# Where do logs come from?

Source: Commodity Origins, https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/logs/ — data JSON: https://commodityorigins.com/data/commodities/logs.json — license CC BY 4.0 (upstream data keeps its license; see Sources below).

Logs come mainly from the United States, which produced 319.1 million m3 in 2024, 16% of the world's 2 billion m3 (FAOSTAT forestry). Brazil (10%), Russia (9.9%) and China (9.8%) follow; the top five together supply 52%. The biggest exporter of wood in the rough (HS 4403) is New Zealand (14% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Cameroon, sapele, FOB Douala, was $405.7/m³ in August 2026, unchanged from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Log production follows forests and roads rather than climate alone: the temperate and boreal north supplies most industrial roundwood because it has softwood plantations and natural forest close to mills and ports, while the tropics supply a small, high-value hardwood trade from forests that are harder to reach and increasingly restricted.

*Tree stems cut to length for sawing or peeling, measured in cubic metres and traded before any milling.* Also called: roundwood, industrial roundwood, sawlogs, timber logs, veneer logs.

## Where do logs come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (m3) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 319.1 million | 16% |
| 2 | Brazil | 199.7 million | 10% |
| 3 | Russia | 193.1 million | 9.9% |
| 4 | China | 190.9 million | 9.8% |
| 5 | Canada | 114.9 million | 5.9% |
| 6 | Indonesia | 91.8 million | 4.7% |
| 7 | Sweden | 64.9 million | 3.3% |
| 8 | Finland | 54.6 million | 2.8% |
| 9 | India | 49.9 million | 2.5% |
| 10 | Germany | 47.3 million | 2.4% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 32% |
| | World | 2 billion | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Forestry production and trade (FO), 2024.

In 2024 United States produced 319.1 million m3 of industrial roundwood, 16% of the world's 2 billion m3 (FAOSTAT forestry). Brazil followed with 10%, then Russia (9.9%), China (9.8%) and Canada (5.9%). The top five together account for 52%, and 177 countries reported production, with 32% coming from outside the top ten. Sawlogs and veneer logs, the subset destined for sawmills and plywood plants rather than pulp, came to 1.1 billion m3, led by United States with 16% (FAOSTAT forestry).

Two cautions before reading that table. First, these figures are industrial roundwood only. FAOSTAT separately counts wood fuel, which is roughly comparable in volume worldwide and dominated by countries where firewood and charcoal remain the main cooking energy; including it would put a very different set of countries at the top. Second, everything here is measured in cubic meters of solid wood under bark, not in tonnes, because density varies by species by a factor of three.

The geography is a story about where the growing is easy and the transport is cheap. The southern United States, the Nordic countries, Canada, Russia, New Zealand, Chile and Brazil supply most industrial roundwood because fast-growing softwoods, radiata pine, loblolly pine, spruce and eucalyptus, can be grown in plantations on a rotation of twenty to forty years within reach of mills and ports. Tropical hardwood forests grow slowly, mix hundreds of species per hectare and sit far from infrastructure, so their contribution to volume is small even though their contribution to value per cubic meter is high.

World output changed +5% over the ten years to 2024 and +2% on the previous year. The long-run trend in volume is flat to slightly up, but the composition has shifted steadily from natural forest toward plantation, and from tropical hardwood toward temperate softwood, as log export bans and legality rules have made tropical material harder to source.

## Who exports and imports logs?

Several tropical producers ban or tax log exports to force milling at home, so a country can be a large producer and a negligible exporter.

### Exporters of wood in the rough, whether or not stripped of bark (HS 4403), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Zealand | $1.8 billion | 14% |
| 2 | United States | $1.8 billion | 14% |
| 3 | Germany | $889 million | 6.8% |
| 4 | Papua New Guinea | $513.4 million | 4% |
| 5 | Poland | $492.3 million | 3.8% |
| 6 | France | $463.3 million | 3.6% |
| 7 | Czechia | $451.9 million | 3.5% |
| 8 | Norway | $441.6 million | 3.4% |
| 9 | Latvia | $440.1 million | 3.4% |
| 10 | Canada | $424.5 million | 3.3% |
| 11 | Solomon Islands | $291.3 million | 2.2% |
| 12 | Slovakia | $253.2 million | 2% |
| 13 | Estonia | $237.7 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | Finland | $217 million | 1.7% |
| 15 | Australia | $216.3 million | 1.7% |

### Importers of wood in the rough, whether or not stripped of bark (HS 4403), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $5.4 billion | 41% |
| 2 | India | $913 million | 7% |
| 3 | Sweden | $829.9 million | 6.4% |
| 4 | Austria | $761.3 million | 5.9% |
| 5 | Germany | $475.1 million | 3.7% |
| 6 | Japan | $436.1 million | 3.4% |
| 7 | Vietnam | $315 million | 2.4% |
| 8 | Canada | $282.3 million | 2.2% |
| 9 | Finland | $271.4 million | 2.1% |
| 10 | Portugal | $260.2 million | 2% |
| 11 | South Korea | $226 million | 1.7% |
| 12 | Belgium | $219.4 million | 1.7% |
| 13 | Czechia | $211 million | 1.6% |
| 14 | Italy | $209.6 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | United States | $176.6 million | 1.4% |

Source: CEPII BACI international trade database (HS22, V202601).

