Our History
One ledger in Sibolga, six generations, and a stubborn refusal to leave the material that started it.
The dates below are the ones the family ledgers agree on. Where the record is thin we have said so rather than rounded it into a better story.
- 1840s
A ledger in Sibolga
The family begins buying benzoin at the port, on credit advanced to tappers before the season. The ledger survives, and the terms written in it are close to the ones we still use.
- 1898
First collection station
A permanent buying post opens upland, cutting the consolidators out of the chain and putting the family in front of the households for the first time.
- 1931
The first still
A single copper still in Medan. Until then everything left Sumatra as raw resin; from here the house sells what it has refined itself.
- 1968
Beyond benzoin
Patchouli, citronella and clove leaf enter the book as the third generation takes over. The catalog reaches nine materials before the decade ends.
- 1994
The Medan works
Two distillation halls and a dedicated resin grading floor replace the old site. Capacity triples; the hand grading does not change.
- 2011
Traceability to the household
The household register begins. Every benzoin lot from this point carries its collection point and the family it came from, recorded at grading rather than reconstructed later.
- 2019
Fractionation and the bench
A fractionation line and a small perfumery open in the same year, so the house can answer both what a material is and what it can do.
- Today
Eighteen naturals, six generations
Resins, leaf oils, roots, spices and one wood, supplied to fine fragrance and functional houses across four continents, still from the same uplands.
The stations and the works the ledger led to.
Our locations