Sadaharitha to issue one million agarwood plants

Sadaharitha Plantations targets to issue around one million agarwood plants within the next two to three years from its nursery in Ingiriya, said Sadaharitha Plantations, Head of Corporate Sales, Premier Kanil Hattotuwa.

He said that the company had already sold around 200,000 plants during the past two years and added that it plans to sell around 500,000 agarwood plants a year.

The company launched operations 11 years ago as a commercial forestry management entity. The company has around 250,000 agarwood plants in its five-acre nursery in Ingiriya.

Sadaharitha aims at popularising the cultivation of aquilaria trees, which is used to produce agarwood, as a garden plant. The company maintains a buffer stock of a round 500,000 plants.

Hattotuwa said that agarwood is a commercially viable plant which produces a valuable compound used to manufacture medicine, perfumes and oil. The compound has a huge demand across the world. Agarwood is grown in Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia and Australia and the product is imported in large quantities by the Middle East, Europe and USA markets.

Senior Lecturer, Forestry and Environmental Science Department, Sri Jayawardenepura University, Dr. Upul Subasinghe said that research on agrawood plantations was launched a few years ago and has been successful.Sri Lanka has obtained the patent rights for the technology to induce agarwood and extract it. Agarwood which is primarily a wet zone crop is harvested after around eight years. Sadaharitha has a buy-back agreement for agarwood plants.

- LF