Very little roundwood is traded internationally relative to what is cut, because a log is bulky, heavy and low in value per tonne, so it is normally sawn close to where it grew. New Zealand was the largest exporter of wood in the rough (HS 4403) in 2024 with 14% of world export value, ahead of United States (14%), on world trade of $13 billion (CEPII BACI). China was by far the largest importer with 41%.

That import concentration is the defining feature of the log trade: one country buys a large share of the world's traded logs and saws them at home, which is why New Zealand radiata pine, Pacific Northwest Douglas fir and, until 2022, Russian Siberian softwood all pointed at the same destination. Policy shapes the export side more than economics does. Several tropical producers ban or heavily tax log exports to force milling at home, so a country can be a substantial producer and a negligible exporter by design. Read a low export share as a policy choice as often as a lack of forest.

## What do logs cost?

- Cameroon, sapele, FOB Douala: $405.7/m³ in August 2026; 12-month change -0%; 10-year change +3%; all-time high $562.8/m³ in March 2008; real high (2024 US$) $996.3/m³ in October 1978 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- Malaysia, meranti, sarawak: $187.4/m³ in August 2026; 12-month change -7%; 10-year change -36%; all-time high $520.8/m³ in May 1993; real high (2024 US$) $1,133/m³ in May 1993 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

Prices are monthly benchmark averages that lag the market; not investment advice.

### How they are priced

There is no exchange-traded benchmark for logs, and the two series on this page are narrow. Cameroon, sapele, FOB Douala was $405.7/m³ in August 2026, unchanged from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its nominal high was $562.8/m³ in March 2008, and in constant dollars the real peak was $996.3/m³ in October 1978, which shows how much more valuable tropical hardwood was in real terms before substitution and supply restrictions reshaped the market.

Say plainly what these quotations are: both World Bank log series are tropical hardwood, sapele from Cameroon and meranti from Malaysia, quoted free on board at the port of shipment. They are not proxies for the softwood logs that make up most of world production and trade. A New Zealand radiata pine log delivered to a Chinese port, a Douglas fir sawlog in Oregon and a Siberian spruce log all price on entirely separate assessments, and none of them tracks sapele.

In practice logs are priced by species, diameter, length and grade at the roadside, the mill gate or the port, with the same tree yielding several price classes: a large clear butt log for veneer, smaller logs for sawing and the top and branches for pulp or chips. Buyers deduct for defect, sweep and rot, and the delivered price includes a haulage component that can exceed the value of the wood itself for a remote stand. That is why standing timber, roadside logs and delivered logs are three different prices, and why a rise in diesel prices lowers what a forest owner receives without changing what a mill pays.

## What moves the price of logs?

### Housing construction

Most industrial roundwood ends up as sawnwood and panels for building, so housing starts in the United States, China and Europe drive demand more than anything else. Because sawmills buy logs on expectations of lumber prices weeks or months ahead, log demand turns before construction activity does, and a change in mortgage rates transmits to the forest within a quarter.

### Log export bans and taxes

Producing countries repeatedly restrict raw log exports to force domestic milling and capture more value. Indonesia in 1985, Gabon in 2010 and Russia in 2022 each removed a large volume from the traded market at a stroke. The immediate effect is a shortage for importing mills and a glut at home, and the medium-term effect depends entirely on whether domestic processing capacity actually gets built.

### Legality and deforestation rules

The Lacey Act, the EU Timber Regulation and now the EU deforestation regulation put the burden of proof on buyers, requiring documented and increasingly geolocated evidence of legal, deforestation-free origin. Suppliers who can produce that evidence gain access to high-value markets; those who cannot divert to markets that do not ask, which rearranges trade routes without changing how much wood is cut.

### Freight and haulage costs

Logs are among the lowest-value dense cargoes moved by sea, so freight is a large share of delivered cost. When bulk carrier rates or diesel prices rise, the economics of shipping logs across an ocean deteriorate faster than for almost any other commodity, and trade contracts toward shorter routes.

