# Commodity Origins — every commodity page as Markdown

Index: https://commodityorigins.com/llms.txt. License CC BY 4.0 for this site's prose and derived tables; upstream data keeps its own license (listed per page).

# Where do almonds come from?

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

Almonds come mainly from the United States, which produced 2 million tonnes in 2024, 51% of the world's 3.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Australia (9.4%), Spain (9.4%) and Turkey (Türkiye) (5.1%) follow; the top five together supply 79%. The biggest exporter of shelled almonds (HS 080212) is the United States (65% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Almonds need rainless summers, enough winter cold to set flower buds, irrigation every year and rented bees at a scale no other crop demands, which is why they concentrate in California's Central Valley and a few dry-summer regions around the Mediterranean.

*A drupe seed grown in Mediterranean climates and dependent on managed bee pollination.* Also called: almond, sweet almonds, almond kernels.

## Where do almonds come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 2 million | 51% |
| 2 | Australia | 370,000 | 9.4% |
| 3 | Spain | 369,700 | 9.4% |
| 4 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 200,000 | 5.1% |
| 5 | Morocco | 163,616 | 4.1% |
| 6 | Iran | 132,106 | 3.3% |
| 7 | Portugal | 90,760 | 2.3% |
| 8 | Italy | 74,960 | 1.9% |
| 9 | Tunisia | 70,873 | 1.8% |
| 10 | Afghanistan | 69,316 | 1.8% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 10% |
| | World | 3.9 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 United States produced 2 million tonnes, 51% of the world's 3.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Australia followed with 9.4%, then Spain (9.4%), Turkey (Türkiye) (5.1%) and Morocco (4.1%). The top five account for 79%, 61 countries reported output and 10% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +43% over the ten years to 2024 and +12% on the previous year.

FAOSTAT counts almonds in shell while the trade quotes kernels, and the shelling loss is large enough that the two tonnages are not comparable. On the in-shell basis the crop runs down California's Central Valley in an almost continuous belt of orchard. Australia's plantings along the Murray harvest in the southern autumn and reach northern buyers when the Californian crop is old.

The Mediterranean producers are a different industry. Spain's traditional groves in Andalusia and Aragón are rainfed, low yielding and planted to hard-shelled local varieties, though intensive irrigated orchards have gone in beside them. Turkey (Türkiye), Morocco and Tunisia grow on the same pattern for regional markets. Frost during the February bloom is the recurring hazard, because almond flowers earlier than any other temperate tree crop.


## Who exports and imports almonds?

### Exporters of almonds, in shell, fresh or dried (HS 080211), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $1.2 billion | 77% |
| 2 | Australia | $285 million | 18% |
| 3 | Portugal | $26.7 million | 1.7% |
| 4 | Spain | $16.4 million | 1% |
| 5 | Afghanistan | $5.9 million | 0.4% |
| 6 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $5.4 million | 0.3% |
| 7 | Thailand | $2.6 million | 0.2% |
| 8 | China | $2.6 million | 0.2% |
| 9 | Hong Kong | $2.4 million | 0.2% |
| 10 | Italy | $2.2 million | 0.1% |
| 11 | Netherlands | $1.8 million | 0.1% |
| 12 | United Arab Emirates | $1.6 million | 0.1% |
| 13 | Germany | $1.4 million | 0.1% |
| 14 | France | $1.4 million | 0.1% |
| 15 | Sweden | $1.2 million | 0.1% |

### Importers of almonds, in shell, fresh or dried (HS 080211), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | $1 billion | 62% |
| 2 | China | $288.9 million | 18% |
| 3 | United Arab Emirates | $58.1 million | 3.6% |
| 4 | Spain | $32.7 million | 2% |
| 5 | Vietnam | $23.8 million | 1.5% |
| 6 | Belgium | $21.3 million | 1.3% |
| 7 | Germany | $20.5 million | 1.3% |
| 8 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $20 million | 1.2% |
| 9 | Thailand | $16.2 million | 1% |
| 10 | France | $10.7 million | 0.7% |
| 11 | Italy | $10.2 million | 0.6% |
| 12 | Hong Kong | $8.7 million | 0.5% |
| 13 | Pakistan | $8.3 million | 0.5% |
| 14 | Netherlands | $7.1 million | 0.4% |
| 15 | Mexico | $6.1 million | 0.4% |

### Exporters of almonds, shelled, fresh or dried (HS 080212), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $3.4 billion | 65% |
| 2 | Spain | $614.4 million | 12% |
| 3 | Australia | $418 million | 8% |
| 4 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $159.5 million | 3.1% |
| 5 | Germany | $119.9 million | 2.3% |
| 6 | Netherlands | $95 million | 1.8% |
| 7 | Italy | $72.3 million | 1.4% |
| 8 | Portugal | $54 million | 1% |
| 9 | Iran | $39.9 million | 0.8% |
| 10 | Chile | $38.8 million | 0.7% |
| 11 | Afghanistan | $26.1 million | 0.5% |
| 12 | Vietnam | $25.9 million | 0.5% |
| 13 | France | $15.3 million | 0.3% |
| 14 | Hong Kong | $14.3 million | 0.3% |
| 15 | South Africa | $12.4 million | 0.2% |

### Importers of almonds, shelled, fresh or dried (HS 080212), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Germany | $467 million | 9% |
| 2 | Spain | $381.2 million | 7.3% |
| 3 | United Arab Emirates | $377.1 million | 7.2% |
| 4 | Italy | $315.4 million | 6% |
| 5 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $308.3 million | 5.9% |
| 6 | France | $254.3 million | 4.9% |
| 7 | China | $252.9 million | 4.8% |
| 8 | Netherlands | $246.7 million | 4.7% |
| 9 | Japan | $202.8 million | 3.9% |
| 10 | Morocco | $193.1 million | 3.7% |
| 11 | Vietnam | $160 million | 3.1% |
| 12 | South Korea | $143.2 million | 2.7% |
| 13 | Canada | $133.6 million | 2.6% |
| 14 | United Kingdom | $121.8 million | 2.3% |
| 15 | Saudi Arabia | $98.5 million | 1.9% |

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

United States was the largest exporter of shelled almonds (HS 080212) in 2024 with 65% of world export value, ahead of Spain (12%), on world trade of $5.2 billion (CEPII BACI). Germany was the largest importer with 9%.

The in-shell line is a separate and much smaller trade. In 2024 United States supplied 77% of an in-shell trade worth $1.6 billion, while India took 62% of imports and China was second with 18%. Both crack the nuts at home, which is why they buy whole and the rest of the world buys kernels.

Import rankings mislead. Germany, Spain and the United Arab Emirates rank high because they blanch, dice and re-export, not because they eat the volume. Spain is at once a large producer, importer and exporter, buying Californian kernels to top up a variable home crop.


## What do almonds cost?

### How they are priced

There is no futures market and no free public benchmark price for almonds, so this site quotes none. Growers sell to handlers either through a cooperative pool, where the return is settled at the end of the marketing year, or by outright sale at a negotiated price per pound, agreed by variety and by kernel size, count and grade.

What the market watches instead is the monthly industry position report of receipts, shipments and uncommitted inventory published under the Californian federal marketing order, alongside private trade assessments. Kernels keep for a year or more in cold store, so carryover is part of current supply, and the ratio of committed sales to inventory moves negotiated prices more than the harvest does.


## What moves the price of almonds?

### Managed bee pollination

Almond is self-incompatible and flowers in February, before wild pollinators are active, so orchards must be stocked with rented honeybee hives. The bloom pulls more than half the managed colonies in the United States into one valley for three weeks, and hive rental is among the largest orchard costs.

### California water allocations

The trees must be watered every year or they die, so a grower cannot fallow in a dry year as a row-crop farmer can. Surface deliveries from the state and federal projects are cut in drought, and groundwater pumping is capped basin by basin under a law passed in 2014.

### Winter chill and bloom weather

Buds need winter cold to break evenly, and a warm winter gives a straggling bloom the bees cannot service. Frost, rain or wind during flowering cuts nut set directly, so the crop is fixed within weeks of the bloom.

### Carryover and shipment pace

Because kernels store, the previous crop's unsold inventory competes with the new one. Handlers price against sales already committed rather than the harvest, so a slow autumn shipping season weighs on what growers are offered next season.

### Tariffs and container availability

Retaliatory duties imposed by China, Turkey and India from 2018 raised the landed cost of Californian kernels in large markets. Almonds also move in ordinary dry boxes, and when carriers repositioned empties to Asia in 2021 exporters could not ship crop they had sold.

## How are almonds produced?

Almond trees are grafted onto rootstock and planted in blocks mixing a main variety with pollinizers, because almost every commercial variety needs pollen from a different tree. Orchards bear from the third or fourth year and stay productive for decades. Bloom is in February; hives arrive a few days before it opens and leave after petal fall.

The nut is a drupe, and what is eaten is the kernel inside the stone. Through the summer the hull dries and splits on the tree. Harvest runs from August into October: a mechanical shaker drops the crop onto the orchard floor, where it dries in windrows before being swept up and carted to a huller-sheller.

There the hull comes off, the shell is cracked, and kernels are sized, graded and sorted for insect damage. Since 2007 almonds sold into the United States must pass a validated treatment step, by steam or fumigation, to reduce salmonella. Kernels then go into cold store.


## What are almonds used for?

Most almonds are eaten as kernels, whole, roasted, salted or coated, and as manufacturing ingredients: blanched and diced for bakery, ground into marzipan and praline, milled into flour for gluten-free baking, and stone-ground into butter. Almond drinks have been the fastest-growing outlet, though they absorb little of the crop by weight because the kernel content of the finished drink is low.

The by-products are used in full. Hulls, which outweigh the kernel, are fed to Californian dairy cattle and earn real revenue rather than counting as waste; shells go to bedding, to cogeneration boilers and to abrasives. Kernels rejected on grade are pressed for cosmetic oil or diverted into paste.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is short and concentrated. Growers deliver to a huller-sheller, and the crop passes to a handler, of which there are a few dozen, who grades, treats, packs and sells it; the largest is a grower cooperative. One state's harvest, one regulatory regime and one set of handlers determine most of the world's supply.

Exports move in containers out of Oakland, and are trucked south to Los Angeles and Long Beach when space is tight. Almonds are dense, non-perishable and low in value per container, which makes them among the first cargoes dropped when carriers are short of boxes.

The structural risks are water, bees and concentration. Groundwater is being metered and capped, hive numbers depend on a beekeeping industry with problems of its own, and one February frost across the Central Valley would take out most of a world crop in a week.


## Timeline

- 1950: A federal marketing order creates the California almond board. It gave the industry mandatory inspection, quality rules and crop reporting, and became the mechanism through which food safety and inventory reporting requirements were later imposed. (https://www.almonds.org/)
- 2004: Salmonella outbreaks are traced to raw Californian almonds. Cases in Canada and the United States forced recalls and showed that a low-moisture food could carry the organism, which led directly to a mandatory treatment rule. (https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/fruit-and-tree-nuts)
- 2007: Pasteurization becomes compulsory for California almonds. Every handler had to apply a validated steam or fumigation step before shipping, changing what the word raw can legally mean on an almond label in the United States. (https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/fruit-and-tree-nuts)
- 2014: California enacts the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. For the first time pumping had to be brought into balance basin by basin, turning water from a variable cost into a hard limit on where permanent orchards can be planted. (https://water.ca.gov/programs/groundwater-management/sgma-groundwater-management)
- 2018: China and Turkey raise duties on Californian almonds. Retaliation for United States steel and aluminum measures landed on tree nuts, cutting Californian sales into two large destination markets that had been growing quickly. (https://www.choicesmagazine.org/choices-magazine/submitted-articles/retaliatory-tariffs-and-container-shipping-disruptions-cause-considerable-trade-damages-to-californias-almond-industry)
- 2019-06: India imposes retaliatory duties on United States almonds. India is the largest single buyer of Californian almonds, so higher duties on both in-shell nuts and kernels bore on the industry's biggest export market at once. (https://www.choicesmagazine.org/choices-magazine/submitted-articles/retaliatory-tariffs-and-container-shipping-disruptions-cause-considerable-trade-damages-to-californias-almond-industry)
- 2021: Container shortages strand almond exports at west coast ports. Carriers sent empty boxes back to Asia rather than loading agricultural cargo, and almond shipments fell well below the volumes handlers had already sold forward. (https://www.choicesmagazine.org/choices-magazine/submitted-articles/retaliatory-tariffs-and-container-shipping-disruptions-cause-considerable-trade-damages-to-californias-almond-industry)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most almonds

United States produced 2 million tonnes in 2024, 51% of the world's 3.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Australia was second with 9.4%. FAOSTAT counts almonds in shell, so these tonnages are not comparable with kernel weights quoted by traders.

### why do almonds need bees

Almond flowers cannot set from their own pollen, and they open in February before wild pollinators are active, so orchards rent honeybee hives. The Californian bloom draws more than half the managed colonies in the United States into one valley for about three weeks, the largest managed pollination event anywhere.

### do almonds use a lot of water

Yes, and the timing is what matters. An orchard is a permanent planting that must be irrigated every year or the trees die, unlike an annual crop that can be fallowed in a drought. California capped groundwater pumping basin by basin under a 2014 law, which limits where new orchards can go.

### are raw almonds actually raw

Almonds sold into the United States market have been required since 2007 to pass a validated salmonella treatment, either steam or fumigation, so nuts labelled raw have been heat or chemically treated. Untreated almonds can still be bought direct from a grower and in some other markets.

### what is the difference between nonpareil and california almonds

They are variety groups, and they price differently. Nonpareil has a thin, easily removed skin and a clean flat kernel, which suits blanching and slicing, and it earns a premium. The California and Mission groups have darker, more wrinkled kernels and go more often into butters, pastes and coated products.

### why does india import almonds in the shell

Because shelling is done locally. In 2024 India took 62% of world imports of in-shell almonds (CEPII BACI), cracking them at home for a market that buys whole nuts, while most other countries import kernels already shelled at origin.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

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# Where does aluminum come from?

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

Aluminum comes mainly from China, which produced 45 million tonnes in 2025, 61% of the world's 74 million tonnes (USGS MCS). India (5.7%), Russia (5.3%) and Canada (4.5%) follow; the top five together supply 80%. The biggest exporter of unwrought aluminum (HS 7601) is Canada (10% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, LME cash, high grade, was $3,251/t in August 2026, up 25% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Bauxite forms as a laterite where tropical rain leaches everything but aluminum and iron out of the rock, which puts the ore in Guinea, Australia and Brazil, while smelting follows cheap electricity, which is why China, the Gulf, Canada and Russia make the metal.

*A light metal smelted from alumina, which is refined from bauxite ore; the chain runs mine (bauxite) to refinery (alumina) to smelter (metal).* Also called: aluminium, bauxite, alumina, primary aluminium, primary aluminum, Al.

## Where does aluminum come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 45 million | 61% |
| 2 | India | 4.2 million | 5.7% |
| 3 | Russia | 3.9 million | 5.3% |
| 4 | Canada | 3.3 million | 4.5% |
| 5 | United Arab Emirates | 2.7 million | 3.6% |
| 6 | Bahrain | 1.6 million | 2.2% |
| 7 | Australia | 1.5 million | 2% |
| 8 | Norway | 1.3 million | 1.8% |
| 9 | Brazil | 1.2 million | 1.6% |
| 10 | Malaysia | 1.1 million | 1.5% |
| | Rest of world | 7 million | 11% |
| | World | 74 million | 100% |

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026.

Aluminum reaches the market through three separate industries in three sets of countries. Bauxite is mined, alumina (aluminum oxide) is refined from it, and primary aluminum is smelted from alumina with electricity. Production on this page means primary metal from smelters, unless bauxite or alumina is named; recycled metal is counted separately by the industry. In 2025 China smelted 45 million tonnes of primary aluminum, 61% of the world's 74 million tonnes (USGS MCS). India and Russia were next, and the top five smelting countries made 80% of the total. World smelter output changed not available for a ten-year span in this source over the ten years to 2025, nearly all of it in Asia.

Smelting goes where electricity is cheap and reliable, because a tonne of metal takes roughly 14 megawatt-hours of power. China built its smelters on coal in Shandong, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia and has been shifting them to hydropower in Yunnan. The Gulf states smelt on gas, Canada, Norway and Iceland on hydro, Russia on Siberian hydro, and India on coal. Power contracts, not ore, decide where the metal is made.

Bauxite is a different map. The ore forms by intense weathering in hot, wet climates, so the largest deposits are laterites in Guinea, northern Australia, Brazil, Jamaica, India, Indonesia and Vietnam. Alumina refineries sit either at the mine, as in Australia and Brazil, or near the smelters, as in China, which imports most of its bauxite by sea. The country-level tables for bauxite mining and alumina refining are not carried on this page, but the trade tables below show the same pattern from the export side.

Bauxite reserves stood at 29 billion tonnes in 2025, with Guinea holding 26%, followed by Australia and Vietnam (USGS MCS). These are reserves of ore, not of metal; roughly four to five tonnes of bauxite make two tonnes of alumina, which makes one tonne of aluminum. Bauxite is abundant relative to demand, so reserves are rarely the constraint.


## Who exports and imports aluminum?

Guinea exports bauxite, Australia exports both bauxite and alumina, China smelts more metal than the rest of the world combined but exports little primary metal.

### Exporters of aluminium ores and concentrates (bauxite) (HS 2606), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Guinea | $8.3 billion | 72% |
| 2 | Australia | $1.9 billion | 16% |
| 3 | Brazil | $241.5 million | 2.1% |
| 4 | China | $222.6 million | 1.9% |
| 5 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $180.2 million | 1.6% |
| 6 | Ghana | $120.6 million | 1% |
| 7 | Guyana | $111.4 million | 1% |
| 8 | Laos | $107 million | 0.9% |
| 9 | Jamaica | $53.8 million | 0.5% |
| 10 | Malaysia | $46.1 million | 0.4% |
| 11 | Montenegro | $38.8 million | 0.3% |
| 12 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $27.3 million | 0.2% |
| 13 | Germany | $26.3 million | 0.2% |
| 14 | Sierra Leone | $24.5 million | 0.2% |
| 15 | Netherlands | $15.6 million | 0.1% |

### Importers of aluminium ores and concentrates (bauxite) (HS 2606), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $9.9 billion | 86% |
| 2 | India | $349 million | 3% |
| 3 | Ireland | $220.7 million | 1.9% |
| 4 | United States | $161.1 million | 1.4% |
| 5 | Germany | $140.4 million | 1.2% |
| 6 | Canada | $132.5 million | 1.2% |
| 7 | Spain | $117.1 million | 1% |
| 8 | Greece | $62.6 million | 0.5% |
| 9 | Saudi Arabia | $38.6 million | 0.3% |
| 10 | France | $36.3 million | 0.3% |
| 11 | South Korea | $35.3 million | 0.3% |
| 12 | Netherlands | $34.9 million | 0.3% |
| 13 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $24.1 million | 0.2% |
| 14 | United Arab Emirates | $20.9 million | 0.2% |
| 15 | Poland | $20.4 million | 0.2% |

### Exporters of alumina (aluminium oxide) (HS 2818), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Australia | $6.1 billion | 29% |
| 2 | Brazil | $3.7 billion | 17% |
| 3 | China | $2.1 billion | 10% |
| 4 | Indonesia | $2 billion | 9.4% |
| 5 | India | $922.8 million | 4.4% |
| 6 | Germany | $916 million | 4.4% |
| 7 | Ireland | $785.2 million | 3.7% |
| 8 | United States | $573.9 million | 2.7% |
| 9 | Vietnam | $562.7 million | 2.7% |
| 10 | Kazakhstan | $459 million | 2.2% |
| 11 | Jamaica | $408.2 million | 1.9% |
| 12 | Spain | $366.6 million | 1.7% |
| 13 | France | $273.9 million | 1.3% |
| 14 | Netherlands | $246.7 million | 1.2% |
| 15 | Japan | $215 million | 1% |

### Importers of alumina (aluminium oxide) (HS 2818), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Russia | $2.3 billion | 11% |
| 2 | Canada | $2.2 billion | 11% |
| 3 | United Arab Emirates | $1.4 billion | 6.5% |
| 4 | Bahrain | $1.3 billion | 6.1% |
| 5 | Norway | $1.1 billion | 5.3% |
| 6 | India | $1.1 billion | 5.1% |
| 7 | United States | $1 billion | 5% |
| 8 | Malaysia | $865.9 million | 4.1% |
| 9 | China | $840 million | 4% |
| 10 | Iceland | $723.4 million | 3.5% |
| 11 | South Africa | $677.5 million | 3.2% |
| 12 | Oman | $672.2 million | 3.2% |
| 13 | Germany | $521.1 million | 2.5% |
| 14 | France | $513.9 million | 2.5% |
| 15 | Indonesia | $512.6 million | 2.4% |

### Exporters of unwrought aluminium (HS 7601), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Canada | $8.3 billion | 10% |
| 2 | United Arab Emirates | $7.4 billion | 9.3% |
| 3 | Russia | $7.3 billion | 9.1% |
| 4 | India | $4.7 billion | 5.9% |
| 5 | Malaysia | $4.5 billion | 5.6% |
| 6 | Norway | $4.3 billion | 5.4% |
| 7 | Australia | $3.8 billion | 4.8% |
| 8 | Netherlands | $3.6 billion | 4.6% |
| 9 | Bahrain | $3.6 billion | 4.6% |
| 10 | Iceland | $2.5 billion | 3.1% |
| 11 | South Africa | $2.2 billion | 2.8% |
| 12 | Mozambique | $1.9 billion | 2.3% |
| 13 | United States | $1.7 billion | 2.1% |
| 14 | Qatar | $1.6 billion | 2% |
| 15 | Italy | $1.6 billion | 2% |

### Importers of unwrought aluminium (HS 7601), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $11.1 billion | 14% |
| 2 | China | $7.8 billion | 9.8% |
| 3 | Germany | $5.8 billion | 7.3% |
| 4 | Japan | $5 billion | 6.4% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $4.2 billion | 5.3% |
| 6 | South Korea | $4 billion | 5.1% |
| 7 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $3.7 billion | 4.6% |
| 8 | Italy | $3.4 billion | 4.3% |
| 9 | Mexico | $3 billion | 3.8% |
| 10 | Malaysia | $2.6 billion | 3.2% |
| 11 | Spain | $2.1 billion | 2.6% |
| 12 | Poland | $2 billion | 2.6% |
| 13 | Thailand | $1.6 billion | 2% |
| 14 | Vietnam | $1.6 billion | 2% |
| 15 | Other Asia, nes | $1.5 billion | 1.9% |

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

The three stages of the chain trade separately. The primary line on this page is unwrought aluminum (HS 7601), the ingot, billet and slab that leaves a smelter. In 2024 Canada was the largest exporter, with 10% of the world's $79.3 billion of exports (CEPII BACI), and United States was the largest importer with 14% of world imports. China, which makes more primary metal than every other country combined, exports very little of it because of a 15% export tax on unwrought aluminum; it exports semi-finished products such as sheet, foil and extrusions instead. The unwrought table therefore describes the Gulf, Russia, Canada, India, Norway and Australia selling to the United States, Europe, Japan and South Korea.

Upstream, the trade in ore and intermediate is even more concentrated. Guinea was the largest exporter of bauxite (HS 2606) in 2024, and Australia the largest exporter of alumina (HS 2818) (CEPII BACI). Guinea sells almost all of its bauxite to China, Australia exports both bauxite and alumina, and China imports bauxite to feed refineries that in turn feed its smelters. Indonesia stopped exporting bauxite in June 2023 to force refining at home, which pushed China further toward Guinea.


## What does aluminum cost?

- LME cash, high grade: $3,251/t in August 2026; 12-month change +25%; 10-year change +98%; all-time high $3,666/t in May 2026; real high (2024 US$) $9,512/t in June 1988 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

Aluminum is priced on the London Metal Exchange. The LME Aluminium contract (ticker AH) trades in 25 t lots quoted in US$/t and settles by delivery of high-grade primary ingot, T-bar or sow into an LME-approved warehouse. The exchange quotes a cash price for delivery in two days and a three-month price, and the spread between them shows whether nearby metal is tight. The Shanghai Futures Exchange contract in yuan prices the Chinese domestic market, and the gap between Shanghai and London, after the export tax and value-added tax, drives the flow of semi-finished products out of China.

Physical buyers pay the LME price plus a regional premium: the Midwest premium in the United States, the Rotterdam duty-paid and duty-unpaid premiums in Europe, and the Main Japanese Ports premium in Asia. These premiums cover freight, financing and duties, and they move on their own. US tariffs under Section 232 pushed the Midwest premium to records in 2025 because the duty applies to imported metal and domestic smelters cannot meet demand. Alumina is priced separately by index, quoted free on board Australia, and long-term bauxite contracts are priced against delivered China assessments. LME warehouse rules also matter: between 2010 and 2015, queues of up to two years to load metal out of Detroit and Vlissingen warehouses inflated premiums until the exchange reformed its load-out rules.

The series charted here is LME cash, high grade. In August 2026 it averaged $3,251/t, up 25% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The nominal record was $3,666/t in May 2026, and in inflation-adjusted terms the high was $9,512/t in June 1988. The lowest monthly average since the series began in 1960 was $496/t in March 1962.


## What moves the price of aluminum?

### Chinese capacity cap and power supply

China set a ceiling of 45 million tonnes a year on primary smelting capacity in 2017 to limit coal burning and grid strain, and its output has run close to that ceiling since. Because China is more than half of world production, a cap on Chinese growth means new supply must come from India, Indonesia and the Gulf, which takes years. Within the cap, hydropower shortages in Yunnan during dry seasons force smelters to cut runs, tightening the market for months at a time.

### Electricity prices and smelter economics

Power is a third or more of a smelter's cost, so energy prices decide which smelters run. Europe's gas and power price spike in 2021 and 2022 idled a large share of the continent's smelting, and some of it has not returned. Smelters cannot be switched on and off cheaply; restarting a potline takes months and capital, so closures remove supply for years. Regions with cheap hydro or gas, and increasingly with dedicated renewable contracts, gain capacity when others lose it.

### Bauxite and alumina supply from Guinea

Guinea supplies about a quarter of the world's bauxite and roughly half of China's imports, so politics in Conakry reach the metal price. The coup of September 2021 and later disputes over mining licenses and export permits have each lifted bauxite and alumina prices, and alumina shortages in 2024 pushed the alumina index to records. Because Chinese refineries hold months of bauxite stock, the effect is usually delayed rather than immediate.

### Transport, packaging and construction demand

Vehicles, buildings and packaging take most of the metal. Aluminum use in cars rises as automakers cut weight, and electric vehicles use more of it in bodies and battery enclosures even though they use less in engines. Construction demand tracks the building cycle in China, Europe and the United States, and beverage cans give a steady base. Solar panel frames and transmission cables have become a large new source of demand as grids and renewable capacity expand.

### Tariffs and sanctions

Trade measures move regional premiums more than the LME price. The US Section 232 tariff on aluminum rose from 10% in 2018 to 25% in February 2025 and 50% in June 2025, and each step lifted the Midwest premium. US sanctions on Rusal in April 2018 removed the second-largest producer from western markets for nine months and sent the LME price to a seven-year high, then reversed it when they were lifted. Bans on Russian metal in LME warehouses after 2022 changed which metal is deliverable, which affects the exchange price directly.

### Scrap and secondary metal

Remelting scrap uses about 5% of the energy of primary smelting, so recycled aluminum is the cheapest source of metal and its share rises with the price of primary. Old scrap from cars, buildings and cans competes with primary ingot in castings and extrusions, and secondary billet is a growing substitute. When primary prices are high, scrap spreads narrow and secondary producers raise output; when they fall, scrap is held back. Trade restrictions on scrap, especially Chinese import rules, shift this balance across borders.

### The US dollar and financing

Aluminum is priced in dollars, and a weaker dollar tends to lift the price for dollar-based buyers while lowering it for others. Low interest rates make it cheap to finance metal in warehouses, which supports the cash-and-carry trades that lock up inventory and keep the forward curve in contango. When rates rise, financed stocks are released and the market loosens. Fund positioning on the LME and in Shanghai can amplify short-term moves in either direction.

## How is aluminum produced?

Bauxite is mined in shallow open pits by stripping the topsoil and digging the ore with excavators; the ore is crushed, sometimes washed, and either shipped as it is or fed into a nearby refinery. The Bayer process, patented in 1888, dissolves the ore in hot caustic soda under pressure, leaves behind an iron-rich residue known as red mud, and then precipitates aluminum hydroxide from the clear liquor. Calcining the hydroxide at about 1,000 °C gives alumina, a white powder that is roughly half aluminum by weight. About two tonnes of alumina come from four to five tonnes of bauxite, and each tonne of alumina leaves one to one and a half tonnes of red mud to store.

Smelting uses the Hall-Héroult process, developed independently in the United States and France in 1886. Alumina is dissolved in molten cryolite at about 960 °C in a steel pot lined with carbon, and a direct current is passed between carbon anodes and the cathode lining. Oxygen from the alumina reacts with the anode carbon to form carbon dioxide, and liquid aluminum collects at the bottom of the pot. A smelter runs hundreds of pots in series, called a potline, and cannot be interrupted without the electrolyte freezing. A tonne of metal needs about two tonnes of alumina, roughly 400 kg of carbon anodes and about 14 MWh of electricity.

Molten metal is siphoned from the pots and cast into ingots, extrusion billet or rolling slab, sometimes with alloying elements added. Rolling mills turn slab into sheet and foil for cans and vehicle bodies; extrusion presses push billet through dies for window frames and structural sections; foundries cast alloys into wheels and engine parts. Secondary smelters melt scrap in gas-fired furnaces to make the same products, and most beverage cans are made from recycled cans.


## What is aluminum used for?

Aluminum is used where low weight, corrosion resistance and conductivity matter. The International Aluminium Institute (IAI) reports that transport is the largest end use at roughly a quarter of global consumption, followed by building and construction, electrical engineering including transmission cables, packaging such as cans and foil, machinery, and consumer durables (IAI, global aluminium cycle). Foil and cans are thin and short-lived; buildings and power lines hold metal for decades, which is why the recycling rate for construction aluminum is high but the flow of scrap back to the market lags demand by a generation.

Nearly all aluminum is used as an alloy. Small additions of magnesium, silicon, copper or zinc give strength, castability or hardness, and the alloy series determine what a scrap stream can be recycled into. Alumina itself has a small market outside smelting, in ceramics, abrasives and refractories, and a share of bauxite goes into cement and chemicals.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain has one dominant node. China smelts more than half of the world's primary aluminum, refines most of its own alumina and imports the bauxite to do it, so a large share of world bauxite moves from Guinea and Australia to Chinese ports such as Longkou and Qingdao. Guinea's ore leaves through Kamsar and the river port at Boké, where several Chinese-backed consortia and the long-established Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée load Capesize vessels. Australia exports bauxite from Weipa and Gove and alumina from refineries in Western Australia and Queensland through Bunbury, Kwinana and Gladstone. Brazil's chain runs from the Trombetas and Paragominas mines to the Alunorte refinery at Barcarena, the largest outside China.

Metal moves from smelters in the Gulf, Russia, Canada, India, Norway and Australia to fabricators in North America, Europe and East Asia, and the LME warehouse network in Rotterdam, Port Klang, Gwangyang and the US Gulf holds the stocks that back the futures contract. Because primary metal from China mostly stays at home, the western market depends on a shorter list of suppliers, and the loss of any one of them, as when Rusal was sanctioned in 2018 or when European smelters closed in 2022, shows up in premiums first and the LME price second.

Single points of failure are political and electrical. Guinea's bauxite exports, Indonesian and Guinean export policy, hydropower in Yunnan and Quebec, and gas prices in Europe and the Gulf each govern a large block of supply. The alumina stage is the most concentrated of all: a handful of refineries in Australia, Brazil and China supply most of the traded alumina, and an outage at one of them, such as the production cut at Alunorte in 2018, can lift alumina prices by half within weeks.


## Key companies

- Aluminum Corporation of China (Chalco): smelter, China, listed (2600)
- Rio Tinto: miner, United Kingdom, listed (RIO)
- Rusal: smelter, Russia, listed (0486)
- Alcoa: smelter, United States, listed (AA)
- Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée: miner, Guinea

## Timeline

- 1886-02: Hall-Héroult process discovered. Two 22-year-old chemists, working separately in Ohio and France, found that alumina dissolved in molten cryolite could be electrolyzed into metal, the process every smelter still uses. (https://www.aluminum.org/primary-production-101)
- 1888-11: First large-scale smelter opens in Pittsburgh. The company that became Alcoa began commercial production, turning aluminum from a curiosity into an industrial metal. (https://www.aluminum.org/primary-production-101)
- 1978-12: LME lists an aluminum contract. For the first time the metal had an exchange price instead of producer list prices, and the 25 t contract became the world benchmark. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_futures_on_the_London_Metal_Exchange)
- 2017-04: China caps smelting capacity at 45 million tonnes. The ceiling set in 2017 to curb coal-fired power use turned the world's largest producer from a source of growth into a fixed quantity. (https://decodingthedragon.substack.com/p/55-why-did-china-cap-its-own-aluminium)
- 2018-03: United States imposes a 10% Section 232 tariff on aluminum. The first of three tariff steps that reshaped regional premiums; the rate rose to 25% in February 2025 and 50% in June 2025. (https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/IN12519.html)
- 2018-04: US sanctions on Rusal. Sanctions on 6 April 2018 cut the second-largest producer off from western customers, bauxite suppliers and LME warehouses, and the price spiked until they were lifted in January 2019. (https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/econographics/us-sanctions-global-impact/)
- 2021-09: Coup in Guinea. The 5 September 2021 takeover put about a fifth of world bauxite supply, and half of China's imports, under an uncertain government. (https://www.crugroup.com/en/communities/thought-leadership/2021/guinea-coup-ignites-uncertainty-in-bauxite/)
- 2022-03: LME aluminum hits a record $4,073/t. On 7 March 2022 Russia's invasion of Ukraine, on top of Europe's energy crisis, pushed the three-month price to its highest ever. (https://aegis-hedging.com/insights/aegis-primer-on-lme-aluminum-price-history)
- 2023-06: Indonesia bans bauxite exports. The ban that took effect in June 2023 aimed to force domestic refining and removed China's third-largest bauxite supplier from the seaborne market. (https://think.ing.com/articles/indonesia-bans-bauxite-exports-from-june-2023/)
- 2025-06: US aluminum tariff doubles to 50%. The proclamation of 3 June 2025 raised the Section 232 rate from 25% to 50% from the next day, sending the US Midwest premium to records. (https://www.bdo.com/insights/tax/section-232-tariffs-on-steel-and-aluminum-doubled-and-related-developments)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most aluminum

China produces the most primary aluminum by far. In 2025 its smelters made 45 million tonnes, 61% of the world's 74 million tonnes (USGS MCS). India and Russia were next. These figures count metal from smelters only; recycled aluminum and the upstream stages of bauxite and alumina are measured separately.

### where does aluminum come from

Aluminum comes from bauxite ore, which is refined into alumina and then smelted with electricity. Bauxite is mined mainly in Guinea, Australia, Brazil and Indonesia; alumina is refined in Australia, China and Brazil; the metal is smelted where power is cheap, above all in China, which made 61% of world primary aluminum in 2025 (USGS MCS).

### which country exports the most aluminum

For unwrought aluminum (HS 7601), Canada was the largest exporter in 2024, with 10% of world export value (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer. China, the biggest producer, exports little primary metal because of an export tax, and sells semi-finished sheet, foil and extrusions instead. For bauxite ore the top exporter was Guinea.

### what is the price of aluminum

This page shows monthly averages rather than live quotes. The LME cash, high grade price averaged $3,251/t in August 2026, up 25% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The record monthly average was $3,666/t in May 2026. Buyers pay a regional premium on top of the LME price, which in the United States includes the effect of import tariffs.

### where does bauxite come from

Bauxite is a weathered tropical rock, so it comes from Guinea, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, India, Jamaica and Vietnam. Guinea was the largest bauxite exporter in 2024 (CEPII BACI). Guinea held the largest bauxite reserves, 26% of the world's 29 billion tonnes in 2025 (USGS MCS). Most exported bauxite goes to Chinese alumina refineries.

### how is aluminum priced

Aluminum is priced on the London Metal Exchange in US dollars per tonne, in 25 t lots of high-grade primary ingot, with cash and three-month quotes. Physical buyers pay the LME price plus a regional premium such as the US Midwest or Rotterdam premium. Alumina is priced separately by index, free on board Australia. The LME cash price averaged $3,251/t in August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### why is aluminum smelted in China

Smelting needs about 14 megawatt-hours of electricity per tonne, so it follows cheap power. China built coal-fired smelters in Shandong, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia and hydro-based ones in Yunnan, and capped total capacity at 45 million tonnes a year in 2017. In 2025 it produced 61% of the world's primary aluminum (USGS MCS), importing much of the bauxite from Guinea and Australia.

### what is aluminum used for

Aluminum is used for vehicles, aircraft, buildings, power cables, cans and foil, machinery and consumer goods. The International Aluminium Institute puts transport at roughly a quarter of demand, followed by construction, electrical uses and packaging. Almost all of it is used as an alloy, and recycled metal, which needs about 5% of the energy of primary smelting, supplies a growing share.

## Sources

- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries
- 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 does aluminum come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/aluminum/.

---

# Where do apples come from?

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

Apples come mainly from China, which produced 51.3 million tonnes in 2024, 52% of the world's 97.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). United States (5%), Turkey (Türkiye) (4.5%) and Poland (3.5%) follow; the top five together supply 68%. The biggest exporter of apples (HS 080810) is China (16% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Apples need a cold winter to break dormancy and a long mild summer to size and color the fruit, which confines the crop to a temperate band running through northern China, the European plain, the American northwest and the plateaus of Turkey and Iran.

*A temperate pome fruit stored for months in controlled atmospheres so it can be sold all year.* Also called: apple, dessert apples, cider apples.

## Where do apples come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 51.3 million | 52% |
| 2 | United States | 4.9 million | 5% |
| 3 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 4.4 million | 4.5% |
| 4 | Poland | 3.4 million | 3.5% |
| 5 | India | 2.6 million | 2.7% |
| 6 | Italy | 2.4 million | 2.5% |
| 7 | Iran | 2.3 million | 2.4% |
| 8 | Russia | 2 million | 2.1% |
| 9 | France | 2 million | 2% |
| 10 | Uzbekistan | 1.5 million | 1.5% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 21% |
| | World | 97.9 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 China produced 51.3 million tonnes, 52% of the world's 97.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). United States followed with 5%, then Turkey (Türkiye) (4.5%), Poland (3.5%) and India (2.7%). The top five account for 68%, 94 countries reported output and 21% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +15% over the ten years to 2024 and +0% on the previous year.

The apple will not crop without a spell of winter cold, and it colors badly where summer nights are warm, so it keeps to middle latitudes and to highland pockets nearer the equator. Chinese output sits on the Loess Plateau and around Bohai Bay, European output runs from Poland's plain to the Alpine valleys of northern Italy, and the Turkish and Iranian crops are grown high enough to get a real winter.

Two markets share one statistic. Dessert apples are graded for looks, firmness and sugar and sold whole; juice apples are grown for yield and acidity and pressed into concentrate. FAOSTAT counts both, so a country with a large concentrate industry ranks higher than its fresh trade alone would suggest.

## Who exports and imports apples?

### Exporters of apples, fresh (HS 080810), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $1.3 billion | 16% |
| 2 | Italy | $1.1 billion | 13% |
| 3 | United States | $1.1 billion | 13% |
| 4 | Chile | $650.8 million | 8.1% |
| 5 | New Zealand | $634.5 million | 7.9% |
| 6 | South Africa | $601.3 million | 7.4% |
| 7 | Poland | $518.5 million | 6.4% |
| 8 | France | $471.4 million | 5.8% |
| 9 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $197.8 million | 2.4% |
| 10 | Netherlands | $149 million | 1.8% |
| 11 | Iran | $129.8 million | 1.6% |
| 12 | Serbia | $116.5 million | 1.4% |
| 13 | Spain | $110.5 million | 1.4% |
| 14 | Japan | $106.4 million | 1.3% |
| 15 | Germany | $100.6 million | 1.2% |

### Importers of apples, fresh (HS 080810), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Germany | $588.6 million | 7.3% |
| 2 | United Kingdom | $427.3 million | 5.3% |
| 3 | India | $412.1 million | 5.1% |
| 4 | Mexico | $382.3 million | 4.7% |
| 5 | Vietnam | $376.6 million | 4.7% |
| 6 | Indonesia | $306.8 million | 3.8% |
| 7 | Other Asia, nes | $285.1 million | 3.5% |
| 8 | Brazil | $274 million | 3.4% |
| 9 | China | $258.4 million | 3.2% |
| 10 | Thailand | $245.6 million | 3% |
| 11 | Russia | $230.2 million | 2.8% |
| 12 | Netherlands | $227.5 million | 2.8% |
| 13 | Spain | $222.7 million | 2.8% |
| 14 | Philippines | $213.8 million | 2.6% |
| 15 | Saudi Arabia | $190.6 million | 2.4% |

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

China was the largest exporter of apples (HS 080810) in 2024 with 16% of world export value, ahead of Italy (13%), on world trade of $8.1 billion (CEPII BACI). Germany was the largest importer with 7.3%.

Only a small part of the crop crosses a border. Apples are heavy, they grow in most temperate countries, and storage lets a domestic harvest cover the year, so there is little reason to import them. The exporters are countries with a surplus and a reputation for grade: Italy and Poland, the United States and Chile, and New Zealand into the northern spring gap.

Import demand is scattered rather than concentrated, which is unusual for a traded fruit. The fastest-growing buyers are in South and Southeast Asia, where an apple is a premium item rather than a staple. Concentrate moves under a separate code and does not appear in these figures.

## What do apples cost?

### How they are priced

There is no futures market and no free public benchmark price for apples, so this site quotes none. Fruit is sold by variety, grade, size count per box, color and firmness, mostly on programs agreed between packers and supermarket chains that run for months rather than on a spot trade.

Because controlled atmosphere storage holds fruit for most of a year, a season's price is a sequence of release decisions. A packer carries the cost of the room and the risk that quality slips, and sells into the weeks when supply thins. The visible references are destination wholesale market reports and the pool payment growers receive once packing, storage and selling costs are deducted.

## What moves the price of apples?

### Spring frost at bloom

Apple flowers open before the last frosts in most growing regions, and a few hours below freezing at full bloom removes most of a crop. Growers fight it with wind machines, water and heaters, but the exposure lands on a whole district at once, because orchards there bloom within days of each other.

### Storage capacity and the release decision

Controlled atmosphere rooms let a harvest picked in six weeks be sold over eleven months, so supply is partly a management choice. When rooms are full at the start of a season, holders release earlier and prices fall sooner; when the crop is short, fruit is metered out instead.

### The juice outlet

Fruit that misses fresh grade goes to concentrate, which puts a floor under an orchard's value. When concentrate prices are strong, marginal fruit is diverted away from the fresh pack; when they collapse, growers push more fruit into a fresh market that does not want it.

### Harvest labor

Apples are picked by hand, in several passes, by crews who judge maturity block by block and handle fruit without bruising it. The work is concentrated into a few weeks, so wage rates, seasonal visa programs and crew availability feed straight into cost, and an understaffed region leaves fruit on the tree.

### Market closures

Apples are traded under phytosanitary rules and make an easy target for retaliation, being visible, perishable and politically useful. One large import market closing strands fruit that must be sold within weeks, and the displaced volume depresses prices well beyond the country that lost the market.

## How are apples produced?

Orchards are planted with grafted trees, a chosen variety on a rootstock that controls the tree's size. Dwarfing rootstocks allow thousands of small trees to the hectare in trellised rows that crop in their third or fourth year. Blossom and young fruit are thinned to size the crop and to blunt the tree's habit of cropping heavily one year and lightly the next.

Picking is by hand in several passes, as skin color and the conversion of starch to sugar tell a crew that a block is ready. Fruit goes into bins and then to a packhouse, where it is washed, sorted by camera for size, color and blemish, and packed or stored.

Storage is the industry's central technology. Rooms are sealed and chilled and the oxygen drawn down until respiration nearly stops, sometimes after an ethylene-blocking treatment. Fruit comes out months later firm enough to sell, which is why apples are on the shelf year-round.

## What are apples used for?

Most apples are eaten fresh, and the grading and storage systems exist to serve that trade. The rest is pressed for juice and concentrate, fermented into cider and vinegar, cooked into sauce, dried, and cut into fresh slices for food service.

The by-product is pomace, the skin, core and seed left after pressing. It is fed to livestock, composted, or extracted for pectin, the gelling agent used in jam, and the seed can be pressed for oil.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is short but storage-heavy. Fruit moves from orchard to packhouse in hours and then sits, often for most of a year, in sealed rooms owned by a comparatively small number of packers and cooperatives. Thousands of growers deliver into a handful of storage and marketing operations in each region.

Export fruit travels in refrigerated containers, three to five weeks by sea from the southern hemisphere, with the atmosphere inside managed the same way as in a store room. Air freight is used only for the first fruit of a season.

The single points of failure are the store room and the buyer. An atmosphere control fault can spoil a season's holdings in one building, and because so much volume is committed to a few large retailers, losing one market pushes a great deal of fruit onto the others at once.

## Timeline

- 1912: East Malling begins classifying apple rootstocks. The Malling series gave growers rootstocks that reliably control tree size, which is what made dense, early-cropping orchards possible. (https://pubs.nmsu.edu/_h/H307/index.html)
- 1920: Kidd and West start systematic gas storage research. Work at Cambridge on carbon dioxide and oxygen mixtures created controlled atmosphere storage, the reason apples can be sold all year. (https://quadram.ac.uk/about/history/)
- 1938: Commercial gas stores become common in Britain. Laboratory results had turned into ordinary trade practice within a generation, converting a seasonal fruit into a year-round grocery item. (https://quadram.ac.uk/about/history/)
- 1991: Pink Lady is launched as a branded apple. A variety bred in Western Australia was sold under a trademark rather than as a generic apple, beginning the managed club varieties that now dominate new plantings. (https://applesandpeople.org.uk/stories/mr-cripps/)
- 2000-06: The United States sets duties on Chinese apple juice concentrate. An antidumping order on non-frozen concentrate showed that the juice market is a separate trade with its own economics, not an afterthought to the fresh business. (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2000-06-07/pdf/00-14318.pdf)
- 2014-08: Russia's food import ban strands European apples. The closure of the largest export market for European fruit forced emergency withdrawals and showed how fast a policy decision can move a perishable crop. (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eur/2014/1031/adopted)
- 2019: Cosmic Crisp is released from the Washington State University program. A publicly bred variety launched with managed planting rights and very long storage life, showing that variety, storage and marketing are now decided together. (https://tfrec.cahnrs.wsu.edu/breed/apple-variety-releases/cosmiccrispbrandwa38/)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most apples

China produced 51.3 million tonnes in 2024, 52% of the world's 97.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). United States was second with 5%. Most of the Chinese crop is eaten or pressed at home rather than exported, so the production and export rankings are not the same.

### why are apples available all year

Because for most of the year they are stored rather than grown. Apples are picked over a few weeks and held in sealed rooms that are chilled and have the oxygen drawn down until the fruit almost stops respiring. That technology grew out of research begun in 1920, and it is why a shop can sell local apples in spring.

### how long can apples be stored

Some varieties keep for the better part of a year in controlled atmosphere storage, and a few newer selections longer than that. Ordinary refrigeration manages a few months. The limit is not rot so much as softening and loss of flavor, which is what the low oxygen level slows down.

### which country exports the most apples

China led exports of apples (HS 080810) in 2024 with 16% of world export value, ahead of Italy (13%), on world trade of $8.1 billion (CEPII BACI). Only a small share of world production is traded at all, because most temperate countries grow their own.

### are juice apples the same as eating apples

Usually not. Juice and cider fruit is grown for yield and acidity and harvested loose rather than picked into bins, then pressed into concentrate. Dessert fruit is picked by hand and graded on looks and firmness. Fruit that misses fresh grade is diverted to juice, which is what links the two markets.

### what is a club apple variety

A variety whose planting rights and trademark are controlled, so only licensed growers may plant it and the fruit is sold under one brand. Pink Lady, launched in 1991, was the first to work this way. The model pays for breeding and marketing, and it limits how fast supply can grow.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

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# Where do avocados come from?

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

Avocados come mainly from Mexico, which produced 2.8 million tonnes in 2024, 25% of the world's 11.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Colombia (11%), Dominican Republic (11%) and Peru (8.2%) follow; the top five together supply 63%. The biggest exporter of avocados (HS 080440) is Mexico (43% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Avocados need frost-free subtropical highlands with a dry period to set fruit, which is why the crop concentrates in the Mexican state of Michoacán, the Andean valleys of Peru and Colombia, and pockets of California, Israel and South Africa.

*A fatty tropical fruit picked hard and ripened after shipping, grown mostly in Mexico and the Andes.* Also called: avocado, hass avocado, alligator pear.

## Where do avocados come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mexico | 2.8 million | 25% |
| 2 | Colombia | 1.3 million | 11% |
| 3 | Dominican Republic | 1.2 million | 11% |
| 4 | Peru | 919,602 | 8.2% |
| 5 | Indonesia | 919,509 | 8.2% |
| 6 | Kenya | 585,000 | 5.2% |
| 7 | Brazil | 427,457 | 3.8% |
| 8 | Israel | 246,971 | 2.2% |
| 9 | Ethiopia | 201,892 | 1.8% |
| 10 | Haiti | 197,249 | 1.8% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 22% |
| | World | 11.2 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 Mexico produced 2.8 million tonnes, 25% of the world's 11.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Colombia followed with 11%, then Dominican Republic (11%), Peru (8.2%) and Indonesia (8.2%). The top five account for 63%, 95 countries reported output and 22% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +120% over the ten years to 2024 and +5% on the previous year.

Mexico's dominance is not an accident of climate alone. Michoacán sits at an altitude and latitude where the Hass variety flowers more than once a year, so the state can supply fruit almost continuously rather than in a single window, and that year-round availability is what turned avocado from a seasonal specialty into a supermarket staple. Peru and Chile supply the northern hemisphere summer, and South Africa, Kenya and Israel fill European gaps.

Almost the entire export trade is one variety. Hass has thick pebbly skin that survives shipping, flesh that ripens predictably and a skin that darkens as it ripens, giving retailers a visual cue. That monoculture is efficient and fragile in the usual way.

## Who exports and imports avocados?

### Exporters of avocados, fresh or dried (HS 080440), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mexico | $4 billion | 43% |
| 2 | Peru | $1.4 billion | 15% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $633.2 million | 6.7% |
| 4 | Israel | $443.7 million | 4.7% |
| 5 | Spain | $410.2 million | 4.4% |
| 6 | Colombia | $348.5 million | 3.7% |
| 7 | Chile | $324.6 million | 3.5% |
| 8 | Morocco | $302 million | 3.2% |
| 9 | Kenya | $263.8 million | 2.8% |
| 10 | South Africa | $251.8 million | 2.7% |
| 11 | Dominican Republic | $116.2 million | 1.2% |
| 12 | Germany | $106.8 million | 1.1% |
| 13 | France | $105.2 million | 1.1% |
| 14 | Tanzania | $75.9 million | 0.8% |
| 15 | United States | $75.4 million | 0.8% |

### Importers of avocados, fresh or dried (HS 080440), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $3.8 billion | 40% |
| 2 | Netherlands | $1.2 billion | 13% |
| 3 | Spain | $553.7 million | 5.9% |
| 4 | France | $476.5 million | 5.1% |
| 5 | Canada | $341.8 million | 3.6% |
| 6 | United Kingdom | $336.6 million | 3.6% |
| 7 | Germany | $302.8 million | 3.2% |
| 8 | Italy | $161.1 million | 1.7% |
| 9 | Russia | $160.9 million | 1.7% |
| 10 | China | $152.6 million | 1.6% |
| 11 | Norway | $132.5 million | 1.4% |
| 12 | Japan | $130.6 million | 1.4% |
| 13 | Chile | $116.3 million | 1.2% |
| 14 | Poland | $115.2 million | 1.2% |
| 15 | Belgium | $98.6 million | 1% |

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

Mexico was the largest exporter of avocados (HS 080440) in 2024 with 43% of world export value, ahead of Peru (15%), on world trade of $9.4 billion (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 40%.

