Our story

Our Story - by founder and Executive Chair Tim Coakley  

I first noticed this different aroma in Singapore in the mid 1990’s particularly around Chinese New Year. Anyone I asked about it just either didn’t answer or said don’t worry about it. You stick to sandalwood. Finally, when I was visiting a sandalwood powder man in Taiwan in early 2004, I got my answer. I smoked Champion Ruby tobacco from Australia and often old men would notice me rolling a smoke and I would make one for them. This time an old guy came up to me and offered a stick of wood to put in my smoke and to make him one too. It was the smell I had been trying to find out. Agarwood chip. We had a few smokes and were both happy. I gave him a new 2-ounce packet of Champion Ruby, and he gave me a small plastic bag of agarwood chip. Later in the day the various people I met told me more about “Chen Xiang” (sinking wood) in Mandarin. I was told it clears your windpipes and makes breathing very easy. So, like a fool I had chip in every cigarette that day and night. The next morning my breathing was raw and whilst it was easy to breathe, it hurt. I was then advised that I have over done it and that you should only maybe have it in one or two aromatic cigarettes per day. This was the start of my love and search for oud.

Once I knew the name of this unique aromatic wood, I could do my research with my travels and google searches. A whole new world opened and the romance began.

After we identified the names used for agarwood in different regions of the world, I was hooked.

We got involved with the owners of CAKit from Vietnam and made a few trips to learn about the various induction methods. We visited sites where it grew and was being harvested. We were convinced that at least the CAKit would produce resin to form oud and then negotiated access to the pattern for Australia, Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga, Hawaii and Solomon Islands. Wescorp Agarwood purchased the license for US$100,000 in March 2007 from Minnesota University’s company, Cultivated Agarwood Llc.

Wescorp had always decreed that we would never be growers and only ever be processors and exporters of the products we handled. It was then we met with Mr Tom Cullity (ex Quintis CEO and a well-known lawyer in Perth) who would find the growers and trial areas for the growing of the agarwood trees in Australia. Tom and Wescorp  formed a company called Agarwood Australasia Pty Ltd (AA). We imported 10kg of Aquilaria crassna seed from Vietnam all with CITES approvals and gave it to 14 different nurseries around the top of WA (from Carnarvon to Kununurra), NT ( from Humpty Doo to Catherine) and Queensland (from Cairns to MacKay).

Only two trees survived the dry season in Kunnunarra, none survived in the Northern Territory and the best performances were south from Cairns to Moresby. It was clear then that no matter how much water you gave the trees during the dry season, if the humidity was below 55% then they would die.

We imported two lots of 20kg A. crassna seeds from Vietnam with CITIES approval. These were given to a local nursey to grow into seedlings. We finished up with 50,000 seedlings. One of the problems was the timing of seeds from northern hemisphere to southern hemisphere. We were 6 months out of whack.

The sugar cane farmers lined up to plant the seedlings changed their mind as the price of sugar went higher and we didn’t have any growers. Tom Cullity sold his shares in Agarwood Australasia to other private investors look for land to lease so the seedlings could be planted.

AA planted 22,000 seedling trees at 4 x 3 spacing from May on cleared prepared properties. By June it stopped raining and we had to water all of the trees every week giving them one litre of water and SeaSol each. It was one of the driest years for ages.

We were not sure how much shade the seedlings needed, so we planted some trees in the established forest. Virtually no preparation, just a hole with a pick then plant the seedling. They did okay even with the competition, but not as good as the open planting.

We planted some in-between sugar rows at a sugar cane farm where they took out the second and third row of sugar cane then planted the seedlings 3 metres apart in between the sugar cane. They did okay but the sugar cane used most of the moisture in the ground. When they decided to water the seedlings, the water they used from their dam was contaminated with poison and they all died.

At another trial property we planted the owner grazed cattle in the tree paddock lightly and after two years old the survivors did okay and the cattle didn’t eat the leaves but enjoyed rubbing on the trunks to scratch insects off. Some still survive as shade for cattle.

