Our Story
Horn Heritage began with one goal — to connect the ancient resin traditions of Puntland with customers around the world, without losing what makes this resin different in the process.
It started with a simple frustration: resin leaving Puntland, passing through three or four hands before it reached a buyer, with each middleman taking a cut and adding distance between the harvester and the customer. The families doing the harvesting — the people who actually knew the trees, the seasons, the difference between a good tear and a great one — were the ones least connected to where their resin ended up, and least rewarded for its quality.
Horn Heritage was founded to close that gap: buying directly from harvesting families across Puntland, grading transparently, and shipping straight to the businesses and individuals who value knowing exactly where their myrrh came from. Our first shipment left Bosaso with a handful of partner families and a few dozen kilograms of resin. Every shipment since has built on those same relationships.
The people
Built on real partnerships
Every batch we sell can be traced back to a specific harvesting region and, in most cases, a specific partner family — many of whom have tapped the same trees for generations. We're gradually building out a fuller directory of our partner families here, with names and regions shared with their permission.
The place
Puntland
- Sanaag border region — Boswellia frereana (Maydi)
- Karkaar mountains — Boswellia carterii
- Cal Miskaad range — Boswellia carterii
- Bari region — Commiphora myrrha
- Bosaso — Port — export dispatch
The heritage
A trade centuries in the making
Frankincense and myrrh have moved out of the Horn of Africa for thousands of years — along ancient overland routes and Red Sea trade lanes connecting Puntland to Egypt, Arabia, and beyond. The harvesting techniques used today were refined over that same span: which trees to tap, when in the season to tap them, and how long to let resin cure before it's ready to sort. It's this inherited knowledge, more than any single process, that we're trying to carry forward.
The mission
Fair partnerships, real quality
Our mission is straightforward: pay harvesting families fairly for the quality of their work, grade honestly, and bring Puntland's resin to the world under its own name — not as an anonymous ingredient, but as a traceable product buyers can stand behind.