### Pests, fire and windthrow

Bark beetle outbreaks, wildfires and storms can force a large salvage harvest, flooding the market with damaged wood at low prices, then leaving a supply gap for years afterwards. Central European spruce beetle damage and North American mountain pine beetle both did exactly this, and the second half of the cycle lasts far longer than the first.

### Currency

Producers sell in dollars and pay harvesting and haulage costs in local currency, so a weaker currency raises the margin on exports at an unchanged world price. Much of the year-to-year competitiveness of New Zealand, Chilean and Brazilian logs is an exchange-rate effect rather than a change in forest productivity.

### Plantation rotation age

Plantation supply is decided by planting decisions made decades earlier, so the volume available to cut in any year is largely fixed. Owners can bring a harvest forward or defer it by a few years in response to price, but they cannot create standing timber, which makes short-run supply unusually inelastic.

## How are logs produced?

A commercial harvest starts long before the chainsaw. In plantation forestry the crop is planted, thinned once or twice to concentrate growth on the best stems, and clear-felled at a rotation age set by species and site: twenty-five to thirty years for radiata pine, longer for spruce, seven for some eucalyptus pulpwood. In natural forest management the harvest is selective, taking a small number of stems per hectare on a cutting cycle of decades, which is far more expensive per cubic meter.

Felling is done by chainsaw or by a mechanical harvester that fells, delimbs and cuts to length in one pass. Cross-cutting, deciding where along the stem to make each cut, is where most of the value is won or lost, because it determines how many high-grade logs come out of a tree. Logs are extracted to a landing by skidder, forwarder or cable yarder on steep ground, sorted by grade and species, and trucked to a mill or port.

Logs deteriorate once cut. Blue stain fungus, insect attack and end splitting all reduce value within weeks in warm weather, so logs are sprinkled with water, debarked, end-sealed or shipped quickly. Export logs are usually debarked and fumigated or heat-treated to satisfy the importing country's phytosanitary rules, which is a real cost and a real barrier.

Volume is measured under bark in cubic meters, but every country uses slightly different scaling rules and log-volume formulas, so cross-country comparisons carry a margin of error that has nothing to do with the forest. FAOSTAT harmonises what countries report, but the underlying measurement conventions differ.

## What are logs used for?

Industrial roundwood splits three ways. Sawlogs and veneer logs, the larger and straighter material, go to sawmills to become the sawnwood described on the sawnwood page and to peeler lathes to become the veneer described on the plywood page. Pulpwood, smaller stems and the tops of larger ones, is chipped for pulp, paper and increasingly for fiberboard and pellets. A third stream, particle and residue wood, is milled into panels or burned for energy at the mill.

The split matters economically because the same tree supplies all three at very different prices. A mill's profitability depends on extracting as much sawlog as possible from each stem and selling the residue rather than paying to dispose of it, so chip and sawdust markets are part of the sawmilling business rather than a separate industry.

Separately from all of this, FAOSTAT counts wood fuel, firewood and charcoal, which is not included in the figures on this page. Globally it is comparable in volume to industrial roundwood and is the dominant use of trees across much of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, but it is largely non-commercial and does not enter the traded market.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain from stump to mill is short and local, and that is precisely what makes it fragile in an unusual way: because logs cannot travel far economically, a mill closure strands the forest around it. When a large sawmill shuts, standing timber within its haulage radius loses much of its value overnight, and there is no alternative buyer within reach. Forestry regions therefore live or die by the presence of processing capacity rather than by the world price.

The seaborne trade that does exist runs on specialized handling. Log carriers and bulk vessels with deck cargo load at a small number of ports, Tauranga and Napier in New Zealand, Vanino and Nakhodka in the Russian Far East before the ban, Douala and Owendo in west Africa, and unload at Chinese ports that have built dedicated log-handling capacity. Phytosanitary treatment and inspection at both ends are genuine bottlenecks: a pest interception can close a trade lane for a season.

The single largest structural risk is regulatory rather than physical. A large share of the world's traded logs comes from countries whose export policy can change with a decree, and a large share of demand comes from markets whose legality requirements are tightening. Between the two, the volume that can legally move from a given forest to a given mill is narrower each year, and the adjustment falls on the suppliers least able to document their chain of custody.

