Short term speculations with shorter's in mind for TFC, page-159

Good post. When enough holes are poked in their report, it will surely sink and not be seen again.

Regarding the price of santalum album (Indian Sandalwood oil), I would like to add some clarification to what you have said above (in red). Your conclusion is that the price quoted by Quintis ($2800) is representative of the real price and the $551 quoted by Glaucus is flawed. This is entirely correct, but your evidence needs a bit of work..

Sandalwood oil are sold at minimum $4,989 per kg
The website you refer to lists many oils for sale. First, the price you quote of 4989 is actually 3989. But more importantly, that price is for Australian sandalwood (santalum spicatum) as I am sure you know. There is no point in comparing the prices of the two different oils. knowing one tells us nothing about the other. Really like apples and oranges, as they are different species with different properties and much different prices.

Album oil is $1,415.7 per 100ml
Knowing the retail price of 100ml of santalum album does not help us know what the wholesale price of 1kg is. The markup for small volumes is huge. Here is a chart I made looking at several websites offering santalum album. What you see here is the price of the oil normalised to 1 kg for different volumes sold. in other words, its as if you buy 200 bottles of 5ml, 10 bottles of 100ml, 4 of 250ml, etc.



I conclude from this chart that the price of large retail volumes of oil is above US$4000. Factoring in any retail markup, the price of 2800 quoted by Quintis is easily supported. BTW, series 6 above is from Eden Botanicals which offers a Australian plantation grown santalum album. Could be Quintis, or another grower. http://www.edenbotanicals.com/sandalwood-australian-fine.html


$USD551 per kg might be poached sandalwood or low quality oil mixed with fragrance oil.
No "might" about it. That price was derived from many different types of inferior and cheaper sandalwood oils (e.g. Australian, African, synthetic, etc). Its all there on the page they reference : https://www.zauba.com/import-sandalwood oil/p-1-hs-code.html. There is no mystery about it. The $551 price is simply wrong and shows the "researchers" of this report to be either outright liars or grossly unskilled in their research.