The gap between production and export rankings is the point. Several large producers grow local varieties for domestic consumption and export almost nothing, while Peru and Chile export a high share of what they grow. Mexico is unusual in being both a very large producer and the dominant exporter, and a single trade relationship, Michoacán to the United States, accounts for a large share of world avocado trade by value.

## What do avocados cost?

### How they are priced

There is no futures market and no free public benchmark price for avocados, so this site does not quote one. Fruit is sold by size count per box, variety and grade, negotiated weekly between exporters and importers, with published market reports from destination wholesale markets giving the visible reference.

Prices are unusually volatile for a fruit because supply arrives in waves from a small number of origins and demand is steady. A gap between the Mexican and Peruvian seasons, or a border delay, can double the wholesale price within weeks. Water availability and the security situation in growing regions also enter the price in ways that a simple supply and demand account would miss.

## What moves the price of avocados?

### Water availability

Avocado is a thirsty crop, and the main growing regions are semi-arid. Irrigation restrictions in Chile and Peru and aquifer depletion in Michoacán have become genuine constraints on planting, and water rights disputes now shape where new orchards can go.

### Alternate bearing

Avocado trees crop heavily one year and lightly the next, so supply oscillates even with stable acreage. Growers manage this with pruning and thinning, but the underlying biennial rhythm still shows up in prices.

### Phytosanitary access

Avocados carry pest risks that importing countries take seriously, and market access is granted orchard by orchard and region by region. A single pest interception can suspend a whole state's exports, which has happened.

### North American demand

United States consumption grew for two decades on the back of marketing and changing food habits, and that single market absorbs a very large share of world exports. Its demand growth, and any slowdown, dominates the market.

### Deforestation and land conversion

Orchard expansion has displaced pine and oak forest in Michoacán, drawing regulatory and buyer scrutiny. Traceability requirements from European and North American buyers now affect which orchards can sell where.

## How are avocados produced?

Avocado is an evergreen tree grown from grafted stock, because seedlings do not come true to type. Trees begin bearing three to five years after planting and reach full production after about eight. Flowering is unusual: the flowers open twice, first as female then as male, and cross-pollination between complementary types raises fruit set, which is why orchards interplant varieties.

Fruit does not ripen on the tree, which is the crop's most useful commercial property. It stays hard until picked, then softens over days, so growers can hold fruit on the tree for weeks as a form of storage and harvest to market demand. Picked fruit is graded by size and quality, packed by count per box, and shipped under controlled atmosphere and temperature to slow ripening. Importers then ripen fruit in chambers using ethylene so it reaches shelves ready to eat.

## What are avocados used for?

Almost all avocado is eaten fresh, whether as whole fruit or as guacamole, and the fresh trade dominates entirely. Processing exists mainly to use fruit that cannot be sold fresh: guacamole and pulp are preserved by high-pressure processing, which extends shelf life without heat and without destroying color and flavour, and frozen pulp and chunks serve food service.

Avocado oil, cold-pressed from the flesh rather than the seed, has grown into a genuine cooking oil and cosmetics market, and it absorbs fruit that is out of grade. The stone and skin, once waste, are now used for extracts and as a source of biopolymer, though these markets are small.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is a cold chain and a border. Fruit is packed at origin, moved in refrigerated containers or trucks, held in ripening rooms near the market, and delivered within a tight window. The dominant flow, from Michoacán across the United States border, is a road trade, and it is exposed to inspection capacity, border closures and security conditions on the route in a way that a seaborne trade would not be.

South American fruit moves by sea to Europe and North America under controlled atmosphere, a three-week voyage that only works because avocado can be held hard. Air freight is used only for premium out-of-season fruit.

The structural risks are water, monoculture and market access. A single variety supplies most of world trade, a small number of regions supply most of the volume, and each of those regions faces water constraints that are tightening rather than easing.

## Timeline

- 1926: The Hass variety is patented. A chance seedling in California produced a fruit with thick skin that shipped well and darkened as it ripened, and it became the variety that made a world avocado trade possible. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 1997-02: The United States reopens to Mexican avocados. After decades of phytosanitary prohibition, limited access was granted and then progressively widened, creating the trade flow that now dominates the world market. (https://www.aphis.usda.gov/)
- 2007: Peru gains access to the United States market. A second large supplier with a counter-seasonal harvest smoothed year-round availability and reduced the price spikes that had followed gaps in Mexican supply. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 2016: Water and deforestation concerns reach buyers. Reporting on aquifer depletion and forest conversion in Michoacán prompted retailers to demand traceability and sustainability documentation from suppliers. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 2022-02: A safety incident suspends Michoacán exports. A brief suspension of United States inspections in the state halted the largest single avocado trade flow and sent wholesale prices sharply higher within days. (https://www.aphis.usda.gov/)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most avocados

Mexico produced 2.8 million tonnes in 2024, 25% of the world's 11.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Colombia was second with 11%. Mexico is unusual in being both the largest producer and the dominant exporter.

### why are avocados expensive

Supply arrives in waves from a small number of origins while demand is steady, so gaps between seasons or a border disruption move prices sharply. Trees also crop heavily one year and lightly the next, and water constraints in the main growing regions limit expansion.

### why is almost all export avocado the Hass variety

Because it has thick pebbly skin that survives shipping, ripens predictably off the tree, and darkens visibly as it ripens, giving retailers a cue for shoppers. That combination made a long-distance trade possible, at the cost of a near-monoculture.

### do avocados ripen on the tree

No, and that is commercially useful. Fruit stays hard on the tree and only softens after picking, so growers can hold it for weeks as a form of storage and harvest to demand. Importers then ripen it in chambers using ethylene before it reaches shelves.

### how much water do avocados need

A great deal, and the main growing regions are semi-arid, which is why irrigation restrictions in Chile and Peru and aquifer depletion in Michoacán have become real constraints on new planting rather than merely an environmental criticism.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where do bananas come from?

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

Bananas come mainly from India, which produced 37.6 million tonnes in 2024, 27% of the world's 139.3 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). China (8.4%), Indonesia (6.6%) and Ecuador (5.4%) follow; the top five together supply 53%. The biggest exporter of bananas and plantains (HS 0803) is Ecuador (27% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Central and South America, US import, was $1.1/kg in August 2026, up 8% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Bananas need constant warmth, deep well-drained soil and about 100 millimeters of rain a month with no dry season and no wind, which limits commercial export production to a narrow set of humid tropical lowlands; the countries that dominate the trade are the ones that also sit within reefer-shipping distance of a rich market.

*The world's most traded fresh fruit, grown from clonal plants and shipped green in refrigerated ships.* Also called: banana, cavendish, plantains, dessert bananas.

## Where do bananas come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | 37.6 million | 27% |
| 2 | China | 11.8 million | 8.4% |
| 3 | Indonesia | 9.3 million | 6.6% |
| 4 | Ecuador | 7.6 million | 5.4% |
| 5 | Brazil | 7 million | 5.1% |
| 6 | Nigeria | 6.9 million | 5% |
| 7 | Philippines | 5.6 million | 4% |
| 8 | Angola | 5.2 million | 3.7% |
| 9 | Tanzania | 3.3 million | 2.3% |
| 10 | Guatemala | 2.8 million | 2% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 30% |
| | World | 139.3 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

The banana plant is a giant herb, not a tree, and it is unforgiving about climate. It wants temperatures between about 25 and 30 degrees Celsius year-round, no frost, deep and freely draining soil, and rain of roughly a hundred millimeters a month spread evenly, with irrigation where it is not. Its pseudostem is water and fiber, so a strong wind flattens a plantation in an hour and a hurricane ends a season. That combination confines commercial export production to humid tropical lowlands with reliable rainfall, low cyclone risk and flat ground.

In 2024 India grew 37.6 million tonnes, 27% of the world's 139.3 million tonnes (FAOSTAT), followed by China (8.4%), Indonesia (6.6%), Ecuador (5.4%) and Brazil (5.1%). That list is misleading if read as a map of the banana trade, because most of the world's bananas never leave the district where they grow. India and China grow enormous quantities for their own markets. In Nigeria, Angola and much of East Africa the crop is largely a cooking staple eaten within a few days of cutting, closer in role to a potato than to dessert fruit, and FAOSTAT's banana item takes in those cooking types alongside the sweet ones.

The export map is different and much smaller. Ecuador, the Philippines, Costa Rica, Colombia and Guatemala grow bananas as an industrial crop on flat, irrigated, drained land with packing stations in the field and a port within a day's drive. Ecuador's plantations lie on the coastal plain around Guayaquil and Machala, in a rain shadow that keeps disease pressure lower than in the Caribbean; the Philippines grows for Japan, China and Korea from Mindanao; Costa Rica and Guatemala grow on the Caribbean lowlands close to Puerto Limón and Puerto Barrios.

World production has been growing steadily rather than dramatically: it changed +21% over the ten years to 2024 and +14% over five (FAOSTAT). 140 countries reported a crop, and everything outside the top ten still added up to 30%, which is unusually high and reflects how widely bananas are grown for local food. The fastest expansion has been African rather than Latin American: Nigeria grew at +8.8% a year over the decade and Angola at +4.1%, against +1.2% for Ecuador and +0.9% for Costa Rica.


## Who exports and imports bananas?

India and China grow the largest crops but export almost none; the trade is supplied by Ecuador, the Philippines, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Colombia.

### Exporters of bananas, including plantains, fresh or dried (HS 0803), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ecuador | $4.2 billion | 27% |
| 2 | Colombia | $1.6 billion | 10% |
| 3 | Guatemala | $1.5 billion | 9.8% |
| 4 | Philippines | $1.5 billion | 9.3% |
| 5 | Costa Rica | $1.4 billion | 9.3% |
| 6 | Netherlands | $391.2 million | 2.5% |
| 7 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $388.4 million | 2.5% |
| 8 | Vietnam | $379.8 million | 2.4% |
| 9 | India | $342.7 million | 2.2% |
| 10 | Mexico | $313.9 million | 2% |
| 11 | Germany | $290.9 million | 1.9% |
| 12 | Honduras | $268.1 million | 1.7% |
| 13 | Panama | $264.2 million | 1.7% |
| 14 | Dominican Republic | $261.9 million | 1.7% |
| 15 | Belgium | $241.3 million | 1.5% |

### Importers of bananas, including plantains, fresh or dried (HS 0803), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $2.9 billion | 19% |
| 2 | Germany | $1 billion | 6.4% |
| 3 | China | $981.1 million | 6.3% |
| 4 | Japan | $930.5 million | 6% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $927.2 million | 5.9% |
| 6 | France | $669.8 million | 4.3% |
| 7 | Russia | $624.7 million | 4% |
| 8 | United Kingdom | $615.2 million | 3.9% |
| 9 | Belgium | $562.7 million | 3.6% |
| 10 | Italy | $553 million | 3.5% |
| 11 | Canada | $507.1 million | 3.3% |
| 12 | South Korea | $373.3 million | 2.4% |
| 13 | Spain | $287.8 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | Saudi Arabia | $272.2 million | 1.7% |
| 15 | Argentina | $214.8 million | 1.4% |

### Exporters of bananas other than plantains, fresh (HS 080390), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ecuador | $4 billion | 27% |
| 2 | Costa Rica | $1.4 billion | 9.8% |
| 3 | Colombia | $1.4 billion | 9.8% |
| 4 | Philippines | $1.4 billion | 9.7% |
| 5 | Guatemala | $1.4 billion | 9.3% |
| 6 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $382.7 million | 2.6% |
| 7 | Vietnam | $379.2 million | 2.6% |
| 8 | India | $326.9 million | 2.3% |
| 9 | Netherlands | $322.2 million | 2.2% |
| 10 | Mexico | $294.3 million | 2% |
| 11 | Honduras | $264 million | 1.8% |
| 12 | Panama | $260.8 million | 1.8% |
| 13 | Dominican Republic | $258.4 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | Germany | $254.3 million | 1.8% |
| 15 | Belgium | $203.9 million | 1.4% |

### Importers of bananas other than plantains, fresh (HS 080390), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $2.5 billion | 17% |
| 2 | Germany | $983.5 million | 6.8% |
| 3 | China | $980.5 million | 6.8% |
| 4 | Japan | $929.3 million | 6.4% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $881.2 million | 6.1% |
| 6 | France | $649 million | 4.5% |
| 7 | Russia | $624.4 million | 4.3% |
| 8 | United Kingdom | $579.5 million | 4% |
| 9 | Italy | $522.9 million | 3.6% |
| 10 | Belgium | $515.7 million | 3.6% |
| 11 | Canada | $487.3 million | 3.4% |
| 12 | South Korea | $373.1 million | 2.6% |
| 13 | Spain | $251.5 million | 1.7% |
| 14 | Saudi Arabia | $227.3 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | Argentina | $212.3 million | 1.5% |

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

Bananas are the most traded fresh fruit in the world, and the trade is far more concentrated than production. In 2024 Ecuador exported $4.2 billion of bananas and plantains (HS 0803), 27% of the world's $15.6 billion (CEPII BACI), more than double the next supplier. Colombia took 10%, Guatemala 9.8%, Philippines 9.3% and Costa Rica 9.3%. Strip out plantains and look only at dessert bananas (HS 080390), a $14.5 billion trade in 2024, and the picture barely changes: Ecuador still leads with 27%, ahead of Costa Rica and Colombia.

On the buying side, United States took 19% of the world's $15.6 billion of imports in 2024, ahead of Germany (6.4%), China (6.3%), Japan (6%) and Netherlands (5.9%) (CEPII BACI). Two of those names are transit points rather than markets. The Netherlands and Belgium appear high because Rotterdam and Antwerp are the discharge ports for northwest Europe, and both re-export a large share inland, which is also why Netherlands and Belgium show up as exporters without growing a commercial crop. Germany does the same on a smaller scale. The pattern to hold on to is that India grows more bananas than anyone and exports 2.2% of world export value, while Ecuador grows a fraction as many and dominates the trade.


## What do bananas cost?

- Central and South America, US import: $1.1/kg in August 2026; 12-month change +8%; 10-year change +6%; all-time high $1.68/kg in December 2022; real high (2024 US$) $2.13/kg in May 1964 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- Central and South America, Europe import: $1.07/kg in August 2026; 12-month change -4%; 10-year change +19%; all-time high $1.64/kg in March 2008; real high (2024 US$) $2.41/kg in March 2008 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How they are priced

Bananas have no futures contract. They are too perishable to store and deliver against a standardized contract, and the fruit is not fungible in the way a grain is, so pricing happens through negotiated supply agreements instead. The dominant mechanism is the annual or seasonal contract between a producer or exporter and a supermarket chain or importer, struck for a fixed price per box for a defined weekly volume across a whole year. Northern European retail negotiations, in particular, set a reference that a large part of the trade follows. Outside those contracts there is a spot market for surplus fruit, which is thin, volatile and usually a discount to contract terms. Ecuador adds a further institution: the state sets an official minimum support price per box that exporters must pay growers, and the gap between that official price and the spot price is a running feature of the Ecuadorian market.

The two series charted on this page are import prices, not farm-gate prices. Central and South America, US import was $1.1/kg in August 2026, up 8% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet), and Central and South America, Europe import was $1.07/kg in August 2026, -4% over the year. The nominal record for the United States series was $1.68/kg in December 2022 and for the European series $1.64/kg in March 2008. What is striking is the long real decline: adjusted for United States inflation, the real high was $2.13/kg back in May 1964, and the series has changed +6% over the past ten years and -11% over five, against a low of $0.11/kg in January 1968 and a start date of 1960.

Two ambiguities matter when reading those numbers. First, both series are landed import prices, so they include ocean freight and insurance and exclude the ripening, distribution and retail margin that make up much of what a shopper pays; the grower's share of the final price is small. Second, a banana price is only meaningful for a stated grade: export fruit is sold by box, at a specified weight, finger length and calibre, and fruit that fails those specifications is worth a fraction of the quoted price or is left in the field. Prices also diverge between the Atlantic and Pacific trades because they are effectively separate markets served by different suppliers.


## What moves the price of bananas?

### Fusarium wilt tropical race 4

The export banana is a single clone, Cavendish, propagated vegetatively, so every plant in every plantation is genetically identical and equally susceptible. Tropical race 4 of Fusarium oxysporum is a soil fungus that blocks the plant's vascular system, persists in the ground for decades and has no chemical cure, so an infected farm is effectively retired. Its arrival in Colombia in 2019 and Peru in 2021 put it inside the region that supplies most of the Atlantic trade, and containment now depends on biosecurity rather than treatment.

### Black sigatoka and fungicide costs

Black leaf streak, caused by Pseudocercospora fijiensis, destroys leaf area and cuts both yield and the time fruit can spend on the boat. Unlike Fusarium it can be controlled, but only by aerial spraying repeated dozens of times a year, which makes fungicide one of the largest cash costs in a plantation budget and one that rises when the fungus develops resistance. Wet years raise spray frequency and cost; restrictions on aerial application raise it further.

### Weather and El Niño

Bananas have no harvest season and no stockpile, so weather affects supply within weeks. Cool water off Ecuador slows bunch filling and delays cutting; unusually warm, wet conditions accelerate it and can create a glut. Wind is the sharpest risk: a tropical storm crossing Central America or a squall line in Mindanao can flatten thousands of hectares, and replanted ground takes the better part of a year to bear again.

### Retail contract negotiations

A handful of European and North American supermarket chains buy a large share of the internationally traded crop and negotiate annual fixed-price contracts. Because those contracts cover most of the volume for a year at a time, the retail negotiation rather than any daily market sets the price most growers receive. Retailers use bananas as a traffic-driving item priced close to cost, which puts persistent downward pressure on the box price passed back down the chain.

### Reefer freight and container availability

Bananas ship at about 13 degrees Celsius in refrigerated containers or specialized reefer vessels, and freight is a large share of the landed cost of a low-value, high-volume cargo. Bunker fuel prices, reefer container availability, and transit constraints such as Panama Canal draft restrictions all feed directly into the import price. When freight tightens, the Atlantic and Pacific trades decouple because rerouting fruit between them is rarely economic.

### Input costs and the box

A plantation buys fertilizer, fungicide, irrigation power, plastic bunch covers, and cardboard boxes, and the box itself is a meaningful cost because every 18 kilograms of fruit needs one. Fertilizer and packaging prices therefore pass into the cost of production quickly. Because contract prices are fixed for a year, an input cost spike compresses grower margins for the remainder of the contract rather than being passed on.

### Tariffs and trade agreements

European Union tariffs on Latin American fruit were the subject of the longest-running dispute in WTO history, settled by the Geneva Agreement of December 2009, which phased the duty down over eight years and ended the preference that African, Caribbean and Pacific suppliers had enjoyed. Tariff schedules still determine which origins can compete in which market, and preferential access is one reason West African fruit reaches Europe while Central American fruit dominates the United States.

### Labor costs and regulation in producing countries

Banana production is labor-intensive year-round rather than seasonal, so wage levels, social security contributions and union agreements are a permanent rather than a peak-season cost. Ecuador's official minimum price per box, Costa Rican labor law and Colombian collective agreements all set a floor under the cost of production. When those floors rise faster than contract prices, exporters shift volume between origins, which is a slow but persistent redistribution of the trade.

## How are bananas produced?

A banana plant is a clone. Commercial plantations are established from suckers taken off an existing mat or, increasingly, from tissue-cultured plantlets, which guarantees uniformity and also guarantees that a pathogen able to attack one plant can attack all of them. A newly planted sucker takes roughly nine to twelve months to throw its flower and another three to four months to fill the bunch. Once established, a mat produces continuously: the parent pseudostem is cut down when its bunch is harvested and a selected follower takes its place, so a well-run field yields every week of the year rather than in a season.

Field work is constant. Plants are propped or guyed against wind, old leaves are cut away to slow disease, the male bud is removed once the fruit has set, and the bunch is enclosed in a treated polythene bag that raises temperature, keeps insects off and protects the skin from scarring. Aerial fungicide keeps black sigatoka off the leaves. Bunches are cut green, at a fixed grade measured by the calibre or thickness of the fingers, because a banana that ripens on the plant splits and cannot be shipped. In the largest plantations, cut bunches are hung on an overhead cable system and towed to the packing station rather than carried.

Packing happens within hours of cutting and is the only processing bananas receive. Bunches are dehanded into clusters, floated in tanks that wash off latex and field heat, treated on the cut crown against rot, graded, weighed and packed into a standard export box holding about 18 kilograms, then palletized and moved into a cold store. Fruit that fails the specification for length, calibre or blemish is rejected at this point, and rejection rates are a real part of plantation economics. The boxes travel at about 13 degrees Celsius, sometimes under controlled atmosphere, for one to four weeks depending on route.

Ripening is a separate industry at the other end. Green bananas are held in sealed rooms, dosed with ethylene gas, and brought through a controlled temperature curve over four to eight days to hit a specified color stage on the day they reach the shop. The by-product streams are modest but real: rejected and over-ripe fruit goes to puree, chips, flour and animal feed, and pseudostem fiber is used for paper and textiles on a small scale.


## What are bananas used for?

The overwhelming majority of bananas are eaten fresh, either as a dessert fruit or, in much of Africa, South Asia and Latin America, as a cooked starch staple. Plantains and cooking bananas are boiled, fried, roasted or pounded, and in the East African highlands they are also brewed into banana beer. This split explains the gap between the production and trade tables: a very large share of the world's 139.3 million tonnes in 2024 (FAOSTAT) is a subsistence and local-market food that never enters commerce beyond a regional market.

Processing takes only a small fraction of the crop. Banana puree, made mostly from fruit that fails export grade, goes into baby food, yogurt, juice blends and bakery products. Dried banana chips are a significant product in the Philippines and India. Green banana flour is used as a gluten-free ingredient and as a source of resistant starch. Because the fruit is cheap, bulky and perishable, none of these processed uses competes with fresh consumption for the best fruit; they are outlets for what the packing station rejects.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The banana chain is a cold chain with no slack in it. Fruit is cut green, packed the same day, cooled, loaded and must arrive before it ripens, so every link runs to a weekly schedule that repeats all year. Ecuador ships through Guayaquil and Puerto Bolívar; Colombia through Turbo and Santa Marta; Costa Rica through Moín and Puerto Limón; Guatemala through Puerto Barrios and Santo Tomás; Honduras through Puerto Cortés; and the Philippines through Davao and General Santos for the Japanese, Korean and Chinese markets. Arrivals concentrate on the other side at Antwerp, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Dover and Portsmouth for Europe, and Wilmington, Port Everglades, Gulfport and Long Beach for North America.

Ownership is concentrated at the shipping and ripening stages rather than at the farm. A small number of multinational marketers own or charter the reefer capacity, operate the ripening rooms and hold the retail contracts, and independent growers sell into their programs. That gives the marketers control of the two links that cannot be improvised: refrigerated ocean transport on a fixed weekly rotation, and ripening capacity near the consuming city. A grower who loses a program has no alternative outlet for that week's fruit.

The single points of failure are unusually stark. The first is genetic: the export trade rests on one clone, and Fusarium tropical race 4 is now present on three continents, including in Colombia and Peru. The second is geographic: a handful of ports handle almost all export volume, so a strike, a storm or a canal restriction removes an entire week of supply from a market with no inventory. The third is agronomic: black sigatoka control depends on a small number of fungicide chemistries to which the fungus keeps developing resistance. None of these has a stockpile or a substitute standing behind it.


## Key companies

- Chiquita Brands International: grower, shipper and marketer, Switzerland
- Fresh Del Monte Produce: grower, shipper and marketer, United States, listed (FDP)
- Dole plc: grower, shipper and marketer, Ireland, listed (DOLE)
- Fyffes: importer and ripener, Ireland
- Corporación Noboa: Ecuadorian exporter (Bonita), Ecuador
- Uniban: Colombian grower cooperative and exporter, Colombia

## Timeline

- 1870: The first commercial banana cargo to the United States. A schooner carried 160 bunches from Jamaica to Jersey City and sold them at a profit, which showed that bananas could be shipped north before they ripened and started the trade. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenzo_Dow_Baker)
- 1899-03: The United Fruit Company is formed. A merger of Boston Fruit with Central American railway and land interests on 30 March 1899 created the integrated plantation, railway and shipping company that shaped the industry and the politics of the region for decades. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company)
- 1928-12: The banana massacre in Colombia. Colombian troops fired on striking United Fruit workers at Ciénaga on 6 December 1928 after a strike over contracts, hours and company stores, an event that shaped Colombian politics and the reputation of the banana trade. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Massacre)
- 1950: Panama disease spreads worldwide. Race 1 of Fusarium wilt had reached every banana-producing region by 1950, destroying the Gros Michel export banana and forcing the industry to find a resistant replacement. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_disease)
- 1960: The industry switches to Cavendish. Growers replanted infested Central American soils with Cavendish cultivars, which resisted race 1, creating the single-clone monoculture that the export trade still depends on. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_disease)
- 1989: Tropical race 4 identified in Taiwan. A new strain of Fusarium wilt able to kill Cavendish was identified, and it went on to devastate plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia through the 1990s. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_disease)
- 1993-07: The EU single banana market. Council Regulation 404/93 applied from 1 July 1993, creating a tariff quota that favored African, Caribbean and Pacific suppliers and triggering the longest-running dispute in WTO history. (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eur/1993/404/2007-01-01)
- 2009-12: The Geneva Agreement on Trade in Bananas. The EU agreed on 15 December 2009 to cut its tariff on Latin American bananas in stages through 2017 in exchange for the withdrawal of WTO complaints, ending sixteen years of litigation. (https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-releases/2010/june/us-eu-sign-agreement-designed-settle-bananas-dispute)
- 2013: TR4 reaches the Middle East. The soil fungus was confirmed in Jordan and, by 2015, in Mozambique and Oman, showing that it could cross oceans on planting material, soil and machinery. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_disease)
- 2019-08: TR4 confirmed in Colombia. Colombia declared a national emergency on 8 August 2019 after the first confirmation in Latin America, in La Guajira, and began eradicating plants across quarantined farmland. (https://www.science.org/content/article/colombia-confirms-dreaded-fungus-has-hit-its-banana-plantations)
- 2021-04: TR4 confirmed in Peru. Peru declared a phytosanitary emergency in April 2021 after detection in Piura, its main export region, making it the second Latin American country with the disease. (https://www.ippc.int/en/news/devastating-banana-disease-reported-in-peru/)

## Frequently asked questions

### Which country produces the most bananas?

India grew 37.6 million tonnes in 2024, 27% of the world's 139.3 million tonnes (FAOSTAT), ahead of China at 8.4% and Indonesia at 6.6%. India exports almost none of that fruit. Most of the world's bananas are eaten close to where they grow, so the production ranking is not the export ranking.

### Which country exports the most bananas?

Ecuador exported $4.2 billion in 2024, 27% of the world's $15.6 billion of banana and plantain exports (CEPII BACI), more than double Colombia at 10%. Guatemala, Philippines and Costa Rica follow. Ecuador leads because its coastal plain has low disease pressure, irrigation and ports within a day of the fields.

### Which country imports the most bananas?

United States took 19% of the world's $15.6 billion of banana imports in 2024, ahead of Germany at 6.4%, China at 6.3% and Japan at 6% (CEPII BACI). The Netherlands and Belgium also rank high because Rotterdam and Antwerp discharge fruit that is then trucked across Europe.

### How much do bananas cost?

Central and South America, US import was $1.1/kg in August 2026, up 8% from a year earlier, and the Central and South America, Europe import price was $1.07/kg in the same month (World Bank Pink Sheet). Both are landed import prices that include ocean freight and insurance; they are not farm-gate prices and they exclude ripening, distribution and retail margin. The record for the US series was $1.68/kg in December 2022.

### Why are bananas so cheap?

They are harvested every week of the year, shipped in enormous standardized volumes, and used by supermarkets as a price-signaling item sold close to cost. In real terms they have got cheaper: adjusted for inflation the US import price peaked at $2.13/kg in May 1964, against $1.1/kg in August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### What is TR4 and could it wipe out bananas?

Tropical race 4 is a soil fungus that kills Cavendish, the single clone behind almost all exported bananas. It has no chemical cure and survives in soil for decades. Identified in Taiwan in 1989, it reached Colombia in 2019 and Peru in 2021. It threatens the export trade, not the world's 139.3 million tonnes of production in 2024, much of which is other varieties (FAOSTAT).

### Are all bananas the same variety?

Nearly all exported bananas are Cavendish, a single clone propagated vegetatively, which is why disease spreads so easily through the trade. Hundreds of other cultivars are grown for local eating and cooking, and they make up a large share of the 139.3 million tonnes the world produced in 2024 (FAOSTAT), including most of the crop in Africa and South Asia.

### Is there a futures market for bananas?

No. Bananas are too perishable to store or deliver against a standardized contract, so the trade runs on annual fixed-price supply agreements between exporters and supermarket chains, plus a thin spot market for surplus fruit. The reference series here, Central and South America, US import, was $1.1/kg in August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### How long does it take to grow a banana?

A newly planted sucker takes about nine to twelve months to flower and another three to four months to fill its bunch, after which the mat produces continuously as followers replace each harvested stem. There is no season: fruit is cut every week of the year, which is why the world grew 139.3 million tonnes in 2024 without a harvest peak (FAOSTAT).

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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 2026-09-06. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where do bananas come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/bananas/.

---

# Where does barley come from?

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

Barley comes mainly from Russia, which produced 16.7 million tonnes in 2024, 12% of the world's 142 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Australia (9.3%), Germany (7.5%) and France (6.8%) follow; the top five together supply 41%. The biggest exporter of barley (HS 1003) is Australia (19% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Feed barley, FOB Black Sea, was $80.4/t in August 2020, down 40% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Barley is the most cold-tolerant, drought-tolerant and salt-tolerant of the major cereals and it ripens in a shorter season than wheat, so it ends up on the land wheat cannot use: the northern edge of European and Canadian cropping, the dry Australian and Spanish plains, and the steppe of Russia and Kazakhstan.

*A cereal grown for animal feed and for malting into beer and whisky; the most cold-tolerant of the major grains.* Also called: malting barley, feed barley, malt.

## Where does barley come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Russia | 16.7 million | 12% |
| 2 | Australia | 13.3 million | 9.3% |
| 3 | Germany | 10.6 million | 7.5% |
| 4 | France | 9.7 million | 6.8% |
| 5 | Canada | 8.1 million | 5.7% |
| 6 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 8.1 million | 5.7% |
| 7 | Spain | 7.4 million | 5.2% |
| 8 | United Kingdom | 7.1 million | 5% |
| 9 | Ukraine | 5.3 million | 3.7% |
| 10 | Argentina | 5.1 million | 3.6% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 36% |
| | World | 142 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

Barley is grown where better-paid crops will not reliably ripen. It tolerates cold, finishes its cycle faster than wheat, copes with thin, alkaline and saline soils, and needs less water, which sends it to the margins: high latitudes in northern Europe and Canada, the dry interiors of Spain, Turkey and Iran, the Eurasian steppe, and the winter-rainfall belts of southern and Western Australia. Very little barley is grown because a farmer preferred it to wheat; most is grown because the field, the rainfall or the frost date ruled wheat out, or because barley fits a rotation as a break crop.

In 2024 Russia harvested 16.7 million tonnes, 12% of the world's 142 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Australia was second with 9.3%, then Germany (7.5%), France (6.8%) and Canada (5.7%), with Turkey (Türkiye) level with Canada on 5.7%. What stands out about that list is how European it is: Germany, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Denmark and Poland all appear in the top fifteen, because barley suits the maritime northwest for malting and the dry Iberian interior for feed.

Two distinctions run through everything. The first is season: winter barley is sown in autumn, vernalizes through the cold and yields more, while spring barley is sown after the frosts and generally makes better malting quality. The second is row type. Two-row barley has plump, even, lower-protein grain and dominates European and Australian malting; six-row barley packs three times as many kernels on the head, carries more protein and enzyme, and is used for feed and for North American brewing traditions that need enzyme to convert added corn or rice.

World production has been drifting down: it changed -2% over the ten years to 2024 and -11% over five (FAOSTAT), as farmers in several countries switched marginal barley land to wheat, canola and pulses. The composition shifted too. Australia grew at +4.4% a year over the decade and Kazakhstan at +4.8%, while Ukraine contracted at -5.2% and Russia at -2%. 101 countries reported a crop, and everything outside the top ten still came to 36%, which is a wide tail for a grain.


## Who exports and imports barley?

### Exporters of barley (HS 1003), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Australia | $1.8 billion | 19% |
| 2 | France | $1.4 billion | 16% |
| 3 | Russia | $984.6 million | 11% |
| 4 | Argentina | $797.3 million | 8.7% |
| 5 | Germany | $714.5 million | 7.8% |
| 6 | Canada | $640.7 million | 7% |
| 7 | Ukraine | $559 million | 6.1% |
| 8 | Romania | $488.1 million | 5.3% |
| 9 | Kazakhstan | $265.2 million | 2.9% |
| 10 | Hungary | $210.2 million | 2.3% |
| 11 | Bulgaria | $176.8 million | 1.9% |
| 12 | United Kingdom | $176.5 million | 1.9% |
| 13 | Denmark | $96.6 million | 1% |
| 14 | Lithuania | $92.8 million | 1% |
| 15 | Czechia | $92.4 million | 1% |

### Importers of barley (HS 1003), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $3.1 billion | 34% |
| 2 | Saudi Arabia | $868.1 million | 9.4% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $565.8 million | 6.1% |
| 4 | Belgium | $456.1 million | 5% |
| 5 | Germany | $362.5 million | 3.9% |
| 6 | Spain | $331.7 million | 3.6% |
| 7 | Japan | $327.6 million | 3.6% |
| 8 | Brazil | $286.2 million | 3.1% |
| 9 | Morocco | $246.4 million | 2.7% |
| 10 | Tunisia | $174 million | 1.9% |
| 11 | Italy | $153.3 million | 1.7% |
| 12 | Algeria | $146.7 million | 1.6% |
| 13 | Kuwait | $134.2 million | 1.5% |
| 14 | Mexico | $121.5 million | 1.3% |
| 15 | Ireland | $119 million | 1.3% |

### Exporters of malt, whether or not roasted (HS 1107), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | France | $693.3 million | 14% |
| 2 | Belgium | $556.2 million | 11% |
| 3 | Germany | $460.5 million | 9% |
| 4 | Argentina | $397.5 million | 7.8% |
| 5 | Australia | $386.4 million | 7.5% |
| 6 | Canada | $381 million | 7.4% |
| 7 | China | $327.8 million | 6.4% |
| 8 | Uruguay | $289.8 million | 5.7% |
| 9 | United States | $276.6 million | 5.4% |
| 10 | Netherlands | $217.8 million | 4.3% |
| 11 | Slovakia | $137.3 million | 2.7% |
| 12 | United Kingdom | $133.1 million | 2.6% |
| 13 | Russia | $122.3 million | 2.4% |
| 14 | Czechia | $113.7 million | 2.2% |
| 15 | Denmark | $111.8 million | 2.2% |

### Importers of malt, whether or not roasted (HS 1107), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | $737.2 million | 14% |
| 2 | Mexico | $421.3 million | 8.2% |
| 3 | Japan | $323.9 million | 6.3% |
| 4 | United States | $299.3 million | 5.8% |
| 5 | Belgium | $199.2 million | 3.9% |
| 6 | Vietnam | $185.7 million | 3.6% |
| 7 | Germany | $170 million | 3.3% |
| 8 | Thailand | $154.1 million | 3% |
| 9 | Netherlands | $136.3 million | 2.7% |
| 10 | Poland | $132 million | 2.6% |
| 11 | Cambodia | $105.1 million | 2.1% |
| 12 | Italy | $93.7 million | 1.8% |
| 13 | Nigeria | $91.7 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $87.5 million | 1.7% |
| 15 | South Africa | $80.9 million | 1.6% |

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

Barley is a grain that mostly stays home. Feed barley is bulky and cheap, and a livestock farm usually buys it from the region that grew it, so only a modest share of the crop moves internationally. What does move is dominated by a handful of exporters and, more unusually, by a single buyer. In 2024 Australia exported $1.8 billion, 19% of the world's $9.2 billion in barley export value, ahead of France (16%), Russia (11%), Argentina (8.7%) and Germany (7.8%) (CEPII BACI).

On the import side China took 34% of the world's $9.2 billion, a share no other buyer approaches, and Saudi Arabia was second with 9.4% (CEPII BACI). China buys both feed barley for pigs and cattle and malting barley for the largest brewing industry in the world; Saudi Arabia buys feed barley for sheep and camels and has done so at scale for decades. Netherlands and Belgium appear next because Rotterdam and Antwerp discharge grain for the European feed compounding industry and re-export within the continent. Malt is a separate and more valuable trade: exports of malt (HS 1107) were worth $5.1 billion in 2024, led by France (14%), Belgium (11%) and Germany (9%), while the largest malt importer was Brazil (14%), followed by Mexico. That pattern reflects where the brewing is done rather than where the barley grows: Brazil and Mexico brew enormous volumes and import the malt to do it.


## What does barley cost?

- Feed barley, FOB Black Sea: $80.4/t in August 2020; 12-month change -40%; 10-year change -50%; all-time high $265.7/t in August 2012; real high (2024 US$) $470.2/t in February 1974 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

Barley has no liquid futures market of its own. Euronext delisted its malting barley contract, and the small volumes traded elsewhere do not support price discovery, so barley is priced physically, cargo by cargo, and by reference to other grains. Feed barley trades at a discount to feed wheat and corn that reflects its lower energy density and the share of a ration it can occupy; when that discount narrows too far, feed compounders substitute back into wheat or corn and the barley price is pulled down. Malting barley is priced on top of the feed value: buyers pay a malting premium, quoted as a spread over feed, that widens when the crop fails quality specifications and collapses when it does not.

The series charted here is Feed barley, FOB Black Sea, an export quotation for feed barley loaded free on board at Black Sea ports. In August 2020 it stood at $80.4/t, down 40% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Over five years the series changed -27% and over ten -50%. Its nominal record was $265.7/t in August 2012, but the real story is in inflation-adjusted terms: the real high was $470.2/t in February 1974, during the grain shock of the 1970s, and the series low since it began in 1960 was $19.2/t in November 1960.

What the quote means matters as much as its level. FOB Black Sea is a price at the ship's rail at Novorossiysk, Odesa or a neighboring port, so a buyer in Saudi Arabia or Spain pays freight, insurance and discharge costs on top, and the delivered price in a given month can differ from the quotation by a large margin when freight is expensive. The specification is feed grade: minimum test weight and maximum moisture, screenings and damaged grain, with no malting requirement at all. Two ambiguities follow. First, this page's price is feed barley, and malting barley in France or Australia may trade far above it. Second, the production table counts all barley regardless of grade, so a country whose crop was rained on at harvest and downgraded to feed shows no change in tonnes and a large change in value.


## What moves the price of barley?

### Chinese import policy

China buys about a third of all internationally traded barley by value, for both feed and brewing, which makes its purchasing decisions the single largest swing factor in the market. Because that demand can be redirected between suppliers or replaced with domestic corn and sorghum, a policy change resets trade flows without changing world supply. The anti-dumping and countervailing duties China imposed on Australian barley, disputed at the WTO from December 2020 and resolved in August 2023, diverted the Australian crop to Saudi Arabia and Southeast Asia for three seasons.

### Corn and wheat substitution in feed rations

Feed barley competes directly with feed wheat and corn for space in a compound ration, and nutritionists reformulate on relative price within weeks. Barley carries less energy per tonne than corn, so it has to trade at a discount to be used at all; when corn is scarce and dear, that discount narrows and barley demand rises, and when corn is plentiful, barley must cheapen to keep its place. This linkage means barley rarely moves far from the broader feed grain complex for long.

### Rain at harvest and the malting premium

Malting barley must germinate evenly in the maltings, so grain that has begun to sprout in the field is worthless for malting even though it is perfectly good feed. A wet fortnight during harvest in France, Denmark or the United Kingdom can downgrade a large share of a crop from malting to feed overnight. That does not change the tonnage in the production statistics at all; it changes the malting premium sharply, and it is the fastest-moving price signal in this market.

### Beer and whisky demand

Malting takes a large minority of world barley and it is the high-value outlet. Beer volumes grow slowly and mostly in emerging markets, and whisky demand runs on a multi-year cycle because distillers lay down spirit years before they sell it. Maltings contract with growers ahead of planting for specified varieties and protein levels, so the malting sector's forward buying determines how many hectares of approved malting varieties get sown in the first place.

### Black Sea supply and export policy

Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan together account for a substantial share of exportable barley, and the region's prices set the world floor because its costs are low. Export duties, quotas, informal price floors, war risk premiums on freight and insurance, and the availability of Ukrainian ports all change how many tonnes reach the market from a given harvest. The Black Sea Grain Initiative of July 2022 and its collapse a year later are the clearest recent illustration.

### The Australian season and the Middle East market

Australia is the largest exporter and its crop is decided between May and October in Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria, on winter rainfall that varies enormously from year to year. Because Australian barley is the natural supplier for Saudi Arabia, Japan and Southeast Asia, a dry Australian winter tightens the whole Indian Ocean trade and pulls in European and Black Sea cargoes at higher freight cost.

### Area competition at planting

Barley is rarely a farmer's first choice, so its planted area is the residual after wheat, canola, corn and pulses have been allocated. When wheat prices are high relative to barley at sowing time, area moves to wheat and the barley crop shrinks a season later; when input costs rise, barley gains because it needs less nitrogen and finishes earlier. This makes barley supply more elastic than demand and explains why its price swings are amplified relative to wheat.

### Freight and currency

Barley is a low-value bulk cargo, so ocean freight is a large share of its delivered cost and small changes in panamax and handysize rates move the arbitrage between the Black Sea, the Baltic, France and Australia. Currency works the same way: a weaker euro makes French barley competitive in North Africa, and a weaker Australian dollar does the same in Asia, without any change in the dollar price at which the market clears.

## How is barley produced?

Barley is sown either in autumn or in spring. Winter varieties are drilled from September to November, establish before the cold, vernalize and then grow away early, which lets them yield more and ripen before summer drought; spring varieties are drilled from February to May and have a shorter, more forgiving season that tends to produce the low-protein grain maltsters want. The crop needs less nitrogen than wheat, partly because too much nitrogen raises grain protein above malting specification, and it is usually the shortest-season cereal in the rotation.

Harvest is by combine at around twelve to fourteen percent moisture, and the grain is dried and stored on the farm or at a cooperative silo. Grading happens at intake and decides almost everything about the grain's value. Malting barley must be of an approved variety, plump and even in size so that it steeps uniformly, low in protein because protein displaces starch, free of visible sprouting, and capable of germinating at a high percentage after a dormancy period. Grain that fails any of those tests is feed barley, and the same field can produce both in successive years.

Malting is a controlled germination, and the standard process has three steps. Steeping immerses the grain in water in cycles over two to three days until it reaches about 46 percent moisture and the embryo wakes up. Germination follows in a temperature-controlled vessel for four to six days, during which the grain grows a rootlet and produces the enzymes that will later convert starch to sugar, while the starchy endosperm is modified and softened. Kilning then dries the green malt with warm air, halting growth, driving off moisture and developing color and flavor. Pale malt is kilned gently; the darker crystal, amber, chocolate and black malts are made by roasting, a technique made possible by the drum roaster patented in 1817.

From there the paths diverge. Malt is milled and mashed with hot water to convert starch into fermentable sugar, and the sweet wort is boiled with hops and fermented for beer or distilled for whisky. Feed barley is rolled, ground or pelleted and blended into compound rations for cattle, pigs and poultry. The by-products are substantial and are sold rather than discarded: malt culms, the dried rootlets screened off after kilning, go to animal feed, as do brewers' spent grain and distillers' grains, and barley straw is baled for bedding and fodder.


## What is barley used for?

Most of the world's barley is fed to animals, and the rest is dominated by malting for beer and whisky, with a small share used directly as human food. That split is what makes barley an unusual grain to analyze: the same crop supplies a low-value bulk commodity that competes with corn, and a specification-driven ingredient that trades at a premium and is contracted years in advance. The International Grains Council tracks the two streams separately for exactly this reason.

Direct food use is regionally important even though it is small in world terms. Pearled barley goes into soups and salads, barley flour into flatbreads in Tibet, Morocco and parts of the Middle East, and roasted barley into tea in Korea and Japan. Barley is high in beta-glucan, a soluble fiber, which has given it a modest health-food market. Beyond food and feed, malt extract is used in confectionery, baking and malt drinks, and barley is grown as a cover and forage crop in its own right, cut green for silage before the grain fills.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The barley chain has two shapes depending on grade. Feed barley moves like any bulk grain: from farm silo to a country elevator or cooperative, by truck or rail to a port terminal, and out in handysize or panamax vessels. The main loading points are Novorossiysk and Taman on the Russian Black Sea coast, Odesa and Chornomorsk in Ukraine, Rouen and La Pallice in France, Constanța in Romania, the Western Australian terminals at Kwinana, Albany and Esperance, Port Adelaide in South Australia, and Vancouver and Thunder Bay in Canada. Discharge is at Jeddah and Dammam for the Saudi feed trade, at Chinese ports for the largest single buyer, and at Rotterdam, Antwerp and Ghent for the European compound feed industry.

Malting barley moves differently. Maltsters contract with growers before planting for named varieties and defined protein and germination specifications, take delivery into dedicated stores, and malt close to either the barley or the brewery. That is why France, Belgium and Germany lead the malt export table: France, Belgium and Germany malt far more barley than their own brewers need and ship malt to brewing countries that grow little suitable barley, above all Brazil and Mexico.

The chokepoints are political and meteorological rather than physical. Because a single buyer takes 34% of world imports by value (CEPII BACI), a trade measure aimed at one exporter re-routes a third of the market, as China's duties on Australian barley did between 2020 and 2023. Because Black Sea ports supply the cheapest tonnes, war risk, port closures and export duties in that region set the world price floor. And because malting quality is decided by the weather in the fortnight before harvest in a handful of northwest European countries, the premium half of the market can be reset by a single wet spell with no change in the tonnage anyone reports.


## Key companies

- Boortmalt: maltster, Belgium
- Malteurop: maltster, France
- Malteries Soufflet: maltster and grain originator, France
- GrainCorp: grain handler, storage and export terminals, Australia, listed (GNC)
- CBH Group: grower cooperative, storage and export terminals, Australia
- Viterra: grain originator and exporter, Netherlands
- Cargill: grain trader and malt producer, United States

## Timeline

- 1516-04: The Bavarian beer purity law. The Reinheitsgebot of 23 April 1516 restricted beer ingredients to barley, hops and water, entrenching barley as the grain of European brewing and shaping malting practice for centuries. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinheitsgebot)
- 1817: The drum roaster is invented. Roasting malt in a rotating drum allowed dark, consistent malts to be made safely, which created the porter and stout styles and turned malting into an industrial process with graded products. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_beer)
- 1857: Pasteur identifies yeast's role in fermentation. Understanding fermentation as a biological process let brewers control it, standardized the conversion of malt sugar to alcohol, and put malt specification on a scientific footing. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_beer)
- 1972-06: The Soviet grain purchases. Large secret Soviet buying of American grain from mid-1972 drained world stocks and lifted cereal prices sharply into 1973 and 1974, which is why barley's inflation-adjusted record sits in that period. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Grain_Robbery)
- 2007-03: Canadian farmers vote to end the barley single desk. A plebiscite in March 2007 recorded 62 percent of western Canadian farmers in favor of ending the Canadian Wheat Board's monopoly on barley marketing, beginning the shift to open selling. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Wheat_Board)
- 2012-08: The Canadian Wheat Board monopoly ends. From 1 August 2012 western Canadian growers could sell wheat and barley to any buyer, opening one of the largest exporting regions to private trade and changing how Canadian barley reaches the world market. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Wheat_Board)
- 2020-12: Australia challenges China's barley duties at the WTO. Australia requested consultations on 16 December 2020 over anti-dumping and countervailing duties that had closed the largest export market for Australian barley and redirected the trade for three seasons. (https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds598_e.htm)
- 2022-07: The Black Sea Grain Initiative. The agreement signed in Istanbul on 22 July 2022 reopened Ukrainian grain exports through a protected corridor, easing the price pressure that the invasion had put on the whole cereal complex. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_Grain_Initiative)
- 2023-07: Russia leaves the grain corridor. Russia declined to renew the initiative on 17 July 2023, ending the protected corridor and forcing Ukrainian grain, barley included, onto riskier routes and overland through the European Union. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_Grain_Initiative)
- 2023-08: China and Australia settle the barley dispute. The two governments notified the WTO on 11 August 2023 that they had reached a mutually agreed solution, and Australian barley returned to its largest market after three years of diversion. (https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds598_e.htm)

## Frequently asked questions

### Which country produces the most barley?

Russia harvested 16.7 million tonnes in 2024, 12% of the world's 142 million tonnes (FAOSTAT), ahead of Australia at 9.3% and Germany at 7.5%. Barley is grown widely on land that suits it better than wheat, so the tail is long: 101 countries reported a crop that year, and everything outside the top ten still added up to 36% of world output.

### Which country exports the most barley?

Australia exported $1.8 billion in 2024, 19% of the world's $9.2 billion of barley exports, ahead of France at 16% and Russia at 11% (CEPII BACI). Australia leads on the strength of its Western Australian and South Australian crops and its proximity to Asian and Middle Eastern buyers.

### Which country imports the most barley?

China took 34% of the world's $9.2 billion of barley imports in 2024, far ahead of Saudi Arabia at 9.4% and Netherlands at 6.1% (CEPII BACI). China buys both feed barley for livestock and malting barley for brewing, which makes its purchasing policy the largest single influence on the trade.

### What is the difference between malting and feed barley?

Malting barley must be an approved variety, plump, even, low in protein and able to germinate reliably; anything failing those tests becomes feed barley. Malting grain earns a premium over the feed price, which this page's series tracks at $80.4/t in August 2020 (World Bank Pink Sheet). A wet harvest can move a large share of a crop from one grade to the other.

### How much does barley cost?

The Feed barley, FOB Black Sea quotation was $80.4/t in August 2020, down 40% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). That is a feed-grade price at the ship's rail, so buyers pay freight and insurance on top, and malting barley trades above it. The nominal record was $265.7/t in August 2012.

### Is barley traded on a futures exchange?

Not in any liquid form. Euronext's malting barley contract was delisted and no other exchange supports meaningful volume, so barley is priced physically against feed wheat and corn, with a negotiated malting premium on top. The Black Sea feed quotation used here was $80.4/t in August 2020 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### What is barley used for?

Most of it is fed to livestock, and most of the rest is malted for beer and whisky, with a small share eaten as pearled barley, flour or roasted barley tea. The malt trade is separately visible in customs data: malt exports were worth $5.1 billion in 2024, led by France at 14% (CEPII BACI).

### Which country exports the most malt?

France led malt exports in 2024 with 14% of a $5.1 billion trade, followed by Belgium at 11% and Germany at 9% (CEPII BACI). The largest importer was Brazil at 14%, followed by Mexico; both brew at scale without growing much malting barley of their own.

### Is barley production falling?

World output was 142 million tonnes in 2024, a change of -2% over ten years and -11% over five (FAOSTAT). Area has moved to wheat, canola and pulses in several countries. The direction differs by producer: Australia grew at +4.4% a year over the decade while Ukraine contracted at -5.2%.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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 2026-09-06. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where does barley come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/barley/.

---

# Where does bauxite come from?

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

Bauxite comes mainly from Guinea, which produced 150 million tonnes in 2025, 34% of the world's 440 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Australia (22%), China (20%) and Brazil (7.5%) follow; the top five together supply 89%. The biggest exporter of bauxite (HS 2606) is Guinea (72% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Bauxite is a tropical weathering product: it forms where heavy rain and heat leached everything soluble out of ancient land surfaces over millions of years, leaving aluminium oxides behind, which is why the deposits ring the tropics from Guinea to Australia to the Caribbean.

*The ore of aluminum: a tropical weathering product refined into alumina, which is then smelted into metal.* Also called: bauxite ore, alumina, aluminium ore, aluminum ore, gibbsite.

