Oud Powder
Oud powder is agarwood in fine divided form: the dust and powder made by grinding chips or offcuts, sold loose for burning or for blending into a paste. It is a physical form of the wood and not a different material, but it is also a by-product as often as it is a product, which is where the difficulty lies. A buyer has to establish what the powder was made from and whether the seller made it deliberately or it fell out of a cutting line.
What this family includes
The family covers the powder deliberately milled from chips, the finer dust that comes off a cutting or sanding line, and the coarser grind sold for burning in a bowl or mixed into a paste. It also covers powders made from woods other than agarwood, which are sold with the same word.
The useful distinction is between a powder produced as the main output of a grinding operation and a dust fraction recovered as a by-product. They behave differently in a bowl, and they are priced differently.
Not the same as
Oud powder is not a dust produced by grinding something else and then selling it under the name. It is not oud oil, which is what the wood can yield when it is distilled, and a kilo of powder and a kilo of oil are not the same purchase by any measure.
It is not bakhoor, which has had oil added to it, and it is not an incense powder bound into a stick. A bag of loose powder and a cone on a core are the same scent only in the loosest sense.
Material and format fields
The fields are: the material the powder was made from, including species and whether it was distillation-grade chip or processing offcut; the fineness, which is described by the seller rather than by any published scale; the proportion of dust against chips still in the bag; whether any oil has been added; the batch reference; the net weight, which is the only field on this family that a buyer can check with a scale; and the intended use, whether it is for burning, for mixing, or for further processing.
No fragrance-mixture standard governs this family. A dry wood powder carries no fragrance mixture, and IFRA certificates are generally not issued for raw materials in any case. What applies instead is the botanical and conservation treatment: all members of Aquilaria and Gyrinops are listed in CITES Appendix II, so the species question decides the documentation a shipment carries.
Comparisons
Powder stands against chips, and the difference is what happens to the resin when the wood is ground. It stands against oil, because the same weight of wood produces a fraction of a weight of oil. And it stands against a dust fraction, where the finer material has a different behaviour in a bowl than a coarse grind.
The practical comparison for a buyer is between a powder sold as a deliberate product and a dust sold as a by-product, because the price difference is not proportional to the difference in use.
Buyer requirements
Ask what the powder was milled from. That single question sorts most of the field, and a supplier who answers it precisely has described the product. Then ask the fineness, whether chips are mixed in, and whether any oil was added.
Then weigh it. Powder is sold by weight and is the one format in this encyclopedia where a scale answers a question directly, so the net weight on the pack should be checked against what arrives.
Related suppliers
The directory separates wood processors, who cut and mill, from raw-material suppliers, who move material without processing it. A processor who will name the lot the powder came from is the useful contact, because the answer is in their records rather than in the bag.
Relevant guides
Choosing an oud wood purchase covers the questions that apply to any oud material bought by weight. Using oud wood with suitable equipment covers how the cut affects the burn. Label and organize samples covers keeping a powder sample usable for comparison.
- Search the supplier directory
- Start a request for quote
- Read choosing an oud wood purchase
This page defines the family and the fields a buyer should fill in. It does not state a fineness grade, a resin content, a yield or a price, and it does not assess any powder.
- Biodiversity and application prospects of fungal endophytes in the agarwood-producing genera Aquilaria and Gyrinops (Thymelaeaceae): a reviewStates that all members of the agarwood-producing genera Aquilaria and Gyrinops are placed in CITES Appendix II. Records 92 compounds identified in agarwood, of which terpenoids are 40.22%, and names eighteen fungal genera reported to promote agarwood formation. It does not establish the quality, yield or age of any material, and it is a review rather than a regulatory instrument.
- Agarwood: A reviewStates that CITES Appendix II covers all species of Aquilaria and Gyrinops, and reports fifteen Aquilaria species distributed across the tropical and subtropical regions of Asia, from Pakistan and India through southern China into Southeast Asia. It does not establish the legal status of any individual shipment in any particular jurisdiction.
- CITES Appendices — what each listing requires for tradeEstablishes what each of the three CITES Appendices requires for trade. Appendix I: international trade is permitted only in exceptional circumstances and cannot be primarily for commercial use, and both an import and an export permit or re-export certificate are required. Appendix II: an export permit or re-export certificate from the country of export is required, and no import permit is needed unless a country's national law requires one. Appendix III: an export permit is required from the country that listed the species, and a certificate of origin is required for exports of a listed species from elsewhere. It does not name any particular species, it does not establish that a shipment complies, and it is not itself a permit.
OudGuide editorial review · 2026-10-21
Reviewed against the cited sources. The family boundary was checked against the format descriptions elsewhere in the encyclopedia, the absence of a published standard for each field was checked rather than asserted, and no composition, concentration, price or grade is stated anywhere on the page.