Transcript
Michael Oelgemöller: "Dengue is very widespread: Fiji is just coming out of an epidemic, American Samoa has issues. But of course dengue is just one example. There is zika, there is malaria. Papua New Guinea has a huge malaria problem, so we are at the moment looking for if, with New Caledonia, access to those islands so we can explore their wildlife. We can have a look - do they have the tree themselves? Do they have an essential oil industry themselves so could we self-empower them and have it really produced there on the spot for the people? Or maybe can Queensland jump in and supply this product to them? Here the tree is everywhere, it's widespread. So we could harvest it in very large quantities and basically then roll out this product. But, of course the ultimate idea is to find those trees on those islands and to provide the recipe basically for the conversion and to have a local essential oil industry and then to develop it into a product."
Mackenzie Smith: Yeah, assuming you have a local industry developed, is this oil cheap to produce?
MO: It's always depending on demand. So, at the moment, as I mentioned earlier, it is already available. It's a bit more expensive than Deet, but for the distillery - it's a very good value adding. So, they sell the essential oil already for I don't know, let's say $15 for 5ml. So, they can convert now into a product that is like 10-times more expensive and of higher value. So, ultimately, it's really like how much you produce and of course the price comes down quite naturally as well. So, we're quite optimistic, but of course there's a market for high end high value natural products. But we're really looking at people who can't afford it, who live in the bush and basically can do it really with kitchen chemisty and with solar energy all by themselves for very, very cheap."
