Frankincense is expensive because it comes from slow-growing trees in some of the world’s most unstable regions, each tree produces very little resin per year, and the species that produce the best grades are in serious decline. The global frankincense trade generates over $1 billion annually, but nearly every step from tree to product involves scarcity, risk, or loss.
Each Tree Produces Very Little Resin
Frankincense resin is harvested by making shallow cuts in the bark of Boswellia trees and waiting for the sap to harden into “tears.” A study monitoring 500 Boswellia trees found that the average yield was just 261 grams per tree per season, roughly half a pound. Some trees produced as little as 41 grams, while the most productive reached about 1.8 kilograms. That enormous variation means harvesters can’t predict output reliably, and most trees give very modest returns for the labor involved.
Boswellia trees also take years to grow large enough to tap, and the resin can only be collected during specific dry seasons. This isn’t a crop you can plant in spring and harvest in fall. The combination of low per-tree output, long maturity timelines, and narrow harvest windows puts a hard ceiling on how much resin reaches the market in any given year.
The Trees Are Disappearing
The most commercially important species, particularly Boswellia papyrifera in Ethiopia and Boswellia sacra in Oman and Somalia, are in rapid decline. Boswellia papyrifera is now considered endangered, with populations shrinking due to a combination of human pressure and environmental degradation. Field surveys in Ethiopia have found that the population structure of these woodlands is unstable: tree density is low (around 266 trees per hectare), and researchers found virtually no young seedlings or saplings replacing older trees. Without new trees growing in, the supply gets smaller each year.
Longhorn beetles are accelerating the problem. Their larvae bore into the stems and branches of Boswellia trees, causing physiological damage and sometimes killing the tree outright. In unmanaged woodlands in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, annual tree mortality from beetle damage runs around 7 to 8 percent per hectare. That’s a staggering loss rate. Trees that are tapped continuously without rest periods are significantly more vulnerable to beetle infestation, creating a vicious cycle: the more harvesters push for resin, the more trees they lose. Trees rested for 10 or more years from tapping showed notably less beetle damage than those tapped without breaks.
Overgrazing by cattle compounds the problem further, preventing seedlings from establishing. When you add agricultural expansion and poor woodland management, these forests are being hollowed out from multiple directions at once. Ethiopia alone loses an estimated $137 per hectare annually in frankincense production from unmanaged woodlands, purely from tree deaths.
Conflict Zones and Fragile Supply Chains
Most of the world’s frankincense grows in arid, resource-poor environments where conflict is common. The Horn of Africa and the Sahel region, home to several key Boswellia species, have faced decades of instability. Somalia contends with ongoing insurgencies linked to Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups. Ethiopia’s Tigray region, one of the most important frankincense-producing areas, was devastated by civil war as recently as 2022.
Armed conflict damages frankincense supply in ways that go far beyond the obvious. Fighting can directly destroy forests, but it also disrupts land management systems, breaks down governance over harvesting rights, and makes it nearly impossible to monitor sustainable tapping practices. When harvesters are displaced or roads become impassable, the resin simply doesn’t get collected. And when stability returns, there’s often pressure to over-harvest to make up for lost income, which damages the trees further. This cycle of disruption and over-exploitation keeps supply unpredictable and pushes prices up.
Grading Creates a Wide Price Spectrum
Not all frankincense is priced equally. The resin is sorted by color, size, shape, and purity, and the differences between grades can be dramatic. Hojari frankincense from the Dhofar mountains in southern Oman is among the most prized. It’s extensively sorted into subcategories: silver, red, and green, with “Royal Green Hojari” commanding the highest prices for its large, well-formed tears with a distinctive light green cast. The term “Royal” is reserved for the biggest, most perfectly shaped pieces.
At the wholesale level, commercial-grade frankincense resin sells for roughly $13 per pound in bulk. But top-tier Hojari or other specialty grades can cost several times that. The rarer the species and the more selective the grading, the higher the price climbs. Boswellia dalzielii, for example, is a less common species whose resin visually resembles Royal Hojari. Recent research has found it contains the highest concentration of boswellic acids (the compounds believed to give frankincense its therapeutic properties) of any Boswellia species, which adds to its value.
Essential Oil Requires Enormous Amounts of Resin
If raw resin is already expensive, frankincense essential oil multiplies that cost considerably. Steam distillation of frankincense resin yields a small fraction of oil relative to the raw material. In laboratory extraction, 110 grams of ground resin produced just 4.9 milliliters of essential oil. That’s a yield of roughly 4.5 percent by volume, meaning you need well over a kilogram of resin to produce a single small bottle of pure oil.
When you consider that the average tree produces only 261 grams of resin per year, the math gets stark. A single tree’s entire annual harvest might yield around 12 milliliters of essential oil. Every 15-milliliter bottle on a store shelf represents more than a full year of one tree’s output, plus the labor of harvesting, sorting, transporting, and distilling. For high-grade oils made from premium resin, the cost reflects that entire chain of scarcity.
Rising Demand Meets Shrinking Supply
Frankincense has seen surging demand over the past two decades. Its traditional uses in religious ceremonies and incense remain strong, but new markets in aromatherapy, natural cosmetics, perfumery, and herbal medicine have expanded the customer base dramatically. The $1 billion global market reflects this broadened demand.
The problem is that supply can’t keep pace. Trees are dying faster than they’re being replaced. Key harvesting regions face ongoing instability. And the resin itself takes time and careful management to produce sustainably, something that’s increasingly difficult when economic pressures incentivize over-tapping. The price of frankincense reflects a product that is genuinely becoming harder to source, from trees that are becoming rarer, in places that are becoming harder to work.