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Distilling agarwood and processing the resinated heartwood involves cycles of laborious work. After the felling of the tree, it begins with the tremendous task of chopping the tree trunk and segregating it to serve the different purposes. The white wood and barely resinated sectors of the tree trunk and branches usually go into the distillation stills while the resinous part of the Oud wood is processed and cleaned further as these valuables are meant for fumigation use. The leaves are collected and filtered for agarwood tea production while the leftover pile of agarwood waste material in the stills, after the completion of its distillation, is collected to make agarwood cones and incense sticks.  

Depending on the size of the tree, it can take up to a week or more for the whole trunk and branches to be segregated according to its different intentions. For woods meant to be distilled into pure Oud oils, it will take further laborious work to shred the wood into smaller pieces, before it can be thrown into the wood grinder to make into the size of wood shavings and sawdust. Only then will the agarwood material be fit for distillation.

In this particular small sized distillery on the outskirts of an ancient jungle, north east of Borneo, the woodhunters had just felled a wild tree which grew in an area that had just been privatised. This 2560kg agarwood tree was already labelled to be felled due to its amazing resin content a couple of years prior, after the discovery of its resinous core through the scraping of the tree's bark. 

Every single bit and part of this amazing agarwood tree was already sold even before it was felled. Towards the end of the night of the first distillation, there had been signs of a great yield - averaging 0.94ml for every kilo in the stills.

A closer look at the resin in this trunk. The zoomed area is where the precious Oud woods are obtained.	Our 'jungle man' chopping and segregating the felled tree	Pak Busu processing and cleaning the resinated Oud meant for fumigation
More laborious chopping of the tree trunk	A common resident of the jungle paying the guys a visit	The yield from a 80-20 ratio of white wood to slighly resinated oud. Borneo Oud Oil coming soon!