## Where does bauxite come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Guinea | 150 million | 34% |
| 2 | Australia | 97 million | 22% |
| 3 | China | 87 million | 20% |
| 4 | Brazil | 33 million | 7.5% |
| 5 | India | 25 million | 5.7% |
| 6 | Indonesia | 10 million | 2.3% |
| 7 | Jamaica | 6.2 million | 1.4% |
| 8 | Saudi Arabia | 5.7 million | 1.3% |
| 9 | Russia | 5.7 million | 1.3% |
| 10 | Kazakhstan | 4.8 million | 1.1% |
| | Rest of world | 8 million | 3.5% |
| | World | 440 million | 100% |

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026.

In 2025 Guinea mined 150 million tonnes of bauxite, 34% of the world's 440 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Australia followed with 22%, then China (20%), Brazil (7.5%) and India (5.7%). The top five account for 89%. Reserves are held mainly in the same places: Guinea holds 26% of the world's 29 billion tonnes (USGS MCS).

The second step in the chain has a different map. Alumina refining, which converts bauxite into the white powder that smelters actually feed, came to {{prod.Alumina, refinery production.world}} in 2025, led by {{prod.Alumina, refinery production.top1.name}} with {{prod.Alumina, refinery production.top1.share}} (USGS MCS). Refining happens either at the mine, where a country has both bauxite and energy, or next to the smelters, and the split explains most of the trade described below.

The geology is unusually legible. Bauxite needs a stable land surface, high rainfall and warmth over geological time, so it occurs as blankets over old plateaux: the Boké region of Guinea, the Weipa and Darling Range deposits of Australia, the Trombetas area of Brazil, the Jamaican and Guyanese deposits, and karst bauxites around the Mediterranean and in China and Vietnam. Guinea's are among the largest and highest grade on earth and sit close to the coast.

Three units are used loosely in this industry and confusing them is easy. Roughly four tonnes of bauxite make two tonnes of alumina, which make one tonne of aluminium metal. Figures on this page are dry tonnes of bauxite unless the alumina item is named explicitly.

## Who exports and imports bauxite?

Guinea ships raw bauxite; Australia ships both bauxite and alumina; China imports bauxite and refines alumina at home for its smelters.

### Exporters of aluminium ores and concentrates (bauxite) (HS 2606), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Guinea | $8.3 billion | 72% |
| 2 | Australia | $1.9 billion | 16% |
| 3 | Brazil | $241.5 million | 2.1% |
| 4 | China | $222.6 million | 1.9% |
| 5 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $180.2 million | 1.6% |
| 6 | Ghana | $120.6 million | 1% |
| 7 | Guyana | $111.4 million | 1% |
| 8 | Laos | $107 million | 0.9% |
| 9 | Jamaica | $53.8 million | 0.5% |
| 10 | Malaysia | $46.1 million | 0.4% |
| 11 | Montenegro | $38.8 million | 0.3% |
| 12 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $27.3 million | 0.2% |
| 13 | Germany | $26.3 million | 0.2% |
| 14 | Sierra Leone | $24.5 million | 0.2% |
| 15 | Netherlands | $15.6 million | 0.1% |

### Importers of aluminium ores and concentrates (bauxite) (HS 2606), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $9.9 billion | 86% |
| 2 | India | $349 million | 3% |
| 3 | Ireland | $220.7 million | 1.9% |
| 4 | United States | $161.1 million | 1.4% |
| 5 | Germany | $140.4 million | 1.2% |
| 6 | Canada | $132.5 million | 1.2% |
| 7 | Spain | $117.1 million | 1% |
| 8 | Greece | $62.6 million | 0.5% |
| 9 | Saudi Arabia | $38.6 million | 0.3% |
| 10 | France | $36.3 million | 0.3% |
| 11 | South Korea | $35.3 million | 0.3% |
| 12 | Netherlands | $34.9 million | 0.3% |
| 13 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $24.1 million | 0.2% |
| 14 | United Arab Emirates | $20.9 million | 0.2% |
| 15 | Poland | $20.4 million | 0.2% |

### Exporters of aluminium oxide (alumina), other than artificial corundum (HS 281820), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Australia | $6 billion | 34% |
| 2 | Brazil | $3.4 billion | 19% |
| 3 | Indonesia | $1.9 billion | 11% |
| 4 | China | $1.2 billion | 6.7% |
| 5 | India | $880.4 million | 4.9% |
| 6 | Ireland | $779.7 million | 4.4% |
| 7 | Vietnam | $527.4 million | 3% |
| 8 | Germany | $471.5 million | 2.6% |
| 9 | Kazakhstan | $449.4 million | 2.5% |
| 10 | Jamaica | $381.5 million | 2.1% |
| 11 | United States | $327.4 million | 1.8% |
| 12 | Spain | $296.3 million | 1.7% |
| 13 | France | $203.7 million | 1.1% |
| 14 | Netherlands | $182.9 million | 1% |
| 15 | Japan | $172.4 million | 1% |

### Importers of aluminium oxide (alumina), other than artificial corundum (HS 281820), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Russia | $2.2 billion | 13% |
| 2 | Canada | $2.2 billion | 12% |
| 3 | United Arab Emirates | $1.3 billion | 7.5% |
| 4 | Bahrain | $1.3 billion | 7.2% |
| 5 | Norway | $1.1 billion | 6.2% |
| 6 | India | $938.5 million | 5.3% |
| 7 | Malaysia | $838.9 million | 4.7% |
| 8 | Iceland | $723.4 million | 4.1% |
| 9 | China | $710.1 million | 4% |
| 10 | Oman | $671.4 million | 3.8% |
| 11 | South Africa | $666 million | 3.7% |
| 12 | United States | $636.6 million | 3.6% |
| 13 | Indonesia | $490.4 million | 2.8% |
| 14 | Qatar | $446.6 million | 2.5% |
| 15 | Argentina | $377.1 million | 2.1% |

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

Guinea was the largest exporter of bauxite (HS 2606) in 2024 with 72% of world export value, ahead of Australia (16%), on world trade of $11.5 billion (CEPII BACI). China was the largest importer with 86%.

That is the defining relationship in the modern bauxite market: Guinea digs, China refines. Chinese alumina refineries expanded far beyond what domestic bauxite could support, and Guinea, with large high-grade deposits near the coast and no domestic refining industry of consequence, filled the gap. Australia exports both bauxite and alumina; Indonesia and Malaysia have repeatedly banned or restricted raw ore exports to force refining at home, with mixed results. Read the export table as a story about which countries chose to ship rock and which chose to ship powder.

## What does bauxite cost?

### How it is priced

This page quotes no bauxite or alumina price, and the reason is straightforward: neither has a free public benchmark series. Bauxite is largely moved under long-term contracts between affiliated companies or on privately assessed spot terms delivered to Chinese ports, priced by alumina content, reactive silica and moisture. Alumina is more liquid, with several private indices assessing free-on-board Australia and delivered China, and there are exchange contracts settling against those indices, but the assessments themselves are licensed.

What can be said is how alumina and metal prices relate, and it is a useful rule. Alumina has historically contracted at a percentage of the London Metal Exchange aluminium price, typically somewhere in the mid to high teens, and although index-linked pricing has largely replaced that formula, the relationship still anchors expectations. That is why the aluminium page's price series is the best available guide to what is happening upstream: when the metal price moves, alumina follows, and bauxite follows alumina at a distance.

Bauxite's own economics are dominated by freight and by quality. The rock is low value per tonne and travels in capesize bulk carriers, so a change in freight rates can move the delivered cost by a large percentage. Quality is priced on available alumina and on reactive silica, which consumes caustic soda in the refinery and is therefore a direct cost penalty. A high-silica bauxite can be worth less than half a low-silica one of the same alumina grade.

## What moves the price of bauxite?

### Chinese alumina refinery demand

Chinese refining capacity exceeds what domestic bauxite can supply, so Chinese import demand is the single largest force in the seaborne bauxite market. Refinery utilization, driven by aluminium smelter margins and by provincial power policy, therefore sets bauxite demand more than mining decisions do.

### Export bans and resource nationalism

Indonesia banned bauxite exports in 2014, partially relaxed and then re-imposed restrictions, and Malaysia has suspended mining on environmental grounds. Each move removed a supplier at short notice and redirected demand, most consistently toward Guinea. Policy has moved this market more than geology has.

### Guinean political and logistical risk

A large share of seaborne bauxite now comes from one country with limited infrastructure, where mining depends on rail, barge and transhipment operations and where political instability has previously interrupted exports. Concentration of supply in a single origin is the market's main vulnerability.

### Caustic soda and energy costs at refineries

The Bayer process consumes caustic soda and a great deal of heat. When caustic or energy prices rise, refining margins compress and refineries cut runs, reducing bauxite demand even when aluminium demand is unchanged.

### Reactive silica and ore quality

Silica in bauxite reacts with caustic soda and is lost, so refineries pay a penalty for it. Deposits with low reactive silica command a premium, and the quality mix available in the market shifts effective prices independently of headline supply and demand.

### Freight rates

Bauxite is among the lowest-value cargoes moved in bulk, so ocean freight is a large share of delivered cost. Rising capesize rates lengthen the effective distance to market and favor suppliers closer to the refineries.

### Aluminium demand and smelter power

Everything upstream is ultimately driven by aluminium, and aluminium smelting is set by electricity availability. Power rationing in China's Yunnan province or European smelter closures on high gas prices propagate back up the chain to alumina and then to bauxite within months.

## How is bauxite produced?

Bauxite is mined almost entirely by open pit, usually by stripping a shallow overburden and digging a blanket deposit a few meters thick. Little beneficiation is done: the ore may be crushed, washed to remove clay and screened, and it is then railed or trucked to a port. Because the deposits are shallow and soft, mining costs are low and the operation is essentially a large earthmoving exercise.

Refining uses the Bayer process, unchanged in principle since 1888. Ground bauxite is digested in hot caustic soda under pressure, which dissolves the aluminium hydroxide minerals and leaves the iron and silicate impurities as a red slurry. That residue, red mud, is separated and impounded, and it is the industry's largest environmental liability: it is highly alkaline and produced in enormous volumes, roughly one to two tonnes for every tonne of alumina. The clarified liquor is cooled and seeded so that aluminium hydroxide crystallizes out, and the crystals are calcined at around a thousand degrees to drive off water, leaving alumina.

Smelting, described on the aluminium page, then dissolves alumina in molten cryolite and passes an enormous electric current through it to strip the oxygen away, leaving metal. That is where the electricity goes: refining is energy-intensive, but smelting is in a different class entirely.

The reason the chain is split across countries is that each step has a different optimal location. Mining wants to be at the deposit, refining wants cheap heat and proximity to either the mine or the smelter, and smelting wants the cheapest electricity on earth.

## What is bauxite used for?

Almost all bauxite becomes alumina, and almost all alumina becomes aluminium metal. The metal's uses are described on the aluminium page: transport, packaging, construction, electrical transmission and consumer goods.

The minority that does not go to smelters is called non-metallurgical or specialty alumina, and it is a high-value business in its own right. Calcined alumina is used in refractories, ceramics, abrasives and spark plug insulators. Alumina is the substrate for catalysts and the carrier in water treatment. Fused alumina makes grinding wheels and sandpaper. Tabular alumina lines furnaces. Aluminium hydroxide is used as a flame retardant filler in plastics and in antacids.

Bauxite that does not go to refineries at all is used directly: calcined bauxite makes high-alumina refractory bricks, provides skid-resistant road surfacing aggregate, and is used as a proppant in oil and gas wells. These uses take a small share of world output but sell at higher prices than metallurgical grade.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is mine, refinery, smelter, and it has been deliberately unbundled across countries in a way that concentrates risk at each handoff. Guinea to China is now the single largest bauxite flow in the world, and it depends on a small number of mining operations, a rail and barge system, offshore transhipment because the ports are shallow, and a long capesize voyage. Any of those can fail, and political instability in Guinea has already interrupted the flow once.

Red mud is the chain's quiet liability. Refineries accumulate vast impoundments of alkaline residue, and a dam failure is catastrophic, as Hungary demonstrated in 2010. Permitting new refining capacity anywhere with strong environmental regulation now turns substantially on residue management, which is one reason refining has concentrated where it has.

Alumina shipping is a straightforward bulk trade with a real chokepoint at the smelter end: a smelter cannot stop. Interrupting the power or the alumina feed to a potline for more than a few hours freezes the electrolytic bath and can destroy the cells, requiring an expensive rebuild. Alumina supply security is therefore treated as an operational imperative rather than a commercial matter, and smelters hold inventory accordingly.

The structural risk is the same one that runs through several pages on this site: abundant resource, concentrated processing. Bauxite reserves are large and spread across many tropical countries, but the refining capacity that turns rock into feedstock, and the cheap power that turns feedstock into metal, are not.

## Key companies

- Rio Tinto: miner and refiner, United Kingdom, listed (RIO)
- Alcoa: miner, refiner and smelter, United States, listed (AA)
- Chalco (Aluminum Corporation of China): miner, refiner and smelter, China, listed (601600)
- Rusal: miner, refiner and smelter, Russia, listed (486)
- Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée: miner, Guinea
- South32: miner and refiner, Australia, listed (S32)

## Timeline

- 1821: Bauxite is identified at Les Baux in France. The rock that gave the mineral its name was recognized as an aluminium ore, though extracting the metal remained prohibitively expensive for another sixty years. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 1888: Bayer patents the alumina refining process. Digesting bauxite in caustic soda to precipitate pure aluminium hydroxide made alumina cheap and, combined with electrolytic smelting, turned aluminium from a precious metal into a commodity. (https://international-aluminium.org)
- 1963: Weipa in Queensland begins production. A very large, high-grade deposit close to the coast established Australia as the dominant bauxite exporter for the following half century. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 1974-03: The International Bauxite Association is formed. Jamaica and other producers created a producer association and raised levies after the oil crisis, the closest bauxite has come to a cartel and a spur to Australian and Guinean development. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 2010-10: The Ajka red mud dam fails in Hungary. A residue impoundment collapse killed ten people and contaminated a river system, and refinery residue management became a central permitting question worldwide. (https://www.eea.europa.eu/)
- 2014-01: Indonesia bans raw bauxite exports. A ban intended to force domestic refining removed a major supplier overnight, sent prices up sharply and redirected Chinese buying decisively toward Guinea. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 2016-01: Malaysia suspends bauxite mining. Environmental damage from unregulated mining in Pahang led to a moratorium, removing the supplier that had partly replaced Indonesia and tightening the market again. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 2018-04: Sanctions on a major producer disrupt alumina supply. Restrictions on Rusal, combined with a production cut at a large Brazilian refinery, sent alumina prices to record levels and showed how tightly the metal price depends on the refining step. (https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS)
- 2021-09: Political instability in Guinea threatens the largest flow. A coup in the country supplying the biggest share of seaborne bauxite lifted aluminium prices immediately, illustrating the concentration risk in the chain. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 2023-06: Guinea overtakes Australia in seaborne supply. Sustained expansion of Boké-region mining made Guinea the largest bauxite exporter, completing a shift in the market's centre of gravity that began with Indonesia's ban. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most bauxite

Guinea mined 150 million tonnes in 2025, 34% of the world's 440 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Australia was second with 22%. Alumina refining has a different map: {{prod.Alumina, refinery production.top1.name}} led with {{prod.Alumina, refinery production.top1.share}} of {{prod.Alumina, refinery production.world}}.

### what is bauxite used for

Almost all of it is refined into alumina and then smelted into aluminium metal. A minority becomes specialty alumina for refractories, ceramics, abrasives, catalysts and flame retardants, or is used directly as calcined bauxite in refractory bricks, road surfacing and oilfield proppants.

### how much bauxite makes a tonne of aluminium

Roughly four tonnes of bauxite yield two tonnes of alumina, which yield one tonne of aluminium metal. Confusing the three units is the most common error in reading aluminium industry figures, so this page states dry tonnes of bauxite unless the alumina item is named.

### why is there no bauxite price here

Neither bauxite nor alumina has a free public benchmark. Bauxite moves on long-term or privately assessed contracts priced by alumina content and reactive silica; alumina is assessed by private indices. Alumina has historically contracted at a percentage of the aluminium price, so the aluminium page is the best available guide.

### why does Guinea export so much bauxite

It has some of the largest and highest-grade deposits on earth, close to the coast, and no significant domestic refining industry. When Indonesia banned raw ore exports in 2014 and Malaysia suspended mining in 2016, Chinese refineries turned to Guinea, and it has since become the largest seaborne supplier.

### what is red mud

The alkaline residue left after the Bayer process dissolves aluminium out of bauxite, produced at roughly one to two tonnes per tonne of alumina. It is impounded behind dams, and a failure at Ajka in Hungary in 2010 killed ten people, making residue management a central issue in permitting new refineries.

### how much bauxite is left

Guinea holds 26% of world bauxite reserves of 29 billion tonnes (USGS MCS). Reserves are large relative to demand and spread across many tropical countries, so the constraint in this chain is refining and smelting capacity rather than ore.

## Sources

- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries
- 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

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

---

# Where does beef come from?

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

Beef comes mainly from the United States, which produced 12.3 million tonnes in 2024, 18% of the world's 69.6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Brazil (15%), China (10%) and Argentina (4.6%) follow; the top five together supply 51%. The biggest exporter of frozen beef (HS 0202) is Brazil (27% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Australia/New Zealand, CIF US ports, was $7.28/kg in August 2026, up 6% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Beef is concentrated where grass is cheap and land is plentiful, which is why the Great Plains, the Brazilian cerrado, the Pampas and the northern Australian rangelands dominate a product that is expensive to move and easy to grow badly.

*Meat from cattle, sold chilled or frozen, as carcasses, primal cuts or boxed trimmings.* Also called: cattle meat, bovine meat, veal, live cattle, beef and veal.

## Where does beef come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 12.3 million | 18% |
| 2 | Brazil | 10.2 million | 15% |
| 3 | China | 7 million | 10% |
| 4 | Argentina | 3.2 million | 4.6% |
| 5 | Australia | 2.6 million | 3.7% |
| 6 | Mexico | 2.3 million | 3.2% |
| 7 | Russia | 1.7 million | 2.4% |
| 8 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 1.5 million | 2.1% |
| 9 | Pakistan | 1.4 million | 2% |
| 10 | France | 1.3 million | 1.9% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 38% |
| | World | 69.6 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 United States produced 12.3 million tonnes of cattle meat, 18% of the world's 69.6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Brazil was second with 15%, then China (10%), Argentina (4.6%) and Australia (3.7%). The top five together account for 51%, which is low concentration by the standards of this site: 189 countries reported cattle meat production and 38% of the total came from outside the top ten. Almost every country with grass keeps some cattle.

Two very different systems sit inside that table. The first is grain finishing, practiced in the United States, Canada, parts of Brazil and increasingly in China: calves are raised on pasture, then moved to feedlots and fed corn and soymeal for the last hundred to two hundred days to add fat and marbling. The second is grass finishing, which dominates in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Australia and New Zealand, where cattle stay on pasture their whole lives and reach slaughter weight more slowly and more cheaply. The first system makes beef a derivative of the corn price. The second makes it a derivative of rainfall.

Geography explains the map better than policy does. Cattle convert grass, which humans cannot eat, into protein, which they can, so cattle occupy land that will not grow crops: the semi-arid Great Plains, the Brazilian cerrado after liming, the Argentine and Uruguayan Pampas, the northern Australian rangelands, the Sahel and the East African highlands. India appears high in FAOSTAT's cattle meat series largely through buffalo and through animals slaughtered at the end of a working or dairy life rather than raised for meat, and much of its output is water buffalo meat sold as carabeef.

World output changed +10% over the ten years to 2024 and +3% on the previous year, slower growth than chicken. Cattle biology sets the ceiling: a cow carries one calf for nine months and that calf takes eighteen months to two years to finish, so a herd cannot be expanded quickly, and expanding it means holding back the heifers that would otherwise have been slaughtered. That is why herd rebuilding tightens supply before it loosens it, and why beef prices move in multi-year cycles rather than seasons.

## Who exports and imports beef?

The United States both exports high-value cuts and imports lean trimmings for grinding, so it appears near the top of both tables.

### Exporters of live bovine animals (HS 0102), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Canada | $1.7 billion | 15% |
| 2 | France | $1.6 billion | 14% |
| 3 | Mexico | $1.3 billion | 11% |
| 4 | Brazil | $849.2 million | 7.5% |
| 5 | Australia | $800.4 million | 7.1% |
| 6 | United States | $515.7 million | 4.6% |
| 7 | Czechia | $341.3 million | 3% |
| 8 | Germany | $301.6 million | 2.7% |
| 9 | Hungary | $289.6 million | 2.6% |
| 10 | Netherlands | $288.2 million | 2.5% |
| 11 | Ireland | $270.2 million | 2.4% |
| 12 | Colombia | $266.5 million | 2.4% |
| 13 | Uruguay | $257.6 million | 2.3% |
| 14 | Spain | $250.2 million | 2.2% |
| 15 | Belgium | $201.1 million | 1.8% |

### Importers of live bovine animals (HS 0102), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $2.9 billion | 26% |
| 2 | Italy | $1.6 billion | 14% |
| 3 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $844.8 million | 7.5% |
| 4 | Indonesia | $502 million | 4.4% |
| 5 | Iraq | $475.4 million | 4.2% |
| 6 | Canada | $427.9 million | 3.8% |
| 7 | Spain | $400.8 million | 3.5% |
| 8 | Netherlands | $355.2 million | 3.1% |
| 9 | Egypt | $322.4 million | 2.8% |
| 10 | Morocco | $303.8 million | 2.7% |
| 11 | Israel | $279.5 million | 2.5% |
| 12 | Belgium | $251.7 million | 2.2% |
| 13 | Poland | $213.7 million | 1.9% |
| 14 | Lebanon | $192.4 million | 1.7% |
| 15 | Croatia | $189 million | 1.7% |

### Exporters of meat of bovine animals, fresh or chilled (HS 0201), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $4.3 billion | 13% |
| 2 | Australia | $3.5 billion | 11% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $2.8 billion | 8.6% |
| 4 | Canada | $2.7 billion | 8.1% |
| 5 | Ireland | $2.2 billion | 6.7% |
| 6 | Poland | $2.2 billion | 6.7% |
| 7 | Mexico | $1.8 billion | 5.4% |
| 8 | Brazil | $1.6 billion | 4.8% |
| 9 | Germany | $1.4 billion | 4.2% |
| 10 | France | $1.3 billion | 4% |
| 11 | Spain | $1.3 billion | 3.8% |
| 12 | Argentina | $1 billion | 3.2% |
| 13 | Paraguay | $776.9 million | 2.3% |
| 14 | Belgium | $753.2 million | 2.3% |
| 15 | Italy | $745.8 million | 2.3% |

### Importers of meat of bovine animals, fresh or chilled (HS 0201), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $5.8 billion | 17% |
| 2 | Italy | $2.4 billion | 7.2% |
| 3 | Germany | $2.4 billion | 7.2% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $2.2 billion | 6.7% |
| 5 | Japan | $1.6 billion | 4.9% |
| 6 | France | $1.6 billion | 4.7% |
| 7 | United Kingdom | $1.3 billion | 4% |
| 8 | Mexico | $1.3 billion | 3.9% |
| 9 | Chile | $1.3 billion | 3.8% |
| 10 | South Korea | $1.3 billion | 3.8% |
| 11 | Spain | $934.4 million | 2.8% |
| 12 | Canada | $827.1 million | 2.5% |
| 13 | Portugal | $814.7 million | 2.5% |
| 14 | China | $770.6 million | 2.3% |
| 15 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $721.8 million | 2.2% |

### Exporters of meat of bovine animals, frozen (HS 0202), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | $10.1 billion | 27% |
| 2 | Australia | $5.7 billion | 15% |
| 3 | United States | $4.6 billion | 13% |
| 4 | India | $3.5 billion | 9.6% |
| 5 | New Zealand | $2.3 billion | 6.2% |
| 6 | Argentina | $2.3 billion | 6.2% |
| 7 | Uruguay | $1.5 billion | 4.2% |
| 8 | Paraguay | $943.8 million | 2.6% |
| 9 | Ireland | $696.1 million | 1.9% |
| 10 | Poland | $544.5 million | 1.5% |
| 11 | Netherlands | $478.4 million | 1.3% |
| 12 | Canada | $463.6 million | 1.3% |
| 13 | Nicaragua | $316.7 million | 0.9% |
| 14 | Germany | $312.5 million | 0.9% |
| 15 | Spain | $238.8 million | 0.7% |

### Importers of meat of bovine animals, frozen (HS 0202), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $11.8 billion | 32% |
| 2 | United States | $5 billion | 14% |
| 3 | South Korea | $2.4 billion | 6.5% |
| 4 | Japan | $1.5 billion | 4.1% |
| 5 | Egypt | $906.3 million | 2.5% |
| 6 | United Arab Emirates | $849 million | 2.3% |
| 7 | Vietnam | $848 million | 2.3% |
| 8 | Other Asia, nes | $814.5 million | 2.2% |
| 9 | Hong Kong | $778.7 million | 2.1% |
| 10 | Malaysia | $711.9 million | 1.9% |
| 11 | Philippines | $711.1 million | 1.9% |
| 12 | Indonesia | $675.6 million | 1.8% |
| 13 | Saudi Arabia | $648.1 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | Israel | $599.5 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | Canada | $468.3 million | 1.3% |

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

Only a small share of world beef crosses a border, and the export table looks nothing like the production table. Brazil was the largest exporter of frozen beef (HS 0202) in 2024 with 27% of world export value, ahead of Australia (15%), on world trade of $36.7 billion (CEPII BACI). China was the largest importer with 32%.

The United States appears near the top of both tables, which confuses people until you look at the cuts. It exports high-value grain-fed middle meats to Japan and South Korea and imports lean grass-fed trimmings from Australia, New Zealand and Brazil to blend into ground beef, because a fatty feedlot carcass does not make good hamburger on its own. Trade is also gated by disease status rather than price: foot-and-mouth disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy and now traceability and deforestation rules decide which countries may sell to which markets, and a single case can close a market overnight.

## What does beef cost?

- Australia/New Zealand, CIF US ports: $7.28/kg in August 2026; 12-month change +6%; 10-year change +72%; all-time high $8.21/kg in March 2026; real high (2024 US$) $17.15/kg in August 1973 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

The benchmark on this page is Australia/New Zealand, CIF US ports, which was $7.28/kg in August 2026, up 6% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). That series is the cost of imported Australian and New Zealand lean manufacturing beef delivered to United States ports. It is not a retail price and not a steak price: it tracks the trimmings that go into ground beef, which is the most internationally traded form of the meat. Its nominal high was $8.21/kg in March 2026; in constant dollars the real peak was $17.15/kg in August 1973, a reminder that beef was a far more expensive food half a century ago than it is today.

Live cattle trade separately as a futures contract, and that is where the price risk in the feeding business is managed. The CME live cattle contract covers 40,000 pounds of finished steers quoted in US cents per pound, and feeder cattle and corn contracts alongside it let a feedlot lock in the spread between what it pays for a calf and grain and what it receives for a finished animal. That spread, not the beef price itself, is what determines whether cattle get fed.

Physical beef is sold by cut, grade and specification rather than as a single commodity, so a quote means little without the detail: chilled or frozen, bone-in or boneless, the chemical lean percentage for trimmings, the grading system, and the plant's export approvals. Terms of sale follow the usual Incoterms, with CIF pricing common in the seaborne trade and the cold chain adding cost that a dry bulk commodity never carries.

## What moves the price of beef?

### The cattle cycle

Herds expand and contract over roughly a decade because a cow produces one calf a year and it takes two years to turn that calf into beef. When prices rise, producers hold heifers back to breed, which removes them from slaughter and tightens supply further before output eventually rises. When prices fall, they sell breeding stock, which floods the market and deepens the fall. This feedback is the single largest source of multi-year swings in the beef price.

### Feed grain costs

In grain-finishing systems, corn and soymeal are the largest variable cost of putting on the last few hundred pounds. When corn prices rise, feedlots bid less for feeder calves and finish animals at lighter weights, cutting total beef output within months. Follow the linked corn and soybean pages for the input side; the ratio between the cattle price and the corn price is watched as closely as either number on its own.

### Drought and pasture

Grass is the cheapest feed there is, and drought removes it. A dry year forces producers to sell cattle they cannot feed, briefly increasing slaughter and depressing prices, then leaves a smaller herd and higher prices for years afterwards. Australian, Argentine and United States herd numbers have all been rewritten by multi-year droughts, and the recovery is always slower than the liquidation.

### Disease and market access

Foot-and-mouth disease and bovine spongiform encephalopathy do not usually kill many animals but close borders instantly. A single confirmed case can remove a country's access to its largest customer for years, as the United States found after December 2003, and regaining access is a diplomatic process rather than a veterinary one. Disease-free status is worth more than any efficiency gain.

### Chinese demand

China moved from a marginal buyer to the largest importer within a decade as incomes rose and after African swine fever destroyed a large share of its pig herd, pulling in every substitute protein. Which countries can supply that demand is decided by bilateral protocols, so a plant listing or delisting moves trade flows more than price does.

### The value of the fifth quarter

Hides, offal, tallow and bone meal are collectively called the fifth quarter and can account for a meaningful share of a carcass's value. When leather demand falls or an export market for offal closes, the packer's revenue per animal drops even though the beef price has not moved, and that shows up as a lower price paid for cattle.

### Currency

Brazil, Argentina, Australia and Uruguay sell in dollars and pay costs in local currency, so a weaker real, peso or Australian dollar raises their margin at an unchanged world price and encourages them to export more. Much of the apparent competitiveness of South American beef in any given year is an exchange-rate effect rather than a productivity one.

### Deforestation and traceability rules

European rules requiring proof that beef was not produced on recently cleared land, and buyer commitments of the same kind, add a compliance cost that falls unevenly. Producers who can trace an animal to its farm of birth gain access; those who cannot are pushed toward markets that do not ask. This reshapes trade routes without changing how much beef exists.

## How is beef produced?

Beef starts with a cow-calf operation, which keeps a breeding herd on pasture and sells weaned calves at six to ten months. Those calves either continue on grass until they are heavy enough to slaughter, or go to a backgrounding operation and then a feedlot for grain finishing. A grain-finished animal reaches slaughter weight at fourteen to eighteen months; a grass-finished one takes two years or more. The choice is economic, not culinary: grain adds weight faster where grain is cheap.

At the abattoir the animal is stunned, bled, skinned and eviscerated, and the carcass is chilled for a day or two. Chilling matters: rapid cooling before rigor mortis completes causes cold shortening and tough meat, so the rate is controlled. The carcass is then graded, in the United States on marbling and maturity, in Australia on a different scale, in the European Union on conformation and fat cover. Grading is what turns one animal into several products with different prices.

Breaking the carcass yields primal cuts, then subprimals, then retail cuts, and the value is wildly uneven: the loin and rib are worth several times the forequarter. Trimmings are sorted by lean percentage and blended to a target for ground beef, which is why an exporter of lean grass-fed trim and an exporter of marbled loins can be the same country. Dressing percentage, the share of live weight that becomes carcass, runs a little under two-thirds, and the rest is the fifth quarter.

Production figures on this page are FAOSTAT's cattle meat measured on a carcass-weight basis, which is the international convention. Retail weight is lower again after bone and trim are removed, so a tonne of production is not a tonne of meat in a shop.

## What is beef used for?

Almost all beef is eaten, but the form varies enormously by market and that determines trade. North America consumes a large share as ground beef, which is why the lean trimmings trade exists. East Asian markets pay premiums for marbled middle meats and for offal cuts that Western markets discount, so a carcass is effectively disassembled and its parts sold to whichever country values them most. This cut-by-cut arbitrage is the reason the same country appears as both a major exporter and a major importer.

The non-meat fraction has its own industries. Hides become leather, tallow becomes soap, cosmetics and increasingly renewable diesel, and bone and blood meal become animal feed and fertilizer, subject to the restrictions introduced after the bovine spongiform encephalopathy crisis. Cattle also produce beef as a by-product of dairying: worn-out dairy cows and surplus dairy calves supply a substantial share of the meat in Europe and New Zealand, which is why the beef and milk markets move together more than they appear to.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

Beef packing is far more concentrated than beef farming. A handful of companies slaughter and process most of the cattle in the United States, Brazil and Australia, and that concentration is where the chain is fragile: a fire, a cyberattack or a disease outbreak at a small number of very large plants removes national slaughter capacity within days, as several incidents have shown. Cattle keep eating and gaining weight whether or not there is a plant to take them, so a bottleneck at the packer shows up immediately as a collapse in the price paid for cattle and a spike in the price of beef, simultaneously.

The cold chain is the second constraint. Chilled beef has a shelf life measured in weeks and must move in refrigerated containers with controlled atmosphere; frozen beef travels more easily but sells for less. Port cold storage, reefer container availability and shipping schedules therefore set what can be sold where. The main seaborne routes run from Santos and Paranaguá to China, from Australian and New Zealand ports to North America and East Asia, and across the North Atlantic in both directions.

The genuine single points of failure are veterinary rather than physical. A country's export business rests on its disease status and on plant-by-plant approvals from each importing country's authorities. Losing foot-and-mouth-free status, or having a handful of plants delisted by a large buyer, removes more trade than any port closure would, and restoring it takes years of surveillance rather than a repair crew.

## Key companies

- JBS: processor, Brazil, listed (JBSS3)
- Cargill: processor, United States
- Tyson Foods: processor, United States, listed (TSN)
- Marfrig: processor, Brazil, listed (MRFG3)
- Minerva Foods: processor and exporter, Brazil, listed (BEEF3)
- National Beef Packing: processor, United States

## Timeline

- 1867: Refrigerated rail cars open the American beef trade. Chilled rail transport let Midwestern packers ship dressed beef east instead of driving live cattle, concentrating slaughter in a few cities and creating the modern packing industry. (https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/)
- 1906-06: The United States passes federal meat inspection. The Federal Meat Inspection Act created mandatory ante-mortem and post-mortem inspection, the template for the plant-approval systems that now govern who may export beef to whom. (https://www.fsis.usda.gov/policy/food-safety-acts/federal-meat-inspection-act)
- 1973-08: Beef reaches its highest real price on record. Amid a worldwide commodity boom and United States price controls, the benchmark import price peaked in inflation-adjusted terms at a level no later spike has approached. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets)
- 1986-11: Bovine spongiform encephalopathy is identified in Britain. The disease and the human variant linked to it triggered mass culls, a global ban on British beef and the feed-ban and traceability rules that still shape the trade. (https://www.woah.org/en/disease/bovine-spongiform-encephalopathy/)
- 2001-02: Foot-and-mouth disease closes British livestock exports. Around six and a half million animals were culled and the European Commission banned all British meat, milk and livestock exports, demonstrating how fast disease removes market access. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5585142/)
- 2003-12: A single BSE case halts United States beef exports. One infected dairy cow in Washington state led Japan, South Korea and dozens of other buyers to suspend imports, costing the American industry billions and taking years to unwind. (https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/sector-at-a-glance)
- 2019-08: African swine fever redirects Chinese protein demand. The loss of a large share of China's pig herd pulled in imported beef at unprecedented volumes and made China the largest buyer in the seaborne trade. (https://www.woah.org/en/disease/african-swine-fever/)
- 2020-04: Packing plant closures break the chain, not the herd. Simultaneous plant shutdowns showed that slaughter capacity, not cattle supply, is the binding constraint: cattle prices fell while beef prices rose in the same weeks. (https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/cattle-beef/sector-at-a-glance)
- 2022-01: United States herd falls toward a multi-decade low. Drought across the southern plains forced heifer slaughter rather than retention, shrinking the breeding herd and setting up several years of tight cattle supply. (https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/catl0126.pdf)
- 2023-06: The EU deforestation regulation adds cattle to its scope. Beef became one of seven commodities requiring proof of deforestation-free origin for the European market, adding traceability obligations that fall hardest on extensive grazing systems. (https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/forests/deforestation/regulation-deforestation-free-products_en)
- 2026-03: The import benchmark sets a nominal record. Tight cattle supply in both hemispheres after successive droughts pushed the lean manufacturing beef quotation to its highest monthly value in the World Bank series. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most beef

United States produced 12.3 million tonnes of cattle meat in 2024, 18% of the world's 69.6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Brazil was second with 15% and China third with 10%. Production is measured on a carcass-weight basis, the international convention.

### which country exports the most beef

Brazil exported the most frozen beef (HS 0202) by value in 2024, 27% of the world total of $36.7 billion (CEPII BACI). Australia was second with 15%. Only a small share of world beef is traded at all, so the export ranking differs sharply from the production ranking.

### why is beef so expensive

Cattle take two years from conception to slaughter, so supply cannot respond quickly to price. After droughts forced herd liquidation, the rebuilding phase holds back breeding females and tightens slaughter further. The benchmark import price was $7.28/kg in August 2026, up 6% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### why does the United States both import and export beef

It exports marbled grain-fed middle meats to Japan and South Korea and imports lean grass-fed trimmings from Australia, New Zealand and Brazil to blend into ground beef. A fatty feedlot carcass does not make good hamburger alone, so the same country appears near the top of both tables.

### is beef production growing

World cattle meat output changed +10% over the ten years to 2024 and +3% on the previous year (FAOSTAT). Growth is slower than for chicken because cattle reproduce slowly: one calf a year, then eighteen months to two years to reach slaughter weight.

### what is the difference between grass-fed and grain-fed beef

Grain-fed cattle spend their last hundred to two hundred days in a feedlot eating corn and soymeal, which adds fat and marbling faster. Grass-fed cattle stay on pasture and take longer to finish. The choice follows the cost of grain relative to land, which is why feedlots dominate North America and pasture dominates South America and Oceania.

### how much of a cow becomes beef

Dressing percentage, the share of live weight that becomes carcass, runs a little under two-thirds, and retail weight is lower again once bone and trim are removed. The remainder is the fifth quarter: hides, offal, tallow and bone, which together contribute a meaningful share of the animal's total value.

### what moves the price of beef

The cattle cycle, feed grain costs, drought, disease-driven market closures and Chinese import demand. Because herds take years to rebuild, beef prices move in multi-year swings rather than seasonally, and a drought that forces heifer slaughter lowers prices briefly before raising them for years.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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 does beef come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/beef/.

---

# Where does canola come from?

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

Canola comes mainly from Canada, which produced 19.2 million tonnes in 2024, 22% of the world's 87.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). China (19%), India (15%) and Australia (7.3%) follow; the top five together supply 69%. The biggest exporter of rapeseed and canola seed (HS 1205) is Canada (32% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Rapeseed oil, crude, FOB Rotterdam, was $1,474/t in August 2026, up 22% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Canola is a cool-season crop that sets seed badly in heat, so it grows where the summer is short and mild or the winter is soft enough to overwinter, and Canada leads because plant breeders there turned an inedible industrial oilseed into a food crop in the 1970s and the prairies had millions of hectares that could grow little else profitably.

*Seed of the rape plant, bred for low erucic acid (canola), crushed into cooking oil and biodiesel with a protein meal by-product.* Also called: rapeseed, colza, oilseed rape, canola oil, rapeseed oil.

## Where does canola come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Canada | 19.2 million | 22% |
| 2 | China | 16.9 million | 19% |
| 3 | India | 13.3 million | 15% |
| 4 | Australia | 6.4 million | 7.3% |
| 5 | Russia | 4.6 million | 5.2% |
| 6 | France | 3.9 million | 4.5% |
| 7 | Germany | 3.6 million | 4.1% |
| 8 | Ukraine | 3.6 million | 4.1% |
| 9 | Poland | 3.1 million | 3.6% |
| 10 | United States | 2.2 million | 2.5% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 13% |
| | World | 87.9 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

Canola is not a separate plant. It is rapeseed, Brassica napus and its relatives, bred so that the oil carries almost no erucic acid and the meal almost no glucosinolates, the two compounds that made traditional rapeseed unfit for food and poor as feed. Canadian breeders produced the first low-erucic varieties in the 1960s and the first double-low varieties in the 1970s, and the name canola was coined to mark the distinction. European and Australian crops are bred to the same standard, so "canola" and "rapeseed" now describe much the same material, but the production and trade statistics on this page are reported as rape or colza seed and include everything grown under that heading, including the mustard-type crop that dominates in India.

The plant is a cool-season brassica. It germinates in cold soil, flowers over three to four weeks, and aborts flowers and shrivels seed when temperatures pass roughly 30 degrees Celsius during that window, which is why it succeeds in places too cool or too short-seasoned for soybeans and fails where they thrive. Spring types are sown in April and May on the Canadian prairies, in Australia's winter-rainfall wheatbelt and across Russia and Ukraine; winter types are sown in August and September in Germany, France, Poland and the United Kingdom and vernalize through the cold months; India grows its crop in the cool dry rabi season after the monsoon.

In 2024 Canada harvested 19.2 million tonnes of rapeseed and canola, 22% of the world's 87.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). China was second with 16.9 million tonnes (19%), India third with 13.3 million tonnes, then Australia with 6.4 million tonnes and Russia with 4.6 million tonnes. Output outside the ten largest producers came to 13%, across 66 reporting countries. World production was +18% against ten years earlier and +22% against five, with the fastest growth among the leaders in Russia at +13.2% a year and Australia at +6.1%. Crushed rather than harvested, the picture flattens out: world production of crude rapeseed and canola oil was 31.4 million tonnes in 2023, with Canada on 14%, China on 14%, Germany on 13% and India on 13% (FAOSTAT), because Germany crushes a great deal of seed it did not grow.


## Who exports and imports canola?

Canada exports seed; the European Union crushes the most and imports both seed and oil; China buys both.

### Exporters of rape or colza seeds (HS 1205), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Canada | $4.2 billion | 32% |
| 2 | Australia | $2.9 billion | 22% |
| 3 | Ukraine | $1.9 billion | 14% |
| 4 | France | $768 million | 5.8% |
| 5 | Romania | $683.4 million | 5.2% |
| 6 | Lithuania | $350.4 million | 2.6% |
| 7 | Hungary | $283.2 million | 2.1% |
| 8 | Poland | $228.3 million | 1.7% |
| 9 | United States | $210.8 million | 1.6% |
| 10 | Czechia | $210.4 million | 1.6% |
| 11 | Slovakia | $166 million | 1.3% |
| 12 | Latvia | $159.5 million | 1.2% |
| 13 | Germany | $155.2 million | 1.2% |
| 14 | Netherlands | $142.6 million | 1.1% |
| 15 | Russia | $115.7 million | 0.9% |

### Importers of rape or colza seeds (HS 1205), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $3 billion | 23% |
| 2 | Germany | $2.5 billion | 19% |
| 3 | Belgium | $1.3 billion | 10% |
| 4 | Japan | $1.1 billion | 8.1% |
| 5 | France | $616 million | 4.7% |
| 6 | Netherlands | $599 million | 4.5% |
| 7 | United Arab Emirates | $500.8 million | 3.8% |
| 8 | United Kingdom | $428.3 million | 3.2% |
| 9 | Mexico | $423.2 million | 3.2% |
| 10 | Pakistan | $385.8 million | 2.9% |
| 11 | Poland | $231.8 million | 1.8% |
| 12 | Czechia | $229 million | 1.7% |
| 13 | United States | $190.8 million | 1.4% |
| 14 | Canada | $183.5 million | 1.4% |
| 15 | Bangladesh | $160.3 million | 1.2% |

### Exporters of rape, colza or mustard oil (HS 1514), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Canada | $4.3 billion | 35% |
| 2 | Germany | $1.4 billion | 12% |
| 3 | Russia | $1.2 billion | 9.5% |
| 4 | France | $697.8 million | 5.7% |
| 5 | Belgium | $578 million | 4.7% |
| 6 | Netherlands | $573.8 million | 4.7% |
| 7 | United Arab Emirates | $523 million | 4.3% |
| 8 | Belarus | $491.5 million | 4% |
| 9 | Czechia | $341.8 million | 2.8% |
| 10 | Ukraine | $272.4 million | 2.2% |
| 11 | Australia | $264.2 million | 2.2% |
| 12 | Denmark | $189.5 million | 1.6% |
| 13 | Poland | $173.5 million | 1.4% |
| 14 | Malaysia | $119.1 million | 1% |
| 15 | Estonia | $105.4 million | 0.9% |

### Importers of rape, colza or mustard oil (HS 1514), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $4.2 billion | 34% |
| 2 | China | $1.8 billion | 15% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $1.2 billion | 9.7% |
| 4 | Belgium | $576.6 million | 4.7% |
| 5 | Germany | $534.4 million | 4.4% |
| 6 | Norway | $502.3 million | 4.1% |
| 7 | Sweden | $296.8 million | 2.4% |
| 8 | Mexico | $266.9 million | 2.2% |
| 9 | United Kingdom | $218.9 million | 1.8% |
| 10 | France | $201.8 million | 1.7% |
| 11 | Austria | $187.2 million | 1.5% |
| 12 | Poland | $182.8 million | 1.5% |
| 13 | Spain | $176.1 million | 1.4% |
| 14 | Italy | $147.2 million | 1.2% |
| 15 | South Korea | $136.6 million | 1.1% |

### Exporters of oilcake from rape or colza seeds (HS 2306), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Canada | $1.9 billion | 18% |
| 2 | Indonesia | $1.8 billion | 17% |
| 3 | Ukraine | $1.1 billion | 10% |
| 4 | Russia | $686.3 million | 6.4% |
| 5 | Germany | $567.4 million | 5.3% |
| 6 | India | $543.8 million | 5.1% |
| 7 | Malaysia | $444.7 million | 4.1% |
| 8 | Belgium | $352.3 million | 3.3% |
| 9 | Argentina | $329.5 million | 3.1% |
| 10 | Netherlands | $287.3 million | 2.7% |
| 11 | Poland | $220.7 million | 2.1% |
| 12 | Hungary | $211.2 million | 2% |
| 13 | United Arab Emirates | $203.6 million | 1.9% |
| 14 | Bulgaria | $199 million | 1.9% |
| 15 | Romania | $176.4 million | 1.6% |

### Importers of oilcake from rape or colza seeds (HS 2306), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $2 billion | 19% |
| 2 | United States | $1.3 billion | 12% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $780.7 million | 7.3% |
| 4 | Italy | $514.9 million | 4.8% |
| 5 | France | $499.3 million | 4.7% |
| 6 | Spain | $420.7 million | 3.9% |
| 7 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $418.3 million | 3.9% |
| 8 | Germany | $409 million | 3.8% |
| 9 | South Korea | $380.9 million | 3.6% |
| 10 | New Zealand | $367.3 million | 3.4% |
| 11 | United Kingdom | $345.2 million | 3.2% |
| 12 | Japan | $282.9 million | 2.6% |
| 13 | Denmark | $188.7 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | Thailand | $181.6 million | 1.7% |
| 15 | Poland | $171.6 million | 1.6% |

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

The seed, the oil and the meal move in different directions and the three tables look nothing alike. World exports of rapeseed and canola seed (HS 1205) were worth $13.2 billion in 2024, with Canada on 32% of the value, Australia on 22% and Ukraine on 14% (CEPII BACI). The buyers of seed are crushers: China took 23%, Germany 19%, Belgium 10% and Japan 8.1%. Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands buy seed from France, Romania, Ukraine and Australia and crush it for the European food and biodiesel market; Japan buys Canadian and Australian seed for its own mills; China buys both seed and oil, and switches between them according to its own crush margins and its trade relations with Canada.

Oil follows a different route. Exports of rape, colza and mustard oil (HS 1514) were worth $12.2 billion in 2024, led by Canada on 35%, Germany on 12% and Russia on 9.5%, and the largest buyer was United States on 34%, mainly for food use and for renewable diesel feedstock. Meal is the third leg: exports under HS 2306 were worth $10.7 billion, with Canada first on 18% and China the largest buyer on 19%. Read that heading with care, because HS 2306 covers oilcake from several oilseeds and not rapeseed alone, which is why palm and coconut producers appear in it. Whether a country sells seed, oil or meal depends on where its crush capacity sits and on the tariffs its customers apply: importing countries commonly tax seed lightly and oil more heavily, which is a deliberate way of keeping the crushing margin at home.


## What does canola cost?

- Rapeseed oil, crude, FOB Rotterdam: $1,474/t in August 2026; 12-month change +22%; 10-year change +80%; all-time high $2,266/t in April 2022; real high (2024 US$) $2,463/t in April 2022 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

Canola has its own futures contract. ICE Futures US lists Canola under the ticker RS, in lots of 20 tonnes quoted in Canadian dollars per tonne, with physical delivery in Saskatchewan; the contract began life on the Winnipeg exchange and is the reference for every cash price on the prairies, where elevators and crush plants quote a basis to the nearest futures month. Europe prices its own crop separately on the Paris rapeseed contract in euros per tonne, and the spread between the two, adjusted for freight and currency, decides whether Australian or Ukrainian seed sails to Hamburg or to Vancouver's customers in Asia.

The series used on this page is not the seed but the oil: Rapeseed oil, crude, FOB Rotterdam, which stood at $1,474/t in August 2026, up 22% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its record was $2,266/t in April 2022, which is also the real peak at $2,463/t once adjusted for US consumer prices, and its low was $411/t in April 2002; the series begins in 2002. Over ten years it was +80%. Because it is quoted FOB Rotterdam it is the price of oil loaded at the port, without onward freight, which makes it lower than a CIF quote for the same oil delivered elsewhere.

Quality terms are precise and they are what make the crop food-grade. Canada No. 1 Canola requires the oil to contain less than 2 percent erucic acid and the meal less than 30 micromoles of glucosinolates per gram, and the grade also limits distinctly green seed, heated seed, moisture and dockage. Oil content, usually around 44 percent of seed weight, is what the crusher is really buying, and Canadian deliveries are paid on it. Two ambiguities follow. First, "canola" and "rapeseed" are used interchangeably in trade but high-erucic-acid rapeseed is still grown under contract as an industrial oilseed and is a different product. Second, this page's production and trade figures are for seed while the price series is for oil, and the two do not move one for one, because the crush margin between them widens and narrows with meal demand.


## What moves the price of canola?

### Heat at flowering on the Canadian prairies

Canola aborts flowers and shrivels seed above roughly 30 degrees Celsius, and the crop flowers in a narrow window in late June and July across Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba. A week of heat in that window can remove several million tonnes from the world's largest exporter without any visible damage to the standing crop. Because the same weeks decide the size of the exportable surplus, the ICE canola contract carries most of its annual volatility between mid-June and early August, before the harvest starts.

### Chinese trade policy

China is the largest buyer of rapeseed and canola seed and a large buyer of oil, and its purchases have repeatedly been interrupted for reasons unrelated to supply. Restrictions on individual Canadian exporters, phytosanitary objections over blackleg, and anti-dumping investigations have each closed or narrowed the seed channel at times, redirecting Canadian volume into domestic crushing and into oil and meal exports instead. Because no other buyer takes seed on that scale, the announcement itself moves the futures price more than the eventual tonnage does.

### European biodiesel policy

Rapeseed oil is the traditional feedstock for European biodiesel, and the crop's area in Germany, France and Poland reflects blending mandates as much as food demand. Rules on which feedstocks count toward renewable transport targets, caps on crop-based biofuels, and greenhouse-gas savings thresholds all change how much oil the sector absorbs. Because winter rapeseed must be sown in August for a harvest eleven months later, a policy change lands on the crop with a full year's delay.

### US renewable diesel demand

Renewable diesel plants on the US Gulf and West Coasts can run on several vegetable oils, and canola oil qualified for federal and Californian low-carbon fuel credits has become one of them. That demand pulls Canadian oil south by rail and pipeline-scale tank truck rather than to Asia, and it links the canola crush margin to diesel economics and to the details of tax credits. A change in the carbon-intensity scoring of Canadian canola, or in the credit's eligibility rules, redirects a large share of one country's crush output.

### The crush margin between oil and meal

A crusher buys seed and sells two products, so the incentive to run depends on the combined value of oil and meal against the seed price rather than on either alone. Canola meal is a mid-protein feed sold mainly into dairy rations, where it competes with soybean meal, and when soybean meal is cheap the canola crush margin compresses even if oil is strong. Crushers respond by slowing throughput, which backs seed up at the elevator and weakens the cash basis while the futures price holds.