## Key companies

- Weyerhaeuser: forest owner and log supplier, United States, listed (WY)
- PotlatchDeltic: forest owner and log supplier, United States, listed (PCH)
- Rayonier: forest owner, United States, listed (RYN)
- Stora Enso: forest owner and processor, Finland, listed (STERV)
- Rougier: tropical forest concession operator, France
- Klabin: forest owner and processor, Brazil, listed (KLBN11)

## Timeline

- 1985: Indonesia bans raw log exports. The first large tropical producer to force domestic processing, it moved the plywood industry to Southeast Asia and set the template other tropical countries would copy. (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02762230)
- 1994-01: The International Tropical Timber Agreement adds a sustainability objective. Producing and consuming countries agreed that tropical timber trade should come from sustainably managed forests, the first multilateral link between the timber trade and forest management. (https://www.itto.int/itta/)
- 2008-05: The United States extends the Lacey Act to plants and wood. It became illegal to import wood harvested in violation of a foreign country's laws, making buyers responsible for the legality of their supply chain for the first time. (https://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant-imports/lacey-act)
- 2010-05: Gabon bans log exports. Africa's largest okoumé producer forced processing at home; output fell sharply in the following years as mills took time to build, a pattern repeated wherever log bans are imposed quickly. (https://news.mongabay.com/2010/06/gabon-bans-log-exports/)
- 2013-03: The EU Timber Regulation takes effect. Placing illegally harvested timber on the European market became an offence and importers had to exercise due diligence, shifting the compliance burden onto buyers in the largest import market. (https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/forests/deforestation/eu-timber-regulation_en)
- 2020-04: Pandemic demand reshapes the wood market. Mills cut output expecting a housing collapse while home improvement demand surged instead, producing the sharpest wood price spike on record over the following eighteen months. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets)
- 2022-01: Russia bans roundwood exports. A ban on softwood log and hardwood sawlog exports removed a country that had supplied roughly a tenth of globally traded roundwood, hitting Chinese and Finnish mills hardest. (https://www.euwid-wood-products.com/news/roundwood-sawnwood/russia-decides-on-roundwood-export-ban/)
- 2023-06: The EU deforestation regulation enters into force. Wood joined cattle, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, rubber and soy in a regime requiring geolocated proof that a product did not come from land deforested after 2020, replacing due diligence with evidence. (https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/forests/deforestation/regulation-deforestation-free-products_en)
- 1978-10: Tropical logs reach their real all-time high. In inflation-adjusted terms the Cameroon sapele quotation peaked, before substitution, plantation supply and export restrictions reduced the role of tropical hardwood in world trade. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets)
- 2008-03: Logs set their nominal record. The commodity boom carried tropical hardwood to its highest nominal monthly price in the World Bank series, just before the financial crisis collapsed construction demand worldwide. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most logs

United States produced 319.1 million m3 of industrial roundwood in 2024, 16% of the world's 2 billion m3 (FAOSTAT forestry). Brazil was second with 10%. These figures exclude wood fuel, which FAOSTAT counts separately and which is comparable in volume worldwide.

### which country exports the most logs

New Zealand exported the most wood in the rough (HS 4403) by value in 2024, 14% of the world total of $13 billion (CEPII BACI). China was the largest importer with 41%, buying logs to saw at home rather than importing finished lumber.

### why do countries ban log exports

To force domestic processing and capture the value added by sawing and peeling rather than exporting raw material. Indonesia did it in 1985, Gabon in 2010 and Russia in 2022. The effect depends on whether milling capacity gets built: Gabon's output fell sharply in the years after its ban while mills were being constructed.

### what is the difference between roundwood and sawlogs

Industrial roundwood is all wood harvested for industry, including pulpwood. Sawlogs and veneer logs are the larger, straighter subset destined for sawmills and plywood plants. In 2024 sawlogs and veneer logs came to 1.1 billion m3 against 2 billion m3 of industrial roundwood overall (FAOSTAT forestry).

### how are logs priced

By species, diameter, length and grade at the roadside, mill gate or port, with deductions for defect and rot. There is no futures market. The two World Bank series on this page are tropical hardwood, sapele and meranti, quoted free on board, and do not track the softwood logs that make up most of world production.

### are logs measured in tonnes or cubic meters

Cubic meters of solid wood under bark. Weight is a poor measure because wood density varies by species by a factor of three and because moisture content changes weight without changing the amount of wood. Scaling conventions still differ between countries, which adds a margin of error to comparisons.

### what moves log prices

Housing construction, export bans and taxes, legality and deforestation rules, freight and haulage costs, and salvage harvests after fire, storms or beetle outbreaks. Standing timber cannot be created quickly, so short-run supply is unusually inelastic and prices move sharply when demand shifts.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Forestry production and trade (FO), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/FO
- CEPII BACI international trade database (HS22, V202601), BACI HS22 V202601, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Etalab Open Licence 2.0. https://www.cepii.fr/CEPII/en/bdd_modele/bdd_modele_item.asp?id=37
- World Bank Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet), 2026-09-02, fetched 6 September 2026. License: CC BY 4.0. https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets

Text last reviewed 2026-09-05. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where do logs come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/logs/.