Sandalwood giant Quintis starts fresh chapter with first WA plantings since restructure

Sandalwood giant Quintis has planted its first new timber in 5 years, in what the once-embattled provider hopes is a brand new cycle of longevity. 

By July, greater than 165,000 Indian sandalwood timber and 476,000 host timber can have been hand planted throughout 327 hectares at Quintis’s Packsaddle plantation close to Kununurra in northern Western Australia.

The sandalwood will develop for 15 to twenty years earlier than its extremely valued heartwood is harvested to be used in a spread of fragrances, cosmetics, conventional medicines, furnishings, and handicrafts.

It is the first time the producer of unique timber, which manages the biggest Indian sandalwood plantation space on this planet, has planted new timber since earlier than it went into administration in early 2018 following the cancellation of main contracts.

After recapitalising as a non-public firm and a file harvest final 12 months, Quintis head forester Troy Sawyer stated funding in a brand new sandalwood rotation marked one other important milestone for the corporate.

“It’s time to essentially begin that subsequent cycle of our journey and the plantations that can take Quintis into the longer term,” he stated.

Some 60,000 timber sown on the irrigated web site throughout 2007 are additionally being harvested.

It shall be Quintis’s largest harvest since it planted its first industrial sandalwood timber in 1999.

“Our harvest evolves yearly; it is getting larger and larger,” Mr Sawyer stated. 

With 15 years of trials and analysis between the planting of the 2 crops, Mr Sawyer stated the corporate had made a number of enhancements to the best way it grew sandalwood in northern Australia. 

While preliminary outcomes from this 12 months’s harvest pointed to constructive yields, he was assured future crops would realise additional potential.

“We’ve learnt quite a bit from the first rotation of plantations,” Mr Sawyer stated.

“We’re actually trying ahead to that sustainability, the place we will flip the plantations over and we will harvest them at one finish of the rotation, and replant them on the different finish.”

After the timber is processed at its Kununurra facility, a lot of Quintis’s high-quality timber shall be transported greater than 3,500 kilometres away to its Mount Romance sandalwood oil distillery close to Albany.

Quintis manages about 12,000 hectares of Indian sandalwood plantations, with operations within the Northern Territory and Queensland.

Its Kununurra web site is the only plantation the place planting will recommence this 12 months.