### Blackleg, clubroot and sclerotinia

Canola is grown in tight rotations, often one year in two, which builds up soil-borne disease. Blackleg is managed with resistance genes that pathogen populations eventually overcome, clubroot has spread across central Alberta and forces longer rotations and equipment sanitation, and sclerotinia stem rot needs fungicide applied at flowering on a forecast rather than a diagnosis. Each pushes up the cost of a hectare of canola and, in the affected districts, pulls area back toward wheat and pulses.

### Australia's crop and non-GM segregation

Australia is the second-largest seed exporter and its crop arrives at the opposite point of the year from Canada's, which makes it the swing supplier to Europe and Japan in the first half of the calendar. Part of the Australian crop is grown and segregated as non-genetically-modified, which commands a premium from European and Japanese buyers who cannot or will not take Canadian material. The size and the GM composition of that crop therefore decide the premium European crushers pay, independently of the world seed balance.

### The Canadian dollar and the euro

Canola futures are quoted in Canadian dollars and Paris rapeseed in euros, while the oil trades in US dollars. A weaker Canadian dollar raises the price a prairie farmer receives without changing the export price a buyer pays, which encourages selling and planting; a stronger one does the opposite and slows farmer deliveries. The same mechanism runs through the euro for European growers, so currency moves often explain divergences between the two futures markets that look like differences in supply.

## How is canola produced?

Seed is small, a few grams per thousand, and is drilled shallow into a firm seedbed: in April and May on the prairies and in Russia and Ukraine, in April to June in Australia's south, and in August and September for the European winter crop, which must reach a rosette of six to eight leaves before winter to survive it. The plant bolts, flowers bright yellow for three or four weeks, then fills pods over six to eight weeks. Ripening is uneven along the stem, and mature pods shatter and spill seed, so much of the Canadian crop is cut and laid in swaths to finish drying evenly before being picked up by a combine; straight-cutting with shatter-tolerant varieties has become common where the risk allows.

Harvested seed carries about 44 percent oil and must be dried to around 8 to 10 percent moisture, because canola heats and spoils in storage faster than cereals do. Green seed, the result of frost before maturity, is a grading fault because chlorophyll carries into the oil and is expensive to remove. At the crush plant the seed is cleaned, preconditioned with heat, flaked between rollers to break the cells, cooked, and pressed in a screw press to remove most of the oil; the press cake is then washed with hexane to strip the remainder, and the solvent is recovered.

A tonne of seed yields roughly 440 kilograms of crude oil and 550 to 570 kilograms of meal at about 36 to 38 percent protein. Crude oil is degummed, refined, bleached and deodorized, and usually winterized to keep it clear in the refrigerator; the result is the vegetable oil with the least saturated fat of the major commodity oils. Part of it is transesterified with methanol into biodiesel or hydrotreated into renewable diesel. The meal is toasted, cooled and pelleted for dairy and feedlot rations. A small separate stream of high-erucic-acid rapeseed is grown under closed contracts and crushed apart from the food crop, its oil going into erucamide slip agents for plastic film, lubricants and cosmetics.


## What is canola used for?

Most canola oil is eaten. Its neutral flavor, high smoke point and low saturated fat content make it a general-purpose frying, baking and salad oil across North America, Europe, Japan and increasingly China and India, and it is the standard oil in a great deal of industrial food manufacturing. In Europe a large share of the crop instead goes to biodiesel under blending mandates, and in North America a growing share goes to renewable diesel, so the same tonne of oil competes for a place between the kitchen and the fuel tank.

Canola meal is the crop's second product and the reason the crush runs at all. At roughly 36 to 38 percent protein with a good amino acid profile, it feeds dairy cattle in particular, where it substitutes for soybean meal, and also poultry, swine and farmed salmon. Industrial uses take the remainder: high-erucic-acid rapeseed oil is the feedstock for erucamide, a slip agent used in plastic film, and for specialty lubricants; the crop's flowers are a major nectar source for commercial honey production on the prairies; and screenings and dockage are sold into bird and pet feed.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Crushing has moved toward the crop. Canada built large plants at Yorkton, Clavet, Regina, Lloydminster and Ste. Agathe so that oil and meal, rather than seed, can be shipped, and continued expansion has been driven by renewable diesel demand to the south. Europe's capacity sits in Germany, France, Poland and the Benelux ports and runs on a mixture of domestic and imported seed. China's plants line the coast and the Yangtze and are supplied by imported seed and oil. That geography means seed exports and oil exports are partial substitutes: when a crusher in one region has margin, the seed goes there instead of to a distant mill.

Canadian seed and products move west by rail through the Rocky Mountain passes to Vancouver and Prince Rupert, and east by rail and lake vessel through Thunder Bay, with the winter rail program a persistent constraint: cold weather forces shorter trains, and a strike, derailment or avalanche closes the only two western corridors. Australian seed leaves through Kwinana, Esperance, Albany and Port Kembla in the southern spring, Ukrainian seed through Odesa and the Danube ports, and European seed moves by barge on the Rhine and Danube to inland crush plants.

The failure points are concentration of a different kind at each stage. One country supplies about a third of the seed trade, and one country buys most of it, so a bilateral dispute rather than a weather event is the most likely cause of a sudden dislocation. The crop is genetically modified in Canada and largely not in Australia and Europe, which splits the market into segregated streams that cannot substitute freely. And the crush itself is concentrated among a handful of firms with plants sized for continuous operation, so an unplanned outage at one large plant removes a visible share of a country's processing capacity for weeks.


## Key companies

- Richardson International: crusher, Canada
- Bunge Global: crusher, United States, listed (NYSE: BG)
- Archer Daniels Midland: crusher, United States, listed (NYSE: ADM)
- Cargill: crusher, United States
- Louis Dreyfus Company: trader, Netherlands

## Timeline

- 1942: Rapeseed first grown in Saskatchewan as a wartime lubricant crop. The prairies learned to grow an oilseed nobody could eat, which is why the breeding work that made it edible had a ready acreage waiting for it. (https://www.esask.uregina.ca/entry/canola.html)
- 1963: Rapeseed futures begin trading on the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange. A local contract gave prairie growers and crushers a hedging instrument, and it became the reference price that every cash bid in Western Canada is still quoted against. (https://www.alberta.ca/understanding-the-canola-futures-contract)
- 1968: Oro, the first low-erucic-acid rapeseed variety, is released. Removing the erucic acid that made the oil unfit for food turned an industrial oilseed into a potential cooking oil and started the crop's second life. (https://saskoilseeds.com/canola-becomes-a-crop/)
- 1974: Tower, the first double-low variety, is released. Cutting glucosinolates as well as erucic acid made the meal usable as animal feed, which gave the crusher a second saleable product and the crop its economics. (https://saskoilseeds.com/canola-becomes-a-crop/)
- 1978: The name canola is trademarked in Canada. A defined standard, rather than a marketing label, separated the edible crop from traditional rapeseed and let buyers specify what they were purchasing. (https://canolainfo.org/discover-canola/history-of-canola/)
- 1981-05: Toxic oil syndrome outbreak begins in Spain. Illness and deaths traced to industrially denatured rapeseed oil sold as cooking oil set back the crop's reputation in Europe for years, though the cause was adulteration rather than the crop. (https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/51/2/685/6521330)
- 1985-01: US regulators affirm low-erucic-acid rapeseed oil as safe for food. Recognition in the United States opened the largest food oil market to canola and turned a Canadian breeding program into a global commodity. (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2023-title21-vol3/pdf/CFR-2023-title21-vol3-sec184-1555.pdf)
- 1995: First herbicide-tolerant canola variety released in Canada. Herbicide tolerance made weed control in a small-seeded crop practical and pushed canola into tighter rotations, at the cost of excluding Canadian seed from non-GM markets. (https://canolainfo.org/discover-canola/history-of-canola/)
- 2007-08: ICE acquires the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange. The canola contract moved onto a global electronic platform, widening participation and tying prairie prices more closely to the wider oilseed complex. (https://ir.theice.com/press/news-details/2007/Winnipeg-Commodity-Exchange-To-Become-ICE-Futures-Canada/default.aspx)
- 2019-03: China suspends canola seed imports from two Canadian exporters. Losing access to the largest seed buyer redirected Canadian volume into domestic crushing and into oil and meal exports, and showed that the market's main risk is diplomatic rather than agronomic. (https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2022/05/statement-by-minister-ng-and-minister-bibeau-on-chinas-removal-of-restrictions-on-canadian-canola-exports.html)
- 2021-12: Prairie drought cuts the Canadian canola crop by more than a third. Heat during the short flowering window removed a large share of the world's exportable surplus in one season and drove the oil price to its record. (https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/211203/dq211203b-eng.htm)
- 2025-08: China imposes a preliminary anti-dumping duty on Canadian canola seed. A duty on seed from the largest exporter to the largest importer forced the trade to reroute again and widened the gap between Canadian and European futures. (https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2025/08/statement-by-ministers-sidhu-and-macdonald-on-chinas-preliminary-anti-dumping-measures-on-imports-of-canola-seed-from-canada.html)

## Frequently asked questions

### what is the difference between canola and rapeseed

Canola is rapeseed bred to a standard: less than 2 percent erucic acid in the oil and less than 30 micromoles of glucosinolates per gram in the meal. Traditional rapeseed oil was unfit for food and its meal poor as feed. Canadian breeders produced the first double-low varieties in the 1970s, and European and Australian crops are now bred to the same standard.

### which country produces the most canola

Canada harvested 19.2 million tonnes of rapeseed and canola in 2024, 22% of the world's 87.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). China was second with 16.9 million tonnes and India third with 13.3 million tonnes. India's crop is largely mustard-type and is reported under the same heading.

### which country exports the most canola

Canada led exports of rapeseed and canola seed (HS 1205) in 2024 with 32% of the $13.2 billion traded, ahead of Australia on 22% and Ukraine on 14% (CEPII BACI). Canada also led exports of rape, colza and mustard oil in 2024 with 35%.

### what is the price of canola per tonne

The exchange reference is ICE Futures US canola, ticker RS, in 20-tonne lots quoted in Canadian dollars. The oil series used here, Rapeseed oil, crude, FOB Rotterdam, was $1,474/t in August 2026, up 22% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its record was $2,266/t in April 2022.

### is canola oil bad for you

This site does not give dietary advice, but the composition is a matter of record: canola has the lowest saturated fat content of the major commodity vegetable oils, and food-grade canola contains less than 2 percent erucic acid by the grading standard. High-erucic-acid rapeseed is still grown, but under closed industrial contracts and crushed separately from the food crop.

### who buys the most canola

China imported 23% of world rapeseed and canola seed by value in 2024, ahead of Germany on 19% and Belgium on 10% (CEPII BACI). The buyers are crushers, not consumers: Germany and Belgium crush imported seed for the European food and biodiesel market, and Japan for its own mills.

### how much oil comes from canola seed

About 44 percent of the seed's weight is oil, so a tonne of seed gives roughly 440 kilograms of crude oil and 550 to 570 kilograms of meal at 36 to 38 percent protein. Globally, 87.9 million tonnes of seed in 2024 corresponded to 31.4 million tonnes of crude rapeseed and canola oil in 2023 (FAOSTAT).

### what is canola used for

Most of the oil is food: frying, baking, salad oil and industrial food manufacturing, prized for a neutral taste and low saturated fat. A large share in Europe goes to biodiesel and a growing share in North America to renewable diesel. The meal feeds dairy cattle, poultry, pigs and farmed salmon, and high-erucic-acid rapeseed oil goes into plastics additives and lubricants.

### why did canola prices go up

The oil series reached $2,266/t in April 2022 and was +80% over ten years to August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet). The recurring causes are heat during the short prairie flowering window, biofuel policy that adds inelastic demand, and interruptions to the seed trade with the largest buyer, which is why the price can move sharply without any change in the world balance.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2023. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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 does canola come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/canola/.

---

# Where does cardamom come from?

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

Cardamom comes mainly from Guatemala, which produced 76,339 tonnes in 2024, 39% of the world's 197,199 tonnes (FAOSTAT). India (27%), Indonesia (21%) and Laos (4.9%) follow; the top five together supply 96%. The biggest exporter of cardamom (HS 0908) is Guatemala (41% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Green cardamom needs deep shade, steady rainfall and cool highland nights, which confines it to a few mountain regions, and the cloud forests of Alta Verapaz in Guatemala turned out to suit it better than the Western Ghats where the plant is native.

*An aromatic seed pod harvested green and dried; FAOSTAT counts it together with nutmeg and mace.* Also called: cardamon, green cardamom, elaichi, nutmeg, mace.

## Where does cardamom come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Guatemala | 76,339 | 39% |
| 2 | India | 54,031 | 27% |
| 3 | Indonesia | 40,446 | 21% |
| 4 | Laos | 9,600 | 4.9% |
| 5 | Nepal | 8,808 | 4.5% |
| 6 | Sri Lanka | 4,058 | 2.1% |
| 7 | Bhutan | 1,122 | 0.6% |
| 8 | Tanzania | 819 | 0.4% |
| 9 | Honduras | 593 | 0.3% |
| 10 | Grenada | 439 | 0.2% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 0.5% |
| | World | 197,199 | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 Guatemala produced 76,339 tonnes, 39% of the world's 197,199 tonnes (FAOSTAT). India followed with 27%, then Indonesia (21%), Laos (4.9%) and Nepal (4.5%). The top five account for 96%, 21 countries reported output and 0.5% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +82% over the ten years to 2024 and -10% on the previous year.

These figures are broader than cardamom. FAOSTAT counts nutmeg, mace and cardamoms in a single item, and the trade heading HS 0908 does the same, so neither ranking separates the three. Guatemala's total is almost entirely green cardamom, while Indonesia's includes a large quantity of nutmeg and mace from Maluku and North Sulawesi.

Two different plants are also mixed in. Green or small cardamom, Elettaria cardamomum, grows in Alta Verapaz, in the Cardamom Hills of Kerala and Tamil Nadu and in Laos. Large or black cardamom, Amomum subulatum, is a separate species grown in eastern Nepal and Sikkim, dried over smoke and used quite differently.


## Who exports and imports cardamom?

### Exporters of nutmeg, mace and cardamoms (HS 0908), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Guatemala | $515.2 million | 41% |
| 2 | India | $241.8 million | 19% |
| 3 | Indonesia | $229.2 million | 18% |
| 4 | Nepal | $62 million | 5% |
| 5 | Vietnam | $22.6 million | 1.8% |
| 6 | Netherlands | $21.5 million | 1.7% |
| 7 | Sri Lanka | $19.9 million | 1.6% |
| 8 | Singapore | $19.6 million | 1.6% |
| 9 | Germany | $15.3 million | 1.2% |
| 10 | Saudi Arabia | $10.1 million | 0.8% |
| 11 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $9.6 million | 0.8% |
| 12 | Honduras | $8.3 million | 0.7% |
| 13 | Bahrain | $7.1 million | 0.6% |
| 14 | United Kingdom | $6 million | 0.5% |
| 15 | Italy | $5.4 million | 0.4% |

### Importers of nutmeg, mace and cardamoms (HS 0908), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Saudi Arabia | $234.3 million | 19% |
| 2 | United Arab Emirates | $233.4 million | 19% |
| 3 | India | $108.1 million | 8.6% |
| 4 | China | $97.3 million | 7.8% |
| 5 | United States | $50.5 million | 4% |
| 6 | Bangladesh | $44.5 million | 3.6% |
| 7 | Jordan | $38.3 million | 3.1% |
| 8 | Germany | $35.9 million | 2.9% |
| 9 | Netherlands | $35.1 million | 2.8% |
| 10 | Pakistan | $29.2 million | 2.3% |
| 11 | Kuwait | $26.8 million | 2.1% |
| 12 | United Kingdom | $23.4 million | 1.9% |
| 13 | Vietnam | $18.3 million | 1.5% |
| 14 | Japan | $15.1 million | 1.2% |
| 15 | Canada | $14.5 million | 1.2% |

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

Guatemala was the largest exporter of cardamom (HS 0908) in 2024 with 41% of world export value, ahead of India (19%), on world trade of $1.3 billion (CEPII BACI). Saudi Arabia was the largest importer with 19%.

The Gulf is the market. Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates together took a large share of world imports in 2024, because cardamom is the defining flavor of Arabic coffee. That concentrated, culturally specific demand is why Guatemala can be the largest exporter while consuming almost none of the spice itself.

India sits on both sides of the table, exporting 19% of world value while importing 8.6%. It consumes nearly all of its own crop domestically and imports to blend and to cover shortfalls, which is the opposite of Guatemala's export-only model.


## What does cardamom cost?

### How it is priced

There is no futures market for cardamom and no free public benchmark price, so this site quotes none. India runs electronic auctions for small cardamom at Puttady in Kerala and Bodinayakanur in Tamil Nadu, where licensed dealers bid lot by lot, but that is a domestic price for Indian capsules rather than a world reference. Guatemalan cardamom is sold in private negotiation between exporters and Gulf importers, with trading and warehousing concentrated in Dubai.

Grade decides most of the price. Buyers pay for large, unsplit capsules that have held their green color, sorted by screen size and increasingly by optical sorters. Split capsules, off-color capsules and loose seed sell far lower, and volatile oil content matters separately for the extraction trade.


## What moves the price of cardamom?

### Gulf buying patterns

Demand concentrates in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and rises around Ramadan and the hajj, when coffee consumption and hospitality peak. Because a handful of importers cover most of that demand, their buying and their held stocks move the market more than any change in world production.

### Rainfall in Alta Verapaz and Kerala

Cardamom needs regular rain through the year and dies back in drought. In Kerala, heavy monsoon rain and landslides destroy plantations outright rather than merely cutting a harvest, and replanting a hillside takes years, so weather losses in the Western Ghats persist.

### Pesticide residues

Importing countries test cardamom closely, and detentions over residues can halt an origin's shipments, divert crop to domestic markets and force exporters to build testing capacity. Because the buyers are few, one authority's decision can close most of an origin's export market at once.

### Drying capacity and color

Capsules dried too hot or too slowly lose the green color buyers pay for. Drier capacity, fuel supply and the weather at harvest therefore set the grade mix and not just the tonnage, and a season with plenty of capsules can still be short of the top grade.

### The planting lag

Cardamom takes about three years from planting to a full harvest, and Guatemalan area has expanded in waves after good years. Those waves arrive together, so an expansion decided in one price cycle lands in the next, which is why supply overshoots and undershoots demand.

## How is cardamom produced?

Cardamom is a perennial herb of the ginger family that grows from rhizomes in the shade of forest trees, propagated from suckers or seedlings and giving its first full harvest about three years after planting. Flowers appear on panicles trailing along the ground, and the capsules on a panicle ripen unevenly.

Picking is done by hand in repeated rounds over several months, and the capsules are taken just short of ripeness: a fully ripe capsule splits, loses seed and loses grade. This is why cardamom is expensive to harvest even where labor is cheap.

Green capsules are washed, sometimes treated to fix the color, and dried in curing houses over indirect heat or in flue-cured driers at a controlled temperature over many hours. Dried capsules are rubbed to remove stalk remnants, cleaned, and sorted by screen size and by color. Off-grade capsules are decorticated and sold as seed, and both capsules and seed can be distilled or extracted for oil and oleoresin.


## What is cardamom used for?

Green cardamom flavors Arabic coffee above all, and beyond the Gulf it goes into South Asian sweets, rice dishes, masalas and spiced tea, and into Nordic baking. Large cardamom, smoke-dried and quite different in flavor, is used in savory Indian and Nepali cooking and should not be read as the same product.

Cardamom oil and oleoresin are distilled and extracted for flavoring, fragrance and liqueurs. Nutmeg and mace, counted beside cardamom in the statistics, come from an unrelated tree and have their own markets. The by-products are husks left after decortication, which go to low-grade grinding, and spent distillation material used as fuel or compost.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

In Guatemala, several hundred thousand smallholders in Alta Verapaz sell wet capsules to intermediaries who own driers. Because drying creates the color and therefore the grade, the drier owner captures much of the value, and the grower is paid for a raw material whose final quality he does not control.

India's chain runs from planters through licensed auctioneers into the Spices Board's electronic auctions and then to dealers and exporters, which makes the domestic price unusually visible for a spice. Guatemalan cardamom instead moves to Dubai and other hubs, where stocks are held to bridge the gap between harvests.

The chokepoints are drier capacity and fuel at harvest, residue testing and certification for Gulf and European buyers, and the exposure of the whole market to a small number of importers in two countries.


## Timeline

- 1914: Cardamom is planted on a coffee estate in Guatemala. A German planter in Cobán set out to undercut India's near monopoly, and the Alta Verapaz cloud forest proved better suited to the crop than its native range. (https://www.heifer.org/blog/rooted-in-racism-cardamom.html)
- 1970s: Guatemala overtakes India as the leading cardamom exporter. A crop with almost no domestic market grew to serve Gulf demand, and India shifted to consuming most of what it grows rather than exporting it. (https://www.heifer.org/blog/rooted-in-racism-cardamom.html)
- 2004-09: Hurricane Ivan destroys Grenada's nutmeg trees. Nutmeg and mace share a statistical heading with cardamom, so the loss of most of an island's trees, which take years to replace, shows up in the same series. (https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/538951468030331426/pdf/355660GD0rebuilding0hurricane0ivan.pdf)
- 2007: India replaces outcry cardamom auctions with electronic auctions. Bidding moved to terminals at Bodinayakanur and later Puttady, creating a transparent domestic price for Indian capsules where none had existed. (https://agriculture.vikaspedia.in/viewcontent/agriculture/market-information/e-auction-of-cardamom)
- 2018-08: Floods and landslides in Kerala destroy cardamom plantations in Idukki. Standing water rotted roots and capsules and landslides removed whole hillsides, cutting India's crop for several seasons rather than one. (https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/export-natural-disaster-cardamom-cultivation-kerala-has-fallen-hard-times-99254)
- 2019: Gulf buyers tighten pesticide residue testing on Indian cardamom. Detained consignments and new testing protocols showed how quickly a concentrated buyer base can close an origin's main export market. (https://www.indianspices.com/sites/default/files/Note%20for%20website%2003012020%20approved%20v1.pdf)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most cardamom

Guatemala produced 76,339 tonnes in 2024, 39% of the world's 197,199 tonnes (FAOSTAT). India was second with 27% and Indonesia third with 21%. Note that FAOSTAT counts nutmeg, mace and cardamoms together in one item, so the figures are broader than green cardamom alone.

### why is cardamom counted with nutmeg and mace

Because both FAOSTAT and the customs heading HS 0908 group them in one item. The three are small, high-value spices that were historically traded together, and the statistical systems never split them. Guatemala's total is almost all cardamom, while Indonesia's includes substantial nutmeg and mace.

### who buys the most cardamom

Saudi Arabia was the largest importer in 2024 with 19% of world import value, followed closely by United Arab Emirates at 19% (CEPII BACI). Cardamom is the defining flavor of Arabic coffee, so Gulf demand rather than European or American cooking sets the market.

### why is cardamom so expensive

Because the capsules ripen unevenly and must be picked by hand in repeated rounds over months, just short of ripeness so they do not split. Drying then has to hold the green color that buyers pay for. Labor and drying, not land, are the binding costs.

### what is the difference between green and black cardamom

They are different species. Green or small cardamom, Elettaria cardamomum, is harvested unripe and dried carefully to keep its color, and flavors coffee, sweets and baking. Black or large cardamom, Amomum subulatum, is a bigger capsule dried over smoke, with a smoky flavor used in savory dishes.

### is there a cardamom price benchmark

No global one. India runs electronic auctions at Puttady and Bodinayakanur that produce a visible domestic price for Indian capsules, but Guatemalan cardamom, which leads world exports at 41% of value in 2024, is sold privately to Gulf importers (CEPII BACI). This site quotes no cardamom price.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where do cashews come from?

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

Cashews come mainly from Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire), which produced 944,673 tonnes in 2024, 22% of the world's 4.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India (19%), Tanzania (12%) and Vietnam (7.2%) follow; the top five together supply 66%. The biggest exporter of raw cashew nuts in shell (HS 080131) is Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) (23% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Cashew is a tree of poor sandy soils and long dry seasons that yields without irrigation or fertilizer, so it spread with Portuguese traders from Brazil into India and coastal East Africa and became the smallholder cash crop of the West African savanna belt.

*A kidney-shaped nut whose caustic shell must be removed by hand or steam before the kernel can be eaten.* Also called: cashew, cashew nuts, raw cashew nut, RCN.

## Where do cashews come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | 944,673 | 22% |
| 2 | India | 794,910 | 19% |
| 3 | Tanzania | 528,262 | 12% |
| 4 | Vietnam | 306,185 | 7.2% |
| 5 | Ghana | 218,576 | 5.2% |
| 6 | Benin | 212,624 | 5% |
| 7 | Brazil | 159,212 | 3.8% |
| 8 | Burkina Faso | 147,617 | 3.5% |
| 9 | Mozambique | 142,250 | 3.4% |
| 10 | Indonesia | 141,305 | 3.3% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 15% |
| | World | 4.2 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) produced 944,673 tonnes, 22% of the world's 4.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India followed with 19%, then Tanzania (12%), Vietnam (7.2%) and Ghana (5.2%). The top five account for 66%, 35 countries reported output and 15% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +42% over the ten years to 2024 and -2% on the previous year.

These are nuts in shell, the raw material the trade calls RCN. West Africa is now the centre of production: Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Guinea-Bissau form a contiguous belt where cashew is the main cash crop of the savanna transition zone. Tanzania and Mozambique dominate the East African crop, and India, Vietnam, Cambodia and Brazil supply Asia and the Americas.

The tree is undemanding, which is why smallholders plant it: it grows on sandy, degraded ground, needs a long dry season to flower and set, and yields without irrigation. Yields per hectare are low by orchard standards and vary with tree age, spacing and management. Most of the world's cashew comes off farms of a few hectares.


## Who exports and imports cashews?

### Exporters of cashew nuts, in shell, fresh or dried (HS 080131), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $808.7 million | 23% |
| 2 | Tanzania | $602 million | 17% |
| 3 | Cambodia | $499.6 million | 14% |
| 4 | Nigeria | $256.3 million | 7.3% |
| 5 | Togo | $221.9 million | 6.3% |
| 6 | Guinea-Bissau | $198.5 million | 5.7% |
| 7 | Ghana | $184.6 million | 5.3% |
| 8 | Burkina Faso | $152.4 million | 4.4% |
| 9 | Senegal | $113.8 million | 3.3% |
| 10 | Mozambique | $112.1 million | 3.2% |
| 11 | Indonesia | $99.4 million | 2.8% |
| 12 | Guinea | $97.5 million | 2.8% |
| 13 | India | $42.7 million | 1.2% |
| 14 | Gambia | $29.7 million | 0.8% |
| 15 | Benin | $19.7 million | 0.6% |

### Importers of cashew nuts, in shell, fresh or dried (HS 080131), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Vietnam | $1.8 billion | 51% |
| 2 | India | $1.6 billion | 45% |
| 3 | United Arab Emirates | $34.9 million | 1% |
| 4 | Singapore | $25.9 million | 0.7% |
| 5 | Togo | $24.9 million | 0.7% |
| 6 | China | $14.7 million | 0.4% |
| 7 | Thailand | $9.2 million | 0.3% |
| 8 | Belgium | $7.1 million | 0.2% |
| 9 | Sri Lanka | $4.2 million | 0.1% |
| 10 | Germany | $3.2 million | 0.1% |
| 11 | Slovakia | $2.5 million | 0.1% |
| 12 | Spain | $2.3 million | 0.1% |
| 13 | Algeria | $2 million | 0.1% |
| 14 | Cambodia | $1.9 million | 0.1% |
| 15 | Ghana | $1.9 million | 0.1% |

### Exporters of cashew nuts, shelled, fresh or dried (HS 080132), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Vietnam | $2.9 billion | 66% |
| 2 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $420.6 million | 9.4% |
| 3 | India | $314.2 million | 7% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $152.9 million | 3.4% |
| 5 | Germany | $149.9 million | 3.3% |
| 6 | Benin | $64.7 million | 1.4% |
| 7 | Nigeria | $56.9 million | 1.3% |
| 8 | Brazil | $43.9 million | 1% |
| 9 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $43.4 million | 1% |
| 10 | Indonesia | $26.6 million | 0.6% |
| 11 | Tanzania | $25.2 million | 0.6% |
| 12 | Myanmar | $21.1 million | 0.5% |
| 13 | Mozambique | $20.9 million | 0.5% |
| 14 | United States | $19.4 million | 0.4% |
| 15 | Ghana | $19 million | 0.4% |

### Importers of cashew nuts, shelled, fresh or dried (HS 080132), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $1.1 billion | 24% |
| 2 | Germany | $425.2 million | 9.5% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $354.9 million | 7.9% |
| 4 | China | $226.9 million | 5.1% |
| 5 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $168.2 million | 3.7% |
| 6 | Vietnam | $154.5 million | 3.4% |
| 7 | United Kingdom | $146.8 million | 3.3% |
| 8 | France | $141.3 million | 3.1% |
| 9 | Spain | $132.7 million | 3% |
| 10 | Saudi Arabia | $116 million | 2.6% |
| 11 | United Arab Emirates | $109.9 million | 2.4% |
| 12 | Australia | $100.7 million | 2.2% |
| 13 | Poland | $92.3 million | 2.1% |
| 14 | Canada | $89.7 million | 2% |
| 15 | Italy | $86.3 million | 1.9% |

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

Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) was the largest exporter of raw cashew nuts in shell (HS 080131) in 2024 with 23% of world export value, ahead of Tanzania (17%), on world trade of $3.5 billion (CEPII BACI). Vietnam was the largest importer with 51%.

The kernel line tells the other half of the story. In 2024 Vietnam exported 66% of a shelled cashew trade worth $4.5 billion, and United States was the largest buyer with 24%. On the raw side India took 45% of imports behind the leader.

Read together the two lines describe a triangle. African countries grow and export raw nuts; Vietnam and India import, shell and re-export kernels; North America and Europe eat them. Ivory Coast and India appear on both lines because both export raw nuts and shell some at home.


## What do cashews cost?

### How they are priced

There is no futures market and no free public benchmark price for cashews, so this site quotes none. Raw nuts and kernels are priced separately. Raw nuts are bought at the farm gate by collectors, in several countries against a minimum price the government announces before the season; Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin and Tanzania all set one, and enforcement varies. Tanzania sells much of its crop through auctions under a warehouse receipt system.

Kernels are sold on grade against private assessments and negotiated contracts. Grades describe whole white kernels by count per pound, with broken and scorched grades well below, and a contract fixes grade, crop year and shipment window. The gap between the farm gate and kernel prices holds the processing margin, freight and shelling loss.


## What moves the price of cashews?

### Outturn ratio

Processors buy nuts and sell kernels, so what they can pay depends on how many kilograms of good whole kernel a bag yields. Outturn varies with season, origin, drying and storage time, and a poor year squeezes the margin from both ends.

### Government prices and export policy

Producing countries intervene heavily. Minimum farm gate prices, levies on raw nut exports and subsidies on kernel exports are used to push shelling onshore. When an announced price sits above what buyers will pay, trade stalls and nuts move across borders instead.

### Asian processing demand

A small number of countries crack most of the world's raw nuts, so their factories' appetite for raw material, and their access to working capital, sets the bid for African crop. When processors are short of credit or long on kernel stock, raw nut prices fall whatever the harvest looked like.

### Harvest and drying weather

Flowering needs a dry spell, and rain during harvest causes mold and raises the moisture of nuts that must then be dried before shipping. Wet raw nuts store badly, lose outturn and can be rejected on arrival after a voyage of several weeks.

### Snack nut demand

Kernels compete with almonds and other snack nuts in North America, Europe, China and India. Retail promotion, and the substitution that follows when a price gap opens between nut types, moves kernel demand faster than raw nut supply can respond.

## How are cashews produced?

The cashew tree carries an odd double fruit: a swollen fleshy stalk, the cashew apple, with the true fruit, a curved grey nut, hanging beneath it. The apple is perishable and mostly stays where it falls. Harvest is by hand, gathering fallen nuts over several weeks, after which they are sun-dried.

Shelling is the hard part, and it is what makes cashew unlike any other nut. Between the shell's layers sits cashew nut shell liquid, a caustic oil containing anacardic acid that blisters skin and corrodes equipment. The shell is softened by steam or by roasting in a bath of the liquid itself, then cut open without breaking the kernel, which is worth far more whole than in pieces.

The kernel is then dried, the thin testa peeled by hand or machine, and the kernels graded by size, color and wholeness before packing under vacuum or nitrogen. Mechanization has advanced in Vietnam, but hand cutting and peeling still account for much of world capacity, which is why shelling follows careful, cheap labor.


## What are cashews used for?

Almost all cashew is eaten as kernels: roasted and salted as a snack, whole and broken in confectionery and bakery, ground into butters and into the plant-based cheeses and creams that gave the nut a second market, and used in Indian and Southeast Asian cooking as a thickener.

By-products matter more here than in most nut crops. Cashew nut shell liquid is a genuine industrial feedstock, distilled into cardanol and used in brake and clutch friction linings, resins, surfactants and coatings, and the spent shell is burned as boiler fuel. The cashew apple is fermented into spirits, notably feni in Goa, though most is left in the field.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain has an unusual geography: nuts grown in Africa are shipped to Asia in bags inside containers, shelled, and shipped out again as kernels, so one nut can cross the Indian Ocean twice before it is eaten. That works only because shelling is labor-intensive enough for freight to be small beside the wage difference.

Raw nuts leave through Abidjan, San Pédro, Tema, Cotonou and Dar es Salaam on a tight seasonal calendar, since the West African crop arrives in the first half of the year and processors want it before it deteriorates. Kernels ship year-round and are far less time-sensitive.

The single points of failure are concentration in processing and quality on arrival. Much of world shelling capacity sits in one country, working on imported nuts bought on credit, so wet nuts or tight lending transmit straight back to farm gate prices across West Africa.


## Timeline

- 1500s: Portuguese traders carry cashew from Brazil to India and East Africa. The tree was planted first to bind coastal soils, and the shelling and eating of the kernel developed in India rather than in the plant's native Brazil. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 1995: Mozambique liberalizes its raw cashew export market. Removing the export tax as a condition of World Bank lending raised raw nut prices, undercut protected domestic factories and became a much-cited case of reform with unintended costs. (https://case.hks.harvard.edu/liberalization-of-the-mozambican-cashew-industry/)
- 2006: Vietnam overtakes India as the largest kernel exporter. Mechanized Vietnamese factories buying raw nuts from Africa made the country the pivot of world cashew processing rather than a producer of any great size. (https://www.vinacas.com.vn/)
- 2015: Ivory Coast taxes raw nut exports to fund local shelling. Levying raw exports and subsidizing kernel exports was an explicit attempt to keep processing value in the country that grows the most raw cashew. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 2018-11: Tanzania's government buys the entire national cashew crop. After farmers refused private buyers' offers, the state directed the army to collect and pay for the crop, disrupting the raw nut trade and the processors who relied on it. (https://www.africanews.com/2018/11/15/nutty-business-tanzania-president-using-army-to-save-cashew-industry/)
- 2023: Injuries from cashew nut shell liquid reach international reporting. Coverage of chemical burns among hand shellers in East Africa put the caustic shell oil, the reason cashew processing stays labor-intensive, in front of buyers and certifiers. (https://observers.france24.com/en/africa/20230118-cashew-oil-cnsl-kenya-kilifi-burning-workers-hands)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most cashews

Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) produced 944,673 tonnes in 2024, 22% of the world's 4.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India was second with 19%. These are nuts in shell; the kernel weight that reaches a shop is a fraction of it.

### why are cashews shipped to asia to be shelled

Because shelling is difficult and labor-intensive. The shell holds a caustic oil that has to be neutralized before the nut can be cut open without breaking the kernel, and doing that well is still largely handwork, so raw nuts travel from Africa to Asian factories and come back as kernels.

### why are cashews never sold in the shell

The shell contains cashew nut shell liquid, which causes chemical burns and blistering on contact, so consumers are never asked to crack cashews themselves. Every cashew sold to eat has already been steamed or roasted, cut open, dried and peeled at a processing plant.

### why are cashews expensive

Because most of the cost is in the shelling, not the growing. Cutting a shell open without breaking the kernel is precise handwork, whole kernels sell for much more than pieces, and the nuts often cross an ocean twice, once as raw nuts and once as kernels, before sale.

### who buys the most cashew kernels

In 2024 United States was the largest importer of shelled cashews with 24% of a trade worth $4.5 billion (CEPII BACI), ahead of Germany with 9.5%. Most kernels are eaten as snacks in North America, Europe, China and India.

### what is cashew nut shell liquid used for

It is a real industrial feedstock rather than a waste. Distilled into cardanol, it goes into friction linings for brakes and clutches, into resins, surfactants, coatings and specialty chemicals, and the spent shell is burned as boiler fuel inside the processing plants themselves.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where does cassava come from?

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

Cassava comes mainly from Nigeria, which produced 62.6 million tonnes in 2024, 18% of the world's 341.6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) (14%), Thailand (8.4%) and Ghana (8.2%) follow; the top five together supply 54%. The biggest exporter of cassava (HS 0714) is Cambodia (20% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Cassava survives drought and thin, acid soils that defeat cereals and can be left in the ground until needed, which is why it anchors the food supply of west and central Africa while Southeast Asia grows the same plant as an industrial starch crop.

*A drought-tolerant root that feeds hundreds of millions and is dried into chips and starch for export.* Also called: manioc, yuca, tapioca, cassava root.

## Where does cassava come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nigeria | 62.6 million | 18% |
| 2 | DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) | 46.6 million | 14% |
| 3 | Thailand | 28.6 million | 8.4% |
| 4 | Ghana | 27.9 million | 8.2% |
| 5 | Brazil | 19.1 million | 5.6% |
| 6 | Indonesia | 15.6 million | 4.6% |
| 7 | Cambodia | 14.3 million | 4.2% |
| 8 | Angola | 11.9 million | 3.5% |
| 9 | Vietnam | 10.5 million | 3.1% |
| 10 | Tanzania | 10.5 million | 3.1% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 27% |
| | World | 341.6 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 Nigeria produced 62.6 million tonnes, 18% of the world's 341.6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) followed with 14%, then Thailand (8.4%), Ghana (8.2%) and Brazil (5.6%). The top five account for 54%, 97 countries reported a crop and 27% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +18% over the ten years to 2024 and +1% on the previous year.

That ranking hides two industries that share a plant. In Nigeria, DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Ghana, cassava is a food staple grown on smallholdings, processed in small mills and eaten within the district. In Thailand it is an industrial raw material grown in blocks for starch factories and chipping yards.

The crop grows where the climate is frost-free and the soil too acid or exhausted for maize or rice. It sets no fixed harvest date: roots can be lifted from about eight months to two years after planting, so a standing field doubles as a store, and it is what farmers fall back on when the cereal harvest fails.


## Who exports and imports cassava?

### Exporters of manioc, arrowroot, sweet potatoes and similar roots (HS 0714), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cambodia | $688.3 million | 20% |
| 2 | Thailand | $517.2 million | 15% |
| 3 | Laos | $399.8 million | 12% |
| 4 | China | $264.2 million | 7.7% |
| 5 | United States | $229.4 million | 6.7% |
| 6 | Costa Rica | $208.5 million | 6% |
| 7 | Egypt | $200.6 million | 5.8% |
| 8 | Vietnam | $165.9 million | 4.8% |
| 9 | Netherlands | $112.8 million | 3.3% |
| 10 | Ghana | $65.5 million | 1.9% |
| 11 | Ecuador | $57.2 million | 1.7% |
| 12 | Jamaica | $56 million | 1.6% |
| 13 | Japan | $45.1 million | 1.3% |
| 14 | Spain | $42.5 million | 1.2% |
| 15 | Mexico | $29.3 million | 0.8% |

### Importers of manioc, arrowroot, sweet potatoes and similar roots (HS 0714), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Thailand | $623.7 million | 18% |
| 2 | China | $608.5 million | 18% |
| 3 | Vietnam | $504 million | 15% |
| 4 | United States | $406.1 million | 12% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $202.9 million | 5.9% |
| 6 | United Kingdom | $144.3 million | 4.2% |
| 7 | Canada | $124.6 million | 3.6% |
| 8 | Japan | $92.6 million | 2.7% |
| 9 | France | $89.4 million | 2.6% |
| 10 | Germany | $67.6 million | 2% |
| 11 | Belgium | $61.3 million | 1.8% |
| 12 | Spain | $46.8 million | 1.4% |
| 13 | Malaysia | $38 million | 1.1% |
| 14 | Singapore | $31.6 million | 0.9% |
| 15 | South Korea | $28.9 million | 0.8% |

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

Cambodia was the largest exporter of cassava (HS 0714) in 2024 with 20% of world export value, ahead of Thailand (15%), on world trade of $3.4 billion (CEPII BACI). Thailand was the largest importer with 18%.

Set that trade value against the tonnage above and the gap is the whole story. A lifted root spoils within a day or two and carries cyanogenic compounds that must be processed out, so almost nothing crosses a border fresh; what moves is dried chips, pellets, flour and pearls.

The exporters are therefore the countries that built factories, not those that grow the most. Cambodia, Thailand and Laos ship chips into Vietnam and China for starch plants, distilleries and feed mills, while Africa barely appears. Native cassava starch sits under a separate heading, so this understates the processed trade.


## What does cassava cost?

### How it is priced

There is no futures market for cassava and no free public benchmark price, so this site quotes none. The crop is bought at the farm gate by the tonne of fresh root at a price set locally: by a starch factory or chipping yard quoting a delivered price in Asia, or by traders buying for African food markets. Private services assess chip and starch prices, behind subscriptions.

What a factory pays turns on starch content and haulage distance. Roots are tested on arrival and the price adjusted from a reference starch level, which is why a loaded truck loses money by the hour. Governments intervene through grower price schemes, chip tariffs and ethanol mandates. Where no factory bids, the local food market sets the price.


## What moves the price of cassava?

### Starch content and time since lifting

Factories pay on measured starch, and a root loses starch quickly once out of the ground, so value drains away within days. That fixes a haulage radius around every plant, usually hours rather than days, and a breakdown or a blocked road destroys value permanently.

### Chinese starch and ethanol demand

Southeast Asian chips go overwhelmingly to Chinese starch plants, distilleries and feed mills, where cassava competes directly with domestic corn. When Chinese corn is cheap or state reserves are released, cassava buying slows and regional prices sag whatever the size of the crop.

### Mosaic and brown streak viruses

Cassava is planted from stem cuttings, so a diseased field supplies the next one and viruses travel in the stakes farmers trade. Cassava mosaic disease cuts root yield and cassava brown streak disease rots the root itself, and neither has a chemical control.

### The long and elastic growing cycle

A crop planted this season can be lifted any time between roughly eight months and two years later, so growers answer a price move by delaying or advancing the harvest rather than by changing area. That flattens short swings and makes area a poor guide to output.

### Policy in producing and buying countries

Cassava sits close to both food security and fuel policy, so governments intervene. Chip tariffs, ethanol blending mandates, rules requiring millers to put cassava flour in bread and grower price supports have all moved the crop, and change faster than planting can follow.

## How is cassava produced?

Cassava is a woody shrub grown as an annual and propagated from stem cuttings, not seed. Cuttings go into ridges at the start of the rains, the plant builds a canopy and then thickens its storage roots, and harvest is by hand: the stem cut, the plant levered up, the roots snapped off.

Every root contains cyanogenic glycosides that release hydrogen cyanide when the tissue is damaged, and processing exists to remove them. Sweet varieties are peeled and boiled. Bitter varieties, which yield more and resist pests better, are grated, pressed, fermented and dried or roasted. Gari, attieke and chikwangue are outcomes of that detoxification, and shortcuts in famine have caused konzo, a permanent paralysis.

The industrial route runs the other way. Roots are washed, rasped to break open the cells, and the starch washed out, dewatered and dried; or the root is chipped, sun dried and pelleted. Both must begin within days, which is why factories sit in the growing area, not at the port.


## What is cassava used for?

Most of the world's cassava is eaten, as boiled root, fermented doughs, and flours and granules such as gari and farinha. The industrial share becomes starch for paper, textiles and food thickening; glucose syrup and monosodium glutamate; fuel ethanol; and dried chips for animal feed. Tapioca pearls are a small corner of the same stream.

By-products are used close to the plant. Peels and the pulp left after starch extraction go to livestock, leaves are eaten as a protein-rich vegetable in central Africa, and stems are kept as planting material. Starch wastewater carries cyanide and must be treated.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

There are two chains. The African one is short and informal: roots reach a village processor within a day, and the gari or flour goes to a town market by truck. The binding constraint is processing capacity near the field, not transport to a port.

The Asian chain is industrial. Roots are hauled to chipping yards and starch factories inside the growing districts, then chips move to ports such as Laem Chabang and Sihanoukville and into China. Cambodia and Laos send much of their root across the border into Thai and Vietnamese factories, so the exporter of the chip often did not grow it.

The structural weakness is concentration at both ends. Planting material is vegetative, so a virus travels through a region in the stakes farmers exchange. At the far end the trade leans on one buyer, and a shift in Chinese corn prices reaches Cambodian farm gates within weeks.


## Timeline

- 1970s: European feed demand builds a Thai export industry. Levies on imported feed grain made cassava pellets a cheap substitute in European compound feed, and Thailand built the drying, pelleting and port capacity to supply it. (https://www.fao.org/4/x4007e/X4007E04.htm)
- 1994: The Uruguay Round renews the European cassava quota. Continuing Thailand's preferential access under a negotiated ceiling kept the trade alive but capped it, and reform of European grain prices then eroded the demand that had created it. (https://www.fao.org/4/x4007e/X4007E04.htm)
- 2004: Cassava brown streak disease escapes coastal east Africa. A virus previously confined to the coastal lowlands appeared inland around the Great Lakes, where it rots the root itself and so destroys the crop rather than merely reducing it. (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-food-systems/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2022.1076364/full)
- 2015: Cassava mosaic disease reaches Southeast Asia. Sri Lankan cassava mosaic virus was found in Ratanakiri, Cambodia, and then spread through the commercial planting-stem trade that supplies the region's growers. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9162994/)
- 2019: The disease reaches Thailand. Arrival in the region's largest processor put yield and starch content at risk in the supply base that feeds most of Asia's cassava starch factories. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9162994/)
- 2021: Cambodia adopts a national cassava policy. The plan set out to move growers from subsistence planting to commercial supply and to attract processing investment, in a country that had become a major exporter of raw chips. (https://opendevelopmentcambodia.net/category/agriculture-and-fishing/agriculture/agricultural-commodities-processing-and-products/crop-products-and-commodities/biofuel-crops/cassava/)
- 2023: Chinese chip buying weakens. Ethanol and starch plants cut cassava purchases when domestic feedstock was cheaper, showing how tightly Southeast Asian farm-gate prices are tied to a single buyer. (https://sustainablecassava.org/national-centre/China/)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most cassava

Nigeria produced 62.6 million tonnes in 2024, 18% of the world's 341.6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) was second with 14%, and the top five together accounted for 54%. Nearly all of Nigeria's crop is eaten at home rather than exported, because fresh cassava root spoils within days of being lifted.

### why does thailand export more cassava than nigeria

Because exporting cassava means exporting dried chips, pellets or starch, not roots. Fresh cassava spoils within days, so only countries with processing capacity can trade it. Thailand and Cambodia built that capacity for Asian starch and ethanol buyers; Nigeria grows far more root but eats it.

### is cassava poisonous

Raw cassava contains cyanogenic glycosides that release hydrogen cyanide when the root is damaged, and it must be processed before eating. Sweet varieties are peeled and boiled; bitter varieties are grated, pressed, fermented and dried or roasted. Inadequate processing during food shortages has caused konzo, an irreversible paralysis.

### what is the difference between cassava and tapioca

Cassava is the plant and its root. Tapioca is the starch extracted from that root, and the pearls, flour and flakes made from it. Gari, fufu and farinha are other processed forms. Traded cassava is mostly dried chips and pellets for feed and industry rather than food starch.

### what is cassava used for

Mostly food: boiled root, fermented doughs and flours such as gari and farinha feed hundreds of millions of people. The industrial share becomes starch for paper, textiles, adhesives and food thickening, glucose syrup and monosodium glutamate, fuel ethanol, and dried chips and pellets for animal feed.

### how is cassava priced

At the farm gate by the tonne of fresh root, with no futures contract and no published world benchmark. Asian factories test roots on delivery and pay against a reference starch content; African prices are set by local food demand. Chip and starch assessments exist but sit behind subscriptions.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where does cheese come from?

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

Cheese comes mainly from the United States, which produced 6.4 million tonnes in 2023, 28% of the world's 23 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Germany (10%), France (7.5%) and Italy (5.3%) follow; the top five together supply 55%. The biggest exporter of cheese (HS 0406) is Germany (15% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Cheese is made where milk is abundant and cheap, because milk is bulky and spoils quickly, so the map of cheese production is the map of temperate dairy farming with a century of plant investment on top of it.

*Milk concentrated by coagulation and ageing, the form in which most traded dairy protein and fat moves.* Also called: cheeses, cheddar, mozzarella, curd.

## Where does cheese come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2023 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 6.4 million | 28% |
| 2 | Germany | 2.4 million | 10% |
| 3 | France | 1.7 million | 7.5% |
| 4 | Italy | 1.2 million | 5.3% |
| 5 | Netherlands | 989,810 | 4.3% |
| 6 | Poland | 975,560 | 4.2% |
| 7 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 773,082 | 3.4% |
| 8 | Russia | 604,962 | 2.6% |
| 9 | Canada | 569,350 | 2.5% |
| 10 | United Kingdom | 509,900 | 2.2% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 30% |
| | World | 23 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2023.

In 2023 United States produced 6.4 million tonnes, 28% of the world's 23 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Germany followed with 10%, then France (7.5%), Italy (5.3%) and Netherlands (4.3%). The top five account for 55%, 95 countries reported output and 30% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +25% over the ten years to 2023 and +1% on the previous year.

Cheese is a way of storing milk. Raw milk is mostly water and lasts days; cheese concentrates the protein and fat into something that keeps for months and travels, which is why it became the form in which dairy crosses borders. Production therefore sits where milk is produced, and the ranking here follows the milk ranking closely: see /commodities/milk/ for the underlying supply and the dairy price.

The series counts cheese made from whole cow milk, so buffalo mozzarella, sheep and goat cheeses fall outside it, while the trade data covers cheese and curd from any milk.


## Who exports and imports cheese?

### Exporters of cheese and curd (HS 0406), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Germany | $6.6 billion | 15% |
| 2 | Italy | $5.7 billion | 13% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $5.6 billion | 13% |
| 4 | France | $4.2 billion | 9.4% |
| 5 | United States | $2.5 billion | 5.6% |
| 6 | Denmark | $2.4 billion | 5.3% |
| 7 | New Zealand | $1.7 billion | 3.8% |
| 8 | Ireland | $1.7 billion | 3.8% |
| 9 | Belgium | $1.4 billion | 3.1% |
| 10 | Poland | $1.3 billion | 3% |
| 11 | Greece | $1.1 billion | 2.4% |
| 12 | Austria | $980.4 million | 2.2% |
| 13 | United Kingdom | $914.3 million | 2% |
| 14 | Spain | $898.8 million | 2% |
| 15 | Switzerland | $812.7 million | 1.8% |

### Importers of cheese and curd (HS 0406), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Germany | $6 billion | 13% |
| 2 | France | $3.1 billion | 7% |
| 3 | Italy | $2.8 billion | 6.3% |
| 4 | United Kingdom | $2.6 billion | 5.8% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $2.3 billion | 5.2% |
| 6 | Belgium | $2.1 billion | 4.6% |
| 7 | Spain | $2.1 billion | 4.6% |
| 8 | United States | $2 billion | 4.4% |
| 9 | Japan | $1.3 billion | 2.8% |
| 10 | Mexico | $1.1 billion | 2.4% |
| 11 | Saudi Arabia | $947 million | 2.1% |
| 12 | Sweden | $857.2 million | 1.9% |
| 13 | China | $854.9 million | 1.9% |
| 14 | Austria | $837.8 million | 1.9% |
| 15 | Poland | $788.7 million | 1.8% |

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

Germany was the largest exporter of cheese (HS 0406) in 2024 with 15% of world export value, ahead of Italy (13%), on world trade of $44.8 billion (CEPII BACI). Germany was the largest importer with 13%.

