Where does cinnamon come from?

In 2024 China produced 94,216 tonnes, 38% of the world's 244,815 tonnes (FAOSTAT). Vietnam followed with 29%, then Indonesia (23%), Sri Lanka (8.4%) and Madagascar (1.3%). The top five account for 100%, 10 countries reported output and <0.1% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +15% over the ten years to 2024 and +2% on the previous year.

That ranking mixes two products. FAOSTAT counts cinnamon and cinnamon-tree flowers in a single item without separating true cinnamon, Cinnamomum verum from Sri Lanka, from the cassia species grown elsewhere. Most of the tonnage is cassia; Sri Lanka's share is close to the world's true-cinnamon share.

The two grow in different places for botanical rather than historical reasons. Cassia comes from Guangxi and Guangdong in China, from Yen Bai and Quang Nam in Vietnam and from the Kerinci highlands of Sumatra. True cinnamon comes from Sri Lanka's wet southwestern belt around Galle and Matara, with small quantities from the Seychelles and Madagascar.

Vietnam was the largest exporter of cinnamon (HS 0906) in 2024 with 28% of world export value, ahead of Sri Lanka (24%), on world trade of $833.2 million (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 20%.

A narrower heading separates the two products. Under HS 090611, which covers Cinnamomum zeylanicum neither crushed nor ground, Sri Lanka took 58% of exports and Vietnam 16%, on trade of $313.8 million in 2024. The largest importer under that heading was Mexico with 26%.

That single line explains most of the market. Mexico is a true-cinnamon buyer by long culinary habit, while the industrial food trade of Europe and North America runs largely on cassia. The two barely compete on price, because a formulator who needs one will not accept the other.

There is no futures market for cinnamon and no free public benchmark price, so this site quotes none. Both products are sold on specification in private negotiation. Ceylon cinnamon is graded by quill: continental, Mexican, Hamburg and Alba classes describe quill diameter, straightness and freedom from blemish, and the finest thin quills sell at multiples of the coarsest. Sri Lankan exporters quote against those grades.

Cassia is priced separately, by origin and by whether it is whole broken bark, sticks or ground, with buyers specifying moisture, volatile oil content, cleanliness and increasingly coumarin. The gap between the two is wide and stable, so a single average cinnamon price would describe neither.

Cassia carries coumarin, which the European Union restricts in named food categories under its flavourings rules. Formulators who cannot meet the limit must dilute, blend or move to true cinnamon, which contains far less. Regulation therefore shifts demand between two products with very different prices.

Ceylon cinnamon quills are made by hand: the inner bark is loosened, peeled off in sheets and rolled. The work takes years to learn, and the number of trained peelers rather than the number of trees sets what Sri Lanka can supply in a season.

Cassia trees are coppiced or felled after several years of growth, so a planting wave in Vietnam or Indonesia turns into a harvest wave much later. Growers can also delay cutting when prices are poor, leaving standing bark as inventory that arrives all at once when prices recover.

Most cinnamon sold in the world is cassia sold under the name cinnamon. When buyer specifications, geographical indications or authenticity testing tighten, demand moves between the species, and because the price gap is large the shift shows up in value far more than in tonnage.

Cinnamon leaf and bark oils are distilled for flavor and fragrance and compete with quills for the same trees and the same labor. Strong oil demand pulls material away from the quill trade, which tightens supply of the graded product without any change in planted area.

Cinnamomum trees are grown as coppiced bushes rather than timber. A young tree is cut back to a stump, and the shoots that grow from it are harvested every one to two years, usually after rain, when the bark separates from the wood most easily.

For Ceylon cinnamon the cut shoots are scraped to remove the outer bark, rubbed with a brass rod to loosen the inner bark, slit and peeled off in sheets. The sheets are telescoped into one another to make a quill, filled with small pieces, dried in shade and rolled. Off-cuts become quillings, featherings and chips.

Cassia is a coarser process: the thicker bark is peeled in strips or slabs, sometimes from felled trees, and sun-dried until it curls into sticks, or dried and ground. Leaves, trimmings and broken bark from either species are steam-distilled for oil, and the residues are burned as fuel.

Cinnamon flavors baking, confectionery, hot beverages, breakfast cereals and savory dishes across South Asia, the Middle East, Mexico and Europe. Cassia carries most of the industrial food volume because it is cheaper and stronger; true cinnamon goes to markets that specify it, whether for flavor, for tradition or to stay under a coumarin limit.

Beyond the ground spice, bark oil and eugenol-rich leaf oil are sold to flavor and fragrance houses, and oleoresin gives manufacturers standardized strength without visible particles. Cinnamon is also widely sold as a supplement. Quillings and chips, the by-product of quill making, are ground into powder rather than wasted.

Sri Lanka's chain runs from smallholder gardens through peeler households to processors and exporters in the southwest. Because peeling is a household skill, the processing step is dispersed rather than industrial, and the bottleneck is people rather than plant.

Cassia chains in China, Vietnam and Indonesia move from village collectors to exporters and grinders, and a large share of the volume ships as whole broken bark to be ground in the importing country, close to the food manufacturer, since ground bark loses aroma in storage.

The chokepoints are analytical rather than physical: coumarin testing, pesticide and chlorate residue limits, and authenticity testing that distinguishes the species. The European geographical indication for Ceylon Cinnamon adds an origin requirement on top, since only fully Sri Lankan material may carry the name.