Sandalwood Materials

What this family includes

The family covers the heartwood sold as chips and as powder, the distilled oil, the solvent and CO₂ extracts sold under their own names, and the sandalwood bases used as carriers in attar production. It also covers the compounds built to imitate sandalwood character, which sit inside the family by function rather than by origin.

The trade uses sandalwood as a carrier and a base rather than only as a scent. That is the fact a buyer from the oud side of the trade most often misses, because it means a large part of this family is used as a supporting material rather than as the thing being bought for its own sake.

Not the same as

Sandalwood is not agarwood. Santalum is a different genus from Aquilaria and Gyrinops, the chemistry is different, the conservation treatment is separate, and the two oils are not substitutes for each other. A buyer comparing a price per tola of sandalwood oil with a price per tola of oud oil is comparing two different materials.

Sandalwood oil is not a perfume oil for skin and not an attar. And a sandalwood accord is not sandalwood at all: it is a manufactured fragrance material, and describing it as sandalwood is the same misrepresentation as describing an oud accord as oud.

Material and format fields

The fields are: the species and the plant part used, since heartwood and leaves are different materials and yield different oils; the form, whether wood, oil, extract or base; the extraction method; the carrier the material is presented in, which for an extract is a decision about the whole product; the batch reference and the date; the net quantity and the container; and the intended use, which decides whether the material is a raw material, a fragrance mixture or a finished consumer product.

On the standards, the position depends on which part of the family is in question. A distillation or an extract offered as a raw material sits outside the certificate mechanism, since IFRA certificates are generally not issued for raw materials. A sandalwood compound built for a finished consumer product is a fragrance mixture and is inside it, with conformity established by the formulator or supplier for the stated use and limits expressed in the finished product. The conservation position is separate again and follows the species.

Comparisons

Sandalwood stands against oud, against sandalwood compounds, and against the carrier role it plays in other materials. A buyer who understands that sandalwood is often the base into which oud is placed will ask a supplier about a blend differently from one who thinks of it only as a scent.

And within the family, the wood, the distillation and the extract are three products with three sets of fields, sold from the same plant and often from the same seller without much distinction on the label.

Buyer requirements

Ask the species and the plant part first, because everything else follows from them. Then ask the extraction method, the carrier, the intended use and the batch reference. A composition figure offered without a method is not a composition, it is a number without a basis.

And say what the material is for. Sandalwood bought as a carrier into which something else will be built is bought on the basis of its own stability and compatibility, not on the strength of its scent.

Related suppliers

The directory lists raw-material suppliers, distributors and exporters, and a buyer of sandalwood materials usually finds the answer with a raw-material supplier rather than with a wood processor, because the distillation and extraction steps sit between the tree and the buyer. A supplier worth approaching states the species, the plant part and the method.

Relevant guides

Botanical identity and genus comparison explains why sandalwood is a different genus and why that decides which rules apply. Distillation and extraction comparisons covers the methods that produce the oil and the extracts. From material to oud oil traces the path a raw material takes to a finished one.