Guangdong Dianbai Breaks Through Agarwood Export Bottleneck: Closed-Loop Traceability Opens Saudi Channel, CITES Compliance Is Key

From "No Way to Export" to Fully Traceable

In April 2025, Dianbai, Guangdong completed its first legally declared agarwood export through Maoming Customs, with 50 kg of agarwood chips delivered to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In December, a one-ton shipment of premium raw agarwood from the Guangdong Agricultural Reclamation Shuguang Farm arrived in Saudi Arabia, generating nearly one million RMB in foreign exchange income — the first single large-batch export of Dianbai agarwood.

All Aquilaria species are listed in Appendix II of CITES, so export requires a CITES Certificate of Export Permit. The prerequisite is a legal-source certificate stamped by county-level or higher forestry authorities, traceable to the planting origin. Through a seven-step closed-loop management system and an "Artificially Cultivated Agarwood Raw Material Origin Certificate," Dianbai has linked planting registration, felling permits, yield estimation, and CITES permit applications into a verifiable compliance loop.

Compliance Red Lines and Industry Lessons

The plan explicitly prohibits new pure agarwood plantations in ecological forests and planting on farmland, treating legacy agarwood stands pragmatically through "registration and classified disposal." For practitioners, only traceable sources and testable certification can enable compliant export under the CITES framework. This article is an industry observation and science-popularization compilation and does not constitute any trading or investment advice; please purchase agarwood through legal channels and insist on traceable, testable sources.