Where do cloves come from?

In 2024 Indonesia produced 147,953 tonnes, 74% of the world's 198,941 tonnes (FAOSTAT). Madagascar followed with 13%, then Tanzania (4.3%), Comoros (3.9%) and Sri Lanka (2.9%). The top five account for 98%, 9 countries reported output and <0.1% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +20% over the ten years to 2024 and +8% on the previous year.

One fact governs this market: most Indonesian cloves are never eaten. They are chopped and blended with tobacco into kretek cigarettes, which dominate Indonesian cigarette sales. The largest producer is therefore also a large buyer, and Indonesia took 8.8% of world clove imports in 2024 (CEPII BACI).

The rest of the crop grows on islands and coasts around the Indian Ocean. Madagascar's clove belt runs down the east coast around Fenerive Est and Analanjirofo, Tanzania's is on Zanzibar and Pemba, and the Comoros and Sri Lanka add smaller quantities. Trees are long-lived, and the same groves have supplied the food trade for generations.

Indonesia was the largest exporter of cloves (HS 090711) in 2024 with 46% of world export value, ahead of Madagascar (34%), on world trade of $654.5 million (CEPII BACI). India was the largest importer with 33%.

Cloves move whole, not ground. Under the separate heading for crushed or ground cloves, HS 090720, world trade was only $25.6 million in 2024, led by Indonesia with 23% and bought mostly by United States at 27%. Grinding happens close to the customer because ground cloves lose their oil.

India is the largest importer for food and traditional preparations, and Gulf states buy heavily for spice blends. Singapore appears among exporters as a re-export hub rather than a producer, which is a reminder that clove statistics include material that passes through rather than grows.

There is no futures market for cloves and no free public benchmark price, so this site quotes none. Cloves are sold by origin and grade in negotiated lots: buyers specify hand-picked or ungraded, the proportion of stems, headless buds and mother-of-clove, plus moisture and volatile oil content. Zanzibar's crop is bought from farmers by a state marketing corporation at an announced price; Madagascan and Indonesian cloves are sold by exporters against private quotations.

The unusual feature is that the largest buyer and the largest grower are the same country. Indonesia's domestic clove price is set by what the cigarette industry will pay, and when the Indonesian crop falls short, its import buying pulls Madagascan and Comorian cloves away from the food trade and lifts prices everywhere else.

Indonesian excise increases, health regulation and shifts in cigarette consumption change clove offtake more than any culinary factor. Because the cigarette industry is a small number of large buyers with storage, its purchasing decisions move the market well before the effect reaches food buyers abroad.

Clove trees crop heavily one year and lightly the next, and whole islands tend to swing together because the trees are of similar age and share a climate. Supply therefore oscillates on a roughly two-year rhythm regardless of planted area or price.

The east-coast clove belt lies in the southwest Indian Ocean cyclone track. Mature trees are broken or defoliated rather than merely stripped, and because a clove tree takes years to bear and decades to reach full yield, storm losses reduce output long after the season they occur in.

When Indonesia's own crop is short, its buyers compete for Madagascan, Comorian and Tanzanian cloves that would otherwise go to the food trade. That switch is the single clearest transmission channel from the cigarette industry to the price a European spice grinder pays.

Cloves bear several years after planting and reach full yield much later, so groves decline slowly as they age and replanting responds slowly to price. Aging plantations in Zanzibar and parts of Madagascar have shrunk output gradually rather than in the sudden way a weather shock does.

Syzygium aromaticum is an evergreen tree, and the clove of commerce is its unopened flower bud. Buds are picked when they swell and turn from green to pink but before the flower opens, because an opened bud loses most of its value. Trees begin bearing several years after planting and yield for decades.

Harvest is by hand from ladders or by climbing, cluster by cluster over several passes as the buds reach the right stage. Pickers strip the buds from the stems, and the stems are dried and sold separately as a cheaper product with its own oil market.

Drying is the whole of the processing. Buds are spread on mats in the sun for several days until they turn dark brown and rattle, losing most of their weight. They are then cleaned and graded on stem content, headless buds, mother-of-clove, moisture and oil. Buds, stems and leaves can all be distilled for eugenol-rich clove oil.

In Indonesia the dominant use is kretek manufacture. In the food trade, cloves flavor spice blends, curries, pickles, baked goods, mulled drinks and cured meats across South Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the Caribbean, usually whole or coarsely ground and in small quantities.

Clove oil, distilled from buds, stems and leaves, is the industrial product. Its main constituent, eugenol, is used in dentistry, in fragrance, as a flavor and as a feedstock for synthetic vanillin. Stems and leaves that never enter the spice trade are distilled for lower-grade oil, and spent distillation material is burned as fuel.

The farm end is smallholder throughout. Village collectors buy dried buds and pass them to exporters, and in Zanzibar the crop moves through a state marketing corporation rather than open trade. Indonesian cloves largely bypass the export chain and go straight into the cigarette manufacturers' buying networks.

Logistics are simple. Dried cloves are stable, need no cold chain and travel in ordinary containers out of Toamasina, Zanzibar, Moroni and Indonesian ports, which is why re-export hubs appear in the trade statistics and why the market has no perishability problem to solve.

The real chokepoints are structural. Demand is concentrated in one industry in one country, supply is concentrated on cyclone-exposed coasts, and the trees are slow. None of those adjusts inside a season.