Aromatic Library
How Much Raw Material Does One Kilogram of Absolute Require?
Yield figures explain almost every price in this catalogue. Here are the commonly cited ranges, with the caveats they deserve.
If you want to understand why one material costs forty dollars a kilogram and another forty thousand, yield explains most of it.
| Material | Commonly cited yield | Approximate biomass per kg |
|---|---|---|
| Rose otto (distilled) | ~0.03% | 3–4 tonnes of flower |
| Rose absolute | ~0.1% of flower | ~1 tonne of flower |
| Jasmine absolute | ~0.1% of flower | ~1 tonne of flower |
| Neroli oil | ~0.1% | ~1 tonne of blossom |
| Tuberose absolute | ~0.08–0.1% | ~1 tonne of flower |
| Orris butter | Very low, plus 3–5 years storage | Substantial, plus time |
| Vetiver oil | ~0.5–1% of dried root | ~100–200 kg of root |
| Frankincense oil | ~3–8% of resin | ~15–30 kg of resin |
| Lavender oil | ~1–1.5% | ~70–100 kg of flowering tops |
These are widely cited industry ranges, not measurements from production we operate. Actual yield varies substantially with cultivar, season, growing conditions, harvest timing and processing practice. Treat them as an explanation of relative price, not as a specification.
Yield is not the whole story
Labour intensity matters independently. Jasmine and rose must be hand-picked before dawn within a short seasonal window; the labour cost per kilogram of flower is high before extraction is considered.
Time matters, as orris demonstrates: the yield problem is compounded by years of storage before processing can begin at all.
And scarcity of the source material matters where the raw material itself is limited, as with agarwood, where only a minority of trees produce anything usable.
Why this is worth knowing as a buyer
Because it gives you a sanity check. If someone offers you rose otto at a price that implies flower costs below what farmers are paid, something in the chain is not what it is described as. Yield arithmetic is one of the more reliable adulteration detectors available to a buyer without a laboratory.
Continue reading
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