Australian Sandalwood Oil Processing

At our factory located in Albany Western Australia Mount Romance Australia extracts Pure Australian Sandalwood Oil from Australian Sandalwood (Santalia spicatum). This oil is then exported to our customers worldwide.

Once harvested the sandalwood tree the bark and leaves are removed and the remaining parts of the tree are sorted into roots, butts and logs. When this has been done the wood is chipped so that a large surface is made available for the extraction process. Quality control is important at this stage too big or too small will affect the final yield and quality of Pure Australian Sandalwood Oil.

The quality of our oil is very important to us at Mount Romance and we like to produce a consistently great product for our customers, this is easier said than done however. Sandalwood is a natural product grown in a variety of climatic conditions and soil types and, just like wine, there are subtle differences between trees harvested in different areas. This is where our quality control systems become important. At our factory the laboratory analyses all of our deliveries of Sandalwood and then issues blending and batching instructions so that a constantly great product is produced. This way we can offer our customers a consistent product every time they order.

The chipped Sandalwood then enters our production process. At our factory Mount Romance uses a technique known as steam distillation to distil Australian Sandalwood Oil from Sandalwood. This process involves passing Steam through a vessel containing sandalwood. The volatile Sandalwood Oil evaporates in the steam, the vapour is then cooled in a condenser and the resulting condensate is separated into two phases, oil and water. Sandalwood Oil is lighter than water so its floats above the water phase enabling it to be easily collected.

The final step in the process involves removing trace amounts of water from the oil and finally filtration. Before orders are supplied to our customers the laboratory checks to ensure that the oil is in specification and a certificate of analysis is produced for each shipment. Pure Australian Sandalwood Oil is now ready for dispatch to our customers in Europe, Middle East, Asia and America.

Nothing in the production process is wasted at Mount Romance. The spent charge, distilled Sandalwood chips, has a use in incense. By products such as resin and terpene fractions have applications in toiletries, cosmetics and incense markets.