BANGKOK— The global essential oil industry is in the middle of a quiet renaissance. Perfumers, cosmetic formulators, and wellness brands are turning back to natural ingredients. Consumers want to know where their products come from, and growers and distillers around the world are investing in better cultivation, cleaner processing, and full traceability. Few materials capture this moment better than sandalwood, one of the oldest and most treasured aromatics in the trade.
Aurashine Essentials Private Limited is heading to Bangkok this October to be part of that story.
The Mumbai-based aroma ingredients company will attend the IFEAT 2026 Conference, the annual gathering of the International Federation of Essential Oils and Aroma Trades. This year’s conference runs October 19–23 at the Marriott Marquis Queen’s Park. Aurashine’s team will hold scheduled meetings at Table No. 8 from October 20 through 23. There, delegates can sample the company’s range of natural essential oils, including the first oil distilled from Santalum album heartwood harvested at its own plantation in Western Australia.
The company says the first distillation has exceeded its expectations for both yield and quality.
“We went into the first harvest hoping for good oil. What came out of the still was better than that,” said Bharat Shetty, founder of Aurashine Essentials. “Bangkok is the first time we can put it in front of the people who know sandalwood best and let the oil make the argument for us.”
From Acquisition to Distillation
The Bangkok debut follows a deal that Aurashine completed earlier this year. In March 2026, the company acquired the Top Banana sandalwood plantation near Kununurra, in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia. The plantation was formerly owned by Santalol and is more than 20 years old. As we reported at the time, the purchase gave Aurashine direct control of a mature, working asset. It was not a speculative planting that would take decades to produce anything.
That difference matters. A Santalum album tree needs 15 to 20 years before its heartwood holds enough oil to be worth distilling. Few commodity businesses can wait that long, and even fewer can finance the wait. Buying an established plantation removes that delay. Aurashine had its trees and its timeline in place from the day the deal closed.
Harvesting on the 180-hectare property is still under way. With each new stand that is felled and distilled, the company moves closer to something the sandalwood trade has rarely had: a supplier that can promise the same oil next year, and the year after.
“Consistency is the thing buyers value most and are offered least,” Mr. Shetty said. “When a perfumer builds a base around sandalwood, they need to know it will smell the same in five years. Owning the plantation lets us make that promise and keep it.”
IFEAT 2026
IFEAT’s annual conference is one of the few places where the whole essential oil value chain gathers in one venue. Growers, distillers, traders, flavor and fragrance houses, and regulators all attend. The 2026 program is built around the theme of tradition, resilience, and innovation, and it includes the finals of the IFEAT Sustainability Awards.
For a company making a case about secure, traceable sandalwood supply, that audience fits well.
“IFEAT is where the industry comes to have serious conversations,” Mr. Shetty said. “The people at these tables have been working with sandalwood for decades. Some of them have been let down by the supply chain. We want to meet them, hear what they need, and show them what has changed.”
Aurashine is also keen to meet new delegates. These include emerging aromatherapy and wellness brands, regional distributors in Southeast Asia, and formulators who may never have had reliable access to genuine Album oil. The company’s meeting schedule at Table No. 8 will cover existing partners and new introductions. Delegates are encouraged to book time in advance by emailing the sales team at sales@aurashinearomatics.com ahead of the conference.
More Than Sandalwood
Sandalwood will get the most attention in Bangkok, but it is only part of what Aurashine is bringing.
The company, founded in 1997, supplies a wide range of natural essential oils. These include Indian agarwood, Sumatran patchouli, South Indian vetiver, Egyptian geranium, amyris, and buddhawood, along with sandalwood derivatives and reconstituted oils. Samples from across the portfolio will be available at the table.
Patchouli in particular is likely to come up. Anubhaba Satapathy recently analyzed seven years of Indian patchouli import data. The analysis tracked a price climb from about ₹3,500 to ₹21,500 a kilo and looked at what that volatility means for buyers. The company expects price stability and supply security to be recurring topics in Bangkok, and not only for sandalwood.
Behind the samples is infrastructure that most delegates will never see but many will depend on. Aurashine has 280 metric tons of storage capacity for essential oils and aroma chemicals, a 100,000-square-foot facility in a Free Trade Warehousing Zone for export efficiency, and a NABL-accredited laboratory for quality testing. In fiscal 2024-25, the company distilled 35,000 kilograms of sustainable sandalwood oil.
Sustainability as Strategy
Sustainability comes up at every industry conference. In sandalwood, it has a concrete meaning.
Decades of illegal felling in southern India badly depleted wild Santalum album stocks. The shortage that followed pushed prices up and encouraged adulteration. A buyer who asks whether sandalwood oil is “sustainable” is asking several things at once. Did this oil come from a legal source? Was the tree grown to be harvested? Will there be more?
Plantation-grown sandalwood answers all three. Trees are planted, managed, and harvested on a known cycle, and replanting is part of the operating model rather than an afterthought. Because Aurashine owns the plantation, runs the harvest, oversees the distillation, and ships the finished oil, every step of the chain of custody is documented within one company.
That approach is part of a broader, independently verified sustainability program. Earlier this year Aurashine earned an EcoVadis Bronze rating. It holds ISO 14001 environmental management and ISO 45001 occupational health and safety certifications, and it has MSME Sustainable (ZED) certification. The company published its first Sustainability & ESG Report for fiscal 2024-25. The report sets out its commitments on environmental stewardship, farmer partnerships, and ethical governance.
The company’s community work reaches beyond the supply chain. It includes a coastal clean-up initiative in Mumbai aimed at reducing plastic waste, and educational outreach with local students.
“Sustainability in our business isn’t a marketing claim. It’s the only way the business works over the long run,” Mr. Shetty said. “If the trees aren’t there in twenty years, neither are we. We are planning for the trees to be there.”
A Busy Year on the Road
Bangkok caps a year in which Aurashine has been unusually visible on the international circuit. In April the company exhibited at Aroma Expo 2026 in Seoul. In May it traveled to Grasse, France, for a two-day presence in the perfume capital of the world. Each trip has deepened relationships with fragrance houses and ingredient buyers who increasingly want to know exactly where their materials come from.
The IFEAT conference is where many of those relationships turn into long-term supply agreements. Aurashine is arriving with a harvest under way and a first distillation that has already beaten its own forecasts. The company believes it can offer something that has been scarce in the sandalwood trade for a generation: certainty.
“The world’s great fragrances have always begun in the soil,” Mr. Shetty said. “We’re bringing a little of ours to Bangkok.”
Aurashine Essentials will be at Table No. 8 at the IFEAT 2026 Bangkok Conference, Marriott Marquis Queen’s Park, from October 20 to 23, 2026. To schedule a meeting with our sales team, email us at sales@aurashinearomatics.com.
