In the late 1990s, the Forestry Department of Western Australia began to grow East Indian Sandalwood trees as part of a global conservation program. Over the years and with the support of our Research and Development Centre, we have developed methods to help Sandalwood adapt and thrive under Australian climate conditions.

Santalum album, the East Indian Sandalwood tree, showed promising potential, and the first commercial scale plantations were initiated in the 1990s. Santanol was founded in 2005 and started to develop 370 hectares of Santalum album in Kununurra in Western Australia. Santanol set up a full-scale oil distillation factory in Perth in 2016 and became a global leader in the production and supply of Santalum album oil and its derivative products.

In 2018 we successfully completed certification in the key areas Quality Assurance, Occupational Health Safety and Environmental Protection and were accredited ISO 9001:2015, OHSAS 18001:2007 and ISO 14001:2015.

That same year we became an approved member of the West Australian Sandalwood preferred buyers qualified by the Western Australian FPC (Forestry Product Commission) to purchase FPC-originated Santalum spicatum wood, which enables us to distill and sell the West Australian Sandalwood oil.

Since 2019 Santanol has been a part of the global forest products group Mercer International (NASDAQ: MERC).