation, and then the material site data sheet. We supply all that with our oil.

Sergey Borisov: What is the biggest problem with oud oil?

Agarwood plantation

Gary Crates: What I think is the biggest challenge in the oud perfume industry is achieving consistency, because most of the oud oil today comes from illegal sources, not CITES-approved sources. And the problem with it is simple: the aquilaria tree is almost extinct now  In a few more years—5, 10, 20 years—they will be totally gone from the wild. Our trees—and we have about two million trees in our plantations—are growing in seven-year cycles. They grow till they are ready to be harvested and then we have our own distilleries and we can supply the oil to fragrance companies.

But about three years ago we started to make our own fragrance collection, Fragrance Du Bois. We worked with some very well-known noses from France, so we created a range of fragrances based on the premise they should be accepted well all over the world (not only for UAE tastes!). For our Asian clients we made light floral oud fragrances, for Middle Eastern clients we have more potent smoky and woody perfumes with higher concentrations of oud. The oud oil concentration in our perfume formulas is between 1 and 4%. For Europe we have the floral, the fruity, the spicy, the green fragrances—there are more mixed clientele tastes in Europe.

Sergey Borisov: Why didn’t you commission some Arabian or Middle Eastern perfumers to create perfumes for their markets?

Gary Crates: That’s a good question and the simple answer is there are very few of them. We found only two noses in the Middle East and we tried to work with them to build our collection. But both of them decided to create their own oud perfume ranges instead. There are not many very good perfumers, in terms of Art of Perfumery. Now in Dubai there's a huge interest in our industry, the younger generation wants to be involved in the perfume industry. So we try to play with them. Look, there is a game at our stand: “Train Your Nose.” There are 53 essential oils you can smell and then, by number, find out the materials, what was what, and memorize the smell. And we have two ouds in the library—one real and one synthetic. We show people the difference because not all people know the difference.

And the fragrances are not about oud oil only. The Shades collection has pyramids of notes, they have legends linked with colors and every perfume has the name of the perfumer with it (Olivier Pescheux, Alexandra Kosinski, Guillaume Flavigny, Hamid Merati-Kashani, Nathalie Cetto, Caroline Sabas) and also they all have real pure organic oud oil. Oud is relatively new for Europeans in the Western market …

Sergey Borisov: As far as I know, agarwood was one of the commodities that were traded on the London Exchange market in the 19th century, along with natural musk and ambergris … It was presented in Europe long before now— maybe it was forgotten?

Gary Crates: Right, absolutely, but that's about agarwood, not oil. Agarwood is one of the traditional medicines in Oriental cultures. Oud and Agarwood in China are significantly bigger than in the whole Middle East. It's a huge market—but we have no data about it, no information at all, as there's no export, no regulation, no CITES. They use it as fragrance, for incense, as powder in capsules to treat different problems with it. They make oud tea with oud leaves. They use it for whole range of different treatments. And they have different species of Aquilaria trees for different diseases, not only perfumes. Like, this is a piece of Aquilaria crassna and they have to macerate it to use in medicine …

Sergey Borisov: By the way, how many different species of Oud trees are known? Fifteen? Twenty?

Gary Crates: It's actually thirty-nine. Originally we thought there were seventeen, but then, having worked with different universities from different countries, we learned about many, many more local species of Aquilaria. But there are only about five species which are commercially used. We work on projects in China and India, but our main plantations stay in Thailand, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka as well. What’s interesting about India is that some years ago the Indian government incentivized farmers to grow agarwood trees, and when we started our plantation we got a lot of support from them and from Indian scientists, too. So there's a lot of trees in India now, as far as farmers representative told us—they have about 1.2 million trees, but they don’t have the “know-how” and proper technologies for good quality oud oil! So we are working with them now trying to make the best organic oil.

We have a range of organic compounds for injection to create different conditions, and we need to find the right time, place and frequency in order to make more agarwood and more oil. I believe that we will have our first results and first trials of organic Indian oil in another nine months. I should say that we provide people with the “know-how” of growing trees but also help them to get education, to know how to use the land between trees to grow food, we build schools for locals—that’s our ethical approach to sourcing.

Agarwood

Sergey Borisov: I've heard that there's a difference in quality between fresh distilled oud oil and aged oud oil.

Gary Crates: Yes, it is true. Oud is very much like a red wine; it actually matures and becomes richer with age. We have Middle Eastern clients that buy agarwood plantations not for the financial return; they want the oud oil straight. So what they do: when the oud oil is ready, they put in into a vault in Dubai, with temperature and humidity control, and they store it for years. So when some holiday comes—for example, Ramadan—they take out, say,  20 tolas as gifts for the family, but they still keep a few kilos of aging oil in their oud cellar. It actually gets higher in value with the years and the oil changes all the time, exactly like a wine. So our ambition and the reason we work with the three universities was to try to replicate through a seven-year period what happens in fifty years with wild oud. When we get every oud oil trial, we do the GCMS analysis, and I would say that we are about 5% away from the perfect result. We are getting closer and closer, obviously it takes time, because every time you do it, it needs one more year to make another approximation step.

Cambodian oud

Sergey Borisov: What about the price of new oud oil?

Gary Crates: It's $30,000 per kilo. We sell our Grade A+ wholesale. And in retail its price is significantly higher.

Sergey Borisov: OK, and if it's properly aged oud oil?

Gary Crates: Well, the highest price I`ve ever heard of in Kuwait was $250,000 per kilo. But there was only 400 grams of the oil, and I think it was about 70 years old.

Sergey Borisov: From the price point of view it seems barbaric to make a perfume out of such a precious material, doesn’t it? How do you dare to mix the precious oil with such meager materials to make fragrances? Why don't you just age it properly?

Agarwood oil

Gary Crates: The problem is that the demand for oud oils is much bigger than supply. The Middle East, UAE, Europe, China, India … We do sell it as oud oil also—look, it's a quarter tola of oud (less than 3 ml) for 400 euros, and we sell it in our own stores only, in Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and we have a lot of devoted clients from the Middle East. But I should say that the actual oud oil market is very small, it is less than 12,000 kilos a year. And if you look at reported trade—it's about 6,000 kilos. The rest is black market. So it's just not a huge market for the oil itself, and to supply the fragrance industry is just another channel to sell our oud oil. Also we convert our production to sell oud powder after distillation, to make incenses, bakhoors, etc. If we compare the oud oil market to the real agarwood market, then you find the difference: thousands of tons of agarwood pieces are sold each year! But we can make the oil in seven years, and the minimum time to get agarwood for bakhoor is nine years—two years longer.

(To be continued with a review of Fragrance du Bois perfumes)