The world’s biggest farmer of Indian sandalwood, Australia’s TFS Corp, is undergoing a transformation from a forestry company growing bulk timber to becoming an exclusive provider of a rare premium luxury ingredient.
TFS, which part-owns and manages 12,000ha of sandalwood plantations spread across northern Australia, will this week rebrand itself as Quintis, to be the key global supplier of commercial quantities of sustainable sandalwood oil and timber.
Founder and managing director Frank Wilson said that as more of TFS’s sandalwood plantations in the Kimberley, Northern Territory and Queensland’s Burdekin region matured and were ready for harvesting after 15 years, significant quantities of valuable heartwood and sandalwood oil were now becoming available.
TFS’s production of the oil-rich heartwood at the trees’ core has jumped from just 30 tonnes in 2014 to 300 tonnes last year, while prices have risen from $US120,000 a tonne of heartwood to more than $US150,000. It is the most expensive tropical hardwood in the world.
New markets are also expanding, as sandalwood takes its place as a “natural botanical” product with potential in skincare, pharmaceutical, jewellery and perfume industries, as well as in its traditional markets of China and India, where it is valued as both a prized furniture wood and for use in religious rituals as an incense oil. “TFS no longer stands for what we have become,” Mr Wilson said.
“We are no longer just a forestry and plantation management company or a bulk commodity supplier; Australian-grown sandalwood album is recognised as the highest quality and most prestigious sandalwood in the world and only the Quintis brand can guarantee its supply is authentic and sustainably grown.”
Most premium sandalwood is harvested from forests in the southern Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, much of it illegally.
It has endangered wild sandalwood trees and has created a global shortage of oil and timber and has led to a profusion of fake timber and substituted and tainted oils in key markets.
Mr Wilson said key to the Quintis relaunch, it will relist on the ASX on Thursday as QIN, will be its new “trust mark” or brand.
Sandalwood shipped from the company’s processing plant at Kununurra will now be stamped or branded with the Quintis trustmark. Its oil and skincare products will also all carry the new brand.
Until this year, most of TFS Corporation’s revenue came from selling two-thirds of its established sandalwood plantations to global pension funds and high net worth individuals, in return for plantation management fees.
Recently Fidelity Boston and the Australian Dimensional fund took 5 per cent stakes each in listed TFS Corporation. Mr Wilson holds the largest single stake of 13 per cent.
TFC Price at posting:
$1.45 Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
