Asia Plantation Capital Berhad held a warm soft opening of their office in Sutera Avenue on Monday evening, 12 February.

Asia Plantation Capital (APC) is the world's fastest-growing plantation management company, leading the way in sustainable forestry growth and pioneering inoculation methods, harvesting techniques, distillation methods and product processing.

Known for its plantation of agarwood, APC has plantations located in Johor since it entered Malaysia in 2015. Currently, the company has 160 plantations, 19 offices, 7,000 clients across 4 continents. Malaysia is also home to APC's state of the art, purpose-built agarwood factory and research centre, located in Johor. The factory has been equipped with the latest heat exchange steam distillation units using purified water, and a clean energy solar power system is being installed to ensure maximum economic efficiency.

APC's business model ranges from the management of plantation, to the inoculation, harvesting, distilling and processing of agarwood inputs into a multitude of agarwood end products, including the highly prized Oud oil. Oud oil, another key by-product of agarwood, is an extremely valuable commodity that has been prized throughout history. It is extracted from the resinous heartwood or agarwood of tropical Aquilaria trees, and used to create the luxury fragrance brand, Fragrance Du Bois.

Fragrance Du Bois is a niche luxury perfume house that uses its own signature pure and natural Oud in all its formulation.

APC's CEO, Steve Watts shares about the company's strategy expansion in Malaysia saying that, "As part of our US$50 million investment in the country, we wish to position Malaysia at the forefront of the global development in agarwood”.

Part of the company's strategy is to share information and help educate local growers on the systems needed to achieve the best commercial and environmental results from agarwood plantations.

"We believe that with our systems and our policy of supporting and working with local growers, we can help advance Malaysia in the future growth of the global agarwood industry" he added.

In 2016, APC was the first company in Malaysia (and the Asian market) to receive its regulatory approval for its agarwood plantation investment program. This allows them to market their agarwood plantation investment program both in the Malaysian and international markets.

In many areas, agarwood in the wild has been logged almost to the point of extinction, due to its high value and the attendant illegal logging. Asia Plantation Capital is one of the few companies in this sector actively developing a legal, sustainable, and ‘clean' agarwood industry, and hopes to develop further into other new markets and countries.