How Is Sumatra Benzoin Graded?

A Small Rabbit Hole into a Very Old Resin Trade

It started with an email.

We were contacted by a benzoin farm in Sumatra offering locally harvested resin. Their quotation listed Grades 1 to 5, followed separately by “Powder Benzoin.”

We are by no means experts in incense resins. Our previous experience with benzoin quality was mostly limited to descriptive terms such as “premium,” “fine,” or “high quality,” along with the occasional letter grades (A–D). So this immediately raised a question: what exactly do these grades mean?

Benzoin is a fragrant balsamic resin obtained from certain trees of the genus Styrax. The two principal commercial types are produced in Southeast Asia. Sumatra benzoin is traditionally produced in North Sumatra, Indonesia, while Siam benzoin is associated principally with Laos and nearby regions. Benzoin has been traded for centuries for use in incense, traditional medicine, perfumery, cosmetics, and as a fragrance fixative.

The FAO Report: Two Grading Systems at the Same Time

The first useful source we found was theFAO’s 2001 Monograph on Benzoin (Balsamic Resin from Styrax Species), published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.This report actually describes two slightly different grading conventions for Sumatra benzoin.

1. Local Farmer and Trader Grades

FAO attributes this information to an even older Indonesian government report from 1993, titled Informasi Pasar Industri Produksi Lokal Jenis Tanaman Kemenyan di Kabupaten Tapanuli Utara.It was prepared by a regional office of Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry in North Sumatra.

The FAO report records the local grades, broadly from the better Mata material toward dirtier or residual material, as:

• Mata besar
• Mata halus
• Jurus/jurir
• Tahir
• Barbar/Laklak
• Dust

The lower categories contain progressively smaller and darker material, often with more bark, dirt, or cleaning remnants.

FAO translatesmata besar as “big eye” and identifies it as first quality, while mata halus is translated as “soft eye” and identified as second quality. Other terms such as jurus/jurir, tahir, and barbar/laklak are better left as local trade names rather than forcing literal English translations onto them.

2. Commercial Export Grades

The second convention is the commercial grading of benzoin “almonds.”

In the FAO's document, the system becomes much simpler. Cleaned resin pieces are graded mainly according to size:

• Grade 1: larger pieces
• Grades 2-3: intermediate and smaller size fractions
• Grade 4: dust and siftings

FAO notes that this commercial convention is comparable with the system used for Lao benzoin. Laos used grades A to D, or alternatively 1 to 4, again principally based on particle size. In fact, the document mentioned that commercial grading practices in Laos, Vietnam, and Indonesia followed broadly similar principles. Further, FAO presumed that these commercially graded benzoin almonds were derived mainly from the higher-quality mata besar and mata halus types.

Then We Found a 2021 Study

Twenty years after the FAO monograph, researchers C. R. Kholibrina and A. Aswandi published a 2021 paper on North Sumatran styrax resin.What was interesting was how familiar the grading system looked.The researchers state that local traders in producing areas of Tapanuli use six resin quality classes.

This is why the “Powder Benzoin” in the quotation also caught our attention. It may correspond to, or be derived from, the lowest fraction described as Grade VI in the 2021 research.In other words, Grade VI is not necessarily pure benzoin powder. The 2021 paper describes it more broadly as granules, flakes, fines, and cleaning remnants.

Almost 30 Years, Surprisingly Little Change

Put the older classification cited by FAO beside the 2021 research and the continuity is striking, although there are differences in spelling, translation, and terminology.

Interestingly, the 2021 paper documents the local categories as a numbered six-grade system and gives much more detail on size, colour, shape, impurities, and harvesting stage. But fundamentally, they appear to describe the same North Sumatran grading tradition.

So when a Sumatran farmer sends a quotation in 2026 mentioning Grades 1 to 5 plus benzoin powder, the terminology looks much less like arbitrary marketing language and much more like something rooted in a local grading tradition that has been documented for decades.

One Thing Definitely Changed: The Price

The grading system may have survived remarkably well. The prices have not.

The FAO monograph records approximate 1997 FOB Medan prices for commercial Sumatra benzoin almonds:

The quotation that landed in our inbox in 2026 looks nothing like that.Apparently, the benzoin grading system survived three decades better than the benzoin price did.Inflation, labour costs, supply chains, and nearly 30 years of economics have had their say.

References

1. Kashio, M. and Johnson, D. V. (eds.). 2001. Monograph on Benzoin (Balsamic Resin from Styrax Species). RAP Publication 2001/21. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok, Thailand.
   FAO Monograph on Benzoin
   Chapter 6: Sumatra Benzoin Grades and Qualities
   Chapter 8: Marketing and Commercial Grading

2. Anon. 1993b. Informasi Pasar Industri Produksi Lokal Jenis Tanaman Kemenyan di Kabupaten Tapanuli Utara [Industrial market information for local benzoin tree production in North Tapanuli]. Report of the Institute of Land Rehabilitation and Conservation, Ministry of Forestry, Regional Office, Medan, North Sumatra. 26 pp. Bibliographic information reproduced in the FAO monograph.
   FAO Bibliography

3. Kholibrina, C. R. and Aswandi, A. 2021. “Increasing added-value of styrax resin through post-harvesting techniques improvement and essential oil based product innovation.” IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 713, 012045.
   DOI: 10.1088/1755-1315/713/1/012045