European countries fill both sides of the table because much of this trade is internal to the European single market: German, Dutch, French and Italian cheese crosses borders within Europe before any of it leaves. Ranking exporters by shipments to the rest of the world would produce a shorter and different list.

The growth in demand is elsewhere. Japan, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Latin America buy cheese they do not make, mostly commodity mozzarella and cheddar for food manufacture and food service, supplied by the European Union, New Zealand and the United States. Named regional cheeses are a much smaller share of tonnage than of attention.


## What does cheese cost?

### How it is priced

There is no futures price on this page. Exchange-traded contracts do exist for cheese and for Class III milk in the United States, and this site does not carry them; the dairy benchmark it does carry sits on /commodities/milk/. Elsewhere cheese is priced on wholesale block and barrel quotations, on cooperative pool payments to farmers, and on private assessments published by subscription services.

Most cheese never touches a spot quote at all. It is sold on annual retail and food-service contracts whose formulas reference published milk component values, so what moves is the milk price and the plant's margin rather than a cheese price as such. Protected regional cheeses are priced separately by age and grade, with consortium rules limiting how much may be made.


## What moves the price of cheese?

### The milk price

Milk is the overwhelming input cost, so cheese follows the milk market rather than leading it. Feed costs, weather, herd size and the milk price paid to farmers all reach cheese with a lag of weeks. The dairy price series carried on this site is at /commodities/milk/.

### Fat and protein values

Milk can go to cheese, butter and powder, and processors send it where the components earn most. When butterfat is dear relative to protein, milk is pulled away from cheese vats, and cheese output falls without any change in the number of cows.

### Market access

Cheese faces high tariffs and tariff-rate quotas in most importing countries, so access is rationed rather than priced. A quota allocation, a veterinary certificate or a sudden import ban can matter more to an exporter than the cost of making the cheese.

### Protected names

Geographical indications restrict who may use a name and often cap output within a defined area. That is a real supply constraint and a durable premium, and it is why cheese names are fought over in trade negotiations more fiercely than tariff lines are.

### Whey value

Cheesemaking leaves whey, and a modern plant depends on selling whey protein and lactose. When whey prices are strong the plant can afford to sell cheese more cheaply, so the sports nutrition and infant formula markets quietly influence what cheese costs.

## How is cheese produced?

Milk is standardized to a target fat and protein ratio, usually pasteurized, and set with starter cultures that acidify it and with rennet that coagulates it. Rennet was once an extract of calf stomach; most is now chymosin made by fermentation, which is why cheese supply no longer depends on the veal trade.

The curd is cut, stirred and warmed to expel whey, then drained, salted and shaped. What happens next defines the family: fresh cheeses are eaten within days; pasta filata curds such as mozzarella are stretched in hot water; hard cheeses are pressed, brined and matured for months or years; blues and washed rinds are ripened with deliberate molds and bacteria.

Yield is the number that governs plant economics, at roughly ten liters of milk for a kilogram of hard cheese, and the rest leaves as whey. Aging ties up capital and space, so long-matured cheeses carry an inventory cost that fresh cheeses do not.


## What is cheese used for?

Most cheese is eaten as cheese, but the largest single industrial pull is pizza, which made mozzarella the volume cheese of world trade. Processed cheese, made by blending and emulsifying, supplies slices, spreads and food service, and shredded and diced cheese goes into prepared meals, sauces and snacks.

The by-products are now a business in their own right. Whey is dried and fractionated into whey protein concentrate and isolate for sports and clinical nutrition, lactose for pharmaceuticals and infant formula, and permeate for animal feed. Cream skimmed off before cheesemaking goes to butter, and brine and washings are recovered where regulations require it.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain starts with a collection radius. Milk is heavy and perishable, so tankers gather it from farms within a few hours of the plant, which fixes cheese factories in dairy regions and makes the plant, not the farm, the bottleneck. A new cheese plant is a large, indivisible investment, so capacity arrives in steps and then has to be filled.

From the vat the cheese moves to ripening rooms, then to cutting and packing operations that are often close to the retail market rather than to the milk. Hard cheese travels well in ordinary refrigerated containers; fresh cheeses are made near where they are eaten.

The vulnerabilities are the milk supply, the export certificate and the culture. Milk cannot be stored while a dispute is settled, veterinary and quota paperwork can strand a container at a port, and the starter cultures and fermentation-produced chymosin that every plant depends on come from a small number of specialist suppliers.


## Timeline

- 1984-03: The European Community introduces milk quotas. Regulation 856/84 put a levy on milk delivered above a reference quantity, capping the milk that European cheese plants could draw on for the next three decades. (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:31984R0856)
- 1992-07: The EU creates protected designations of origin. Regulation 2081/92 gave regional cheese names legal protection against imitation, turning provenance into a defended asset and a permanent price premium. (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:31992R2081)
- 2012: The EU adopts the dairy package. Written contracts and collective bargaining for milk producers were introduced to prepare the supply chain for the end of quotas. (https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/farming/animal-products/milk-and-dairy-products_en)
- 2014-08: Russia bans dairy imports from the EU and others. The ban took effect on 13 August 2014 and closed a large export outlet for European cheese, pushing volume back into the internal market. (https://www.fao.org/giews/food-prices/food-policies/detail/en/c/246122/)
- 2015-04: EU milk quotas end. Milk output was free to grow for the first time since 1984, and much of the additional milk went into cheese, the highest-value bulk outlet available. (https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/farming/animal-products/milk-and-dairy-products_en)
- 2024-05: The EU consolidates its geographical indication rules. Regulation (EU) 2024/1143 unified registration across food, wine and spirits, tightening the framework that governs which cheeses may carry which names. (https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/farming/geographical-indications-and-quality-schemes/geographical-indications-and-quality-schemes-explained_en)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most cheese

United States produced 6.4 million tonnes in 2023, 28% of the world's 23 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Germany was second with 10%. The figures count cheese made from whole cow milk, so sheep, goat and buffalo cheeses are not included. The top five producers accounted for 55% of world output.

### how much milk does it take to make cheese

Roughly ten liters of milk for a kilogram of hard cheese, with the exact ratio set by the milk's protein and fat content and by the style being made. Fresh cheeses use less milk per kilogram because they retain more water. The rest of the milk leaves the vat as whey.

### is there a cheese price benchmark

Not one carried on this site. Exchange contracts for cheese and Class III milk exist in the United States, and cheese is otherwise sold on block and barrel quotations, cooperative pools and private assessments. The dairy price series this site does publish is at /commodities/milk/.

### which country exports the most cheese

Germany, with 15% of world export value in 2024, ahead of Italy at 13%, on trade of $44.8 billion (CEPII BACI). Much of that moves between European countries rather than leaving the continent, and the largest importer, Germany at 13%, is also the largest exporter.

### why is cheese expensive

Because it concentrates a perishable raw material and then stores it. About ten liters of milk go into a kilogram of hard cheese, and maturing ties up warehouse space and working capital for months or years. Protected regional cheeses add a supply limit set by consortium rules.

### what is whey used for

It is the liquid left after the curd is separated, and it is now a product in its own right: dried and fractionated into whey protein concentrate and isolate for nutrition products, lactose for pharmaceuticals and infant formula, and permeate for animal feed. Whey revenue is part of what sets a cheese plant's margin.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2023. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where does chicken come from?

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

Chicken comes mainly from the United States, which produced 20.2 million tonnes in 2024, 16% of the world's 127.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). China (12%), Brazil (11%) and Russia (4.3%) follow; the top five together supply 47%. The biggest exporter of poultry meat (HS 0207) is Brazil (26% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, US Gulf ports, broiler cuts, was $1.69/kg in August 2026, up 1% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Broiler production goes wherever cheap corn and soybean meal sit next to a large domestic market, because feed is most of the cost of a chicken and grain is cheaper to grow than to ship, which is why the United States, China and Brazil lead the table and why the export trade runs out of the grain surplus countries.

*Meat from broiler chickens, the world's fastest-growing source of animal protein.* Also called: poultry, broiler, chicken meat, broilers, poultry meat.

## Where does chicken come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 20.2 million | 16% |
| 2 | China | 15.4 million | 12% |
| 3 | Brazil | 13.7 million | 11% |
| 4 | Russia | 5.5 million | 4.3% |
| 5 | India | 5 million | 3.9% |
| 6 | Indonesia | 4.2 million | 3.3% |
| 7 | Mexico | 4 million | 3.1% |
| 8 | Egypt | 2.6 million | 2% |
| 9 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 2.5 million | 2% |
| 10 | Japan | 2.5 million | 1.9% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 41% |
| | World | 127.9 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

On this page "chicken" means the meat of chickens measured in carcass weight, the standard FAO basis, and it excludes turkey, duck and other poultry. In 2024 United States produced 20.2 million tonnes, 16% of the world's 127.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). China followed with 15.4 million tonnes (12%) and Brazil with 13.7 million tonnes (11%), ahead of Russia (4.3%) and India (3.9%). World output was +27% compared with ten years earlier, the fastest growth of any major meat. 190 countries reported production and 41% of the total came from outside the top ten, because almost every country raises at least some of its own chicken.

The reason the map looks the way it does is feed. A modern broiler converts a little over one and a half kilograms of feed into a kilogram of live weight, better than any other farmed land animal, and that feed is mostly [corn](/commodities/corn/) for energy and soybean meal for protein. Because grain is bulky and cheap relative to meat, it is usually cheaper to move the finished bird than the feed it ate, so large-scale production settles where grain is grown or lands cheaply: the American South and Midwest, the Brazilian states of Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, the North China Plain, and the ports of the Netherlands and Thailand that import feed and export meat. Chicken needs no pasture, so land quality barely enters into it.

Two other features shape the industry. The production cycle is very short: a broiler reaches market weight in roughly six weeks, and the whole chain from a placed chick to a boxed carcass can respond to a price signal within a couple of months, which is why chicken supply adjusts far faster than beef. And chicken carries no religious prohibition, so it grows in every food culture. Between them these explain the growth rates in the table: over the ten years to 2024, output grew at +8% a year in Indonesia, +9.6% in Egypt and +9.1% in Pakistan, against +1.3% in United States (FAOSTAT).

Producing and exporting are different things again. The United States and China are the two largest producers, but China consumes what it makes and imports more besides, while the United States exports mainly the parts its own consumers do not want. Brazil, the third-largest producer, is by a wide margin the largest exporter. Most chicken in the world is eaten within a few hundred kilometers of the shed it grew in, and only a modest share of world output ever crosses a border.


## Who exports and imports chicken?

Rich countries export legs and wings and keep breast meat, so trade volumes and trade values point at different countries.

### Exporters of meat and edible offal of poultry, fresh, chilled or frozen (HS 0207), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | $9.2 billion | 26% |
| 2 | United States | $4.7 billion | 13% |
| 3 | Poland | $4.6 billion | 13% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $2.7 billion | 7.6% |
| 5 | Thailand | $1.5 billion | 4.3% |
| 6 | Germany | $1.2 billion | 3.4% |
| 7 | Belgium | $1.2 billion | 3.2% |
| 8 | China | $1 billion | 2.9% |
| 9 | Ukraine | $972.3 million | 2.7% |
| 10 | France | $893.2 million | 2.5% |
| 11 | Russia | $797 million | 2.2% |
| 12 | Hungary | $688.4 million | 1.9% |
| 13 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $641.5 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | Spain | $528.6 million | 1.5% |
| 15 | Italy | $493.5 million | 1.4% |

### Importers of meat and edible offal of poultry, fresh, chilled or frozen (HS 0207), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $2.7 billion | 7.7% |
| 2 | Germany | $2.4 billion | 6.7% |
| 3 | France | $2.1 billion | 5.8% |
| 4 | United Kingdom | $2.1 billion | 5.7% |
| 5 | Mexico | $1.8 billion | 5% |
| 6 | Netherlands | $1.6 billion | 4.4% |
| 7 | Japan | $1.4 billion | 3.9% |
| 8 | Saudi Arabia | $1.4 billion | 3.8% |
| 9 | United Arab Emirates | $1.2 billion | 3.5% |
| 10 | Iraq | $960.7 million | 2.7% |
| 11 | Hong Kong | $867 million | 2.4% |
| 12 | Belgium | $734.4 million | 2.1% |
| 13 | Spain | $626.4 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | Kuwait | $478.8 million | 1.3% |
| 15 | Canada | $471.6 million | 1.3% |

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

In 2024 the largest exporter of poultry meat (HS 0207) was Brazil, with $9.2 billion, or 26% of the world's $35.8 billion of export value (CEPII BACI), followed by United States (13%), Poland (13%), Netherlands (7.6%) and Thailand (4.3%). The largest importer was China with $2.7 billion, 7.7% of the world's $35.8 billion, ahead of Germany (6.7%), France (5.8%) and United Kingdom (5.7%). Note that this customs heading covers all poultry meat and edible offal, so turkey and duck are inside it while the production table above counts chicken alone.

The striking feature of the poultry trade is that it is a trade in parts rather than in birds, and the parts move in opposite directions. Consumers in the United States, Britain and much of Europe pay a premium for boneless breast and eat relatively little dark meat, while buyers in Mexico, West Africa, the Caribbean, the Philippines and Central Asia prefer leg quarters and pay less. USDA reports that the majority of US broiler exports by weight are leg quarters and other dark meat (USDA ERS, Poultry and eggs sector at a glance). Chicken feet and paws, worthless in western markets, are a valuable export to China and Hong Kong. That asymmetry is why the same country can be a large importer and a large exporter at once: the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and China all appear in both tables, buying the cuts their consumers want and selling the ones they do not. It also means volume rankings and value rankings disagree, because a tonne of breast fillet and a tonne of leg quarters are not worth the same money.


## What does chicken cost?

- US Gulf ports, broiler cuts: $1.69/kg in August 2026; 12-month change +1%; 10-year change -3%; all-time high $2.72/kg in June 2018; real high (2024 US$) $3.9/kg in July 1973 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

Chicken has no futures contract anywhere in the world, and there is no exchange price to look up. What exists instead is a set of wholesale quotations compiled by price reporting firms from surveys of actual transactions: Urner Barry's quotations for boneless breast, wings, leg quarters and whole birds in the United States, the Cepea and Esalq indicators in Brazil, and equivalent trade quotations in Europe and Asia. Retail contracts between processors and supermarkets are typically negotiated for a season or a year, often with a formula tied to a published quotation or to feed costs, so the spot quotations move on the marginal volume rather than on the whole market.

The series charted here is US Gulf ports, broiler cuts. In August 2026 it stood at $1.69/kg, up 1% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The nominal record for the series is $2.72/kg in June 2018, but adjusted for US consumer prices the real high was far earlier, $3.9/kg in July 1973; the lowest month in a series that begins in 1960 was $0.3/kg in January 1960. Measured against ten years earlier the series was -3%, which is the clearest single statement of what better genetics, better feed conversion and larger plants have done to the cost of chicken.

Reading a chicken quote takes three cautions. The first is that a cut price is not a bird price. Processors think in terms of a cut-out value, the weighted worth of everything a carcass yields, because breast, wings, tenders, leg quarters, feet and rendered by-products all sell into different markets at different prices; a rally in wings before a sporting season and a slump in leg quarters can happen in the same week. The second is the delivery term: an FOB quote at a US Gulf port covers frozen product loaded for export and excludes ocean freight, while a domestic delivered quote includes trucking to the buyer's dock, and the two can diverge sharply when reefer capacity is tight. The third is that this is one origin's export quotation, not a world price. Brazilian, Thai, Polish and Ukrainian product competes for the same buyers, and a shift in the Brazilian real can move the delivered price in Jeddah or Manila without the American number changing at all.


## What moves the price of chicken?

### Corn and soybean meal costs

Feed is the largest single cost of producing a chicken, and it is mostly corn and soybean meal, so the broiler margin is really a spread between the meat price and the feed price. When grain rallies, integrators do not raise output; they cut chick placements, and the reduced supply lifts meat prices with a lag of two to three months. Because the biological cycle is short, this feedback works quickly, and the ratio between the chicken price and the feed cost is the number the industry actually manages.

### Avian influenza and import bans

Highly pathogenic avian influenza is the largest recurring shock to the trade. An outbreak triggers culling on the affected farms, movement restrictions around them, and immediately a wave of import bans from trading partners. Whether those bans are national or regional matters enormously: countries that accept zoning keep buying from unaffected states or provinces, while those that ban a whole country can remove a major supplier from the market overnight. The disease also moves with wild birds, which makes it seasonal and impossible to eliminate.

### The dark meat and white meat spread

A chicken is sold in pieces to different customers, and the relative value of those pieces is set by consumer preference in each market. Wealthier consumers bid up boneless breast; leg quarters, wings, feet and offal find their value elsewhere. When demand in the importing markets for dark meat weakens, the whole carcass must be carried by the breast, which changes what a processor can pay for a bird. Exporters therefore watch consumption in Mexico, West Africa, China and the Philippines as closely as domestic retail sales.

### Chick placements and the short cycle

Supply is planned in weekly increments of eggs set and chicks placed, and those numbers are published in the large producing countries. Because a broiler takes about six weeks to grow, placements today are a reliable forecast of supply next quarter, and the industry expands or contracts far faster than beef or dairy. The constraint on how quickly it can expand is the parent flock, which takes months to build, so a very sharp increase in demand still runs into a hatching egg bottleneck.

### Currencies and the Brazilian real

The largest exporter sells in dollars and pays its costs in reais, so a weaker real cuts its dollar costs and lets it undercut competitors while still earning more at home. Currency moves therefore reallocate market share between Brazil, the United States, Thailand and the European suppliers without any change in production costs measured in feed. Importing currencies matter too, since a devaluation in an African or Southeast Asian buyer reduces its purchasing power for a product bought in dollars.

### Market access and plant approvals

Poultry trade is governed less by tariffs than by sanitary approvals. An exporting plant must be individually listed by the importing authority, and a delisting removes that plant's access even when the country's status is unchanged. Large importers use approvals, residue testing and labelling rules as instruments of policy, and the reopening or closing of a single large market can move an exporter's whole book. Antidumping cases and safeguard quotas add a second layer over the top.

### Substitution against beef and pork

Chicken is the cheapest widely available animal protein, so it gains share whenever the alternatives get expensive. High cattle prices push consumers toward chicken in the rich world; an outbreak of African swine fever that removes a large part of a country's pig herd does the same thing much more violently, as it did in China. The reverse also holds: cheap pork caps chicken prices. Chicken's role as the substitute of last resort makes its demand unusually stable and its price unusually sensitive to the others.

## How is chicken produced?

The industry rests on a breeding pyramid controlled by very few companies. Pedigree lines are maintained at the top, multiplied through great-grandparent and grandparent generations, and sold to producing countries as parent stock; those parents lay the hatching eggs that become commercial broilers. Only two international breeding groups supply most of the world's broiler genetics, and the birds are hybrids selected over decades for growth rate, feed conversion, breast yield and liveability. A commercial broiler is a terminal cross: it is not bred from, and every crop of chicks comes from the parent flock.

Hatching eggs are incubated for about three weeks, and day-old chicks are delivered to grow-out houses, usually run by contract farmers who own the building and the labor while the integrator owns the birds and supplies the feed and the veterinary program. Birds are grown loose on litter in climate-controlled sheds and fed a series of rations, high protein at the start and higher energy toward the end, for roughly five to seven weeks depending on the target weight; smaller birds go to whole-bird and rotisserie markets, larger ones to deboning for breast fillet and further processing. Mortality, water use, ventilation and litter condition are monitored continuously, and the flock is caught and hauled to the plant in a single night.

Processing is a continuous line. Birds are stunned, bled, scalded to loosen the feathers, plucked, and eviscerated by machine; the carcass is then chilled, either in a bath of chilled water, the standard American method, or in cold air, the standard European one, which affects both water uptake and shelf life. From there the carcass is either packed whole, cut into portions by automatic cone lines, or deboned for fillet and further processed into nuggets, patties and marinated products. Nothing is wasted: feet and paws are packed for export, offal is sold or rendered, and the remainder goes to rendering plants that produce poultry meal and fat for pet food and animal feed. Product for export is blast frozen and packed in cartons for reefer containers.


## What is chicken used for?

Chicken is food, and very little of it is anything else. It is eaten as whole birds, as portions, as boneless fillet and as further processed products, and it has become the most consumed meat in much of the world because it is cheap, quick to cook, low in fat and acceptable in every major dietary tradition. Growth in consumption has been fastest in middle-income countries, where rising incomes translate into animal protein more directly than anywhere else, which is why the fastest production growth in the table sits in Indonesia, Egypt, Pakistan and India rather than in the established producers.

The parts that western consumers reject support a second economy. Leg quarters, wings, gizzards, hearts, livers and necks are sold into markets that value them, and chicken feet and paws are a delicacy in China and a significant export line. What is left after that becomes rendered poultry meal and poultry fat, used in pet food and in aquaculture and livestock feed, and feather meal, a low-grade protein. Eggs are a separate industry with separate birds: laying hens are a different genetic line from broilers, and the two markets share only their feed.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Broiler production is the most vertically integrated agriculture there is. A single company typically owns or contracts the breeder flocks, the hatchery, the feed mill, the grow-out houses, the processing plant, the rendering operation and the sales book, so that the bird never changes owner between the egg and the carton. That structure exists because the biology is unforgiving on timing: chicks must be placed the day they hatch, feed must arrive on schedule, and birds must be caught when they hit weight. It also concentrates risk, because a single disease event or plant closure travels through every stage at once.

Exports move in refrigerated containers and in reefer vessels from a small number of ports: Itajaí, Navegantes, Paranaguá and Santos in Brazil; the US Gulf, Savannah and Charleston in the United States; Gdańsk and Rotterdam for the European suppliers; Laem Chabang for Thailand. Cold chain is the whole logistics problem. Product is blast frozen, kept below minus eighteen degrees for a voyage that may take five weeks, and cleared through veterinary inspection at the destination, where a temperature excursion or a paperwork failure can condemn a container.

The chokepoints are biological, regulatory and structural rather than geographic. Genetics are supplied by a very small number of breeding companies, so a disease event in the great-grandparent flocks would be felt worldwide years later. Avian influenza can close borders faster than any tariff. A single plant's delisting by a major importer removes access for that plant, and an importing country's approval list is a lever that can be pulled for reasons that have nothing to do with animal health. Reefer container availability and the cost of refrigerated shipping set a floor under the delivered price, and in the producing countries the availability of contract growers willing to invest in new sheds is the real constraint on expansion.


## Key companies

- JBS: processor, Brazil, listed (JBSS3)
- BRF: processor, Brazil, listed (BRFS3)
- Tyson Foods: processor, United States, listed (TSN)
- Wens Foodstuff Group: producer, China, listed (300498)
- Cargill: processor and feed supplier, United States
- CP Foods (Charoen Pokphand Foods): producer and processor, Thailand, listed (CPF)

## Timeline

- 1923: A delivery error starts the Delmarva broiler industry. A Delaware farm ordered fifty chicks for laying and was sent five hundred; raising and selling them for meat rather than eggs showed that chickens could be a crop in their own right, and the region became the first broiler cluster. (https://hvov.org/Poultry-Industry-Founders-Cecile-and-Wilmer-Steele)
- 1948: The Chicken of Tomorrow contest rewires the bird. A national breeding competition run with the US Department of Agriculture selected for meat yield rather than egg laying, and the broad-breasted broiler that resulted is the ancestor of nearly every chicken eaten today. (https://www.nal.usda.gov/exhibits/speccoll/exhibits/show/chicken-of-tomorrow)
- 1983-04: Pennsylvania avian influenza forces the first mass US cull. An H5N2 outbreak in the mid-Atlantic states led to the destruction of roughly seventeen million birds and established the depopulate-and-compensate playbook the United States still uses. (https://www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-poultry-disease/avian/avian-influenza)
- 1997-12: H5N1 in Hong Kong makes bird flu a trade question. The first widely reported human deaths from avian influenza led Hong Kong to destroy its entire live poultry population, and importing countries began writing flu clauses into poultry protocols. (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/influenza-(avian-and-other-zoonotic))
- 2004: Brazil passes the United States as the largest exporter. Brazilian exports overtook American shipments for the first time, on the back of cheap domestic corn and soymeal, integrated processors and access to halal markets. (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/369269631_The_emergence_of_Brazil_as_the_Leading_World_Exporter_of_Chicken_Meat)
- 2010-01: Russia bans US chlorine-rinsed poultry. Moscow barred imports of chicken washed in chlorine, closing what had been the largest single market for American leg quarters and pushing that trade toward Africa and Asia. (https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/poultry-eggs/trade)
- 2015-06: The largest US poultry health disaster on record. The 2014 to 2015 highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak killed or forced the destruction of more than fifty million birds across fifteen states, with direct losses near 1.6 billion dollars concentrated in turkeys and laying hens. (https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details?pubid=86281)
- 2018-06: Chicken sets its highest monthly benchmark price. The US Gulf export quotation reached its nominal peak in the World Bank series, the top of a run of high prices between 2012 and 2018 driven by strong global demand and expensive feed. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets)
- 2021-10: A global bird flu panzootic settles in. H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b spread through wild birds across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas and stopped being seasonal, turning export bans from rare shocks into a standing feature of the trade. (https://www.woah.org/en/disease/avian-influenza/)
- 2022-03: Feed costs jump after the invasion of Ukraine. Corn and soymeal prices rose sharply, and because feed is the largest cost in growing a broiler, the squeeze passed into chicken prices worldwide within months. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets)

## Frequently asked questions

### Which country produces the most chicken?

United States produced more chicken meat than any other country in 2024, 20.2 million tonnes in carcass weight, 16% of the world's 127.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). China was second with 12% and Brazil third with 11%. Producing and exporting differ: China eats what it raises, while Brazil sends a large share abroad.

### Where does chicken come from?

From intensive broiler farms located near cheap corn and soybean meal, because feed is most of the cost of a chicken. In 2024 the world produced 127.9 million tonnes across 190 countries (FAOSTAT), led by United States (16%), China (12%) and Brazil (11%). Most chicken is eaten close to where it is raised.

### Which country exports the most chicken?

Brazil was the largest exporter of poultry meat (HS 0207) in 2024, with $9.2 billion, 26% of the world's $35.8 billion of export value (CEPII BACI), ahead of United States (13%) and Poland (13%). The customs heading covers all poultry, so it includes turkey and duck alongside chicken.

### Who imports the most chicken?

China was the largest importer of poultry meat in 2024, taking $2.7 billion, or 7.7% of the world's $35.8 billion (CEPII BACI), followed by Germany (6.7%) and France (5.8%). Several countries appear as both large importers and large exporters because they buy the cuts their consumers prefer and sell the rest.

### Why is chicken cheaper than beef?

Because a broiler converts feed to meat far more efficiently and does it in about six weeks, while a beef animal takes years and needs land. Genetics, feed and plant scale have compounded that advantage: the US Gulf ports, broiler cuts series was -3% against ten years earlier, standing at $1.69/kg in August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### What is the price of chicken?

This site shows monthly averages, not live quotes. The US Gulf ports, broiler cuts quotation was $1.69/kg in August 2026, up 1% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The record monthly average was $2.72/kg in June 2018. There is no chicken futures contract anywhere, so published prices come from surveys of wholesale transactions.

### Why does America export chicken legs and not breasts?

Because American consumers pay a premium for boneless breast and eat comparatively little dark meat, so leg quarters are worth more abroad than at home. USDA reports that the majority of US broiler exports by weight are leg quarters and other dark meat. The export quotation reflects that: US Gulf ports, broiler cuts was $1.69/kg in August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### How does bird flu affect chicken prices?

Highly pathogenic avian influenza forces culling and movement restrictions, and it triggers import bans from trading partners, which can remove a major exporter from the market within days. Egg-laying flocks are usually hit harder than broilers, so egg prices move more than meat prices. The chicken benchmark was $1.69/kg in August 2026, up 1% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### What is chicken meat used for?

Almost all of it is eaten, as whole birds, portions, boneless fillet and further processed products such as nuggets and patties. Feet, paws, gizzards and other offal are exported to markets that value them. What remains is rendered into poultry meal and fat for pet food and animal feed. World output reached 127.9 million tonnes in 2024, +27% on ten years earlier (FAOSTAT).

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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 2026-09-06. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where does chicken come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/chicken/.

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# Where do chickpeas come from?

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

Chickpeas come mainly from India, which produced 11 million tonnes in 2024, 65% of the world's 16.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Australia (13%), Turkey (Türkiye) (3.4%) and Ethiopia (2.6%) follow; the top five together supply 87%. The biggest exporter of chickpeas (HS 071320) is Australia (24% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Chickpeas are a cool-season legume that finishes on stored soil moisture, so they concentrate where a dry season follows a wet one: India's post-monsoon rabi plains, Australia's northern grain belt, the Anatolian plateau and the Ethiopian highlands.

*A pulse eaten whole or milled into flour, and the base of hummus and falafel.* Also called: chick peas, garbanzo beans, gram, chana.

## Where do chickpeas come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | 11 million | 65% |
| 2 | Australia | 2.3 million | 13% |
| 3 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 575,000 | 3.4% |
| 4 | Ethiopia | 443,954 | 2.6% |
| 5 | Myanmar | 419,221 | 2.5% |
| 6 | Russia | 414,127 | 2.5% |
| 7 | Canada | 286,768 | 1.7% |
| 8 | Mexico | 266,628 | 1.6% |
| 9 | United States | 255,460 | 1.5% |
| 10 | Pakistan | 209,090 | 1.2% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 4.2% |
| | World | 16.9 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 India produced 11 million tonnes, 65% of the world's 16.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Australia followed with 13%, then Turkey (Türkiye) (3.4%), Ethiopia (2.6%) and Myanmar (2.5%). The top five account for 87%, 47 countries reported a crop and 4.2% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +28% over the ten years to 2024 and +5% on the previous year.

India is the whole story of this crop. It grows most of the world's chickpeas and eats more than it grows, so its own harvest, rather than anyone's export capacity, sets the world balance. Australia is the swing supplier, growing a crop it barely consumes, with Turkey (Türkiye), Ethiopia and Myanmar behind it.

Two types share the name and behave as separate commodities. Desi chickpeas are small, dark and angular, grown across South Asia and Ethiopia and usually split into dal or milled into flour. Kabuli chickpeas are large, pale and round, grown in Turkey, Mexico and the United States and sold whole for hummus and canning.


## Who exports and imports chickpeas?

### Exporters of chickpeas, dried and shelled (HS 071320), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Australia | $602.5 million | 24% |
| 2 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $359.5 million | 15% |
| 3 | Russia | $312 million | 13% |
| 4 | India | $294.2 million | 12% |
| 5 | Mexico | $170.6 million | 6.9% |
| 6 | Canada | $161.9 million | 6.6% |
| 7 | Tanzania | $108 million | 4.4% |
| 8 | United States | $101.4 million | 4.1% |
| 9 | Argentina | $91.2 million | 3.7% |
| 10 | United Arab Emirates | $44.7 million | 1.8% |
| 11 | Sudan | $29.8 million | 1.2% |
| 12 | Myanmar | $20.4 million | 0.8% |
| 13 | France | $17.4 million | 0.7% |
| 14 | Netherlands | $14.6 million | 0.6% |
| 15 | Ethiopia | $14 million | 0.6% |

### Importers of chickpeas, dried and shelled (HS 071320), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | $417.4 million | 17% |
| 2 | Pakistan | $303.8 million | 12% |
| 3 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $259 million | 11% |
| 4 | Bangladesh | $191.5 million | 7.8% |
| 5 | Algeria | $165.3 million | 6.7% |
| 6 | United Arab Emirates | $116 million | 4.7% |
| 7 | Saudi Arabia | $81.9 million | 3.3% |
| 8 | Iraq | $80.3 million | 3.3% |
| 9 | United States | $67 million | 2.7% |
| 10 | Spain | $57.1 million | 2.3% |
| 11 | Italy | $55.8 million | 2.3% |
| 12 | United Kingdom | $52.4 million | 2.1% |
| 13 | Egypt | $51.1 million | 2.1% |
| 14 | Canada | $35.8 million | 1.5% |
| 15 | Iran | $34.5 million | 1.4% |

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

Australia was the largest exporter of chickpeas (HS 071320) in 2024 with 24% of world export value, ahead of Turkey (Türkiye) (15%), on world trade of $2.5 billion (CEPII BACI). India was the largest importer with 17%.

India sits high on both the export and the import table, which is not a contradiction. It buys bulk desi chickpeas for its mills and its dal market and sells kabuli and specialty grades abroad. Australia leads the export table because it grows a crop it does not eat.

The rest of the table is geography. Turkey, Russia and Mexico ship into the Mediterranean, the Gulf and North America, while Pakistan, Bangladesh and Algeria buy for the same dishes India does. Because buying is concentrated in a handful of countries, one government's tariff decision moves the world price.


## What do chickpeas cost?

### How they are priced

There is no futures market for chickpeas and no free public benchmark price, so this site quotes none. India's exchange-traded chana contract, the only liquid futures market the crop has had, has been suspended by the securities regulator since 2021. What exists instead is physical: farm-gate and mandi prices in India, grower bids posted by Australian packers, and fob offers negotiated between exporters and importers.

Those physical prices are quoted by type and by size. Desi and kabuli trade separately, and within kabuli the caliber, counted as seeds per ounce or measured in millimeters, changes the price by multiples. Indian government procurement at minimum support prices, and public tenders by importing states, put a visible floor under parts of the market.


## What moves the price of chickpeas?

### India's import tariff

India is the largest consumer of chickpeas and adjusts its import duty to protect its own growers, sometimes within a season. Duty increases in 2017 and 2018 closed the Australian trade almost overnight and cut prices at the far end of the world; suspending the desi duty in 2024 reopened it.

### The Indian rabi crop

India's own harvest, sown on residual moisture after the monsoon, decides whether it buys abroad at all. A good monsoon leaves water in the soil profile and a large rabi crop, which removes the world's largest buyer from the market; a weak or early-ending monsoon does the opposite.

### Caliber and color, not tonnage

Kabuli quality is graded on size, color and skin damage, and a season that produces small or stained seed leaves a grower with a nominal kabuli crop selling at desi prices. Because the two types are not substitutes for most buyers, an average chickpea price means very little.

### Ascochyta blight and pod borer

Ascochyta blight destroys crops in a wet finish and forces fungicide programs and long rotations, while Helicoverpa larvae bore into pods and can take a crop in weeks. Both are managed with cost rather than avoided, which makes chickpeas a riskier rotation choice than the cereal they replace.

### Competition for rotation area

Chickpeas fix their own nitrogen and break cereal disease cycles like [lentils](/commodities/lentils/) do, but they compete for the same paddocks as wheat, barley and canola. When cereal prices are strong or chickpea demand is uncertain, area moves quickly and by large fractions.

## How are chickpeas produced?

Chickpeas are sown into a prepared seedbed at the start of a cool season and grow on stored soil moisture, fixing nitrogen through root nodules as they go. They flower and set pods over several weeks, then dry down in the field. Most of the crop is rainfed, with irrigation in parts of India, Mexico and the Middle East.

Harvest is by combine where fields are large and by hand where they are not. The seed is cleaned of soil, straw and weed seed and graded, and this is where value is made or lost: kabuli lots are sized over screens and sorted optically, and stained seed is diverted to milling.

Milling splits the story. Desi chickpeas are dehulled and split into chana dal or ground into besan flour, which needs equipment that India and Pakistan have in quantity. Kabuli chickpeas are mostly sold whole, either dry in bags or soaked, cooked and canned closer to the consumer.


## What are chickpeas used for?

Chickpeas are eaten whole in stews and salads, split as dal, and milled into flour for batters, breads and snacks. The kabuli type is the base of hummus and falafel and dominates canning; the desi type feeds the far larger South Asian dal and besan trade. Roasted snacks are a growing outlet, and chickpea protein has a place in plant-based foods.

By-products are used where the crop grows. Chickpea straw is valued fodder, higher in protein than cereal straw, and screenings, splits and broken seed go to livestock. The liquid from cooked or canned chickpeas, aquafaba, has become a minor commercial ingredient as an egg-white substitute.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Australian chickpeas move from farm to up-country storage or straight to packers, then by road and rail to Brisbane, Newcastle and Port Kembla and out in containers to the subcontinent and the Gulf. The trade moves in containers rather than bulk, because buyers want lots of a defined grade.

In India the crop moves through the mandi system to millers and to government procurement agencies, with private and state stocks both in play. Turkey and Mexico run their own kabuli packing industries, and Russia has built a desi export trade on expanding Black Sea pulse area.

The chokepoint is policy rather than logistics. Nothing about moving a bagged pulse is difficult, but the largest destination can be opened or closed by a customs notification, and growers on the other side of the world commit paddocks a year before they know which it will be.


## Timeline

- 2016: The UN runs an International Year of Pulses. A coordinated push on the nutritional and soil-fertility case for pulses lifted the profile of chickpeas and lentils in food manufacturing and in rotation planning. (https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/From-butter-beans-to-pigeon-peas-UN-launches-International-Year-of-Pulses/en)
- 2016: Australian chickpea trade with India peaks. India took most of Australia's crop at a value the industry had never seen, and Australian growers expanded area on the assumption the market would stay open. (https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2023-11-05/australia-worlds-largest-chickpea-exporter-pulse-council-growth/103057674)
- December 2017: India imposes an import duty on chickpeas. A large domestic harvest and falling farm prices prompted a tariff that shut the door on imports and stranded exporters who had planted for that market. (https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2019/september/u-s-exports-of-chickpeas-lentils-and-dry-peas-have-dropped-sharply-due-to-a-steep-decline-in-shipments-to-india)
- 2018: India raises pulse tariffs again. A second increase, partly in retaliation for United States steel and aluminum duties, pushed rates to levels that ended the trade rather than merely slowing it. (https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2019/september/u-s-exports-of-chickpeas-lentils-and-dry-peas-have-dropped-sharply-due-to-a-steep-decline-in-shipments-to-india)
- August 2021: India suspends chana futures trading. The securities regulator halted derivatives trading in chickpeas and other farm commodities to curb price speculation, removing the crop's only liquid futures market. (https://krishijagran.com/commodity-news/review-on-sebi-s-suspension-of-futures-trading-in-chana-rm-seed/)
- 2023: Australian production falls to a fraction of its pre-tariff level. Six years without the largest buyer showed how quickly area contracts when one destination accounts for most of a crop's demand. (https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2023-11-05/australia-worlds-largest-chickpea-exporter-pulse-council-growth/103057674)
- May 2024: India suspends the duty on desi chickpeas. A short domestic crop reopened the Indian market to Australian and Russian supply, and growers replanted the area they had abandoned. (https://grainsaustralia.com.au/news/2024/05/suspension-of-indian-chickpea-tariffs-offers-valuable-opportunities)
- 2024: Australia harvests a record pulse crop. Record chickpea area and strong yields met a reopened Indian market, restoring in one season a trade that tariffs had suppressed for six years. (https://saskpulse.com/resources/australia-harvests-a-record-pulse-crop/)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most chickpeas

India produced 11 million tonnes in 2024, 65% of the world's 16.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Australia was second with 13%, and the top five together accounted for 87%. India also eats more chickpeas than it grows, which is why it appears near the top of the import table as well.

### what is the difference between desi and kabuli chickpeas

Desi chickpeas are small, dark and angular, grown mainly in South Asia and Ethiopia and usually dehulled and split into chana dal or milled into besan flour. Kabuli chickpeas are larger, paler and rounder, sold whole for hummus, canning and salads. They trade as separate commodities at different prices.

### are chickpeas and garbanzo beans the same thing

Yes. Garbanzo is the Spanish name for the same plant, and in the United States it usually refers to the large pale kabuli type sold whole or canned. Neither is a bean botanically; the chickpea is its own genus in the legume family, and it is counted as a pulse rather than an oilseed.

### why did australia stop exporting chickpeas to india

India raised its chickpea import duty from December 2017 and again in 2018, which closed a market that had taken most of Australia's crop. Australian production fell sharply over the following years. India suspended the duty on desi chickpeas in May 2024 and the trade resumed.

### do chickpeas improve the soil

They fix atmospheric nitrogen through bacteria in root nodules, leaving nitrogen for the next crop, and they break the disease cycles that build up under continuous cereals. That agronomic value is why growers in dry regions keep chickpeas in the rotation even when the price is uncertain.

### how are chickpeas priced

By type, grade and seed size, in physical markets rather than on an exchange. India's chana futures contract has been suspended since 2021, and there is no published world benchmark. Reference points are Indian mandi prices, grower bids from Australian and Canadian packers, and negotiated fob offers between exporters and importers.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where does chromium come from?

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

Chromium comes mainly from South Africa, which produced 23 million tonnes in 2025, 45% of the world's 51 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Turkey (Türkiye) (18%), Kazakhstan (14%) and India (5.9%) follow; the top five together supply 86%. The biggest exporter of chromium ore (HS 2610) is South Africa (85% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Chromite forms in layered igneous intrusions and in ophiolite complexes where oceanic crust was thrust onto land, and the same Bushveld intrusion that holds most of the world's platinum also holds most of its chromium, which is why one geological body underpins two unrelated industries.

*The metal that makes stainless steel stainless, mined as chromite ore and smelted into ferrochrome.* Also called: chrome, chromite, ferrochrome, chrome ore, Cr.

## Where does chromium come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Africa | 23 million | 45% |
| 2 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 9 million | 18% |
| 3 | Kazakhstan | 7 million | 14% |
| 4 | India | 3 million | 5.9% |
| 5 | Brazil | 2 million | 3.9% |
| 6 | Zimbabwe | 2 million | 3.9% |
| 7 | Finland | 1.9 million | 3.7% |
| | Rest of world | 3 million | 6.1% |
| | World | 51 million | 100% |

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026.

In 2025 South Africa mined 23 million tonnes of chromite ore, 45% of the world's 51 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Turkey (Türkiye) followed with 18%, then Kazakhstan (14%), India (5.9%) and Brazil (3.9%). The top five account for 86%. Reserves are extremely concentrated: South Africa holds 39% of the world's 901.4 million tonnes of chromite ore (USGS MCS).

The Bushveld Complex in South Africa contains chromitite layers, most importantly the Lower Group 6 and Middle Group seams, that can be followed laterally for tens of kilometers, and they hold the great majority of world chromite reserves. Kazakhstan's Kempirsai deposit is smaller but exceptionally high grade. Turkey, India, Finland and Zimbabwe supply the rest, with Turkish and Indian ore feeding both domestic and Chinese smelters.

Everything about chromium comes back to one product. Around nine-tenths of chromite is used to make ferrochrome, and essentially all ferrochrome is used to make stainless steel, which is defined as steel containing at least about eleven percent chromium. That chromium forms a self-repairing oxide film on the surface, and that film is the whole reason stainless steel does not rust. There is no substitute for chromium in that role at any price.

Production is measured here as chromite ore tonnage rather than contained chromium, following the source. Ore grades vary, and the chromium-to-iron ratio matters as much as the chromium percentage for smelting economics.

## Who exports and imports chromium?

South Africa holds most of the world's chromite but exports much of it as ore rather than alloy; China smelts the ferrochrome, and electricity prices decide where smelting happens.

### Exporters of chromium ores and concentrates (HS 2610), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Africa | $7.2 billion | 85% |
| 2 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $408.8 million | 4.9% |
| 3 | Zimbabwe | $145.6 million | 1.7% |
| 4 | Pakistan | $133.8 million | 1.6% |
| 5 | Kazakhstan | $113.7 million | 1.4% |
| 6 | Albania | $109.1 million | 1.3% |
| 7 | Oman | $56.3 million | 0.7% |
| 8 | Papua New Guinea | $55.3 million | 0.7% |
| 9 | Philippines | $36.1 million | 0.4% |
| 10 | Madagascar | $33.4 million | 0.4% |
| 11 | Netherlands | $32.7 million | 0.4% |
| 12 | China | $19.7 million | 0.2% |
| 13 | United Arab Emirates | $17.1 million | 0.2% |
| 14 | Mozambique | $14.6 million | 0.2% |
| 15 | Germany | $11.8 million | 0.1% |

### Importers of chromium ores and concentrates (HS 2610), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $5.5 billion | 65% |
| 2 | Mozambique | $2 billion | 24% |
| 3 | Russia | $134.3 million | 1.6% |
| 4 | Indonesia | $112.7 million | 1.3% |
| 5 | Hong Kong | $92.7 million | 1.1% |
| 6 | India | $82.3 million | 1% |
| 7 | Singapore | $66.7 million | 0.8% |
| 8 | United Arab Emirates | $61.5 million | 0.7% |
| 9 | South Africa | $54 million | 0.6% |
| 10 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $49.3 million | 0.6% |
| 11 | Sweden | $41.5 million | 0.5% |
| 12 | Netherlands | $41.4 million | 0.5% |
| 13 | Germany | $32.5 million | 0.4% |
| 14 | Japan | $24.4 million | 0.3% |
| 15 | United States | $17.3 million | 0.2% |

### Exporters of ferro-chromium containing more than 4% carbon (HS 720241), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Africa | $4.4 billion | 50% |
| 2 | Kazakhstan | $2.1 billion | 24% |
| 3 | India | $699.3 million | 7.9% |
| 4 | Zimbabwe | $383.9 million | 4.3% |
| 5 | Finland | $348.4 million | 3.9% |
| 6 | Netherlands | $165.9 million | 1.9% |
| 7 | Russia | $135.8 million | 1.5% |
| 8 | Sweden | $120.7 million | 1.4% |
| 9 | Albania | $118.9 million | 1.3% |
| 10 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $82.4 million | 0.9% |
| 11 | Brazil | $58 million | 0.7% |
| 12 | Oman | $55.8 million | 0.6% |
| 13 | China | $44.7 million | 0.5% |
| 14 | Mozambique | $22.9 million | 0.3% |
| 15 | Italy | $14.6 million | 0.2% |

### Importers of ferro-chromium containing more than 4% carbon (HS 720241), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $3 billion | 34% |
| 2 | Mozambique | $1.2 billion | 13% |
| 3 | Indonesia | $1.1 billion | 12% |
| 4 | Japan | $685.9 million | 7.7% |
| 5 | United States | $534.2 million | 6% |
| 6 | South Korea | $418.8 million | 4.7% |
| 7 | Netherlands | $328.9 million | 3.7% |
| 8 | Belgium | $270.6 million | 3% |
| 9 | Italy | $201.7 million | 2.3% |
| 10 | Germany | $175.3 million | 2% |
| 11 | Other Asia, nes | $129.8 million | 1.5% |
| 12 | Spain | $117 million | 1.3% |
| 13 | Sweden | $100.3 million | 1.1% |
| 14 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $79.5 million | 0.9% |
| 15 | France | $77.3 million | 0.9% |

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

South Africa was the largest exporter of chromium ore (HS 2610) in 2024 with 85% of world export value, ahead of Turkey (Türkiye) (4.9%), on world trade of $8.4 billion (CEPII BACI). China was the largest importer with 65%.

That table is ore, and it shows the central tension in the industry. South Africa mines most of the world's chromite and exports a large share of it as raw ore to China, which smelts it into ferrochrome and makes stainless steel. South Africa has the ore and the smelting tradition but not, reliably, the electricity; China has the power, the furnaces and the stainless mills. Successive South African governments have considered export taxes or restrictions on raw chromite to force domestic smelting, and the debate turns entirely on whether the electricity to run those furnaces exists.

## What does chromium cost?

### How it is priced

This page quotes no chromium price, because no free public series exists. Ferrochrome has historically been settled on a quarterly European benchmark negotiated between the largest South African producer and the main stainless mills, with spot assessments for South African and Chinese material published by private price reporting agencies. Chromite ore is assessed separately, delivered to Chinese ports, again privately. There is no exchange contract of any consequence.

The pricing logic is worth understanding even without a number. A ferrochrome smelter buys ore, coke or coal as a reductant, and a very large quantity of electricity, and sells alloy. Because power can be forty percent or more of conversion cost, the ferrochrome price effectively embeds an electricity price, and the geography of smelting has followed cheap power from South Africa toward China and Indonesia over two decades.

Stainless steel mills, the only real customers, buy on an alloy surcharge model: the price of a stainless coil is a base price plus a surcharge reflecting the cost of chromium, nickel and molybdenum in the grade. That mechanism passes raw material cost straight through to the buyer, which is why stainless demand is less price-sensitive to chromium than it might appear and why the ferrochrome market is driven by stainless volume rather than by stainless price.

## What moves the price of chromium?

### Stainless steel production

Essentially all chromium demand is stainless steel demand, and Chinese and Indonesian mills dominate world output. Stainless production volumes, driven by construction, appliances, process industry and transport, therefore set chromium demand directly, and there is no substitution to soften the link.

### Electricity cost and availability

Ferrochrome smelting is among the most power-intensive metallurgical processes in use. South African load shedding has repeatedly forced smelters to run below capacity or close, while cheap Indonesian and Chinese power has attracted new furnaces. The map of smelting is essentially a map of electricity tariffs.

### South African export policy

Periodic proposals to tax or restrict raw chromite exports, intended to force domestic beneficiation, hang over the market. Because South Africa supplies so much of the ore that Chinese smelters use, even the prospect of restriction moves buying behaviour and inventories.

### Chrome-to-iron ratio and ore grade

Smelters value ore for its chromium content relative to iron, not just its chromium percentage, because iron dilutes the alloy. High-ratio Kazakh ore therefore commands a premium over lower-ratio South African material, and the discount between them widens when smelter margins are thin.

### Chinese port stocks

Chromite inventories at Chinese ports are large relative to monthly smelting demand and act as the market's shock absorber. A build-up during a smelter margin squeeze depresses ore prices for months even when mine output is unchanged.

### Nickel prices

Austenitic stainless grades contain both chromium and nickel, and when nickel becomes very expensive mills shift toward ferritic and 200-series grades that use less nickel and, in some cases, more chromium or manganese. That substitution changes chromium demand without any change in total stainless output.

## How is chromium produced?

Chromite is mined by underground and open-pit methods from the seams of the Bushveld and from ophiolite bodies elsewhere. The ore is crushed and concentrated by gravity separation, since chromite is denser than the surrounding silicates, producing a concentrate that is sold as lumpy ore, chips or fines. Fine concentrate must be agglomerated into pellets or briquettes before it can be smelted efficiently.

Smelting takes place in submerged arc furnaces, where chromite, a carbon reductant and a flux are heated by electricity until the chromium and iron oxides are reduced to a molten ferrochrome alloy. High-carbon ferrochrome, the bulk product, contains several percent carbon. Charge chrome, a slightly lower-grade variant, is what most stainless mills actually buy. Low-carbon and medium-carbon grades require further refining and are used for specialty steels.

At the stainless mill, ferrochrome is melted with scrap and other alloying elements in an electric arc furnace and refined, usually by argon-oxygen decarburisation, which removes carbon without oxidising the valuable chromium. The finished steel is cast, hot rolled, annealed, pickled and cold rolled.

A separate and much smaller chemical chain converts chromite into sodium dichromate and then into chromic acid, chrome plating chemicals and leather tanning agents. This chain is tightly regulated because hexavalent chromium compounds are toxic and carcinogenic, and controls on their use have grown steadily stricter.

## What is chromium used for?

Stainless steel is the use, at roughly nine-tenths of demand. Chromium above about eleven percent creates a passive oxide layer that reforms when scratched, giving corrosion resistance that carbon steel cannot approach. Stainless goes into kitchen equipment and appliances, architectural cladding, chemical and food processing plant, oil and gas equipment, medical instruments, cutlery and transport.

Alloy and tool steels use chromium in smaller percentages for hardenability and wear resistance, and superalloys for turbines rely on it for high-temperature oxidation resistance. Chrome plating gives a hard, bright, corrosion-resistant surface on everything from taps to hydraulic rams.

Refractories made from chromite withstand slag attack in furnace linings, though this use has declined on health grounds. Foundry sands use chromite for its thermal properties. Chrome chemicals tan leather, pigment paints and treat timber, though hexavalent chromium restrictions have reduced several of these markets. Nothing in this list rivals stainless steel in volume.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is ore, ferrochrome, stainless steel, and it is stretched across continents in a way that is entirely explained by electricity. South Africa holds the ore and has smelters that increasingly cannot get reliable power; China has furnaces and mills and buys the ore; Indonesia has built stainless capacity next to cheap captive coal power and now smelts both nickel and chromium. Every question about chromium supply security eventually becomes a question about where cheap, reliable electricity is available.

