FEATURED PROJECTS:
Wood of Gods
When someone from the European Commission rang and asked if Denzil knew anything about a type of incense called Agarwood he had to admit he did not know that much at the time. He knew it was listed by CITES as one of the most endangered medicinal plants in the world and that it came Indo-China but that was about it.
Well Denzil got the job and a few months later was on a plane to Vietnam to help the EU assess whether it should award a major grant to a small and little known Dutch NGO called TRP Rainforest Project This was the beginning of one of the most interesting adventure’s of Denzil’s life.
It took him to Shinto temples in Kyoto, royal palaces in Saudi Arabia and the deepest rain forests of Vietnam,Laos and Thailand.
All in search of “Wood of the Gods” the world’s most expensive incense wood, more valuable than silver and then sold in backstreet shops and offices hidden away in the bazaars of the Middle and Far East. The TRP Rainforest Project had a highly ambitious objective.
To develop the world’s first plantation of Agarwood and more important to find a way of inoculating this strange softwood tropical tree so that it would begin to produce the dark resinous xylem which gives this tree its enormous value and cultural prestige.
When Denzil first started work on this project few in the western world knew what agarwood was, now at least 10 major perfume houses have launched agarwood (Oudh wood) perfumes.
With the help of some amazing scientists from the University of Minnesota TRP developed and patented an inoculation kit and Cultivated Agarwood was born.
Because of this technology sustainable agarwood plantations have now been set up all over the world and this once highly endangered tree has been largely spared.
Denzil Phillips International is proud to have been part of TRPs team that started this process off.