Agarwood trees

[pianist]

Anyone vested with Agarwood trees in Malaysia/Indonesia?
care to share your opinions? thanks

was approached to look into this tool. Supposed to be materials for cosmetics products or something.

[propertyinvestor]

Another scam product proudly brought to you buy the same syndicates behind all those landbanking crap.

[sgd]

like just a few years back when oil prices were high and people went crazy about biodiesel alternatives like growing cassava and Jatropha tree investments which later proved not commercially viable even though there was potential. A lot of times these kinds of investment I won't say is outright cheating but it can "misrepresented or exaggerated" by the people who offer this kind of investments maybe it's true there is a farm somewhere maybe even at a good location near towns or roads.

I don't know much about agarwood from wikipedia it seems there is a market for it. I always believe any privately held investment if it is so good it will pay for itself the owners will never need to subscribe help from any investors. If you want to invest then I suggest take a stake in something that you are comfortable to walk away from if it is really good can still invest somemore later.

Like I invest / collect whiskies 30yr old vintages cost around 300-500 per bottle. if I like a particular poplar vintage I buy 1-2 bottles and keep in my whisky cabinet if 1 day I grow tired of it and want to walk away it's still less than 10k outlay for a hobby investment.

[pianist]

thanks for e sharing..i mean not as investors, has anyone owned agarwood trees plantation before as direct owners? i.e. having to go to the purchased land itself and upkeep as owners

[martinlee]

Here's my experience with them:

http://www.martinlee.sg/agarwood-trees-investment/

[Clement]

Hi,

I have been doing research on this area recently. Just want to share my observations.

1) There is limited data on yield and pricing of agarwood products, this is as most of the trade takes place in the black market. Cultivated agarwood is a relatively new development, and wild agarwood is rare (1 in 7000 aquilaria trees or so are infected) and felling of trees is illegal in many places.

2) Cultivated agarwood uses inoculation methods to stimulate the growth of the resin which gives the wood it's distinct smell. The quality of the inoculated wood is not of the type that fetches the high prices. A further risk arises if new inoculation methods are found that can flood the market with cheaper / higher quality wood.

3) The Indian government is encouraging and subsidizing planting of trees. This might dramatically increase supply of agarwood oil in the future.

[specuvestor]

^^^ Nice summary

Nice Blog martinlee

[sgd]

basically any buyback deal means they are farming out the risk to you and if you make it thru they buy it back at an advantage.

Anything could happen, there could be blight or disease and trees all die or close to harvest thieves could come in steal your trees a lot of unknown risk.

A friend once told me about arrowana aquarium fish. Some big fish farm wanted to sell him juveniles and promised to buy them back after several months at higher price after they grown bigger.

He said no.

[martinlee]

^^^ Nice summary

Nice Blog martinlee

Thanks.

[egghead]

I'm not sure if MAS visits our VB forum. If they do, I hope they can consider this suggestion.

I suggest MAS should require all alternative investments to lodge their business plans with MAS, and then MAS will publish them in a MAS forum which is open to public. MAS can invite a few, say 100, selected people who are willing to spare their time to contribute (e.g. people like d.o.g., specuvestor, etc from VB). In this way, they can leverage on the crowd ideas (as in crowd funding for capital raising) and no costs will be incurred.

The results: the retail public gets more than just a list of alerts - valuable inputs that hopefully make them more aware before parting with their hard earned money.