Agarwood Australasia continued to use the existing tree maintenance contractors until 2012 but then took over to do our own management other than spraying for caterpillars by the helicopters. The tractor and slashers were compacting the rows too much often the operators were knocking down trees when they turned. Their spraying for weeds was disappointing, and we took that over too. We bought our first 60” Hustler mower in 2012 and employed Russell Stewart as an operator. We bought 3 old Suzuki Utes and put one together from the three to be our spraying and watering unit.

Some of the trees we planted up in the tableland area struggled, as it can be very dry in winter and the wallabies were forever stripping the bark off the trunks to sharpen their claws. At times it was flooded and the water would sit there for over a week.

Due to continual flooding and Phytophthora, we decided to harvest one of the farms and get out of the lease. The remaining 2,700 trees were induced with Wescorp’s patent CAKit in 2015 and boosted 6 months later. We then harvested all of the trees in June 2016. We used high pressure gurney to strip the bark off then cut the trees down and took them back to the factory. We also pushed out all of the stumps and carted them back to the factory and left them in a pile in the open. Over 18 months the butts disintegrated to nothing and were worth nothing. The logs were used to extract oil from our experimental cooking apparatus we had built. The results were poor, even though we tried to cut off most of the sapwood with our band saw prior to chipping. From these cooks we were able to work out how to set up our commercial cooking shed for the future. Agarwood Australasia didn’t make any money from the first property, and it was a significant loss. We were convinced that CAKits were not the way to go for oil production.

First harvest of CAKit

Planted 22,000 seedlings at a new property with me, Russell and 4 backpackers in 2010. The whole place had to be cleared of scrub as it hadn’t been farmed for over 20 years. We hired a D5 dozer without a driver and pushed up and burnt as we went. The rows were mounded and ripped at the same time with a contractor and tough areas ripped with the dozer first.  We started planting on Australia Day and finished early March. It virtually rained every afternoon, and we didn’t have to water once. These trees were all planted at 4 metre row width and the tree spacing in the rows varied from 1 metre to 3 metres. We had many trials on this property with Dr Tony Page.

When the trees were 2/3 years old, we measured every tree (20,000) for form; diameter at 150mm above the ground; stability; height; and new growth. The first measurement was stability and if it was less than 3 out of 5, we would not do any more measurements of that tree. If the tree scored 3 or more then we would look at the form (ideally single trunk with Xmas tree shape for close planting in a plantation. If the form was 3 or more then we went onto diameter, height and growth. It was then tagged with a “cattle tag” numbered and recorded in the row and paddock. Of the 20,000 trees we selected 550 trees that had the highest scores.  These trees were then measured every 6 months for 2 years on the same criteria.

 By 2014 we had selected 56 “super” trees from this farm. 4 of the outstanding trees across different genetics were actually given names. Bo Derek #525; Elle MacPherson #97; Bob #79; and Lleyton Hewitt #373. When I called out the diameter of Lleyton to Tony, he yelled “come on!!”. We then looked at each other and said “Lleyton Hewitt”.

In 2016, at 6 years old we induced and boosted 113 of the selected trees following the CAKit procedures. We also did Lleyton. In 2018 we harvested all of the CAKit trees other than Elle and Lleyton. At this stage Lleyton had swallowed all of the pipes and only small scaring remained of each hole. We checked him for resin development, and it was positive after 3 months. 

 

This is Lleyton in October 2018, 8 and a half years old

When we distilled the logs from the 2018 harvest, we found that the CAKit was not suitable as an induction method. It was then we employed a scientist from Iran who had studied Fungi and started our research in finding the fungi to cause the tree to lay down resin for protection against the fungi.

In 2020, we found samples of naturally formed resin in trees that had been damaged. We started the lab again and grew the fungi from the samples. Separating the different species of fungi was very time consuming. We found 72 different species of fungi from the sample. Once separated, we put each fungus separately into similar trees and plugged the hole. 3 months later we drilled the trees above the hole to see if resin was forming. There were 3 stand out fungi. We then put these together along with other okay results and put them into trees as before. After 3 months the 7, 32, and 70 were outstanding with resin development. Now we just had to find a commercial way of inducing the trees.

We built a new lab in 2022 at the Wescorp factory ourselves using much of the equipment from the tissue lab we built at the “Mother Nursery”. We had to buy more equipment specifically for fungi production, and we learnt a great deal as the years progressed. 

to be continued........