Physically, moving chromite is unremarkable bulk shipping from Richards Bay and Durban, from Kazakh rail links, and from Turkish and Indian ports. The chokepoints are the same South African rail and port constraints described on the manganese page, since the two minerals compete for the same corridors.

The concentration risk is real but differently shaped from most critical minerals. Reserves are overwhelmingly in one country and processing is overwhelmingly in another, so a disruption at either end matters, and the two are linked by a single long shipping route. Unlike lithium or graphite, though, there is no meaningful recycling gap: stainless steel is one of the most recycled materials in the world, and scrap supplies a large share of chromium units in mature markets, which cushions the primary chain considerably.

The genuine long-term constraint is South African electricity. If it improves, more smelting happens at the ore; if it does not, ore keeps travelling and the value stays where the power is.

## Key companies

- Glencore-Merafe Chrome Venture: miner and ferrochrome producer, South Africa, listed (MRF)
- Samancor Chrome: miner and ferrochrome producer, South Africa
- Eurasian Resources Group: miner and ferrochrome producer, Luxembourg
- Yildirim Group: miner and ferrochrome producer, Turkey
- Outokumpu: stainless steel producer and chromite miner, Finland, listed (OUT1V)
- Tsingshan Holding Group: stainless steel producer, China

## Timeline

- 1913: Stainless steel is developed. The discovery that adding chromium above about eleven percent makes steel resist corrosion created essentially the entire modern demand for the metal. (https://worldsteel.org)
- 1924: Bushveld chromitite seams are mapped. Systematic work on the same intrusion that yielded the platinum reefs established South Africa's dominance of world chromite reserves. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 1938: Kempirsai in Kazakhstan enters production. An exceptionally high-grade deposit gave the market a source with a favorable chromium-to-iron ratio that still commands a premium over South African ore. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 1968: Argon-oxygen decarburisation transforms stainless making. A refining method that removes carbon without burning off chromium let mills use cheaper high-carbon ferrochrome, cutting stainless costs and expanding demand sharply. (https://worldsteel.org)
- 2006: Chinese ferrochrome smelting overtakes South Africa. Cheap power and proximity to stainless mills moved the conversion step to China, turning South Africa into an ore exporter rather than an alloy exporter. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 2008-01: South African power cuts halt smelters. A national electricity emergency stopped ferrochrome furnaces alongside the platinum mines, and the resulting alloy shortage lifted prices sharply. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 2013: South Africa debates a chrome ore export tax. Proposals to restrict raw ore exports to force domestic smelting became a recurring policy question, unresolved because the electricity to run more furnaces was not available. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 2019: Indonesian stainless capacity changes the demand map. Integrated nickel and stainless complexes built next to captive coal power created a second large centre of chromium consumption outside China. (https://worldsteel.org)
- 2022-06: European hexavalent chromium rules tighten further. Stricter authorisation requirements for chromium trioxide in plating and surface treatment reduced the chemical market and pushed users toward alternatives. (https://echa.europa.eu/)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most chromium

South Africa mined 23 million tonnes of chromite ore in 2025, 45% of the world's 51 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Turkey (Türkiye) was second with 18%. Reserves are more concentrated still, with South Africa holding 39% of the world total.

### what is chromium used for

Around nine-tenths goes into stainless steel, where chromium above about eleven percent forms a self-repairing oxide film that prevents rusting. Smaller uses are alloy and tool steels, superalloys, chrome plating, refractories, foundry sands and leather tanning chemicals.

### why is there no chromium price on this page

No free public series exists. Ferrochrome has historically settled on a quarterly European benchmark negotiated between producers and stainless mills, with spot assessments published privately, and chromite ore is assessed privately too. There is no exchange contract of consequence.

### why does South Africa export ore instead of ferrochrome

Because smelting ferrochrome is extremely power-intensive and South African electricity has been unreliable and expensive. China and Indonesia have cheaper, more reliable power, so the conversion step moved there and South Africa ships raw ore instead.

### can stainless steel be made without chromium

No. The definition of stainless steel is steel containing at least about eleven percent chromium, because that is the threshold at which a passive, self-repairing oxide film forms. No other element performs that job at any comparable cost.

### how much chromium is left

South Africa holds 39% of world chromite ore reserves of 901.4 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Concentration is extreme, though stainless steel is heavily recycled, so scrap supplies a large share of chromium units in mature markets and cushions demand for primary ore.

### what moves the chromium price

Stainless steel output above all, then electricity costs at smelters, South African export policy and rail performance, ore grade and chromium-to-iron ratio, Chinese port inventories, and nickel prices, which shift stainless grade mix and therefore chromium intensity.

## Sources

- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries
- 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

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

---

# Where does cinnamon come from?

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

Cinnamon comes mainly from China, which produced 94,216 tonnes in 2024, 38% of the world's 244,815 tonnes (FAOSTAT). Vietnam (29%), Indonesia (23%) and Sri Lanka (8.4%) follow; the top five together supply 100%. The biggest exporter of cinnamon (HS 0906) is Vietnam (28% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Cinnamon is bark stripped from coppiced trees that need wet tropical lowlands, and the split between Sri Lanka's thin, mild true cinnamon and the far cheaper cassia grown in China, Vietnam and Indonesia explains where the crop is grown and who buys it.

*The dried inner bark of Cinnamomum trees, sold as true cinnamon from Sri Lanka or the cheaper cassia.* Also called: cassia, ceylon cinnamon, true cinnamon.

## Where does cinnamon come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 94,216 | 38% |
| 2 | Vietnam | 71,307 | 29% |
| 3 | Indonesia | 55,204 | 23% |
| 4 | Sri Lanka | 20,587 | 8.4% |
| 5 | Madagascar | 3,248 | 1.3% |
| 6 | Timor-Leste | 125 | 0.1% |
| 7 | São Tomé and Príncipe | 57.6 | <0.1% |
| 8 | Grenada | 37.4 | <0.1% |
| 9 | Dominica | 33.8 | <0.1% |
| 10 | Seychelles | 0 | <0.1% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | <0.1% |
| | World | 244,815 | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

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.


## Who exports and imports cinnamon?

### Exporters of cinnamon and cinnamon-tree flowers (HS 0906), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Vietnam | $236.7 million | 28% |
| 2 | Sri Lanka | $199.5 million | 24% |
| 3 | Indonesia | $140.6 million | 17% |
| 4 | China | $128.4 million | 15% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $15.3 million | 1.8% |
| 6 | India | $14.5 million | 1.7% |
| 7 | United States | $14.3 million | 1.7% |
| 8 | Germany | $12.7 million | 1.5% |
| 9 | Madagascar | $10.1 million | 1.2% |
| 10 | France | $6.8 million | 0.8% |
| 11 | Spain | $5.5 million | 0.7% |
| 12 | Poland | $5.5 million | 0.7% |
| 13 | Austria | $4.8 million | 0.6% |
| 14 | United Kingdom | $2.8 million | 0.3% |
| 15 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $2.8 million | 0.3% |

### Importers of cinnamon and cinnamon-tree flowers (HS 0906), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $164.4 million | 20% |
| 2 | India | $98.7 million | 12% |
| 3 | Mexico | $90.5 million | 11% |
| 4 | Peru | $22.8 million | 2.7% |
| 5 | Saudi Arabia | $22.2 million | 2.7% |
| 6 | Germany | $22.1 million | 2.6% |
| 7 | Canada | $21 million | 2.5% |
| 8 | United Kingdom | $18.3 million | 2.2% |
| 9 | Bangladesh | $17.3 million | 2.1% |
| 10 | Netherlands | $16.4 million | 2% |
| 11 | Spain | $14.3 million | 1.7% |
| 12 | United Arab Emirates | $13.6 million | 1.6% |
| 13 | Pakistan | $12.7 million | 1.5% |
| 14 | Poland | $12.6 million | 1.5% |
| 15 | Vietnam | $11.7 million | 1.4% |

### Exporters of cinnamon (cinnamomum zeylanicum), neither crushed nor ground (HS 090611), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sri Lanka | $181.9 million | 58% |
| 2 | Vietnam | $48.9 million | 16% |
| 3 | Indonesia | $30.2 million | 9.6% |
| 4 | China | $20.5 million | 6.5% |
| 5 | Madagascar | $6.3 million | 2% |
| 6 | India | $5 million | 1.6% |
| 7 | United States | $2.1 million | 0.7% |
| 8 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $2.1 million | 0.7% |
| 9 | Netherlands | $1.9 million | 0.6% |
| 10 | Germany | $1.4 million | 0.4% |
| 11 | Spain | $1.3 million | 0.4% |
| 12 | France | $1.1 million | 0.4% |
| 13 | Nepal | $966,967 | 0.3% |
| 14 | Israel | $955,308 | 0.3% |
| 15 | Austria | $944,615 | 0.3% |

### Importers of cinnamon (cinnamomum zeylanicum), neither crushed nor ground (HS 090611), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mexico | $81.4 million | 26% |
| 2 | United States | $60.7 million | 19% |
| 3 | Peru | $22 million | 7% |
| 4 | Saudi Arabia | $11.8 million | 3.8% |
| 5 | India | $8.8 million | 2.8% |
| 6 | Colombia | $8.7 million | 2.8% |
| 7 | Indonesia | $8.2 million | 2.6% |
| 8 | Spain | $7 million | 2.2% |
| 9 | Guatemala | $6.9 million | 2.2% |
| 10 | Dominican Republic | $6 million | 1.9% |
| 11 | United Kingdom | $5.1 million | 1.6% |
| 12 | Bolivia | $4.7 million | 1.5% |
| 13 | Morocco | $4.5 million | 1.4% |
| 14 | Germany | $4.1 million | 1.3% |
| 15 | Malaysia | $3.9 million | 1.2% |

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

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.


## What does cinnamon cost?

### How it is priced

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.


## What moves the price of cinnamon?

### Coumarin limits

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.

### Peeling labor

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 harvest cycles

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.

### Species substitution and labeling

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.

### Bark oil and leaf oil demand

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.

## How is cinnamon produced?

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.


## What is cinnamon used for?

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.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

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.


## Timeline

- 1765: Systematic cinnamon cultivation begins in Ceylon. Experimental planting in Colombo under the Dutch governor showed cinnamon could be farmed rather than gathered from wild trees, which is the origin of the plantation industry. (https://cinnamon.gov.lk/about-cinnamon/history/)
- 1800s: Britain expands the Ceylon cinnamon plantations. Colonial administrators secured the best cinnamon land around Colombo and Negombo and enlarged the planted area, fixing the southwestern belt as the home of true cinnamon. (https://cinnamon.gov.lk/about-cinnamon/history/)
- 2011: EU flavouring rules set maximum coumarin levels in named foods. Because cassia is high in coumarin and true cinnamon is not, a food safety rule became the main commercial dividing line between the two species. (https://www.cbi.eu/market-information/spices-herbs/cinnamon-0/market-entry)
- 2020-06: New binding EU residue limits for chlorate apply to spices. Residue rules tightened the testing burden on cinnamon shipments and pushed exporters toward washing and handling practices that could be documented. (https://www.cbi.eu/market-information/spices-herbs/cinnamon-0/market-entry)
- 2022-02: Ceylon Cinnamon is registered as a protected geographical indication in the EU. The registration reserved the name for cinnamon grown and processed in Sri Lanka, giving the true-cinnamon trade a legal defense against cassia sold under the same word. (https://www.srilankabusiness.com/spices/ceylon-cinnamon-geographical-indication.html)
- 2023: Sri Lanka creates a Department of Cinnamon Development. Placing cinnamon alongside tea and rubber in the state's agricultural machinery signaled that the country intends to defend a premium niche rather than compete on volume. (https://cinnamon.gov.lk/about-cinnamon/history/)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most cinnamon

China produced 94,216 tonnes in 2024, 38% of the world's 244,815 tonnes (FAOSTAT), ahead of Vietnam at 29%. Note that FAOSTAT counts cinnamon and cassia together in one item, so most of that tonnage is cassia rather than the true cinnamon of Sri Lanka, which reported 8.4%.

### what is the difference between ceylon cinnamon and cassia

They come from different Cinnamomum species. Ceylon or true cinnamon has thin, layered, brittle quills, a milder flavor and very little coumarin. Cassia has thick, hard, single-layer bark, a stronger flavor and much more coumarin. Cassia is far cheaper and accounts for most of the world's cinnamon trade.

### why is ceylon cinnamon more expensive

Because it is peeled by hand. A trained peeler loosens the inner bark, strips it in sheets and telescopes the sheets into a quill, and the skill takes years to learn. Sri Lanka took 58% of exports under the true-cinnamon heading in 2024 (CEPII BACI).

### which country imports the most cinnamon

United States was the largest importer of cinnamon (HS 0906) in 2024 with 20% of world import value, ahead of India at 12% (CEPII BACI). Under the narrower true-cinnamon heading the largest importer was Mexico with 26%, reflecting long-established use of thin Ceylon quills in Mexican cooking and drinks.

### how is cinnamon harvested

Trees are grown as coppiced bushes. They are cut back to a stump and the shoots harvested every one to two years, usually after rain, when bark separates most easily from the wood. The bark is then peeled by hand for Ceylon cinnamon or stripped in slabs and sun-dried for cassia.

### is there a cinnamon price benchmark

No. Cinnamon has no futures contract and no free public benchmark price, and this site quotes none. Ceylon cinnamon is sold against quill grades describing diameter and appearance, and cassia is sold by origin, form and volatile oil content, so the two trade at very different levels.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where do cloves come from?

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

Cloves come mainly from Indonesia, which produced 147,953 tonnes in 2024, 74% of the world's 198,941 tonnes (FAOSTAT). Madagascar (13%), Tanzania (4.3%) and Comoros (3.9%) follow; the top five together supply 98%. The biggest exporter of cloves (HS 090711) is Indonesia (46% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The clove tree came from a handful of small islands in eastern Indonesia and was carried out of them by smugglers to the Indian Ocean, and Indonesia still grows most of the world's crop mainly in order to smoke it.

*Dried flower buds of a tropical tree, most of the crop going into Indonesian kretek cigarettes rather than food.* Also called: clove, clove buds, syzygium aromaticum.

## Where do cloves come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indonesia | 147,953 | 74% |
| 2 | Madagascar | 25,114 | 13% |
| 3 | Tanzania | 8,575 | 4.3% |
| 4 | Comoros | 7,767 | 3.9% |
| 5 | Sri Lanka | 5,813 | 2.9% |
| 6 | Kenya | 2,136 | 1.1% |
| 7 | China | 1,337 | 0.7% |
| 8 | Malaysia | 226 | 0.1% |
| 9 | Grenada | 19 | <0.1% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | <0.1% |
| | World | 198,941 | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

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.


## Who exports and imports cloves?

### Exporters of cloves (whole fruit, cloves and stems), neither crushed nor ground (HS 090710), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indonesia | $303 million | 46% |
| 2 | Madagascar | $223.1 million | 34% |
| 3 | Tanzania | $32.8 million | 5% |
| 4 | Comoros | $21.1 million | 3.2% |
| 5 | Singapore | $16.3 million | 2.5% |
| 6 | Sri Lanka | $11.3 million | 1.7% |
| 7 | India | $10 million | 1.5% |
| 8 | Netherlands | $4.3 million | 0.7% |
| 9 | Germany | $4.1 million | 0.6% |
| 10 | United Arab Emirates | $3.4 million | 0.5% |
| 11 | Brazil | $3 million | 0.5% |
| 12 | France | $2.4 million | 0.4% |
| 13 | China | $2.1 million | 0.3% |
| 14 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $2.1 million | 0.3% |
| 15 | Spain | $1.7 million | 0.3% |

### Importers of cloves (whole fruit, cloves and stems), neither crushed nor ground (HS 090710), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | $216 million | 33% |
| 2 | Indonesia | $57.5 million | 8.8% |
| 3 | United Arab Emirates | $50.3 million | 7.7% |
| 4 | China | $35.3 million | 5.4% |
| 5 | Saudi Arabia | $30.6 million | 4.7% |
| 6 | Singapore | $28 million | 4.3% |
| 7 | United States | $23.5 million | 3.6% |
| 8 | Bangladesh | $17 million | 2.6% |
| 9 | Vietnam | $13 million | 2% |
| 10 | Peru | $12.1 million | 1.9% |
| 11 | Pakistan | $11.6 million | 1.8% |
| 12 | Mexico | $10.1 million | 1.5% |
| 13 | Netherlands | $7.9 million | 1.2% |
| 14 | Germany | $7 million | 1.1% |
| 15 | Egypt | $6.7 million | 1% |

### Exporters of cloves, crushed or ground (HS 090720), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indonesia | $5.8 million | 23% |
| 2 | Madagascar | $2.5 million | 9.6% |
| 3 | Vietnam | $2.3 million | 9.1% |
| 4 | India | $2.2 million | 8.7% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $1.9 million | 7.5% |
| 6 | Spain | $1.9 million | 7.3% |
| 7 | Sri Lanka | $1.8 million | 7.2% |
| 8 | Germany | $1.6 million | 6.1% |
| 9 | United States | $708,840 | 2.8% |
| 10 | Canada | $597,078 | 2.3% |
| 11 | France | $541,523 | 2.1% |
| 12 | Comoros | $523,530 | 2% |
| 13 | Timor-Leste | $359,518 | 1.4% |
| 14 | Tanzania | $337,479 | 1.3% |
| 15 | Austria | $273,547 | 1.1% |

### Importers of cloves, crushed or ground (HS 090720), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $6.9 million | 27% |
| 2 | United Kingdom | $1.4 million | 5.4% |
| 3 | Canada | $1.3 million | 5.2% |
| 4 | South Africa | $1.3 million | 5% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $1.1 million | 4.3% |
| 6 | Germany | $1 million | 4% |
| 7 | France | $990,507 | 3.9% |
| 8 | Sweden | $889,716 | 3.5% |
| 9 | Egypt | $839,023 | 3.3% |
| 10 | Poland | $721,263 | 2.8% |
| 11 | Australia | $599,270 | 2.3% |
| 12 | Nigeria | $592,368 | 2.3% |
| 13 | China | $504,938 | 2% |
| 14 | Belgium | $480,570 | 1.9% |
| 15 | Saudi Arabia | $480,555 | 1.9% |

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

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.


## What do cloves cost?

### How they are priced

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.


## What moves the price of cloves?

### Kretek demand and tobacco taxation

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.

### Biennial bearing

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.

### Cyclones in Madagascar

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.

### Indonesian import demand

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.

### Tree age and replanting

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.

## How are cloves produced?

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.


## What are cloves used for?

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.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

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.


## Timeline

- 1522: Portuguese forts are built on the clove islands of Maluku. Fortifying the only islands then growing cloves turned a local crop into the object of European competition and set the pattern of monopoly that followed. (https://www.aramcoworld.com/articles/2021/spice-migrations-cloves)
- 1600s: The Dutch East India Company destroys clove trees outside its control. A policy of extirpation confined cloves to islands the company held, keeping supply short and prices high for more than a century. (https://www.aramcoworld.com/articles/2021/spice-migrations-cloves)
- 1770: Clove seedlings are smuggled out to Mauritius. Breaking the monopoly let cloves spread to Réunion, the Seychelles and Madagascar, creating the Indian Ocean supply base that still serves the food trade. (https://www.aramcoworld.com/articles/2021/spice-migrations-cloves)
- 1812: Cloves reach Zanzibar and plantations expand. Sultanate policy required clove planting alongside coconut, and Zanzibar and Pemba became the dominant producers for the rest of the nineteenth century. (https://www.aramcoworld.com/articles/2021/spice-migrations-cloves)
- 1990-12: Indonesia grants a clove marketing board a trading monopoly. A single board was given sole rights over clove trading and imports, forcing growers to sell low and cigarette makers to buy high. (https://www.fao.org/4/y4632e/y4632e0l.htm)
- 1998: The clove monopoly is dismantled under Indonesia's IMF program. Removing the board's marketing and import monopoly returned clove buying to the cigarette manufacturers and reopened Indonesia to imported cloves. (https://www.fao.org/4/y4632e/y4632e0l.htm)
- 2012-04: WTO Appellate Body rules against the US ban on clove cigarettes. The ban on flavored cigarettes that spared menthol was found to discriminate against Indonesian kreteks, the clearest sign of how far clove demand is a tobacco question. (https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds406_e.htm)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most cloves

Indonesia produced 147,953 tonnes in 2024, 74% of the world's 198,941 tonnes (FAOSTAT). Madagascar was second with 13% and Tanzania third with 4.3%. Production is concentrated on islands around the Indian Ocean and in eastern Indonesia, where the tree originated, and most of the Indonesian crop goes into cigarettes rather than food.

### what are cloves used for

Most of the world crop goes into kretek cigarettes in Indonesia, where cloves are chopped and blended with tobacco. The rest flavors spice blends, curries, pickles, baked goods, mulled drinks and cured meats, and clove oil is distilled for eugenol used in dentistry, fragrance and synthetic vanillin.

### why does indonesia import cloves when it is the largest producer

Because its cigarette industry consumes more than the domestic crop supplies in many years, and clove trees crop heavily one year and lightly the next. Indonesia took 8.8% of world clove imports in 2024 (CEPII BACI). That buying pulls cloves from Madagascar, the Comoros and Tanzania away from the food trade and lifts prices for everyone else.

### what are kretek cigarettes

Indonesian cigarettes made from tobacco blended with chopped clove buds, often with clove oil and other spices. They dominate Indonesian cigarette sales, which is why clove demand tracks tobacco taxation and smoking regulation far more closely than it tracks food demand anywhere in the world.

### how are cloves harvested and dried

Buds are picked by hand before the flower opens, when they swell and turn pink, in several passes over the tree. Pickers strip buds from the stems, then spread the buds on mats to sun-dry for several days until they turn dark brown and rattle, losing most of their weight.

### how are clove prices set

By negotiation on origin and grade, with no futures contract and no free public benchmark. Buyers specify stem content, headless buds, moisture and volatile oil. Zanzibar's crop is bought by a state marketing corporation at an announced price, while Madagascan and Indonesian cloves sell against private quotations.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where does coal come from?

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

Coal comes mainly from China, which produced 4,663 million tonnes in 2025, 52% of the world's 9,053 million tonnes (Energy Institute). India (12%), Indonesia (8.7%) and United States (5.3%) follow; the top five together supply 82%. The biggest exporter of coal (HS 2701) is Australia (34% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Australian thermal, Newcastle, was $135.2/t in August 2026, up 20% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Coal sits where ancient swamp forests were buried and compressed, and the countries that mine the most are the ones that happen to sit on those basins and also burn enormous amounts of electricity at home, which is why the production map is a map of demand as much as geology.

*Fossilized carbon rock burned for power and heat, and baked into coke for steelmaking.* Also called: thermal coal, steam coal, coking coal, metallurgical coal, hard coal, lignite.

## Where does coal come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (million tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 4,663 | 52% |
| 2 | India | 1,084 | 12% |
| 3 | Indonesia | 790 | 8.7% |
| 4 | United States | 484 | 5.3% |
| 5 | Australia | 431 | 4.8% |
| 6 | Russia | 429 | 4.7% |
| 7 | South Africa | 236 | 2.6% |
| 8 | Kazakhstan | 121 | 1.3% |
| 9 | Mongolia | 106 | 1.2% |
| 10 | Germany | 86.4 | 1% |
| | Rest of world | 161 | 6.9% |
| | World | 9,053 | 100% |

Source: Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy, Statistical Review 2026.

Coal is not one product. Thermal coal, also called steam coal, is burned to raise steam for electricity and industrial heat. Metallurgical coal, also called coking coal, is baked in the absence of air to make coke, the carbon and structural support that lets a blast furnace turn iron ore into pig iron. The two trade separately, at different prices, and a mine usually sells into one market or the other. Coal is also graded by rank, the degree to which burial and heat have driven off water and volatile matter: lignite (brown coal) at one end, then sub-bituminous, bituminous and anthracite at the other. The Energy Institute figures used on this page count commercial solid fuels by weight, hard coal plus lignite and sub-bituminous coal together, so a tonne of wet lignite and a tonne of anthracite count the same even though they carry very different amounts of energy.

In 2025 China mined 4,663 million tonnes, 52% of the world's 9,053 million tonnes (Energy Institute). That single share is the most important fact on the page: no other commodity of this size is so concentrated in one country, and Chinese mine output is set by domestic power demand and by safety and permitting rules rather than by any world market. India follows with 12% and Indonesia with 8.7%, then United States (5.3%), Australia (4.8%) and Russia (4.7%).

Geology set the map. Most bituminous coal formed in the swamp forests of the Carboniferous and Permian periods, which is why the great basins lie in ancient continental interiors: the Ordos and Shanxi fields of northern China, the Gondwana basins of Jharkhand, Odisha and Chhattisgarh in India, the Kuznetsk basin in Russia, the Highveld of South Africa, and Appalachia and the Illinois basin in the United States. Younger, softer coals dominate elsewhere. Indonesia's Kalimantan and Sumatra deposits are mostly sub-bituminous with high moisture, which is why the country ranks high by tonnes and lower by energy. Australia is unusual in holding both a large thermal resource in the Hunter Valley and the premium hard coking coal of Queensland's Bowen basin.

Output has been moving between countries rather than disappearing. 34 countries reported production in 2025, and everything outside the top ten came to 6.9%. World output changed +14% over the ten years to 2025 and +18% over five, while the composition shifted: United States contracted at -5.1% a year over that decade and Germany at -7.3%, against +4.9% for India and +15.9% for Mongolia, whose coking coal goes overland to Chinese steel mills.


## Who exports and imports coal?

Most coal is burned in the country that mines it; only about a fifth of world output crosses a border, so the export table is far smaller than the production table.

### Exporters of coal; briquettes and similar solid fuels made from coal (HS 2701), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Australia | $61.7 billion | 34% |
| 2 | Indonesia | $34.5 billion | 19% |
| 3 | Russia | $22.4 billion | 13% |
| 4 | United States | $19.8 billion | 11% |
| 5 | Mongolia | $8.3 billion | 4.6% |
| 6 | Canada | $7.6 billion | 4.2% |
| 7 | South Africa | $6.9 billion | 3.9% |
| 8 | Colombia | $6.8 billion | 3.8% |
| 9 | Mozambique | $3 billion | 1.7% |
| 10 | Kazakhstan | $1.3 billion | 0.7% |
| 11 | China | $975.6 million | 0.5% |
| 12 | Poland | $892.7 million | 0.5% |
| 13 | Netherlands | $676.5 million | 0.4% |
| 14 | Philippines | $577.3 million | 0.3% |
| 15 | Czechia | $340.2 million | 0.2% |

### Importers of coal; briquettes and similar solid fuels made from coal (HS 2701), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $39.3 billion | 22% |
| 2 | India | $32.2 billion | 18% |
| 3 | Japan | $26.7 billion | 15% |
| 4 | South Korea | $15.3 billion | 8.6% |
| 5 | Other Asia, nes | $8.9 billion | 5% |
| 6 | Vietnam | $5 billion | 2.8% |
| 7 | Netherlands | $4.9 billion | 2.7% |
| 8 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $4.6 billion | 2.6% |
| 9 | Malaysia | $4.6 billion | 2.6% |
| 10 | Germany | $4 billion | 2.2% |
| 11 | Indonesia | $3.6 billion | 2% |
| 12 | Brazil | $3.2 billion | 1.8% |
| 13 | Philippines | $3.2 billion | 1.8% |
| 14 | Morocco | $1.7 billion | 0.9% |
| 15 | Poland | $1.5 billion | 0.9% |

### Exporters of coke and semi-coke of coal (HS 2704), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Poland | $2.1 billion | 20% |
| 2 | China | $2.1 billion | 20% |
| 3 | Indonesia | $1.5 billion | 15% |
| 4 | Colombia | $1.2 billion | 12% |
| 5 | United States | $578.9 million | 5.6% |
| 6 | Japan | $527.5 million | 5.1% |
| 7 | Germany | $441.5 million | 4.2% |
| 8 | Russia | $276.2 million | 2.6% |
| 9 | Czechia | $274.2 million | 2.6% |
| 10 | Mozambique | $256.6 million | 2.5% |
| 11 | Australia | $201.1 million | 1.9% |
| 12 | Zimbabwe | $169.5 million | 1.6% |
| 13 | Italy | $147.5 million | 1.4% |
| 14 | Bosnia and Herzegovina | $83.3 million | 0.8% |
| 15 | Hungary | $57.7 million | 0.6% |

### Importers of coke and semi-coke of coal (HS 2704), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | $1.8 billion | 17% |
| 2 | Brazil | $944.6 million | 9.1% |
| 3 | Germany | $902.1 million | 8.7% |
| 4 | Indonesia | $509.1 million | 4.9% |
| 5 | United Kingdom | $484.2 million | 4.6% |
| 6 | Austria | $436.2 million | 4.2% |
| 7 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $428.5 million | 4.1% |
| 8 | France | $397.7 million | 3.8% |
| 9 | Belgium | $391.7 million | 3.8% |
| 10 | Canada | $382.5 million | 3.7% |
| 11 | Malaysia | $295.8 million | 2.8% |
| 12 | Japan | $273.6 million | 2.6% |
| 13 | Vietnam | $241.2 million | 2.3% |
| 14 | Ukraine | $235.8 million | 2.3% |
| 15 | South Africa | $205.7 million | 2% |

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

Coal is the least traded of the big bulk commodities relative to how much of it is produced. Most of it is burned in the country that mined it, close to the pithead, because it is heavy, low in value per tonne and expensive to move. The export table therefore describes a different industry from the production table: a seaborne market supplying countries that burn far more coal than they dig. In 2024 the largest exporter of coal (HS 2701) was Australia, with 34% of the world's $179 billion in export value (CEPII BACI), followed by Indonesia (19%), Russia (13%), United States (11%) and Mongolia (4.6%), which is landlocked and moves its coking coal to China by truck and rail rather than by ship.

The buyers are the industrial economies of East and South Asia. China took 22% of the world's $179 billion of imports in 2024, ahead of India (18%), Japan (15%) and South Korea (8.6%) (CEPII BACI). China and India both mine more coal than anyone except each other and still import heavily, because inland mines cannot always reach coastal power stations more cheaply than a ship can. Netherlands appears high on the import list mainly as a transit and blending point for the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp hub rather than as a final consumer. Processed coal shows a different pattern again: the leading exporter of coke and semi-coke (HS 2704) in 2024 was Poland with 20% of that $10.4 billion trade, just ahead of China, and the largest importer was India (17%).


## What does coal cost?

- Australian thermal, Newcastle: $135.2/t in August 2026; 12-month change +20%; 10-year change +101%; all-time high $430.8/t in September 2022; real high (2024 US$) $456/t in September 2022 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- South African thermal, Richards Bay: $96.8/t in August 2026; 12-month change +4%; 10-year change +46%; all-time high $302/t in April 2022; real high (2024 US$) $328.3/t in April 2022 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

There is no world price for coal. There are regional benchmarks for cargoes of a defined specification, and everything else is priced as an adjustment to one of them. The two contracts that matter for seaborne thermal coal both trade on ICE Futures Europe. The Rotterdam Coal contract (API2, ticker ATW) covers 1,000 tonnes per lot, is quoted in US dollars and cents per tonne, and is financially settled against the API 2 index published in the Argus/McCloskey Coal Price Index Report for cargoes delivered into Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp. The globalCOAL Newcastle contract (ticker NCF) is also 1,000 tonnes per lot in US dollars per tonne and settles against the Newcastle index for coal loaded in New South Wales, which is the reference for the Pacific basin.

The series charted on this page is Australian thermal, Newcastle. It stood at $135.2/t in August 2026, up 20% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its nominal record was $430.8/t in September 2022, during the European energy crisis; adjusted for United States inflation the real high was $456/t in September 2022, and the lowest monthly average in a series that begins in 1970 was $7.8/t in January 1970. Over ten years the series changed +101% and over five -20%. The companion Atlantic reference, South African thermal, Richards Bay, was $96.8/t in August 2026, +4% from a year earlier, and its own record was $302/t in April 2022.

A quote only means something once you know what it describes. Newcastle and Richards Bay prices are FOB, free on board at the loading port, so the buyer pays freight; API 2 is CIF, cost, insurance and freight included, into northwest Europe. Both refer to a standard energy content, conventionally 6,000 kilocalories per kilogram net as received, and cargoes of higher or lower energy are priced pro rata, with penalties for ash, sulfur and moisture written into the contract. Two ambiguities follow. First, both price series on this page are thermal coal; metallurgical coal is quoted separately, usually off premium hard coking coal FOB Australia assessments, and can trade at a large multiple of the thermal price. Second, production here is measured in tonnes across all ranks, so a country that mines wet lignite looks larger by weight than it does by the energy it actually produces.


## What moves the price of coal?

### Chinese mine output and policy

China mines and burns roughly half the world's coal, so administrative decisions in Beijing move the seaborne price more reliably than any demand signal. When output is restricted for safety inspections, consolidation or environmental targets, Chinese utilities buy imported tonnes and the Pacific benchmark rises; when the state pushes mines to produce, imports are displaced and prices fall. The 2016 rule capping mine working days at 276 a year is the clearest case, cutting domestic output and lifting prices across Asia within months.

### Weather and electricity demand

Coal is the swing fuel in most Asian power systems, so it absorbs the residual after hydro, nuclear, wind and solar have run. A hot summer in China or India, a cold snap in northeast Asia, or a weak monsoon that empties hydropower reservoirs all raise burn and draw down stockpiles at power stations. Because utility stock levels are reported and watched, a run of unusual weather shows up in the price long before it shows up in annual consumption data.

### Gas prices and fuel switching

In Europe and parts of Asia, gas and coal plants compete to run, and the switching point depends on the relative cost of fuel plus the price of carbon allowances. When gas becomes expensive, as it did across Europe in 2022, utilities dispatch coal units harder and bid up API 2 cargoes; when gas is cheap, coal plants sit idle. This links the coal price to LNG and pipeline gas markets even in years when coal supply itself is unremarkable.

### Freight rates and the basin arbitrage

Coal is worth little per tonne, so ocean freight is a large share of the delivered cost and small changes in capesize and panamax rates move the economics. When the gap between the Atlantic and Pacific benchmarks exceeds the cost of the voyage, Colombian, South African and United States cargoes head east and Australian cargoes head west, closing the spread. Congestion, canal restrictions and longer routings all raise the effective freight cost and widen regional differences.

### Indian import demand

India mines more coal every year and still imports, because its domestic coal is high in ash, its inland railways are congested and its coastal power stations and cement plants can often buy an imported cargo more cheaply than a domestic tonne railed a thousand kilometers. Indian buying is price sensitive rather than fixed: when the benchmark falls, imports rise sharply, which puts a floor under the market and makes India the marginal buyer for Indonesian and South African coal.

### Sanctions and trade re-routing

Coal trade responds to politics faster than most bulk markets because cargoes are fungible and voyages are short. China's unofficial halt to Australian coal purchases from late 2020 and the European Union's embargo on Russian coal from August 2022 did not change how much coal existed; they changed who bought it from whom, lengthened voyages and widened the spread between benchmarks. Re-routing raises freight costs and creates persistent regional discounts and premiums.

### Steel output and metallurgical demand

Metallurgical coal is priced by blast furnace economics, not by power demand. When steel margins are good, mills run hard and bid for premium hard coking coal with low ash, low sulfur and strong coke strength; when construction slows, coking coal falls even if thermal coal is firm. Supply is far more concentrated than for thermal coal, so a cyclone in Queensland or a rail outage on the Bowen basin lines moves the coking price on its own.

### Climate policy and mine investment

Policy affects supply through finance more than through demand. Banks, insurers and export credit agencies have withdrawn from new thermal coal projects, and permitting has become slower in most jurisdictions, so replacement capacity is not being built at the rate depletion would imply. That makes the supply curve steeper: when demand rises unexpectedly, there is less idle capacity to bring on, which is one reason coal prices have spiked more violently in recent cycles than in the 1990s.

## How is coal produced?

Coal begins as peat in a waterlogged forest floor where dead plant matter accumulates faster than it rots. Burial under sediment applies heat and pressure, driving off water, oxygen and volatile compounds and concentrating carbon. That progression defines rank, and rank determines use: lignite is burned close to the mine because it is too wet to ship economically; sub-bituminous coal, such as Indonesia's, is a cheap power fuel; bituminous coal covers both high-energy thermal grades and the coking coals; anthracite is a small, specialized market.

How it is mined depends on how deep the seam sits. Where coal lies near the surface, as in Indonesia, the Powder River Basin and much of Australia, it is stripped: overburden is removed by dragline, shovel or truck, the seam is drilled, blasted and loaded, and the ground is reshaped behind the pit. Deeper seams are worked underground. Longwall mining shears a face several hundred meters wide while hydraulic supports hold the roof and let it collapse behind, and it is the highest productivity underground method; room and pillar mining, older and more flexible, leaves pillars of coal standing to hold the roof and recovers less of the seam.

Raw coal from the pit is rarely what the customer buys. At a preparation plant it is crushed, sized and washed, usually in dense medium baths or cyclones that float coal off the heavier rock and pyrite. Washing raises the energy content and cuts ash and sulfur, but it also loses mass, so a mine's saleable output can be well below what it digs. Thermal coal is then blended to hit a contract specification for calorific value, ash, sulfur, moisture and volatile matter. Metallurgical coal goes further: in a coke oven battery it is heated to around 1,000 degrees Celsius without air for about a day, driving off volatiles to leave porous, strong coke, and capturing coke oven gas, coal tar, ammonia and light oils as by-products.

Seasonality in coal is a demand and logistics phenomenon rather than a harvest. Stockpiles build in shoulder seasons and draw down in summer and winter peaks; the Australian cyclone season from November to April interrupts Queensland loading; the monsoon floods Indian and Indonesian open pits; and river levels on the Rhine and the Barito determine how much coal can move by barge in any given month.


## What is coal used for?

The dominant use of coal is electricity generation, and the second is iron and steel, where coke is both the reductant that strips oxygen from iron ore and the permeable skeleton that lets gas flow through a blast furnace charge (International Energy Agency, Coal 2022). Cement is the third large user: coal fires the kiln that turns limestone into clinker, and the ash often ends up in the cement itself. Beyond those three, coal supplies industrial process heat, district heating in parts of Europe and Asia, and a chemical industry that is largely Chinese, where coal is gasified to make methanol, ammonia for fertilizer, and olefins that elsewhere come from oil or gas.

The by-products of coking are a small but old chemical industry in their own right: coal tar for pitch, creosote and carbon black feedstock, ammonia for fertilizer, and benzene and toluene for solvents and plastics. Fly ash and bottom ash from power stations are sold into cement and concrete, and pulverized coal injection displaces some coke in the blast furnace itself. None of these is large next to the two big uses, and none of them changes the essential fact that coal is bought for its energy and its carbon, in that order.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The seaborne coal chain is short and rigid: mine, rail, port, ship, discharge berth, stockyard, boiler. Because coal is bulky and cheap, the rail and port links are usually purpose built and owned by consortia of the miners themselves, and they run close to capacity by design. Australia loads through Newcastle in New South Wales for thermal coal and through Hay Point, Dalrymple Bay, Gladstone and Abbot Point in Queensland for coking coal. South Africa concentrates almost everything through the Richards Bay Coal Terminal, fed by a single heavy haul line from the Mpumalanga Highveld. Indonesia is different again: much of its coal is barged down the Barito and Mahakam rivers in Kalimantan and transshipped to ocean vessels at anchorage, which makes river levels and barge availability part of the supply picture.

The other routes are equally identifiable. Colombia ships from Puerto Bolívar and Ciénaga on the Caribbean coast; the United States loads Appalachian coal at Baltimore and Norfolk and Illinois basin coal through New Orleans; Russia moves Kuznetsk coal thousands of kilometers east on the Trans-Siberian and Baikal-Amur lines to Far East ports and west to the Baltic and Black Sea; and Mongolia trucks and rails coking coal across the Gashuunsukhait and Gantsmod crossings into Inner Mongolia. On the buying side, Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp is the blending and storage hub for northwest Europe and the physical basis for the API 2 contract.

The single points of failure are almost all inland. A derailment or maintenance shutdown on the Richards Bay line, cyclone damage to a Queensland rail corridor, flooding in a Kalimantan pit, or congestion at a Chinese border crossing removes cargoes that no other supplier can replace within the loading window, because export capacity is fixed and stockpiles at ports are small relative to annual flows. Concentration is also structural on the demand side: with China and India together taking 22% and 18% of world import value in 2024 (CEPII BACI), a policy change in either country resets the seaborne market on its own.


## Key companies

- Coal India: state-owned miner, thermal coal, India, listed (COALINDIA)
- China Shenhua Energy: miner, power generator and rail operator, China, listed (601088)
- Glencore: miner and coal trader, Switzerland, listed (GLEN)
- BHP: metallurgical coal miner, Australia, listed (BHP)
- Peabody Energy: thermal and metallurgical coal miner, United States, listed (BTU)
- Whitehaven Coal: thermal and metallurgical coal miner, Australia, listed (WHC)
- Exxaro Resources: thermal coal miner, South Africa, listed (EXX)
- Adaro Energy: sub-bituminous coal miner, Indonesia, listed (ADRO)

## Timeline

- 1709: Coke smelting at Coalbrookdale. Abraham Darby produced cast iron using coke rather than charcoal in January 1709, tying coal permanently to iron and steel and removing the limit that forest supply had placed on iron output. (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Abraham-Darby)
- 1913: British coal output peaks. United Kingdom production reached its all-time high before the First World War, the high-water mark of the coal economy that powered the first industrial revolution. (https://ourworldindata.org/death-uk-coal)
- 1984-03: The British miners' strike begins. The National Coal Board announced closures on 6 March 1984 and the walkout at Cortonwood began a year-long dispute that ended with the rapid contraction of the British industry. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984%E2%80%931985_United_Kingdom_miners'_strike)
- 2001-04: globalCOAL launched. An electronic marketplace and a standard trading agreement turned seaborne thermal coal into a commoditized market, and the Newcastle index it produced became the Asia-Pacific benchmark. (https://www.globalcoal.com/coalprices/newcindex.cfm)
- 2009: China becomes a net coal importer. The world's largest producer began buying from the seaborne market, which turned Chinese domestic policy into the main driver of international coal prices. (https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2012/02/understanding-chinas-rising-coal-imports)
- 2016-04: China caps mine working days at 276 a year. The restriction cut Chinese output by roughly a tenth within months and produced the sharpest coal price rally since the financial crisis, ending four years of falling prices in Asia. (https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/smp/2016/nov/box-a-production-of-iron-ore-and-coal-in-china.html)
- 2020-10: China stops buying Australian coal. An unofficial halt to Australian imports re-routed the Pacific trade for more than two years, sending Australian cargoes to India and Japan and pulling Russian, Mongolian and Indonesian coal into China. (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-05/china-gives-green-light-to-australian-coal-imports/101829430)
- 2021-11: The Glasgow Climate Pact names coal. COP26 produced the first climate agreement to call explicitly for a phase-down of unabated coal power, a signal that has shaped mine financing and permitting more than it has shaped consumption. (https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-glasgow-climate-pact-key-outcomes-from-cop26)
- 2022-08: The EU embargo on Russian coal takes full effect. The transition period for contracts signed before the fifth sanctions package expired on 10 August 2022, forcing European utilities to buy Australian, South African, Colombian and United States coal instead. (https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2022/04/08/eu-adopts-fifth-round-of-sanctions-against-russia-over-its-military-aggression-against-ukraine/)
- 2022-12: World coal use passes eight billion tonnes. The IEA reported that consumption exceeded eight billion tonnes in a single year for the first time as high gas prices pushed European and Asian utilities back to coal. (https://www.iea.org/reports/coal-2022/executive-summary)
- 2023-01: China reopens to Australian coal. Beijing allowed major utilities to resume Australian purchases, narrowing the freight-driven gap between Atlantic and Pacific prices that the ban had opened. (https://www.spglobal.com/commodity-insights/en/news-research/latest-news/coal/022223-china-starts-buying-australian-coal-as-unofficial-ban-ends)

## Frequently asked questions

### Which country produces the most coal?

China mined 4,663 million tonnes in 2025, 52% of the world's 9,053 million tonnes (Energy Institute). India was second with 12% and Indonesia third with 8.7%. Nearly all of that coal is burned at home rather than exported, so the production ranking describes where coal is used as much as where it is dug.

### Which country exports the most coal?

Australia was the largest exporter in 2024, with 34% of the world's $179 billion of coal exports (CEPII BACI), ahead of Indonesia with 19% and Russia with 13%. Australia leads because it sells both thermal coal from New South Wales and premium coking coal from Queensland into Asia.

### Which country imports the most coal?

China took 22% of the world's $179 billion of coal imports in 2024 (CEPII BACI), followed by India at 18% and Japan at 15%. China and India both mine far more than they buy; they import because coastal power stations can often source a cargo more cheaply than domestic coal railed inland.

### What is the difference between thermal and coking coal?

Thermal coal is burned to raise steam for electricity and heat. Coking coal is baked into coke, which reduces iron ore in a blast furnace. They are priced separately, and this page's series track thermal coal only: Australian thermal, Newcastle was $135.2/t in August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet). Coking coal usually trades well above that.

### How much does coal cost?

The benchmark Australian thermal, Newcastle price was $135.2/t in August 2026, up 20% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The record was $430.8/t in September 2022, during the European energy crisis. The Atlantic reference, South African thermal, Richards Bay, was $96.8/t in August 2026. Both are quoted per tonne at a standard energy content.

### Why did coal prices spike in 2022?

European gas prices rose far enough that utilities switched back to coal, and the EU embargo on Russian coal took full effect in August 2022, forcing buyers to source from farther away. Australian thermal, Newcastle reached $430.8/t in September 2022 (World Bank Pink Sheet), against $135.2/t in August 2026.

### How much coal is traded internationally?

Far less than is mined. World coal exports were worth $179 billion in 2024 (CEPII BACI), against production of 9,053 million tonnes in 2025 (Energy Institute), most of it burned in the country that dug it. Coal is heavy and cheap per tonne, so freight makes long-distance trade worthwhile only for coastal buyers.

### Is coal production still growing?

World output changed +14% over the ten years to 2025 and -0% over the last year, reaching 9,053 million tonnes (Energy Institute). The direction differs by country: United States contracted at -5.1% a year over that decade while India grew at +4.9% and Indonesia at +5.5%.

### Does the United States still mine coal?

Yes. United States produced 484 million tonnes in 2025, 5.3% of world output (Energy Institute), and exported $19.8 billion worth in 2024, 11% of world export value (CEPII BACI). Output has been shrinking at -5.1% a year over the past decade as gas and renewables displaced coal in power generation.

## Sources

- Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy, Statistical Review 2026. License: Free to use with attribution (Energy Institute terms). https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review
- 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 2026-09-06. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where does coal come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/coal/.

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# Where does cobalt come from?

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

Cobalt comes mainly from DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo), which produced 230,000 tonnes in 2025, 74% of the world's 310,000 tonnes (USGS MCS). Indonesia (14%), Russia (2.5%) and Madagascar (1.3%) follow; the top five together supply 93%. The biggest exporter of unwrought cobalt and mattes (HS 810520) is DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) (65% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Cobalt, 99.8% minimum purity, LME spot, was $55,873/t in July 2026, up 70% from a year earlier (IMF PCPS). Cobalt is almost never the reason a mine exists: it rides along in the copper of the Central African Copperbelt and in the nickel laterites of Indonesia and the Pacific, so its supply is decided by copper and nickel economics rather than by anything cobalt buyers do.

*A metal recovered mostly as a by-product of copper and nickel mining, used in battery cathodes and superalloys.* Also called: Co, cobalt hydroxide, cobalt sulphate, cobalt metal, battery metal.

## Where does cobalt come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) | 230,000 | 74% |
| 2 | Indonesia | 44,000 | 14% |
| 3 | Russia | 7,700 | 2.5% |
| 4 | Madagascar | 3,900 | 1.3% |
| 5 | Philippines | 3,700 | 1.2% |
| 6 | Australia | 3,700 | 1.2% |
| 7 | Canada | 3,500 | 1.1% |
| 8 | Papua New Guinea | 2,800 | 0.9% |
| 9 | Cuba | 2,000 | 0.6% |
| 10 | China | 2,000 | 0.6% |
| | Rest of world | 9,100 | 2.2% |
| | World | 310,000 | 100% |

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026.

In 2025 DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) mined 230,000 tonnes of cobalt content, 74% of the world's 310,000 tonnes (USGS MCS). Indonesia followed with 14%, then Russia (2.5%), Madagascar (1.3%) and Philippines (1.2%). The top five account for 93%, and only 12 countries mine it at all. Reserves are concentrated in the same place: DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) holds 50% of the world's 12 million tonnes (USGS MCS).

That first share is one of the highest single-country concentrations of any commodity on this site, and it is a geological accident. The Central African Copperbelt running through the southern Democratic Republic of the Congo and into Zambia contains stratiform copper-cobalt deposits of a richness found almost nowhere else, and the cobalt in them is recovered as a by-product of copper. Indonesia's rapid rise is a different story: cobalt recovered from nickel laterite processed by high-pressure acid leach, again as a by-product, this time of the nickel described on the nickel page.

Production means mined cobalt content, not refined metal or chemical. A substantial share of Congolese output leaves the country as cobalt hydroxide, an intermediate, and is refined into sulfate elsewhere, so the refining map differs sharply from the mining map.

Artisanal and small-scale mining supplies a meaningful minority of Congolese output, dug by hand from shallow workings and sold through traders. It is the part of the supply chain that attracts the most scrutiny, because working conditions are poor and child labor has been documented, and it is also the part that responds fastest to price: when cobalt is expensive, artisanal output rises within months.

## Who exports and imports cobalt?

DR Congo mines most of the world's cobalt as a copper by-product and exports hydroxide; China refines the majority of it into battery chemicals.

### Exporters of cobalt and articles thereof (HS 8105), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) | $3.1 billion | 54% |
| 2 | United States | $417.3 million | 7.5% |
| 3 | Canada | $263.4 million | 4.7% |
| 4 | China | $210.6 million | 3.8% |
| 5 | United Kingdom | $186.3 million | 3.3% |
| 6 | Japan | $158.2 million | 2.8% |
| 7 | Norway | $147.9 million | 2.6% |
| 8 | Germany | $142.9 million | 2.6% |
| 9 | Finland | $117.2 million | 2.1% |
| 10 | Australia | $104.7 million | 1.9% |
| 11 | Belgium | $94.6 million | 1.7% |
| 12 | Madagascar | $88.5 million | 1.6% |
| 13 | France | $75.2 million | 1.3% |
| 14 | Malaysia | $63 million | 1.1% |
| 15 | Netherlands | $56.6 million | 1% |

### Importers of cobalt and articles thereof (HS 8105), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $3.3 billion | 59% |
| 2 | United States | $447.4 million | 8% |
| 3 | Japan | $182.4 million | 3.3% |
| 4 | United Kingdom | $155.9 million | 2.8% |
| 5 | Germany | $151 million | 2.7% |
| 6 | Other Asia, nes | $132.6 million | 2.4% |
| 7 | Netherlands | $125.6 million | 2.2% |
| 8 | Belgium | $121.1 million | 2.2% |
| 9 | France | $119.4 million | 2.1% |
| 10 | South Korea | $93.9 million | 1.7% |
| 11 | Malaysia | $93.6 million | 1.7% |
| 12 | India | $86.4 million | 1.5% |
| 13 | Ireland | $65.4 million | 1.2% |
| 14 | Singapore | $57.7 million | 1% |
| 15 | Italy | $42.2 million | 0.8% |

### Exporters of cobalt mattes, unwrought cobalt and powders (HS 810520), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) | $3.1 billion | 65% |
| 2 | Canada | $237.8 million | 5% |
| 3 | China | $166.1 million | 3.5% |
| 4 | United States | $133.8 million | 2.8% |
| 5 | Finland | $117.1 million | 2.5% |
| 6 | Japan | $102.6 million | 2.2% |
| 7 | Norway | $101.3 million | 2.1% |
| 8 | Australia | $100.3 million | 2.1% |
| 9 | Madagascar | $88.1 million | 1.9% |
| 10 | Belgium | $81.2 million | 1.7% |
| 11 | United Kingdom | $53.1 million | 1.1% |
| 12 | Morocco | $49.3 million | 1% |
| 13 | Germany | $46.6 million | 1% |
| 14 | Philippines | $46.2 million | 1% |
| 15 | Netherlands | $45.5 million | 1% |

### Importers of cobalt mattes, unwrought cobalt and powders (HS 810520), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $3.2 billion | 68% |
| 2 | United States | $314.6 million | 6.7% |
| 3 | Japan | $147.8 million | 3.1% |
| 4 | Other Asia, nes | $110.6 million | 2.3% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $109 million | 2.3% |
| 6 | Belgium | $97.3 million | 2.1% |
| 7 | United Kingdom | $90.2 million | 1.9% |
| 8 | Malaysia | $86.9 million | 1.8% |
| 9 | Germany | $77.5 million | 1.6% |
| 10 | South Korea | $69.1 million | 1.5% |
| 11 | France | $54.1 million | 1.1% |
| 12 | India | $43.8 million | 0.9% |
| 13 | Norway | $40.4 million | 0.9% |
| 14 | Ireland | $33.8 million | 0.7% |
| 15 | Austria | $26.9 million | 0.6% |

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

DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) was the largest exporter of unwrought cobalt and mattes (HS 810520) in 2024 with 65% of world export value, ahead of Canada (5%), on world trade of $4.7 billion (CEPII BACI). China was the largest importer with 68%.

