Kashan in Isfahan Province is home to 1,740 traditional workshops, 36 industrial factories and 78 semi-industrial units producing rosewater, plus thousands of hectares of damask rose.
“These units have created jobs for 70,000 people but,” as Reza Seyyed Navvabi, the head of Traditional Rosewater Producers Association, says, “all of them have become jobless this year due to the outbreak of coronavirus.”
Noting that half of annual rosewater sales usually takes place in March-May when tourists flock to Kashan, Navvabi said, “But this year with the lockdown of tourist centers and cancellation of rosewater production festivals, retail sales have plummeted to its worst rate on record. Apart from the retail market, rosewater is being sold in large quantities to confectioneries. Coronavirus has also cut purchases by this guild as well as those by dairy factories to zero.”
“Over the years, mosques have been our major customers, particularly in the holy month of Ramadan; cemeteries where you could smell the rich scent of rosewater is now filled with the smell of alcohol. The coronavirus has left this valuable industry in tatters,” he told the Persian-language daily Iran.
Navvabi noted that this year’s damask rose production increased 1.5-fold to stand at 100,000 tons compared with last year’s 60,000 tons, “but in the absence of demand, we have no choice but to destroy our output”.
Calling on the government to allow rosewater exports, or import of machinery used to convert damask rose and rosewater into essence, Navvabi said, “Right now, farmers are bearing the brunt of losses. This year, they spent 50,000 rials [$0.31] a kilogram to pay laborers who picked the flowers compared with last year’s 35,000 rials [$0.21] while a kilogram of damask rose is sold at 10,000-12,000 rials [$0.06-0.07] this year over last year’s 15,000 rials [$0.09].”
Referring to hurdles in the way of supplying packaging materials, including bottles and cartons, due to the road closures, he said storehouses are full of rosewater but the prospect of selling it is dim.
He put losses sustained by traditional rosewater workshops in Kashan at 2,000-2,500 billion rials ($12.5-15.5 million) and said low-interest loans, tax and insurance exemption might help this troubled sector to survive after such a disaster.
Iran is the world’s biggest producer of damask rose, accounting for 70% of its global production, according to the executive manager of the Agriculture Ministry's National Medicinal Plants Project.
“Land under damask rose cultivation in Iran amounts to 24,000 hectares. Every year, 870 to 2,000 kilograms of damask rose essence are produced in Iran, which is priced at €5,500-12,000 per kilo in the international markets,” Hossein Zeinali was also quoted as saying by ILNA.
Iran, he had said earlier, supplies 90% of global rosewater demand, but accounts for only 8-10% of rose essence production in the world.
Zeinali said the country exported $10 million worth of rose, rosewater and essence in the fiscal 2018-19, of which the export of 194,000 kilograms of damask rose generated $1.4 million.
“About 3.85 million kilograms of rosewater worth $8 million were exported to Persian Gulf littoral states in the fiscal 2018-19,” he added.
Iran’s rosewater is exported to 23 countries. Fars Province has the largest area under rose cultivation whereas the city of Kashan in Isfahan Province is the main hub of rosewater production in Iran.
Rosewater is the hydrosol portion of the distillate of rose petals, a byproduct of the production of rose oil for use in perfume. It is used to flavor food and tea, as a component in cosmetic and medical preparations, and for religious purposes throughout Europe and Asia.
