Agarwood is traded in many forms. The most common raw export products are chips, powder, sawn wood, and logs. Modified agarwood products include oil, exhausted powder, medicines, perfumes and cosmetics, incense, carvings, and jewelry.
Several destination markets exist for agarwood, including the Middle Eastern market for oil, high quality chips, and lesser quality products for bakhoor, and the Asian market for high quality incense products, exhausted powder used for making incense joss sticks, small solid wood products (including prayer beads and small sculptures), and medicinal products. In addition, there is a growing market in the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America for agarwood oil for use in cosmetics and perfumery (UNCTAD 2017).
Agarwood fragrances are considered a symbol of a high standard of living in Middle Eastern and Arab
countries and the market for luxury and premium goods in that region continues to grow. Indonesia
has produced some novel agarwood products, of which black magic wood (BMW) has become popular.
BMW is produced by impregnating (non-agarwood) 35% wood chips with a mixture of agarwood resin and low-grade agarwood oil in a high-pressure boiler.
For thousands of years, agarwood has been used for medicinal purposes and continues to be used in Ayurvedic, Tibetan and traditional East Asian medicine.