Read that alongside a fact the table cannot show: most Congolese cobalt is exported as hydroxide under a different customs heading, travels by road to ports in South Africa, Tanzania or Namibia, and is refined in China into the sulfate that cathode makers use. China refines the large majority of world cobalt regardless of where it was mined, so the country that dominates refining barely appears in the mining table and the country that dominates mining sells an intermediate rather than a finished product.

## What does cobalt cost?

- Cobalt, 99.8% minimum purity, LME spot: $55,873/t in July 2026; 12-month change +70%; 10-year change +123%; all-time high $95,023/t in March 2008; real high (2024 US$) $139,652/t in March 2008 (IMF PCPS).

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

### How it is priced

The benchmark shown is Cobalt, 99.8% minimum purity, LME spot, which was $55,873/t in July 2026, up 70% from a year earlier (IMF PCPS). Its nominal high was $95,023/t in March 2008. Note that the IMF publishes this series under a name that says dollars per pound while the underlying description says dollars per tonne; the values are per tonne and this site labels them accordingly.

Cobalt metal trades on the London Metal Exchange in one-tonne lots, but the contract is thin and most physical business is done against private assessments of standard-grade metal and, increasingly, of cobalt sulfate and hydroxide delivered into China. Hydroxide is normally sold at a discount to the metal price expressed as a payable percentage of contained metal, so a producer's realised price depends on a negotiated payability as much as on the headline quotation.

Because cobalt is a by-product, its price does not clear the market the way a primary metal's does. When the price collapses, copper and nickel mines keep producing cobalt anyway because the host metal still pays, and supply barely falls. When it spikes, the only fast supply response is artisanal digging and stockpile release. That asymmetry is why cobalt has some of the most violent price cycles in the metals complex.

## What moves the price of cobalt?

### Battery chemistry and thrifting

Cobalt stabilizes nickel-rich cathodes, but it is the most expensive input, so cell makers have spent a decade reducing the amount used per kilowatt-hour and switching to lithium iron phosphate chemistries that contain none at all. Demand growth therefore lags electric vehicle growth substantially, and a chemistry shift can offset years of vehicle sales growth.

### Copper and nickel economics

Because cobalt is a by-product, its supply is set by decisions taken for other metals. A copper price high enough to justify Congolese expansion delivers cobalt whether or not cobalt is wanted, and the Indonesian nickel build-out has added cobalt as a side effect. This is the single most important thing to understand about the market.

### Congolese policy and export handling

Royalty changes, an export ban on unprocessed concentrate, state trading arrangements for artisanal material and periodic export quotas have all moved the price. Because one country supplies most of the world's cobalt, a decree in Kinshasa is a global supply event.

### Indonesian supply growth

High-pressure acid leach plants built for nickel now produce cobalt in volumes that have materially reduced Congolese market share. This is new supply that arrived because of nickel demand, and it is the main reason the market moved into surplus.

### Responsible sourcing requirements

Automakers and electronics firms require audited chains of custody that exclude child labor and unregulated artisanal material. Compliance splits the market: audited industrial hydroxide commands a premium and unaudited material sells at a discount into buyers who do not ask, which changes trade routes rather than volumes.

### Stockpiles and strategic reserves

Cobalt is small enough that government stockpiling and trader inventories are large relative to annual consumption. Purchases into a strategic reserve, or a release from one, can move the price without any change in mine output or battery demand.

### Recycling

Cobalt is valuable enough per tonne to justify recovery from spent batteries and superalloy scrap, and recycling rates are higher than for lithium. As the electric vehicle fleet ages, recycled units will supply a growing share and further weaken the link between mine supply and battery demand.

## How is cobalt produced?

In the Congolese Copperbelt, oxide and mixed ores are mined by open pit, crushed, and leached with sulfuric acid. Copper is recovered by solvent extraction and electrowinning; the cobalt-bearing raffinate is then treated, and cobalt is precipitated as a hydroxide containing perhaps thirty percent cobalt. That hydroxide is the product that leaves the country. At the refinery, usually in China, it is redissolved, purified and crystallized as cobalt sulfate, the form cathode makers use, or reduced to metal.

In Indonesian nickel laterite operations the route is different: ore is leached at high temperature and pressure with sulfuric acid, nickel and cobalt are precipitated together as a mixed hydroxide precipitate, and the two are separated downstream. Cobalt from this route arrives as a small percentage of a nickel-dominated stream.

The third route is the historic one: cobalt recovered from nickel sulfide ores in Canada, Russia, Australia and Finland, where it follows the nickel smelting and refining circuit. It is a small share of world supply now but supplies much of the metal, as opposed to chemical, market.

Artisanal production bypasses most of this. Hand-dug ore is washed, sorted and sold to buying stations, entering the formal chain at the leaching stage. Everything on this page is measured as contained cobalt, so a tonne of hydroxide is not a tonne of cobalt.

## What is cobalt used for?

Rechargeable batteries take the largest share, principally in nickel-cobalt-manganese and nickel-cobalt-aluminium cathodes for electric vehicles and in lithium cobalt oxide for consumer electronics, where energy density per unit volume matters more than cost. The direction of travel in vehicle cells is toward less cobalt per unit of energy, but portable electronics remain a stable cobalt-intensive market.

Superalloys are the second use and the one with no substitute. Cobalt-based and cobalt-containing alloys retain strength at temperatures that would soften other metals, so they appear in jet engine turbine blades and vanes, gas turbines and turbochargers. Cemented carbides use cobalt as the binder that holds tungsten carbide grains together in cutting tools and mining bits, magnets use it where high-temperature performance is needed, and cobalt compounds serve as catalysts in petroleum desulfurization and in making the terephthalic acid used for polyester. Cobalt blue pigments in ceramics and glass are the oldest use of all.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is a narrow corridor with two chokepoints in different countries. Mined supply is concentrated in the Congo; refining is concentrated in China. Between them sits a long overland haul, because the Congolese Copperbelt is landlocked and material moves by truck for one to two thousand kilometers to ports in South Africa, Tanzania, Namibia or Mozambique before it can be shipped. Road conditions, border delays and periodic customs disputes therefore affect world cobalt availability directly, and truck queues at border posts have been visible in the price.

Refining concentration is the second chokepoint and the reason cobalt appears on critical minerals lists. A buyer wanting battery-grade cobalt sulfate from outside China has limited options, and building alternatives requires not just plants but qualification by cathode makers, which takes years.

The reputational chain is a genuine constraint too. Automakers cannot afford to be linked to child labor, so audited material trades separately from unaudited, and the industry has built traceability schemes to keep them apart. This does not remove artisanal supply from the market; it directs it toward buyers with fewer requirements.

The structural risk is the opposite of scarcity. Indonesian by-product supply plus falling cobalt intensity per battery has pushed the market into surplus, and the danger for producers is a prolonged period of prices too low to justify investment, followed by a shortage when demand for high-nickel cathodes eventually recovers.

## Key companies

- Glencore: miner and trader, Switzerland, listed (GLEN)
- CMOC Group: miner, China, listed (603993)
- Eurasian Resources Group: miner, Luxembourg
- Huayou Cobalt: refiner and cathode materials maker, China, listed (603799)
- Umicore: refiner and recycler, Belgium, listed (UMI)
- Sherritt International: miner and refiner, Canada, listed (S)

## Timeline

- 1924: Industrial cobalt mining begins in the Congo. Union Minière's Copperbelt operations established the region as the world's dominant cobalt source, a position it has held for a century. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 1978-05: The Shaba conflict cuts supply and prices spike. Fighting in the Congolese copper province interrupted exports and cobalt prices multiplied, the first demonstration that concentrated by-product supply makes for violent price cycles. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 1991-06: Lithium-ion commercialisation creates the battery market. Lithium cobalt oxide cathodes in the first commercial cells made cobalt a consumer electronics input and set up the demand growth that followed. (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2019/summary/)
- 2008-03: Cobalt reaches a cyclical peak. Chinese industrial demand and thin supply drove the price to a level that prompted a wave of Congolese investment and a subsequent collapse. (https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS)
- 2016-01: Artisanal mining conditions draw global scrutiny. Documented child labor in Congolese artisanal cobalt led automakers and electronics firms to build audited supply chains and split the market between traceable and untraceable material. (https://www.oecd.org/corporate/mne/mining.htm)
- 2018-03: The Congo raises royalties and declares cobalt strategic. A new mining code trebled the royalty on cobalt and reclassified it as a strategic substance, raising costs at the source of most world supply. (https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS)
- 2018-04: Cobalt sets its recent nominal high. Electric vehicle expectations met a tight market and the price peaked, prompting both a supply response and an acceleration of efforts to design cobalt out of cathodes. (https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS)
- 2020-09: Cathode thrifting and iron phosphate cut cobalt intensity. Cell designs reduced cobalt per kilowatt-hour and lithium iron phosphate chemistries removed it entirely, breaking the assumed link between vehicle sales and cobalt demand. (https://www.iea.org/topics/critical-minerals)
- 2022-01: Indonesian by-product cobalt arrives at scale. High-pressure acid leach plants built for nickel began producing cobalt in volume, adding a second major source and eroding Congolese market share. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 2024-02: The Congo introduces export controls on cobalt. Measures to manage a surplus and support the price showed again that the largest producer can act unilaterally on world supply. (https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most cobalt

DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) mined 230,000 tonnes of cobalt content in 2025, 74% of the world's 310,000 tonnes (USGS MCS). Indonesia was second with 14%. It is one of the most concentrated commodities on this site, and the cobalt is a by-product of copper mining.

### why is cobalt a by-product

It occurs in economic concentrations almost only alongside copper in the Central African Copperbelt or nickel in laterite and sulfide deposits, so mines are built for copper or nickel and recover cobalt as a credit. Cobalt supply therefore responds to copper and nickel prices rather than its own.

### is cobalt being designed out of batteries

Partly. Cell makers have reduced cobalt per kilowatt-hour in nickel-rich cathodes and lithium iron phosphate chemistries use none. Cobalt still stabilizes high-nickel cathodes and remains standard in consumer electronics, so demand grows more slowly than electric vehicle sales rather than disappearing.

### how much cobalt is left

DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) holds 50% of world reserves of 12 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Reserves are the economically mineable portion at current prices and technology; large quantities also exist in deep-sea nodules and in laterites not currently economic to process for cobalt alone.

### what is cobalt used for besides batteries

Superalloys for jet and gas turbine components, where its high-temperature strength has no ready substitute; cemented carbide binders in cutting and drilling tools; high-temperature magnets; catalysts for petroleum desulfurization and polyester production; and the blue pigments in ceramics and glass that are its oldest use.

### where is cobalt refined

Overwhelmingly in China, regardless of where it was mined. Congolese cobalt leaves as a hydroxide intermediate and is refined into sulfate for cathode makers elsewhere, which is why the refining map and the mining map look nothing alike and why cobalt appears on critical minerals lists.

### what moves the cobalt price

Battery chemistry and thrifting on the demand side; copper and nickel economics, Congolese policy, Indonesian by-product growth, stockpiling and artisanal supply on the supply side. Because supply is a by-product, it barely falls when the price does, which makes the cycles unusually sharp.

### what is artisanal cobalt

Ore dug by hand from shallow workings and sold through traders, supplying a meaningful minority of Congolese output. It responds to price within months, faster than any industrial mine, and it is the part of the chain where poor conditions and child labor have been documented, which is why audited and unaudited material now trade separately.

## Sources

- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries
- 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
- IMF Primary Commodity Price System (PCPS), 2026-08-06, fetched 6 September 2026. License: © International Monetary Fund. All rights reserved (IMF terms of use). https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS

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

---

# Where does cocoa come from?

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

Cocoa comes mainly from Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire), which produced 1.9 million tonnes in 2024, 36% of the world's 5.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Indonesia (12%), Ghana (10%) and Ecuador (7.7%) follow; the top five together supply 73%. The biggest exporter of cocoa beans (HS 1801) is Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) (26% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Cocoa (ICE New York and London average), was $5.95/kg in August 2026, down 22% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Cacao needs year-round heat, heavy rain and shade within about ten degrees of the equator, and West Africa's forest belt offered all three plus cheap land and family labor once the tree arrived from the Americas in the late 1800s.

*Fermented, dried seeds of the cacao tree, ground into liquor, butter and powder to make chocolate.* Also called: cocoa beans, cacao, cacao beans, cocoa bean.

## Where does cocoa come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | 1.9 million | 36% |
| 2 | Indonesia | 632,702 | 12% |
| 3 | Ghana | 530,000 | 10% |
| 4 | Ecuador | 403,699 | 7.7% |
| 5 | Nigeria | 350,000 | 6.7% |
| 6 | Cameroon | 320,000 | 6.1% |
| 7 | Brazil | 297,509 | 5.7% |
| 8 | Peru | 157,253 | 3% |
| 9 | Sierra Leone | 93,750 | 1.8% |
| 10 | Colombia | 67,678 | 1.3% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 9.2% |
| | World | 5.2 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

The cacao tree (Theobroma cacao) is native to the upper Amazon basin, but the crop that fills the world's chocolate is grown mostly on the other side of the Atlantic. Cacao is an understory tree of the humid tropics: it wants temperatures that never drop far below 20°C, rainfall spread through most of the year, deep soils and, when young, shade. That confines commercial growing to a narrow band roughly 20 degrees either side of the equator, and within that band to the wettest lowlands.

In 2024 Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) produced 1.9 million tonnes of cocoa beans, 36% of the world's 5.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Indonesia was second with 12%, and the two neighbors together dominate the market in a way no pair of countries does for coffee or wheat. Ghana (10%) and Ecuador (7.7%) follow; the top five produced 73% of the total, and the share outside the top ten was only 9.2%.

West African cocoa is a smallholder crop. Typical farms are a few hectares of Forastero-type trees, often the Amelonado variety that Tetteh Quarshie carried to the Gold Coast in 1879, planted as the forest frontier moved west from Ghana into Ivory Coast after independence. Yields are low, trees are aging and new land is scarce, which is why output has stalled even as prices rose. Cameroon and Nigeria complete the West African bloc. In Latin America, Ecuador grows both fine-flavor Nacional cocoa and the high-yielding CCN-51 clone on larger, more commercial farms, and Brazil's Bahia plantations have partly recovered from the witches' broom fungus that devastated them. Indonesia's Sulawesi smallholders made it a major producer, although its crop has shrunk as farmers switched to palm oil and other crops.

The map is therefore the product of botany plus history: a New World tree, carried by colonial trade to islands off Africa and then to the mainland, where a forest belt and millions of family farms turned it into the world's supply.


## Who exports and imports cocoa?

The Netherlands, Germany and Malaysia are big exporters of cocoa butter and powder made from imported beans; Ivory Coast and Ghana now grind a growing share at home.

### Exporters of cocoa beans, whole or broken, raw or roasted (HS 1801), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $5 billion | 26% |
| 2 | Ecuador | $3.1 billion | 16% |
| 3 | Nigeria | $2.2 billion | 12% |
| 4 | Ghana | $1.5 billion | 7.7% |
| 5 | Cameroon | $1.3 billion | 6.8% |
| 6 | Peru | $845.6 million | 4.5% |
| 7 | Netherlands | $694.8 million | 3.7% |
| 8 | Guinea | $485.2 million | 2.6% |
| 9 | Dominican Republic | $441.3 million | 2.3% |
| 10 | Papua New Guinea | $353.9 million | 1.9% |
| 11 | DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) | $351.3 million | 1.9% |
| 12 | Uganda | $333.8 million | 1.8% |
| 13 | Belgium | $309.6 million | 1.6% |
| 14 | United States | $306.1 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | Malaysia | $226.1 million | 1.2% |

### Importers of cocoa beans, whole or broken, raw or roasted (HS 1801), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Netherlands | $4.1 billion | 22% |
| 2 | Malaysia | $3.1 billion | 17% |
| 3 | Germany | $1.8 billion | 9.4% |
| 4 | Belgium | $1.4 billion | 7.2% |
| 5 | Indonesia | $1.2 billion | 6.6% |
| 6 | United States | $1.1 billion | 6.1% |
| 7 | Singapore | $688 million | 3.6% |
| 8 | Canada | $685.6 million | 3.6% |
| 9 | France | $598.3 million | 3.2% |
| 10 | Spain | $564.2 million | 3% |
| 11 | Italy | $531.3 million | 2.8% |
| 12 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $492.7 million | 2.6% |
| 13 | Mexico | $332 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | Switzerland | $268.3 million | 1.4% |
| 15 | United Kingdom | $226 million | 1.2% |

### Exporters of cocoa paste (HS 1803), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $2.1 billion | 25% |
| 2 | Netherlands | $1.6 billion | 19% |
| 3 | Germany | $826.2 million | 10% |
| 4 | Ghana | $701.9 million | 8.5% |
| 5 | France | $360 million | 4.3% |
| 6 | Indonesia | $305.3 million | 3.7% |
| 7 | Cameroon | $296.5 million | 3.6% |
| 8 | Malaysia | $290.8 million | 3.5% |
| 9 | Belgium | $199.5 million | 2.4% |
| 10 | Singapore | $195.9 million | 2.4% |
| 11 | Ecuador | $172 million | 2.1% |
| 12 | Switzerland | $171.9 million | 2.1% |
| 13 | Estonia | $148.3 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | Spain | $116.8 million | 1.4% |
| 15 | United Kingdom | $85.3 million | 1% |

### Importers of cocoa paste (HS 1803), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Germany | $1 billion | 13% |
| 2 | Netherlands | $967 million | 12% |
| 3 | United States | $629.2 million | 7.6% |
| 4 | Belgium | $587.1 million | 7.1% |
| 5 | Poland | $523.1 million | 6.3% |
| 6 | France | $516 million | 6.2% |
| 7 | Spain | $479.8 million | 5.8% |
| 8 | Italy | $392.6 million | 4.7% |
| 9 | Malaysia | $244.7 million | 3% |
| 10 | Russia | $192.1 million | 2.3% |
| 11 | Japan | $172.3 million | 2.1% |
| 12 | Australia | $167.5 million | 2% |
| 13 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $159 million | 1.9% |
| 14 | Singapore | $150.3 million | 1.8% |
| 15 | China | $149.5 million | 1.8% |

### Exporters of cocoa butter, fat and oil (HS 1804), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Netherlands | $3.7 billion | 27% |
| 2 | Indonesia | $1.5 billion | 11% |
| 3 | Germany | $1.5 billion | 11% |
| 4 | Malaysia | $1.3 billion | 9.3% |
| 5 | France | $1.1 billion | 7.8% |
| 6 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $1 billion | 7.5% |
| 7 | Ghana | $416 million | 3.1% |
| 8 | Singapore | $382.6 million | 2.8% |
| 9 | Cameroon | $329.4 million | 2.4% |
| 10 | Brazil | $296.8 million | 2.2% |
| 11 | Peru | $268.6 million | 2% |
| 12 | United States | $193.8 million | 1.4% |
| 13 | Nigeria | $192.9 million | 1.4% |
| 14 | Bulgaria | $189.1 million | 1.4% |
| 15 | Estonia | $171.1 million | 1.3% |

### Importers of cocoa butter, fat and oil (HS 1804), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Germany | $1.9 billion | 14% |
| 2 | Belgium | $1.5 billion | 11% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $1.1 billion | 8.3% |
| 4 | United States | $1.1 billion | 8.1% |
| 5 | France | $1.1 billion | 7.9% |
| 6 | Poland | $728.6 million | 5.4% |
| 7 | United Kingdom | $702.2 million | 5.2% |
| 8 | Italy | $611.8 million | 4.5% |
| 9 | Switzerland | $410.1 million | 3% |
| 10 | Canada | $407 million | 3% |
| 11 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $322.9 million | 2.4% |
| 12 | Russia | $311.5 million | 2.3% |
| 13 | Japan | $306.1 million | 2.3% |
| 14 | Estonia | $280 million | 2.1% |
| 15 | India | $279.4 million | 2.1% |

### Exporters of cocoa powder (HS 1805), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Netherlands | $1.3 billion | 26% |
| 2 | Malaysia | $713 million | 15% |
| 3 | Indonesia | $466.5 million | 9.6% |
| 4 | Germany | $463.1 million | 9.6% |
| 5 | Spain | $331.9 million | 6.8% |
| 6 | Singapore | $252.4 million | 5.2% |
| 7 | France | $209.7 million | 4.3% |
| 8 | Brazil | $120.7 million | 2.5% |
| 9 | United States | $117.8 million | 2.4% |
| 10 | Ghana | $109.7 million | 2.3% |
| 11 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $108.7 million | 2.2% |
| 12 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $104.2 million | 2.1% |
| 13 | Peru | $63.2 million | 1.3% |
| 14 | Belgium | $59.9 million | 1.2% |
| 15 | Italy | $48.7 million | 1% |

### Importers of cocoa powder (HS 1805), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $445.9 million | 9.2% |
| 2 | China | $251.3 million | 5.2% |
| 3 | Russia | $250.6 million | 5.2% |
| 4 | India | $240.5 million | 5% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $186.1 million | 3.8% |
| 6 | Germany | $179.4 million | 3.7% |
| 7 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $177.8 million | 3.7% |
| 8 | France | $174.2 million | 3.6% |
| 9 | Italy | $151.2 million | 3.1% |
| 10 | Philippines | $144.5 million | 3% |
| 11 | Indonesia | $141.5 million | 2.9% |
| 12 | Belgium | $140.2 million | 2.9% |
| 13 | Canada | $117.6 million | 2.4% |
| 14 | Poland | $115.7 million | 2.4% |
| 15 | Japan | $113.3 million | 2.3% |

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

Cocoa is exported in four forms: raw beans (HS 1801), cocoa paste or liquor (HS 1803), cocoa butter (HS 1804) and cocoa powder (HS 1805). Beans are the form that says where cocoa comes from. In 2024 Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) was the biggest exporter of cocoa beans with 26% of world export value (CEPII BACI), followed by Ecuador and Nigeria. The largest importer of beans was Netherlands (22% of world import value), ahead of Malaysia and Germany.

The semi-finished products tell a different story. The top exporter of cocoa butter in 2024 was Netherlands (27% of world export value), and the top exporter of cocoa powder was Netherlands; the leading exporter of cocoa paste was Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire). The Netherlands, Germany and Malaysia grind imported beans and re-export butter and powder they did not grow, while Ivory Coast and Ghana have built grinding capacity at home so that a growing share leaves as paste and butter rather than beans. Chocolate itself trades under HS 1806 and is not counted here.


## What does cocoa cost?

- Cocoa (ICE New York and London average): $5.95/kg in August 2026; 12-month change -22%; 10-year change +96%; all-time high $10.75/kg in January 2025; real high (2024 US$) $22.5/kg in July 1977 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

Cocoa has two benchmark futures contracts. ICE Futures US lists the Cocoa contract (ticker CC), 10 tonnes per lot, quoted in US dollars per tonne; ICE Futures Europe lists London Cocoa (ticker C), also 10 tonnes, quoted in pounds sterling per tonne. Both deliver beans of approved origins into licensed warehouses in Europe and the United States. The World Bank series on this page, Cocoa (ICE New York and London average), averages the two markets: it was $5.95/kg in August 2026, down 22% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The series' highest month on record was $10.75/kg in January 2025 and its lowest $0.26/kg in July 1965; over ten years it has moved +96%. The International Cocoa Organization publishes a daily price that averages the nearest three active months on both exchanges.

Physical beans trade at a differential to the futures. Ghana beans earn a premium for consistent fermentation and low defects; Ivorian beans trade near the reference; Ecuadorian, Nigerian and Cameroonian beans are quoted at their own discounts or premiums; and certified fine-flavor cocoa from Ecuador, Peru or Madagascar can sell far above the exchange price. Grades are set by cut test (share of moldy, slaty and insect-damaged beans) and by bean count per 100 grams. Ivory Coast and Ghana add a further layer: their marketing boards sell most of the crop forward before the season opens, fix a farmgate price for the year and, since 2019, charge buyers a living income differential on top of the market price.

Two ambiguities. Cocoa on this page means fermented, dried beans; cocoa products are priced separately, often as ratios of the bean price (the butter ratio and powder ratio). And the London contract is in pounds, so the dollar-sterling rate moves the London price even when nothing has changed in the physical market.


## What moves the price of cocoa?

### Weather in West Africa

Ivory Coast and Ghana grow well over half of the world's cocoa, so their rainfall is the market's main variable. The main crop, harvested from October, depends on rains from April to July; the smaller mid-crop depends on the dry Harmattan wind from the Sahara being short and mild between December and February. Too little rain shrinks pods, too much spreads black pod fungus, and El Niño years have brought both heat and drought to the region.

### Swollen shoot and black pod

Cocoa swollen shoot virus, spread by mealybugs, kills trees within a few years and has no cure; the only remedy is cutting out infected farms, which removes production for the years it takes to replant and bear. Black pod (Phytophthora) rots pods in wet weather. Both diseases spread faster on aging, unshaded farms, and neither can be fixed within a single season, so an outbreak shows up in supply for years.

### Marketing board policy

Ivory Coast's Conseil du Café-Cacao and the Ghana Cocoa Board sell most of the crop forward and fix farmgate prices for the season. When the fixed price lags the world market, farmers sell less fertilizer-intensive care into their trees and beans are smuggled across whichever border pays more; when the two countries' prices diverge, beans flow toward the higher one. Board decisions on farmgate prices, forward sales and the living income differential can move the futures market as much as weather does.

### Aging trees and no new land

A cocoa tree yields best between roughly its tenth and twenty-fifth year, and much of West Africa's stock is past that. Replanting costs money and several years of lost income, and the forest that used to absorb new planting is either gone or protected, with EU deforestation rules closing the door on beans from cleared land. Supply therefore cannot respond quickly to high prices the way an annual crop such as corn can.

### Grind data and substitution

Quarterly grind statistics from the European, North American and Asian cocoa associations are the market's demand proxy: grindings fall when prices are high because chocolate makers cut cocoa content, shrink bars and lean on cocoa butter equivalents, which EU rules allow up to 5% of a chocolate product. Grindings rise when prices fall. Consumer demand itself is steady in Europe and North America and growing in Asia.

### Exchange stocks and speculation

Certified stocks in ICE warehouses are the deliverable supply against the futures contract. When they drain, nearby months move to a premium over later ones and the price can gap higher on modest buying. Cocoa is a small market by value, so hedge funds and trading houses can dominate open interest, and forced buying by short hedgers who cannot find beans has amplified rallies.

### Currency

New York cocoa is quoted in dollars and London in pounds, so the exchange rate shifts the spread between them. The West African CFA franc is pegged to the euro, which means Ivorian and Cameroonian earnings in local currency move with the euro-dollar rate; Ghana's cedi floats and its depreciation has at times made Ghanaian farmgate prices lag Ivorian ones, encouraging beans to cross the border.

## How is cocoa produced?

Cacao is a small tree that bears pods directly on its trunk and older branches. Seedlings take several years to produce, and hybrid clones bear sooner than traditional Amelonado trees. In West Africa the main crop is harvested from about October to March and a smaller mid-crop from about April to September; Ecuador and Indonesia harvest most of the year. Ripe pods are cut down with knives on poles, split open, and the wet beans scooped out with their sweet white pulp.

Fermentation is the step that creates chocolate flavor. Beans are heaped under banana leaves or placed in wooden boxes for about five to seven days, during which yeasts and bacteria consume the pulp, the bean dies and the precursors of chocolate aroma form. The beans are then sun-dried for about a week on mats, tables or concrete to a moisture level safe for storage, bagged and sold through buyers or cooperatives to exporters. Quality is judged by the cut test, which counts moldy, slaty (unfermented), germinated and insect-damaged beans, and by bean size.

Grinders turn beans into products. Beans are cleaned, roasted and winnowed to separate the shell from the nib; nibs are milled into cocoa liquor (also called mass or paste); liquor is pressed to yield cocoa butter and press cake; cake is milled into cocoa powder, often after alkalization (Dutch processing) to darken color and soften flavor. Chocolate makers combine liquor, butter, sugar and milk powder. By-products include pod husks (compost or potash), pulp (fermented juice and sweeteners) and shells (mulch, fuel and animal feed). Yields per hectare vary widely: intensively managed clonal plantations in Ecuador produce several times what an aging West African smallholding does.


### Harvest calendar

- Ivory Coast (Main crop): harvest Jan, Feb, Mar, Oct, Nov, Dec. Mid crop April–September.
- Ghana (Main crop): harvest Jan, Feb, Mar, Oct, Nov, Dec. Light crop May–August.
- Ecuador (Main crop): harvest Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul. Second flush October–December.
- Cameroon (Main crop): harvest Jan, Feb, Oct, Nov, Dec
- Nigeria (Main crop): harvest Jan, Feb, Oct, Nov, Dec
- Indonesia (Sulawesi main crop): harvest May, Jun, Jul, Aug
- Brazil (Bahia temporão): harvest May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep. Main (safra) October–February.
- Peru: harvest Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug

## What is cocoa used for?

Almost all cocoa becomes chocolate or chocolate-flavored food. Cocoa liquor and cocoa butter are the basis of chocolate bars, coatings and fillings; cocoa powder flavors biscuits, cakes, ice cream, desserts and drinks. Because chocolate makers value butter and powder differently, the two are priced as ratios of the bean price and one can be in surplus while the other is short.

Outside food, cocoa butter goes into cosmetics, soaps and pharmaceutical bases, and cocoa shell and pod husk are used as mulch, fuel and feed. Consumption is concentrated in Europe and North America, with the fastest growth in Asia, according to the International Cocoa Organization's grinding and consumption statistics; the ICO and ICCO both count consumption in bean equivalent rather than in finished chocolate.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Beans move from farm to village buyer or cooperative, then by truck to exporters' warehouses at the ports: Abidjan and San Pedro in Ivory Coast, Tema and Takoradi in Ghana, Douala in Cameroon, Lagos in Nigeria, Guayaquil in Ecuador and Makassar in Indonesia. From there they ship in bulk holds, bagged in containers or loose in container liners to Amsterdam, the world's largest cocoa port, and to Antwerp, Hamburg, Barcelona, Philadelphia and the Malaysian grinding hubs at Port Klang and Pasir Gudang.

Grinding is where the chain narrows. A few processors (Barry Callebaut, Cargill, ofi and a handful of others) operate the large plants in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, the United States, Malaysia, Indonesia and, increasingly, Abidjan and Tema. Traders such as Ecom, Sucden and Touton connect them to origin. Chocolate manufacturing is spread more widely, with Mondelez, Mars, Nestlé, Hershey, Ferrero and Lindt buying industrial chocolate and cocoa products rather than beans.

The single points of failure are unusually clear. Two neighboring countries grow the bulk of supply, so one regional drought, one disease outbreak or one political crisis reaches the whole market, as the 2011 export ban in Ivory Coast showed. Two ports in Ivory Coast handle most of that country's exports. Price discovery runs through two contracts on one exchange group, and physical delivery through a small set of licensed warehouses. And because trees take years to replace, there is no spare capacity anywhere to fill a gap quickly.


## Key companies

- ofi (Olam Food Ingredients): cocoa processor and trader, Singapore
- Olam Group: parent of ofi, Singapore, listed (VC2)
- Mondelez International: chocolate manufacturer, United States, listed (MDLZ)
- The Hershey Company: chocolate manufacturer, United States, listed (HSY)
- Mars: chocolate manufacturer, United States
- Nestlé: chocolate manufacturer, Switzerland, listed (NESN)
- Ecom Agroindustrial: cocoa trader, Switzerland
- Ghana Cocoa Board: state marketing board, Ghana

## Timeline

- 1879: Cocoa arrives in the Gold Coast. Tetteh Quarshie returned from Fernando Po with Amelonado pods and planted a farm at Akwapim Mampong; farmers bought pods from it and cocoa spread across the Eastern Region of what became Ghana. (https://cocobod.gh/cocoa-story)
- 1937: Gold Coast cocoa hold-up. Farmers refused to sell to the European buying firms in protest at their pricing cartel, the episode from which Ghana's marketing board traces its origins. (https://cocobod.gh/about-us)
- 1947: Cocoa Marketing Board established. The Gold Coast set up a state board to buy and export the whole crop and fix producer prices, the model Ghana still uses through COCOBOD. (https://cocobod.gh/about-us)
- 1973: First International Cocoa Agreement and ICCO. The International Cocoa Organization was established under UN auspices to run the first International Cocoa Agreement, the start of decades of attempts to stabilize prices through producer-consumer agreements. (https://www.icco.org/icco-documentation/icco-agreements-and-their-history/)
- 2000-06: EU chocolate directive 2000/36/EC. The EU allowed up to 5% vegetable fats other than cocoa butter in products still called chocolate, provided the label says so, weakening one source of cocoa butter demand. (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eudr/2000/36/2013-11-18/data.html)
- 2001-09: Harkin-Engel Protocol. Chocolate and cocoa companies signed a voluntary agreement to eliminate the worst forms of child labor in cocoa growing, the framework behind the industry's later sustainability programs. (https://www.cocoainitiative.org/knowledge-hub/resources/harkin-engel-protocol)
- 2011-01: Ivory Coast cocoa export ban. During the post-election standoff, the internationally recognized president called a month-long export ban to cut off his rival's revenue, halting shipments from the largest producer and lifting world prices. (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2011/1/24/ouattara-calls-for-cocoa-export-ban)
- 2011: Ivory Coast re-regulates its cocoa sector. After a decade of liberalization, the Conseil du Café-Cacao was created to manage the sector, sell most of the crop forward and set a fixed farmgate price each season. (https://www.kit.nl/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Demystifying-cocoa-sector-chapter11-cocoa-marketing-and-prices.pdf)
- 2019-07: Living income differential. Ivory Coast and Ghana agreed to charge buyers a fixed premium of US$400 per tonne on all cocoa sales from the 2020/21 season, replacing an earlier floor-price plan, to raise farmer incomes. (https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/economy/2019/8/6/chocolate-gold-ivory-coast-and-ghana-set-a-fixed-price-for-cocoa)
- 2023-06: EU deforestation regulation enters into force. Cocoa sold into the EU must be traced to plots free of deforestation after 31 December 2020, which affects West African supply chains more than any other commodity's. (https://www.wri.org/insights/explain-eu-deforestation-regulation)
- 2024-12: Cocoa futures reach a record. New York cocoa futures reached US$12,565 per tonne after excessive rain in 2023 and heat and drought in 2024 cut the West African crop and left a large global deficit. (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/4/21/bitter-easter-truth-why-has-chocolate-become-so-expensive)

## Frequently asked questions

### Where does most cocoa come from?

From West Africa. In 2024 Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) produced 1.9 million tonnes of cocoa beans, 36% of the world's 5.2 million tonnes, and Indonesia produced 12% (FAOSTAT). Ghana, Ecuador and Nigeria complete the top five, which together grew 73% of world output. Almost all of it comes from smallholder farms of a few hectares.

### Which country produces the most cocoa?

Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) is the largest producer: 1.9 million tonnes of dried beans in 2024, or 36% of the world total (FAOSTAT). Its output has grown at +1.4% a year over ten years. The crop is grown by hundreds of thousands of family farms in the forest belt of the south and west, and exported mainly through the ports of Abidjan and San Pedro.

### Why is cocoa so expensive?

Because supply is concentrated in two countries whose harvests have suffered from bad weather, disease and aging trees, while chocolate demand held up. The benchmark cocoa price was $5.95/kg in August 2026, down 22% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet); the record was $10.75/kg in January 2025. Trees take years to replace, so supply cannot respond quickly to high prices.

### Is cocoa the same as cacao?

Yes in origin, though the words are used differently. Cacao usually refers to the tree, Theobroma cacao, and to raw or minimally processed beans; cocoa refers to the fermented, dried beans of commerce and the powder and butter made from them. Trade statistics and the 5.2 million tonnes the world produced in 2024 (FAOSTAT) count dried beans, whatever the label says.

### Which country exports the most cocoa?

Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) exported the most cocoa beans in 2024, with 26% of world export value (CEPII BACI), followed by Ecuador and Nigeria. For processed cocoa the ranking changes: the largest exporter of cocoa butter that year was Netherlands, because European and Malaysian grinders process beans they import.

### Who buys the most cocoa?

Netherlands was the largest importer of cocoa beans in 2024, with 22% of world import value, ahead of Malaysia and Germany (CEPII BACI). World bean imports were worth $18.9 billion. The Netherlands imports far more than it eats because Amsterdam is the world's largest cocoa port and the Zaan region hosts the biggest grinding plants.

### Is cocoa grown in the United States or Europe?

Only in tiny amounts. Cacao needs hot, wet tropical conditions within about 20 degrees of the equator, which rules out mainland Europe and all of the United States except Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Of the 57 countries that reported production in 2024, the top five grew 73% of the world's 5.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT), nearly all of it in West Africa, Latin America and Indonesia.

### How is the price of cocoa set?

Off two futures contracts: ICE New York Cocoa (10 tonnes, US dollars per tonne) and ICE London Cocoa (10 tonnes, pounds per tonne). Physical beans trade at a premium or discount to those contracts by origin and grade, and Ivory Coast and Ghana add a fixed living income differential. The World Bank's Cocoa (ICE New York and London average) series was $5.95/kg in August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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
- Harvest calendars (curated from USDA FAS IPAD crop calendars and FAO GIEWS country briefs), curated 2026-09. License: Public domain (USDA) with FAO GIEWS cross-reference (attribution). https://ipad.fas.usda.gov/ogamaps/cropcalendar.aspx

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

---

# Where does coconut oil come from?

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

Coconut oil comes mainly from the Philippines, which produced 1.2 million tonnes in 2023, 39% of the world's 3.1 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Indonesia (21%), India (18%) and Vietnam (5.8%) follow; the top five together supply 87%. The biggest exporter of coconut and palm kernel oil (HS 1513) is Indonesia (34% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Philippines/Indonesia, CIF Rotterdam, was $1,853/t in August 2026, down 32% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The coconut palm wants a frost-free coastal lowland within about twenty degrees of the equator, and the countries that press the most oil are the ones where Spanish, American and Dutch administrations built a copra export trade a century ago and where smallholders still keep the palms their grandparents planted.

*Oil pressed from dried coconut flesh (copra), used in food, soap and oleochemicals.* Also called: copra oil, coconut, copra, virgin coconut oil.

## Where does coconut oil come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2023 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Philippines | 1.2 million | 39% |
| 2 | Indonesia | 646,000 | 21% |
| 3 | India | 549,000 | 18% |
| 4 | Vietnam | 182,000 | 5.8% |
| 5 | Mexico | 131,000 | 4.2% |
| 6 | Malaysia | 56,100 | 1.8% |
| 7 | Papua New Guinea | 43,900 | 1.4% |
| 8 | Sri Lanka | 43,475 | 1.4% |
| 9 | Thailand | 29,300 | 0.9% |
| 10 | Bangladesh | 29,300 | 0.9% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 6.4% |
| | World | 3.1 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2023.

Coconut oil is pressed from copra, the dried flesh of the coconut. The palm, Cocos nucifera, grows within roughly twenty degrees of the equator on coastal lowlands, wants at least 1,500 millimeters of rain spread through the year, mean temperatures near 27 degrees Celsius and no frost, and tolerates the sandy, salty soils that defeat most crops. It bears from about its sixth year, keeps yielding for fifty years or more, and drops nuts continuously rather than in a season, so harvesting runs all year. Almost all of it is grown by smallholders on a hectare or two. That single fact explains much of the industry's behavior: there is no estate sector to finance replanting, and no mill-and-plantation pairing of the kind that organizes palm oil.

In 2023 Philippines pressed 1.2 million tonnes of coconut oil, 39% of the world's 3.1 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Indonesia made 646,000 tonnes (21%) and India 549,000 tonnes (18%), followed by Vietnam and Mexico. Everything outside the ten largest producers came to 6.4% of the total, spread across 68 reporting countries. The nut itself ranks differently: world production of coconuts in shell was 65.5 million tonnes in 2024, led by Indonesia with 18 million tonnes, then India at 14.7 million tonnes and Philippines at 14.5 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India harvests nuts on the Philippine scale but eats and drinks most of them fresh, so it falls to third in oil.

Measured in oil, this is a contracting industry. World output was -13% against ten years earlier and -13% against five, and both leaders went backwards over the decade to 2023: Philippines at -2.1% a year and Indonesia at -3.5% (FAOSTAT). The causes are physical rather than commercial. Much of the Philippine and Indonesian palm stock was planted in the 1960s and 1970s and is past its productive peak; replanting costs a smallholder six or seven years of income from that land; the Philippine coconut belt in Eastern Visayas, Bicol and eastern Mindanao sits under the Pacific typhoon track; and land near Java, Kerala and southern Luzon is worth more under houses or other crops. Where the palms stand still traces the copra trade laid out under colonial administration, not any newer decision about where oil is cheapest to make.


## Who exports and imports coconut oil?

The Netherlands and Malaysia refine imported crude oil for the European market; the Philippines and Indonesia press most of the world's copra.

### Exporters of copra (HS 1203), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indonesia | $26.7 million | 31% |
| 2 | India | $23.9 million | 28% |
| 3 | Papua New Guinea | $22.2 million | 26% |
| 4 | Vanuatu | $5.6 million | 6.5% |
| 5 | Solomon Islands | $3.5 million | 4.1% |
| 6 | Egypt | $669,748 | 0.8% |
| 7 | France | $533,335 | 0.6% |
| 8 | Timor-Leste | $507,033 | 0.6% |
| 9 | Sri Lanka | $481,590 | 0.6% |
| 10 | Kiribati | $395,608 | 0.5% |
| 11 | Philippines | $240,427 | 0.3% |
| 12 | United Kingdom | $159,155 | 0.2% |
| 13 | Saudi Arabia | $149,275 | 0.2% |
| 14 | Malaysia | $125,453 | 0.1% |
| 15 | Uganda | $94,240 | 0.1% |

### Importers of copra (HS 1203), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Philippines | $30.3 million | 35% |
| 2 | United Arab Emirates | $18.7 million | 22% |
| 3 | Bangladesh | $17.5 million | 21% |
| 4 | India | $8 million | 9.3% |
| 5 | Pakistan | $1.8 million | 2.1% |
| 6 | Nepal | $1.4 million | 1.7% |
| 7 | Iran | $1.3 million | 1.5% |
| 8 | Malaysia | $1.2 million | 1.4% |
| 9 | Afghanistan | $899,454 | 1.1% |
| 10 | Switzerland | $531,815 | 0.6% |
| 11 | Indonesia | $507,033 | 0.6% |
| 12 | Fiji | $432,739 | 0.5% |
| 13 | Vietnam | $281,089 | 0.3% |
| 14 | Saudi Arabia | $262,195 | 0.3% |
| 15 | South Korea | $242,708 | 0.3% |

### Exporters of coconut, palm kernel and babassu oil (HS 1513), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indonesia | $2.7 billion | 34% |
| 2 | Philippines | $2 billion | 25% |
| 3 | Malaysia | $1.2 billion | 15% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $490.4 million | 6.2% |
| 5 | Thailand | $184.8 million | 2.3% |
| 6 | Papua New Guinea | $137.1 million | 1.7% |
| 7 | Spain | $110.5 million | 1.4% |
| 8 | Colombia | $103 million | 1.3% |
| 9 | Sri Lanka | $90.5 million | 1.1% |
| 10 | Belgium | $87.7 million | 1.1% |
| 11 | Germany | $86.6 million | 1.1% |
| 12 | Guatemala | $62.7 million | 0.8% |
| 13 | Singapore | $56.8 million | 0.7% |
| 14 | United States | $56.1 million | 0.7% |
| 15 | Honduras | $53.1 million | 0.7% |

### Importers of coconut, palm kernel and babassu oil (HS 1513), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $1.2 billion | 15% |
| 2 | China | $1 billion | 13% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $808 million | 10% |
| 4 | Malaysia | $691.7 million | 8.7% |
| 5 | Germany | $515.7 million | 6.5% |
| 6 | Brazil | $318.9 million | 4% |
| 7 | Sri Lanka | $221.8 million | 2.8% |
| 8 | Spain | $220 million | 2.8% |
| 9 | Russia | $196.5 million | 2.5% |
| 10 | Italy | $191.2 million | 2.4% |
| 11 | Mexico | $177.8 million | 2.2% |
| 12 | India | $153.8 million | 1.9% |
| 13 | Japan | $149.9 million | 1.9% |
| 14 | Indonesia | $127.1 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | Belgium | $125.3 million | 1.6% |

### Exporters of crude coconut (copra) oil (HS 151311), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Philippines | $1 billion | 57% |
| 2 | Indonesia | $423.1 million | 24% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $65.2 million | 3.6% |
| 4 | Sri Lanka | $61.8 million | 3.4% |
| 5 | Papua New Guinea | $47.9 million | 2.7% |
| 6 | Singapore | $39.1 million | 2.2% |
| 7 | Malaysia | $22.6 million | 1.3% |
| 8 | Slovenia | $15.7 million | 0.9% |
| 9 | United States | $12.1 million | 0.7% |
| 10 | Germany | $10.2 million | 0.6% |
| 11 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $8 million | 0.4% |
| 12 | Solomon Islands | $7.1 million | 0.4% |
| 13 | Canada | $6.8 million | 0.4% |
| 14 | Vietnam | $6.6 million | 0.4% |
| 15 | India | $5.7 million | 0.3% |

### Importers of crude coconut (copra) oil (HS 151311), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Netherlands | $430.6 million | 24% |
| 2 | Malaysia | $339.9 million | 19% |
| 3 | United States | $241.5 million | 13% |
| 4 | Indonesia | $114.1 million | 6.4% |
| 5 | Germany | $112.2 million | 6.3% |
| 6 | Spain | $104.8 million | 5.8% |
| 7 | Philippines | $94.4 million | 5.3% |
| 8 | Italy | $53 million | 3% |
| 9 | Sri Lanka | $42 million | 2.3% |
| 10 | France | $37.5 million | 2.1% |
| 11 | Sweden | $35 million | 2% |
| 12 | Switzerland | $20.7 million | 1.2% |
| 13 | United Kingdom | $15 million | 0.8% |
| 14 | Canada | $11.5 million | 0.6% |
| 15 | China | $10.9 million | 0.6% |

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

The headline trade line on this page is HS 1513, which lumps coconut oil together with palm kernel and babassu oil, so read it as the lauric oil basket rather than as coconut alone. World exports of coconut and palm kernel oil (HS 1513) were worth $7.9 billion in 2024, with Indonesia first on 34% of the value and Philippines second on 25% (CEPII BACI); Indonesia leads that basket partly on palm kernel oil rather than coconut. Narrow the line to crude coconut oil, HS 151311, and the order reverses: Philippines shipped 57% of the $1.8 billion traded in 2024, ahead of Indonesia on 24%.

Copra itself barely travels. World exports of it were worth $85.5 million in 2024 (CEPII BACI), because dried flesh is bulky, goes rancid and is cheaper to press beside the drying yard than to ship; the trade that does exist runs from the Pacific islands, with Papua New Guinea on 26% of it, into mills elsewhere, and Philippines was the largest buyer on 35%. On the oil side the buyers split into consumers and refiners. United States took 15% of imports of the HS 1513 basket by value and China 13%, but for crude coconut oil specifically the two largest importers were Netherlands on 24% and Malaysia on 19%, which refine, fractionate and re-export it. Dutch and Malaysian import figures therefore overstate what those countries consume.


## What does coconut oil cost?

- Philippines/Indonesia, CIF Rotterdam: $1,853/t in August 2026; 12-month change -32%; 10-year change +18%; all-time high $2,841/t in July 2025; real high (2024 US$) $8,308/t in March 1974 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

Coconut oil has no futures contract. There is no equivalent of Bursa Malaysia's palm oil board or the Chicago oilseed complex, so the price is what reporting agencies assess from deals between a few dozen sellers and buyers, quoted in dollars per tonne either FOB the Philippines and Indonesia or CIF Rotterdam. A physical contract names the loading window, the port, the free fatty acid tolerance and the moisture and impurity limits. Copra at the mill gate is priced as a percentage of the oil value, because copra runs about 63 to 65 percent oil by weight, so the farm gate and the Rotterdam quote move together with a lag of a few weeks.

This site's series is Philippines/Indonesia, CIF Rotterdam, which stood at $1,853/t in August 2026, down 32% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its nominal record was $2,841/t in July 2025; adjusted for US consumer prices the real peak came far earlier and far higher, at $8,308/t in March 1974. The low since the series began in 1960 was $200/t in April 1972. Over ten years the series was +18%. Because the quote is CIF it carries ocean freight and insurance into Rotterdam, so it sits above the FOB price at Manila or Bitung by the cost of moving a small parcel halfway around the world.

Two ambiguities matter here. A quoted coconut oil price means crude coconut oil, the commodity grade pressed from copra and sold to a refinery, not virgin coconut oil, which is made from fresh kernel, sells at a large premium and moves in cases rather than cargoes. And coconut oil is one of two lauric oils; the other is palm kernel oil, whose fatty acid profile does the same work in soap, surfactants and confectionery fats. The two trade as a pair, and the spread between them, rather than either level on its own, usually decides which one a buyer takes.


## What moves the price of coconut oil?

### The lauric spread with palm kernel oil

Coconut oil and palm kernel oil are close chemical substitutes, both rich in the 12-carbon lauric acid that oleochemical plants want. Palm kernel oil is a by-product of a far larger palm oil industry, so its supply is set by decisions about a different crop and does not respond to lauric demand. When the two prices converge, buyers switch to whichever is cheaper and coconut loses volume; when palm kernel supply tightens, coconut rises with it. Watching either price alone misses the substitution that actually clears the market.

### Typhoons in the Philippine coconut belt

Eastern Visayas, Bicol and eastern Mindanao carry a large share of the Philippine palm stock and sit in the western Pacific typhoon track, with the season concentrated between July and December. A storm strips nuts immediately, which cuts copra within months, and snaps or uproots mature palms, which removes their output for the six or more years a replacement takes to bear. The two effects arrive on different timescales, so a single storm shows up in the price twice: once as a short crop and again as a lower ceiling for the rest of the decade.

### El Niño and the twelve-month lag

A coconut takes about twelve months from flowering to a mature nut, and the palm sets flowers continuously, so drought stress registers in copra supply roughly a year after the weather. El Niño dry spells across the Philippines and Indonesia therefore cut output in the year following the event rather than during it, which is why the market can be well supplied while the drought is in the news and short when it has been forgotten. Wet-season flooding in low-lying groves does the reverse and hits drying rather than yield.

### The aging palm stock and the replanting gap

A coconut palm yields best between roughly ten and forty years old and declines after that without dying, so a plantation can look intact while producing far less than it once did. Large parts of the Philippine and Indonesian stock date from planting drives in the 1960s and 1970s. Replacing a palm costs a smallholder every harvest from that tree for six or seven years, which no one with a hectare of land can easily fund, so replanting programs move slowly and the supply ceiling falls a little each year regardless of price.

### Oleochemical demand for lauric fatty acids

Roughly half the world's coconut oil never reaches a kitchen. It is split into lauric acid and fatty alcohols that become the surfactants in detergents, shampoos and toothpaste, plus emollients for cosmetics and medium-chain triglycerides for food and pharmaceutical use. Those plants run continuously and cannot reformulate quickly, so their demand is inelastic over months even when the price doubles; they respond instead by switching between the two lauric oils, which transmits the shock rather than absorbing it.

### Philippine policy and the coconut levy

The Philippines is the largest exporter of crude coconut oil, so its rules move the world price. The Philippine Coconut Authority licenses exporters and issues clearances; a levy collected from farmers in the 1970s was placed in a trust fund by legislation in 2021 and is being spent on replanting, fertilizer and processing; and a coconut methyl ester blending requirement diverts oil into diesel at home. Any change to the export levy, the blending rate or the trust fund's disbursement alters how much oil leaves the country.

### A thin market with no hedge

There is no coconut oil futures contract, no published world stocks series and only a few dozen serious counterparties, so the market carries none of the shock absorbers that grain and palm oil have. A refiner who needs a cargo cannot lay off the risk on an exchange and must instead buy forward physically or switch feedstock. Thin trading turns a modest supply surprise into a large price move, and it is the main reason the coconut oil price is more volatile than the vegetable oil complex it belongs to.

### Health claims and food fashion

Coconut oil is almost entirely saturated fat, and the way that fact is read has swung twice. A campaign against tropical oils in the United States in the late 1980s pushed it out of processed food; a wave of interest in virgin coconut oil after about 2010 pulled a premium retail segment out of the same crop; and a 2017 advisory from cardiologists cooled that again. These swings move a small share of total volume but a large share of the high-margin end, and they change what refiners are willing to bid for good-quality oil.

## How is coconut oil produced?

A nut takes about twelve months from flowering to maturity, and because the palm flowers continuously a grove is harvested every 45 to 60 days, either by climbers, by a knife on a long bamboo pole, or by collecting what has fallen. The nuts are dehusked, the shells split, and the white flesh prised out. Left wet it molds within days, so the flesh is dried on the spot: on drying floors in the sun where the weather allows, over a smoke kiln in the wet months, or in a hot-air dryer at a larger operation. Dried to about 6 percent moisture it becomes copra, the traded intermediate, and the quality of that drying step sets the free fatty acid content, the color and the mold and aflatoxin risk in everything downstream.

Copra is sold to a mill, cleaned, cut and pressed. An expeller screw press takes out most of the oil, and solvent extraction with hexane strips the remainder from the cake, leaving crude coconut oil and copra meal, a protein feed sold to ruminant and poultry rations. The crude oil is dark and strongly flavored. Refining, bleaching and deodorizing produce RBD coconut oil for food and industry; fractionation separates the harder and softer portions for confectionery coatings and specialty fats; and splitting the oil with steam yields fatty acids and glycerin that feed the oleochemical chain into fatty alcohols and surfactants.

Virgin coconut oil is made differently and never passes through copra. Fresh kernel is either pressed and the oil separated from the resulting coconut milk by centrifuge, fermentation or gentle heat, or dried at low temperature and pressed directly. Because it is never bleached or deodorized it keeps the coconut aroma, and because it needs fresh nuts within a day or two of husking it is made close to the grove at small scale. The same nut carries several other products: the husk becomes coir fiber and peat, the shell becomes charcoal and activated carbon, the water inside is packed as a drink, and the residual meal after milk extraction is dried into flour.


## What is coconut oil used for?

Coconut oil is solid below about 24 degrees Celsius, melts sharply just under body temperature, and resists oxidation, and those three properties decide where it goes. As a food it is the frying and cooking oil of the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Kerala and much of the Pacific, and industrially it is the fat that gives confectionery coatings, non-dairy creamers, filled milks and biscuit fillings their snap and mouthfeel without hydrogenation.

The larger industrial stream is chemical rather than culinary. Splitting the oil gives lauric and myristic acids, which are converted to fatty alcohols and then to the surfactants in shampoo, dish and laundry detergent, and to esters used as emollients in cosmetics. Medium-chain triglycerides are distilled from the same feedstock for sports nutrition and pharmaceutical carriers, glycerin is recovered as a co-product, and in the Philippines a share of the oil is converted to coconut methyl ester and blended into diesel. Copra meal left after pressing is a low-protein feed traded mainly into Southeast Asian and Korean cattle rations.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Pressing sits close to the trees. Mills cluster in Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao in the Philippines and around Bitung in North Sulawesi and in North Sumatra in Indonesia, and a small number of exporters handle most of the crude oil that leaves either country. Refining sits somewhere else entirely: Rotterdam, Malaysia and the United States take in crude oil and turn it into RBD grades, fractions and oleochemicals for European and North American buyers, which is why the crude coconut oil import table is led by refining countries rather than consuming ones. Between those two ends there is almost no inventory: copra spoils, mills run hand to mouth, and no country publishes a stocks series the market can watch.

Shipping is by parcel tanker in lots of a few thousand tonnes, usually sharing a vessel with other vegetable oils, out of Manila, Batangas, General Santos, Davao and Cagayan de Oro in the Philippines and Bitung and Surabaya in Indonesia. The long-haul routes run west through the Malacca Strait and Suez to Rotterdam and Hamburg and east across the Pacific to the US West Coast and the Gulf. Because parcels are small and specialized, freight is a larger share of the delivered price than it is for palm oil, and a shortage of clean chemical tanker space widens the CIF-to-FOB gap quickly.

The failure points are concentrated. One country supplies most of the world's traded crude coconut oil, and its main growing regions lie in a typhoon corridor. The crop is a single species planted in a few large cohorts, exposed to the cadang-cadang viroid in the Philippines and to lethal yellowing phytoplasmas elsewhere, neither of which has a treatment once a palm is infected. There is no futures market to hedge and no strategic stock to draw on, so the whole chain absorbs a shock through price rather than through inventory, and buyers absorb it by switching to palm kernel oil.


## Key companies

- Franklin Baker Company of the Philippines: processor, Philippines
- Wilmar International: processor, Singapore, listed (SGX: F34)
- Marico: refiner, India, listed (NSE: MARICO)
- Cargill: trader, United States
- Bunge Global: refiner, United States, listed (NYSE: BG)

## Timeline

- 1934: US Revenue Act imposes a processing tax on coconut oil. A three-cent-per-pound tax on oil pressed in the United States, with the proceeds on Philippine-origin oil remitted to Manila, tied the industry's economics to American trade law for a generation. (https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/301/308)
- 1937: Cadang-cadang disease of coconut first documented in the Philippines. A viroid that kills mature palms with no available treatment became a permanent constraint on replanting in the world's largest oil-producing country. (https://dpvweb.net/dpv/showdpv/?dpvno=402)
- 1969: Asian and Pacific Coconut Community established. An intergovernmental body under the UN regional commission gave producing countries a shared statistical and policy forum for a crop with no exchange and little published data. (https://sti-portal.fao.org/organizations/asian-and-pacific-coconut-community)
- 1973-06: Philippine Coconut Authority created. A single agency was given control of licensing, replanting and export clearance in the country that supplies most of the world's traded crude coconut oil. (https://www.lawphil.net/statutes/presdecs/pd1973/pd_232_1973.html)
- 1973-08: Philippine coconut levy imposed on copra sales. A levy taken from farmers to fund a stabilization scheme became the industry's defining political dispute and starved replanting of money for decades. (https://www.lawphil.net/statutes/presdecs/pd1973/pd_276_1973.html)
- 1988-10: US campaign against tropical oils in processed food. A privately funded advertising campaign against saturated fat pushed coconut and palm oil out of American food manufacturing and cut a large export market. (https://time.com/archive/6717311/a-crusader-from-the-heartland-philip-sokolof/)
- 1995-06: Philippine Coconut Preservation Act restricts felling of palms. Cutting a coconut palm was made subject to permit and to replanting requirements, an attempt to stop the stock shrinking as land shifted to other uses. (https://lawphil.net/statutes/repacts/ra1995/ra_8048_1995.html)
- 2012-01: Philippine Supreme Court rules the coconut levy funds are public property. The ruling ended decades of litigation over who owned the levy proceeds and opened the way to spending them on the palm stock they came from. (https://lawphil.net/judjuris/juri2012/jan2012/gr_177857_2012.html)
- 2013-11: Typhoon Haiyan damages or destroys 33 million coconut trees. A single storm removed a large part of Eastern Visayas' bearing stock, and because a replacement palm takes years to bear, the loss showed up in copra supply for the rest of the decade. (https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/Philippine-coconut-farmers-struggling-to-recover-from-typhoon/en)
- 2017: American Heart Association advises replacing coconut oil with unsaturated fats. The advisory cooled a premium retail market for virgin coconut oil that had grown through the 2010s and had been supporting the value of the best-quality crop. (https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/food-features/coconut-oil/)
- 2021-02: Coconut Farmers and Industry Trust Fund Act signed in the Philippines. The law released the levy assets into a trust fund earmarked for replanting, fertilizer and processing, the first large-scale attempt to reverse the decline in Philippine yields. (https://www.lawphil.net/statutes/repacts/ra2021/ra_11524_2021.html)
- 2022-06: Philippine Coconut Farmers and Industry Development Plan approved. The plan set out how the trust fund would be spent, which determines whether the world's largest exporter can lift a palm stock that has been shrinking for a decade. (https://lawphil.net/executive/execord/eo2022/eo_172_2022.html)

## Frequently asked questions

### where does coconut oil come from

It is pressed from copra, the dried flesh of the coconut. In 2023 Philippines made 1.2 million tonnes of coconut oil, 39% of the world's 3.1 million tonnes, ahead of Indonesia with 646,000 tonnes and India with 549,000 tonnes (FAOSTAT). The palm grows only in frost-free coastal lowlands near the equator.

### which country exports the most coconut oil

Philippines led exports of crude coconut oil (HS 151311) in 2024 with 57% of the $1.8 billion traded, ahead of Indonesia on 24% (CEPII BACI). In the wider HS 1513 basket, which also covers palm kernel and babassu oil, Indonesia ranks first on 34%.

### what is the price of coconut oil per tonne

Philippines/Indonesia, CIF Rotterdam averaged $1,853/t in August 2026, down 32% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). That is crude coconut oil delivered into Rotterdam, including freight and insurance. There is no coconut oil futures contract, so prices are assessed from physical deals rather than set on an exchange.

### what is copra

Copra is coconut flesh dried to about 6 percent moisture, either in the sun, over a smoke kiln or in a hot-air dryer. It runs about 63 to 65 percent oil by weight and is the form in which the crop is sold to a mill. Very little crosses borders: world copra exports were worth $85.5 million in 2024 (CEPII BACI), because it is cheaper to press than to ship.

### is coconut oil the same as palm oil

No. Palm oil comes from the orange flesh of the oil palm fruit and palm kernel oil from the seed inside it; coconut oil comes from a different palm entirely. Coconut oil and palm kernel oil are the close pair, both rich in lauric acid and both used in soap and surfactants. World coconut oil output was 3.1 million tonnes in 2023 (FAOSTAT), a fraction of palm oil's.

### why is coconut oil so expensive

Supply is falling while lauric demand is not. World production was -13% over ten years to 2023, held back by aging palms, typhoon damage and slow replanting (FAOSTAT). With no futures market, no published stocks and only one close substitute, shortages clear through price: the series peaked at $2,841/t in July 2025 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### what is coconut oil used for

About half is food, mostly frying and cooking oil in South and Southeast Asia and hard fats for confectionery coatings, creamers and biscuit fillings. The rest is split into lauric acid and fatty alcohols for detergents, shampoo and cosmetics, into medium-chain triglycerides, and in the Philippines into biodiesel. Copra meal left after pressing is sold as animal feed.

### why is coconut oil production falling

The palms are old. World output was -13% over five years to 2023, with Philippines down at -2.1% a year and Indonesia at -3.5% over the decade (FAOSTAT). Much of the stock was planted in the 1960s and 1970s, replanting costs a smallholder six or seven years of income, and typhoons remove mature palms outright.

### what is virgin coconut oil

Virgin coconut oil is pressed from fresh kernel rather than from copra, and is separated from coconut milk by centrifuge, fermentation or low heat instead of being refined, bleached and deodorized. It keeps the coconut aroma, is made near the grove at small scale, and sells at a large premium to the commodity grade quoted at $1,853/t in August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2023. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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 does coconut oil come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/coconut-oil/.

---

# Where does coffee come from?

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

Coffee comes mainly from Brazil, which produced 3.4 million tonnes in 2024, 30% of the world's 11.1 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Vietnam (18%), Colombia (7.5%) and Indonesia (7.3%) follow; the top five together supply 68%. The biggest exporter of green coffee (HS 090111) is Brazil (35% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Arabica (ICE New York, other milds), was $7.97/kg in August 2026, down 1% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The top producers sit inside the tropics, where arabica finds cool, frost-free highlands and robusta tolerates hot, wet lowlands; Brazil leads because it also has flat land, large mechanized farms and irrigated plantings that no other origin can match.

*Seeds of the Coffea plant, traded green (unroasted) and then roasted close to where it is drunk.* Also called: coffee beans, green coffee, arabica, robusta, arabica coffee, robusta coffee.

## Where does coffee come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | 3.4 million | 30% |
| 2 | Vietnam | 2 million | 18% |
| 3 | Colombia | 839,847 | 7.5% |
| 4 | Indonesia | 807,578 | 7.3% |
| 5 | Ethiopia | 575,696 | 5.2% |
| 6 | Uganda | 402,000 | 3.6% |
| 7 | India | 363,000 | 3.3% |
| 8 | Peru | 358,994 | 3.2% |
| 9 | Central African Republic | 324,923 | 2.9% |
| 10 | Honduras | 324,015 | 2.9% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 16% |
| | World | 11.1 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

Coffee grows in a band around the equator that the trade calls the bean belt. Arabica (Coffea arabica), the higher-value species, wants altitudes of roughly 800 to 2,000 meters, mild temperatures, a dry season to trigger flowering and no frost at all. Robusta (Coffea canephora) tolerates heat and humidity, grows at lower elevations and yields more per tree, but it tastes harsher and sells at a discount. Where a country sits on those two maps explains most of what it grows.

In 2024 Brazil produced 3.4 million tonnes of green coffee, 30% of the world's 11.1 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Brazil's coffee belt in Minas Gerais, São Paulo, Espírito Santo and Bahia is unusual: much of it is flat enough to harvest by machine, farms are large by coffee standards, and irrigated plantings on the cerrado have pushed output away from the frost-prone south. Vietnam (18%) grows mostly robusta on smallholdings in its Central Highlands, an industry built almost from nothing since the 1980s. Colombia (7.5%) and Indonesia (7.3%) follow, and the top five producers together grew 68% of world output.

Outside Brazil, coffee is overwhelmingly a smallholder crop. Ethiopia, where arabica evolved in the forests of the southwest, harvests much of its crop from garden and semi-forest plots. Colombia's volcanic slopes give it washed arabica grown by hundreds of thousands of families. Central America, Peru, Uganda, India and Indonesia round out the picture, each with a local mix of species, altitude and processing tradition. 78 countries reported production in 2024, but the share outside the top ten was only 16%.

History set the map as much as climate did. Coffee reached Brazil in 1727 and dominated its export economy by the mid-1800s; the 1975 Black Frost pushed planting north into Minas Gerais; and coffee leaf rust, which destroyed Ceylon's plantations after 1869, is one reason so much of Asia grows robusta.


## Who exports and imports coffee?

Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Belgium re-export roasted and soluble coffee they did not grow; the raw-bean ranking (HS 090111) is the one that says where coffee comes from.

### Exporters of coffee, all forms (green, roasted, decaffeinated, husks) (HS 0901), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | $11.7 billion | 23% |
| 2 | Vietnam | $4.1 billion | 8.2% |
| 3 | Switzerland | $3.7 billion | 7.4% |
| 4 | Colombia | $3.6 billion | 7.1% |
| 5 | Germany | $3.5 billion | 6.9% |
| 6 | Italy | $2.7 billion | 5.3% |
| 7 | Indonesia | $1.7 billion | 3.3% |
| 8 | Uganda | $1.5 billion | 2.9% |
| 9 | Ethiopia | $1.5 billion | 2.9% |
| 10 | Honduras | $1.4 billion | 2.7% |
| 11 | Peru | $1.2 billion | 2.3% |
| 12 | India | $1.2 billion | 2.3% |
| 13 | France | $1.1 billion | 2.2% |
| 14 | Netherlands | $1.1 billion | 2.2% |
| 15 | United States | $967.2 million | 1.9% |

### Importers of coffee, all forms (green, roasted, decaffeinated, husks) (HS 0901), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $8.8 billion | 17% |
| 2 | Germany | $5.3 billion | 10% |
| 3 | Italy | $2.9 billion | 5.8% |
| 4 | Belgium | $2.9 billion | 5.7% |
| 5 | France | $2.8 billion | 5.5% |
| 6 | Spain | $1.9 billion | 3.8% |
| 7 | Canada | $1.8 billion | 3.5% |
| 8 | Japan | $1.7 billion | 3.4% |
| 9 | Netherlands | $1.7 billion | 3.3% |
| 10 | United Kingdom | $1.4 billion | 2.7% |
| 11 | Poland | $1.3 billion | 2.6% |
| 12 | South Korea | $1.2 billion | 2.4% |
| 13 | Switzerland | $1.1 billion | 2.2% |
| 14 | China | $838.2 million | 1.7% |
| 15 | Russia | $721.3 million | 1.4% |

### Exporters of coffee, not roasted, not decaffeinated (green coffee) (HS 090111), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | $11.7 billion | 35% |
| 2 | Vietnam | $3.9 billion | 12% |
| 3 | Colombia | $3.4 billion | 10% |
| 4 | Indonesia | $1.6 billion | 4.9% |
| 5 | Uganda | $1.5 billion | 4.4% |
| 6 | Ethiopia | $1.4 billion | 4.2% |
| 7 | Honduras | $1.3 billion | 3.9% |
| 8 | Peru | $1.2 billion | 3.5% |
| 9 | India | $1.1 billion | 3.4% |
| 10 | Guatemala | $945.4 million | 2.8% |
| 11 | Germany | $823.8 million | 2.4% |
| 12 | Nicaragua | $587.9 million | 1.7% |
| 13 | Belgium | $511.7 million | 1.5% |
| 14 | Mexico | $438.8 million | 1.3% |
| 15 | Costa Rica | $427.2 million | 1.3% |

### Importers of coffee, not roasted, not decaffeinated (green coffee) (HS 090111), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $6.2 billion | 18% |
| 2 | Germany | $4.4 billion | 13% |
| 3 | Italy | $2.6 billion | 7.7% |
| 4 | Belgium | $2.5 billion | 7.3% |
| 5 | Japan | $1.6 billion | 4.8% |
| 6 | Spain | $1.1 billion | 3.3% |
| 7 | Canada | $962.5 million | 2.9% |
| 8 | Netherlands | $906.3 million | 2.7% |
| 9 | France | $878 million | 2.6% |
| 10 | Switzerland | $875.5 million | 2.6% |
| 11 | South Korea | $784.5 million | 2.3% |
| 12 | China | $705.8 million | 2.1% |
| 13 | Poland | $634 million | 1.9% |
| 14 | United Kingdom | $631.5 million | 1.9% |
| 15 | Russia | $547.8 million | 1.6% |

### Exporters of coffee, roasted, not decaffeinated (HS 090121), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Switzerland | $3.5 billion | 23% |
| 2 | Italy | $2.5 billion | 17% |
| 3 | Germany | $2.1 billion | 14% |
| 4 | France | $978 million | 6.5% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $874.9 million | 5.9% |
| 6 | United States | $785.4 million | 5.3% |
| 7 | Poland | $580.8 million | 3.9% |
| 8 | Canada | $530.5 million | 3.5% |
| 9 | Belgium | $326.7 million | 2.2% |
| 10 | Spain | $271.1 million | 1.8% |
| 11 | Czechia | $194.7 million | 1.3% |
| 12 | United Kingdom | $194.2 million | 1.3% |
| 13 | Sweden | $185.6 million | 1.2% |
| 14 | Denmark | $166.4 million | 1.1% |
| 15 | Slovakia | $132.9 million | 0.9% |

### Importers of coffee, roasted, not decaffeinated (HS 090121), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $2.1 billion | 14% |
| 2 | France | $1.8 billion | 12% |
| 3 | Germany | $861.1 million | 5.8% |
| 4 | Canada | $752.3 million | 5% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $687.3 million | 4.6% |
| 6 | Poland | $674.7 million | 4.5% |
| 7 | United Kingdom | $619.6 million | 4.1% |
| 8 | Spain | $563 million | 3.8% |
| 9 | Austria | $454.7 million | 3% |
| 10 | Romania | $379.3 million | 2.5% |
| 11 | Belgium | $378.4 million | 2.5% |
| 12 | South Korea | $347 million | 2.3% |
| 13 | Czechia | $312.1 million | 2.1% |
| 14 | Italy | $297.8 million | 2% |
| 15 | Denmark | $223.3 million | 1.5% |

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

Trade and production rankings differ because coffee is exported in three forms: green (unroasted) beans, roasted coffee and soluble (instant) coffee. In 2024 the biggest exporter under HS 0901, which counts roasted beans as well as green, was Brazil with 35% of world export value (CEPII BACI). For green beans alone (HS 090111) the leading exporter was Brazil (35% of world export value in 2024), which is the ranking that says where coffee comes from.

The largest importer of coffee in 2024 was United States (18% of world import value), followed by Germany and Italy. Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Belgium sit high on export tables without growing a single tree: they import green beans, roast or freeze-dry them, and re-export the result. The top exporter of roasted coffee (HS 090121) in 2024 was Switzerland, with 23% of that trade.


## What does coffee cost?

- Arabica (ICE New York, other milds): $7.97/kg in August 2026; 12-month change -1%; 10-year change +116%; all-time high $9.05/kg in February 2025; real high (2024 US$) $36.6/kg in April 1977 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- Robusta (ICE London): $3.98/kg in August 2026; 12-month change -9%; 10-year change +97%; all-time high $6.88/kg in April 1977; real high (2024 US$) $35.97/kg in April 1977 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

Two futures contracts set the reference prices. Arabica trades on ICE Futures US as the Coffee C contract (ticker KC), 37,500 lb per lot, quoted in US cents per pound, deliverable from a list of approved origins into licensed warehouses in the United States and Europe. Robusta trades on ICE Futures Europe as the Robusta Coffee contract (ticker RC), 10 tonnes per lot, quoted in US dollars per tonne. The World Bank series used on this page, Arabica (ICE New York, other milds), follows the arabica side: it stood at $7.97/kg in August 2026, down 1% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The companion robusta series, Robusta (ICE London), was $3.98/kg in August 2026. The arabica series' highest month on record was $9.05/kg in February 2025; its lowest was $0.78/kg in July 1969.

Physical coffee is not sold at the futures price. Exporters quote a differential against the nearest contract month, positive or negative, that reflects origin, grade, screen size, defect count and cup quality. Colombian milds and other milds carry premiums over the C contract; Brazilian naturals usually trade at a discount; robustas are priced off London. Quotes are typically FOB (free on board) at the port of origin, so freight and insurance to Hamburg or New Orleans come on top. The International Coffee Organization's composite indicator blends the four groups (Colombian milds, other milds, Brazilian naturals, robustas) into a single daily reference.

Two ambiguities to keep in mind. First, coffee on this page means green beans, not roasted or soluble product. Second, arabica is quoted per pound in New York and robusta per tonne in London, so convert units before comparing the two.


## What moves the price of coffee?

### Weather in Brazil

Brazil grows about a third of the world's coffee and its arabica belt lies at the southern edge of where the tree can survive. A frost between June and August, as in 1975, 1994 and 2021, kills leaves and wood and cuts the following year's crop rather than the one being picked; a dry spell during the September to November flowering aborts fruit set. Because no other origin can replace Brazilian volume quickly, the market builds a weather risk premium into the C contract every southern winter.

### Brazil's biennial cycle

Arabica trees bear heavily one year and rest the next while they recover, and Brazil's crop is large enough that its on-year and off-year pattern shows up in the world balance. Prices tend to soften into an on-year harvest and firm ahead of an off-year, and analysts adjust every Brazilian crop estimate for where the cycle stands. Irrigation and pruning have smoothed the swing but not removed it.

### Stocks-to-use

The ratio of ending stocks to consumption tells you how much cushion the market has against a bad harvest. USDA puts world coffee stocks-to-use at 12% for 2026/27, compared with 13% in 2025/26 (USDA PSD). Certified stocks in ICE warehouses are the visible slice; when they drain, the nearby contract moves to a premium over later months and price spikes become sharper because there is nothing to sell into them.

### The Brazilian real

Coffee is priced in dollars but Brazilian costs are in reais. A weaker real raises the local price a grower receives for the same New York quote, so farmers sell more of what they hold and spend more on fertilizer, which pushes dollar prices down over the following months. A stronger real does the opposite. The Colombian peso and Vietnamese dong work the same way for their exporters, but the real matters most because Brazil's volume is largest.

### Robusta and Vietnam

Robusta substitutes for arabica in blends and instant coffee, so the two prices are linked. When Vietnam's harvest is short or its farmers hold beans back, roasters move some volume to arabica and the arabica-robusta spread narrows; when robusta is plentiful the spread widens. The dry season and reservoir levels in Vietnam's Central Highlands are watched as closely as Brazilian frost forecasts.

### Disease and pests

Coffee leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix) defoliates arabica in warm, wet years, and the outbreak that swept Central America in 2012 and 2013 cut regional output and farm employment for several seasons. The coffee berry borer bores into beans in every origin. Warmer temperatures at altitude let both move uphill into areas that used to be safe, which is why rust-resistant cultivars are spreading.

### Demand and roaster buying

Consumption grows slowly in Europe and North America and faster in producing countries and Asia, so demand rarely moves prices within a month, but it sets the level around which supply shocks swing. Roasters also time their purchases: when prices spike they run down inventories and buy hand to mouth, thinning demand at the top; when prices fall they cover forward. Regulation such as the EU's deforestation rules adds traceability costs at the margin.

## How is coffee produced?

Coffee is a fruit. The tree flowers after the first rains and cherries ripen seven to nine months later, so harvest runs from roughly May to September in Brazil, October to February in Central America and Ethiopia, and November to February in Vietnam. Each cherry holds two seeds, the beans. Arabica accounts for most of the value in trade and robusta for a large share of the volume. Within arabica, cultivars such as Typica, Bourbon, Caturra and Catuaí, and rust-resistant hybrids such as Castillo, decide yield and cup quality.

Processing removes the fruit. In the washed method, cherries are pulped, fermented to loosen the sticky mucilage, washed and dried on patios or raised beds; it gives cleaner, brighter coffee and needs water. In the natural method, used for most of Brazil and much of Ethiopia, whole cherries dry in the sun before hulling; it gives heavier body and fruit. Honey and pulped-natural methods sit between. The dried product, parchment (washed) or dried cherry (natural), is milled to strip the husk, then graded by screen size, density and defect count, and bagged as green coffee, traditionally in 60 kg jute sacks or loaded loose into container liners.

By-products include pulp (composted or dried as cascara), parchment husk burned as boiler fuel, and silverskin shed during roasting. Yields differ enormously: irrigated, mechanized Brazilian farms produce several times more green coffee per hectare than rain-fed smallholder plots in East Africa. Roasting happens close to the drinker, usually weeks before sale, because roasted coffee stales within months while green coffee keeps for a year or more.


### Harvest calendar

- Brazil (Arabica and robusta (conilon)): harvest May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep. Peak July–August; biennial bearing cycle.
- Vietnam (Robusta, Central Highlands): harvest Jan, Oct, Nov, Dec
- Colombia (Main crop): harvest Oct, Nov, Dec. Mitaca (fly crop) April–June.
- Indonesia (Robusta, Sumatra): harvest May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep
- Ethiopia (Arabica): harvest Jan, Oct, Nov, Dec
- Uganda (Robusta main crop): harvest Jan, Feb, Oct, Nov, Dec. Second crop May–August.
- Honduras (Arabica): harvest Jan, Feb, Mar, Nov, Dec
- India (Arabica then robusta): harvest Jan, Feb, Nov, Dec. Robusta picked into March.

## What is coffee used for?

Almost all coffee is drunk. Green beans are roasted for ground and whole-bean retail and food service, or extracted and dried into soluble coffee, which absorbs a large share of the world's robusta. Smaller volumes go to decaffeination, flavor extracts and ready-to-drink beverages, and the caffeine recovered during decaffeination is sold to the soft-drink and pharmaceutical industries.

Non-beverage uses of the bean are negligible; the meaningful by-products are agricultural. Consumption is concentrated in the European Union, the United States, Brazil and Japan, with the fastest growth in producing countries and in Asia, according to the International Coffee Organization's consumption statistics. The World Bank's coffee series and the ICO composite both refer to green coffee, so consumption is usually counted in green bean equivalent rather than cups.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Green coffee moves from farm to a wet mill or dry mill, then to an exporter's warehouse and a port: Santos and Rio de Janeiro for Brazil, Ho Chi Minh City for Vietnam, Buenaventura and Cartagena for Colombia, Djibouti for landlocked Ethiopia, Mombasa for Uganda and Kenya. Nearly all of it ships in containers, bagged or in bulk liners. The main destinations are Hamburg, Antwerp, Genoa, Trieste, New Orleans and New York, where ICE-licensed warehouses hold certified stocks. Germany, Belgium, Italy and Switzerland are pivots in the chain rather than end markets, roasting and re-exporting much of what they land.

Concentration is at the trading and roasting stages, not the farm. A handful of merchants (Neumann Kaffee Gruppe, Ecom, ofi, Louis Dreyfus, Sucafina, Volcafe) handle a large share of exports, and a few roasters (Nestlé, JDE Peet's, Starbucks, Lavazza) buy a large share of what they ship. Both sides hedge on ICE, so a sudden price spike raises margin calls along the whole chain and can squeeze the smallest exporters out of the market.

Single points of failure: Brazil's weather, because no other origin has spare volume; the Suez route that carries Asian robusta to Europe, which adds weeks when ships divert around the Cape of Good Hope; container availability, since coffee competes for boxes with every other export; and for Ethiopia the road and rail corridor to Djibouti. Price discovery itself is concentrated in two contracts on one exchange group.


## Key companies

- Nestlé: roaster (Nescafé, Nespresso), Switzerland, listed (NESN)
- JDE Peet's: roaster, Netherlands
- Starbucks: roaster and retailer, United States, listed (SBUX)
- Neumann Kaffee Gruppe: green coffee trader, Germany
- Lavazza: roaster, Italy
- Ecom Agroindustrial: green coffee trader, Switzerland

## Timeline

- 1727: Coffee is planted in Brazil. Francisco de Melo Palheta planted the first coffee bush in Pará, the start of an industry that made Brazil the dominant producer by the 1840s. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_production_in_Brazil)
- 1869: Coffee leaf rust reaches Ceylon. Hemileia vastatrix appeared on estates in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and spread across the island within five years; the plantation coffee economy had collapsed by the 1890s and was replaced by tea. (https://www.historyofceylontea.com/ceylon-publications/feature-articles/the-collapse-of-coffee-in-ceylon-c-1869-1890-disease-empire-and-plantation-transformation.html)
- 1906-02: Taubaté Convention. Brazil's coffee states agreed to borrow against and stockpile coffee to hold prices above the historical average during overproduction, the first state valorization scheme. (https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/taubate-convention)
- 1962: International Coffee Agreement. 56 countries negotiated an agreement in New York to hold prices at 1962 levels through export quotas; it took effect in December 1963 and governed the market for a generation. (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v09/d360)
- 1975-07: The Black Frost, Paraná. A severe frost in southern Brazil produced the most dramatic price spike of the modern era and pushed coffee planting north into Minas Gerais. (https://dailycoffeenews.com/2014/10/06/a-brief-history-of-coffee-price-volatility-in-the-modern-era-1963-2013/)
- 1989-07: Export quotas suspended. Producers could not agree on quota allocation, the quota system was suspended and coffee prices fell by about 40 percent, opening the free-market era. (https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/voices/set-fail-how-commodity-agreements-collapse)
- 2002-08: The coffee crisis. The ICO reported world prices around 50 US cents/lb, the lowest in real terms for a century, after production in Vietnam and Brazil outran demand for five years. (https://www.ico.org/documents/globalcrisise.pdf)
- 2013-03: Coffee rust emergency in Central America. The International Coffee Council declared the leaf rust epidemic the worst since the pest reached Central America in 1976, with more than two million livelihoods in the region at stake. (https://www.ico.org/documents/cy2012-13/ed-2157e-report-clr.pdf)
- 2021-07: Frost hits Brazil again. A severe frost on 20 July lifted the ICO composite indicator to its highest monthly average since 2014 and set the stage for the price surge of the following years. (https://www.ico.org/documents/cy2020-21/cmr-0721-e.pdf)
- 2023-06: EU deforestation regulation enters into force. Coffee sold into the EU must be traced to plots free of deforestation after 31 December 2020, adding due-diligence costs for exporters and roasters. (https://www.wri.org/insights/explain-eu-deforestation-regulation)
- 2025-02: Arabica futures pass US$4.30/lb. ICE arabica futures traded above US$4.30/lb for the first time, beating the 1977 post-frost record of US$3.39/lb, on short Brazilian supply and low stocks. (https://perfectdailygrind.com/2025/02/coffee-prices-record-highs-roasters/)

## Frequently asked questions

### Which country produces the most coffee?

Brazil produced 3.4 million tonnes of green coffee in 2024, 30% of the world's 11.1 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Vietnam was second with 18%, and Colombia third with 7.5%. The top five producers together grew 68% of world output. Brazil leads because its farms are large, flat and often irrigated, while most other origins rely on smallholders picking by hand.

### Where does most coffee come from?

From a belt of tropical countries between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. In 2024 the top five were Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia, Indonesia and Ethiopia, which together produced 68% of the world's 11.1 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Arabica comes mainly from Latin America and East Africa; robusta from Vietnam, Brazil, Indonesia and Uganda.

### Why is coffee so expensive?

Coffee prices follow the weather in Brazil and the size of world stocks. The benchmark Arabica (ICE New York, other milds) price was $7.97/kg in August 2026, down 1% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet); the series' record was $9.05/kg in February 2025. Frost or drought in Brazil cuts the next crop, and with stocks-to-use at 12% in 2026/27 (USDA PSD) there is little cushion.

### What is the difference between arabica and robusta?

Arabica is grown at altitude, tastes milder and sweeter, and fetches higher prices; robusta grows in hot lowlands, yields more, has twice the caffeine and tastes harsher. In August 2026 arabica (Arabica (ICE New York, other milds)) was $7.97/kg while robusta (Robusta (ICE London)) was $3.98/kg (World Bank Pink Sheet). Robusta goes mostly into instant coffee and espresso blends.

### Which country exports the most coffee?

Brazil was the largest exporter of coffee (HS 0901) in 2024, with 35% of world export value (CEPII BACI), followed by Vietnam and Colombia. Some European countries rank high because they re-export roasted and instant coffee made from imported beans; the green-bean ranking shows where coffee is grown.

### Which country imports the most coffee?

United States was the largest importer of coffee in 2024, taking 18% of world import value (CEPII BACI), ahead of Germany and Italy. Germany imports far more than it drinks because its roasters re-export to the rest of Europe. World coffee imports were worth $33.7 billion that year.

### Is coffee grown in the United States or Europe?

Only on a tiny scale. The United States grows coffee in Hawaii and Puerto Rico, and Europe's only plantings are in the Canary Islands, none of which register against the 11.1 million tonnes the world produced in 2024 (FAOSTAT). Coffee needs frost-free tropical conditions, and 78 countries, nearly all between the tropics, reported production that year.

### How is the price of coffee set?

Arabica is priced off the ICE Coffee C futures contract in New York (37,500 lb, US cents per pound) and robusta off the ICE Robusta contract in London (10 tonnes, US dollars per tonne). Exporters add or subtract a differential for origin and grade. The World Bank's Arabica (ICE New York, other milds) series was $7.97/kg in August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### Where did coffee originally come from?

Arabica coffee evolved in the highland forests of southwestern Ethiopia and was first cultivated and traded through Yemen. It reached Java, the Caribbean and Brazil in the 1700s; Brazil planted its first bush in 1727. Today Ethiopia still grows much of its crop from garden and forest plots, while the world's 11.1 million tonnes in 2024 came mostly from the Americas and Southeast Asia (FAOSTAT).

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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
- USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, Production, Supply and Distribution (PSD), 2026-09-06. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://apps.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/
- Harvest calendars (curated from USDA FAS IPAD crop calendars and FAO GIEWS country briefs), curated 2026-09. License: Public domain (USDA) with FAO GIEWS cross-reference (attribution). https://ipad.fas.usda.gov/ogamaps/cropcalendar.aspx

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

---

# Where does copper come from?

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

Copper comes mainly from Chile, which produced 5.3 million tonnes in 2025, 23% of the world's 23 million tonnes (USGS MCS). DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) (14%), Peru (12%) and China (7.8%) follow; the top five together supply 62%. The biggest exporter of copper ores and concentrates (HS 2603) is Chile (29% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, LME cash, grade A cathode, was $14,326/t in August 2026, up 48% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The biggest copper mines sit on porphyry deposits along the Andes and the western Americas, where subducting ocean crust pushed metal-rich magma toward the surface, plus the sediment-hosted Copperbelt of DR Congo and Zambia.

*A conductive red metal mined as ore, concentrated, smelted and refined into cathode for wiring, motors and pipes.* Also called: copper ore, copper concentrate, refined copper, copper cathode, Cu.

## Where does copper come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chile | 5.3 million | 23% |
| 2 | DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) | 3.2 million | 14% |
| 3 | Peru | 2.7 million | 12% |
| 4 | China | 1.8 million | 7.8% |
| 5 | Russia | 1.3 million | 5.7% |
| 6 | United States | 1 million | 4.3% |
| 7 | Zambia | 940,000 | 4.1% |
| 8 | Australia | 730,000 | 3.2% |
| 9 | Kazakhstan | 710,000 | 3.1% |
| 10 | Indonesia | 710,000 | 3.1% |
| | Rest of world | 3 million | 20% |
| | World | 23 million | 100% |

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026.

Copper is mined as ore, concentrated at the mine, and then smelted and refined somewhere else, often in another country. On this page "copper production" means mined copper measured by its metal content, unless refined copper is named. In 2025 Chile mined 5.3 million tonnes, 23% of the world's 23 million tonnes (USGS MCS). DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Peru came next, and the top five countries together mined 62% of the total. Mine output across 14 countries changed not available for a ten-year span in this source over the ten years to 2025, with the fastest growth coming from central Africa rather than from the Andes.

The map is shaped by geology. Porphyry copper deposits form above subduction zones, where oceanic plates dive beneath continents and feed large bodies of magma that leave low-grade but enormous ore bodies. That is why the Andes of Chile and Peru, the southwestern United States, Mexico and the mountain belts of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea hold so many of the largest mines. The second great copper province is different: the Central African Copperbelt of DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Zambia holds sediment-hosted deposits with far higher grades, which is why a single new mine there can move the world ranking.

Refined copper tells a different story from mined copper. The country that refines the most is {{prod.Refinery production.top1.name}}, with {{prod.Refinery production.top1.share}} of the world's {{prod.Refinery production.world}} of refined output in 2025 (USGS MCS). Much of that metal is made from imported concentrate, so a ranking of refiners describes where smelters were built, not where the ore was dug.

Reserves, which the USGS defines as the part of identified resources that could be mined economically at the time of the estimate, stood at 980 million tonnes in 2025. Chile held 18% of that total, followed by Australia and Peru (USGS MCS). Reserves grow when prices rise or technology improves, so the figure is a snapshot of what is worth mining, not a count of what exists.


## Who exports and imports copper?

Chile and Peru export concentrate; China imports it to smelt. Refined copper (HS 7403) is led by Chile, DR Congo and Japan.

### Exporters of copper ores and concentrates (HS 2603), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chile | $31 billion | 29% |
| 2 | Peru | $20.5 billion | 19% |
| 3 | Indonesia | $8.4 billion | 8% |
| 4 | Australia | $4.6 billion | 4.3% |
| 5 | Brazil | $4.2 billion | 3.9% |
| 6 | United States | $4 billion | 3.8% |
| 7 | Mexico | $3.7 billion | 3.5% |
| 8 | Canada | $3.5 billion | 3.3% |
| 9 | Mongolia | $3.3 billion | 3.1% |
| 10 | Kazakhstan | $3.2 billion | 3% |
| 11 | DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) | $3 billion | 2.9% |
| 12 | Serbia | $1.7 billion | 1.6% |
| 13 | Russia | $1.5 billion | 1.4% |
| 14 | Papua New Guinea | $1.3 billion | 1.2% |
| 15 | Spain | $1.1 billion | 1.1% |

### Importers of copper ores and concentrates (HS 2603), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $66.2 billion | 63% |
| 2 | Japan | $13.5 billion | 13% |
| 3 | South Korea | $4.7 billion | 4.5% |
| 4 | India | $4 billion | 3.8% |
| 5 | Spain | $2.6 billion | 2.4% |
| 6 | Germany | $2.5 billion | 2.4% |
| 7 | Bulgaria | $2.5 billion | 2.3% |
| 8 | Philippines | $1.9 billion | 1.8% |
| 9 | Mexico | $1.5 billion | 1.5% |
| 10 | Finland | $1.1 billion | 1% |
| 11 | Sweden | $925.6 million | 0.9% |
| 12 | Other Asia, nes | $903.2 million | 0.9% |
| 13 | Canada | $751.3 million | 0.7% |
| 14 | Poland | $509.4 million | 0.5% |
| 15 | Namibia | $343.1 million | 0.3% |

### Exporters of refined copper and copper alloys, unwrought (HS 7403), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) | $19.5 billion | 20% |
| 2 | Chile | $17.2 billion | 18% |
| 3 | Japan | $7.2 billion | 7.6% |
| 4 | Kazakhstan | $4.2 billion | 4.4% |
| 5 | Australia | $3.6 billion | 3.8% |
| 6 | Russia | $3.2 billion | 3.4% |
| 7 | China | $3.1 billion | 3.2% |
| 8 | Poland | $2.8 billion | 2.9% |
| 9 | Peru | $2.5 billion | 2.6% |
| 10 | Zambia | $2.4 billion | 2.5% |
| 11 | Indonesia | $2.3 billion | 2.4% |
| 12 | Bulgaria | $1.9 billion | 2% |
| 13 | Republic of the Congo | $1.9 billion | 1.9% |
| 14 | South Korea | $1.8 billion | 1.9% |
| 15 | United States | $1.7 billion | 1.8% |

### Importers of refined copper and copper alloys, unwrought (HS 7403), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $37.4 billion | 39% |
| 2 | United States | $8.4 billion | 8.8% |
| 3 | Other Asia, nes | $5.1 billion | 5.3% |
| 4 | Italy | $5 billion | 5.2% |
| 5 | Germany | $4.2 billion | 4.4% |
| 6 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $3.5 billion | 3.7% |
| 7 | Thailand | $3.3 billion | 3.4% |
| 8 | India | $2.8 billion | 2.9% |
| 9 | South Korea | $2.6 billion | 2.7% |
| 10 | Brazil | $2.6 billion | 2.7% |
| 11 | Malaysia | $2.3 billion | 2.4% |
| 12 | Vietnam | $1.9 billion | 2% |
| 13 | France | $1.9 billion | 1.9% |
| 14 | Mexico | $1.6 billion | 1.6% |
| 15 | Saudi Arabia | $1.5 billion | 1.6% |

### Exporters of copper cathodes (HS 740311), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) | $19.2 billion | 22% |
| 2 | Chile | $17.2 billion | 20% |
| 3 | Japan | $6.6 billion | 7.5% |
| 4 | Kazakhstan | $3.7 billion | 4.3% |
| 5 | Australia | $3.6 billion | 4.2% |
| 6 | China | $3.1 billion | 3.5% |
| 7 | Russia | $3.1 billion | 3.5% |
| 8 | Poland | $2.6 billion | 3% |
| 9 | Peru | $2.5 billion | 2.9% |
| 10 | Zambia | $2.3 billion | 2.6% |
| 11 | Indonesia | $2.1 billion | 2.4% |
| 12 | Bulgaria | $1.9 billion | 2.2% |
| 13 | Republic of the Congo | $1.9 billion | 2.1% |
| 14 | South Korea | $1.5 billion | 1.8% |
| 15 | United States | $1.4 billion | 1.6% |

### Importers of copper cathodes (HS 740311), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $33.2 billion | 38% |
| 2 | United States | $8.2 billion | 9.5% |
| 3 | Other Asia, nes | $4.8 billion | 5.5% |
| 4 | Italy | $4.7 billion | 5.4% |
| 5 | Germany | $3.8 billion | 4.3% |
| 6 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $3.2 billion | 3.6% |
| 7 | Thailand | $3.1 billion | 3.5% |
| 8 | India | $2.6 billion | 3% |
| 9 | Brazil | $2.6 billion | 2.9% |
| 10 | South Korea | $2.4 billion | 2.8% |
| 11 | Malaysia | $2.2 billion | 2.5% |
| 12 | Vietnam | $1.9 billion | 2.2% |
| 13 | Mexico | $1.5 billion | 1.7% |
| 14 | Saudi Arabia | $1.5 billion | 1.7% |
| 15 | France | $1.4 billion | 1.6% |

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

Copper crosses borders in two main forms. Ores and concentrates (HS 2603) are a dark powder holding roughly a quarter to a third copper by weight, shipped from mines to smelters. Refined copper (HS 7403), mostly cathode (HS 740311), is the finished metal at 99.99% purity. The primary trade table on this page is concentrate, because that is the flow that starts at the mine. In 2024 Chile was the largest exporter of copper ores and concentrates (HS 2603), with 29% of world export value (CEPII BACI), and China was the largest importer, taking 63% of the world's $105.9 billion of imports. Chile and Peru sell concentrate; China buys it to feed the largest smelting fleet in the world.

Refined copper follows a different route. The largest exporter of unwrought refined copper (HS 7403) in 2024 was DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo), and the top cathode exporter (HS 740311) was DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) (CEPII BACI). The biggest importer of concentrate, China, absorbed 63% of world concentrate imports. Reading the two tables together shows the chain: mine countries export concentrate, smelting countries import it and export cathode, and manufacturing countries import cathode and export wire, tube and finished goods.


## What does copper cost?

- LME cash, grade A cathode: $14,326/t in August 2026; 12-month change +48%; 10-year change +201%; all-time high $14,326/t in August 2026; real high (2024 US$) $19,774/t in April 1974 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

The reference price for copper is set on the London Metal Exchange, where the LME Copper contract (ticker CA) trades in 25 t lots quoted in US$/t and can be settled by delivery of grade A cathode into an LME warehouse. The LME quotes a cash price for delivery in two days and a three-month price, and the gap between them shows whether nearby metal is scarce (backwardation) or plentiful (contango). In the United States the COMEX Copper contract (ticker HG) trades 25,000 lb lots in US¢/lb, and the Shanghai Futures Exchange quotes in yuan for the Chinese domestic market. Physical buyers pay the exchange price plus a regional premium that covers freight, financing and local availability.

The series charted here is LME cash, grade A cathode. In August 2026 it stood at $14,326/t, up 48% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The nominal record is $14,326/t, set in August 2026; adjusted for US inflation the real high was $19,774/t in April 1974, and the lowest monthly average in the series, which begins in 1960, was $607/t in January 1961.

Miners that sell concentrate do not receive the cathode price. Smelters buy concentrate at the exchange price for the contained copper minus treatment and refining charges (TC/RCs), an annual benchmark negotiated between large miners and Asian smelters, plus spot deals for the rest. When smelter capacity outgrows concentrate supply, TC/RCs fall toward zero and smelters lose margin; when mines expand faster than smelters, TC/RCs rise. Precious metal credits for gold and silver in the concentrate and penalties for arsenic or other impurities adjust the final invoice.


## What moves the price of copper?

### Chinese construction, grid and manufacturing demand

China consumes roughly half of the world's refined copper, so its property cycle, power-grid investment and export manufacturing set the tone for the market. State grid spending on transmission lines and transformers is copper-intensive and tends to rise when Beijing wants to support growth, which can offset weak housing starts. Traders watch Chinese import data, bonded-warehouse stocks in Shanghai and the premium paid for cathode in Yangshan as early signals of whether demand is running ahead of or behind supply.

### Energy transition and electric vehicles

Wind turbines, solar farms, batteries and the wiring that connects them use more copper per unit of energy than the fossil systems they replace, and a battery-electric car carries several times the copper of a combustion car. This adds a structural layer of demand on top of construction and appliances. The market prices this through the long-dated futures curve and through mining company investment decisions, because a new porphyry mine takes ten years or more from discovery to first cathode.

### Mine disruptions, strikes and ore grades

A handful of very large mines carry the supply side, so a strike at Escondida, a mud rush at Grasberg or a court ruling that closes Cobre Panamá removes a measurable share of world output within days. Average ore grades at the old Chilean mines have fallen for decades, which means more rock must be moved and more water and power used for the same copper. Grade decline raises costs and makes output more sensitive to any operational problem.

### Smelter capacity and treatment charges

Smelting capacity, concentrated in China, has grown faster than mine supply in some years, which drives treatment and refining charges down and squeezes smelter margins. Low TC/RCs signal tight concentrate and can push smelters to cut runs, which tightens cathode later. High TC/RCs signal the opposite. Because the concentrate market is negotiated between a few large miners and traders and dozens of smelters, these charges are a leading indicator that often moves before the exchange price does.

### The US dollar, interest rates and speculative positioning

Copper is priced in dollars, so a stronger dollar makes it dearer for buyers in other currencies and tends to weigh on the price, while lower real interest rates cut the cost of holding inventory and encourage funds to hold long positions. Managed-money positioning on COMEX and the LME can amplify moves in either direction, and a short squeeze in New York in May 2024 pulled physical metal across the Atlantic to close an unusual gap between the two exchanges.

### Scrap supply and substitution

A large share of copper use is met from recycled metal, and scrap flows respond quickly to price. When cathode is expensive, scrap dealers release inventory and fabricators use more secondary metal, which caps rallies. When prices fall, scrap is held back. At sustained high prices manufacturers also substitute aluminum in power cables, heat exchangers and some wiring, a slow but permanent loss of demand that the copper industry watches closely.

### Trade policy and tariffs

Tariffs change where copper is worth the most, not how much exists. When the United States announced a 50% duty on semi-finished copper products in July 2025, cathode was excluded, but the expectation of tariffs had already pulled metal into US warehouses and widened the COMEX premium over the LME. Export restrictions on concentrate in producing countries, and Chinese rules on scrap imports, have similar effects on regional premiums and on where smelters get built.

## How is copper produced?

Most copper comes from open-pit mines because porphyry ore bodies are large and close to the surface; the deep, high-grade deposits of the Copperbelt and the block caves at Grasberg and El Teniente are mined underground. Ore is crushed and ground to a fine powder and then separated by froth flotation, in which chemicals make copper sulfide particles stick to air bubbles while waste rock sinks. The product is a concentrate holding about 25% to 35% copper, which is dried and shipped in bulk. The remaining ground rock, called tailings, is stored in engineered dams that are among the largest structures in mining.

Sulfide concentrate goes to a smelter, where it is melted with oxygen and flux in a flash furnace to produce matte and then blister copper of roughly 98% to 99% purity, with sulfur captured as sulfuric acid. Blister is cast into anodes and refined electrolytically: anodes dissolve in an acid bath and pure copper plates onto cathode sheets, leaving gold, silver and other metals behind in anode slimes that are refined separately. The product is grade A cathode, the form the LME accepts for delivery.

Oxide ore, common in the upper parts of deposits in Chile and the Copperbelt, skips smelting. It is stacked on lined pads and sprinkled with dilute sulfuric acid, a heap leach; the copper-bearing solution is concentrated by solvent extraction and then plated directly as cathode by electrowinning, a route known as SX-EW. It produces the same cathode without a smelter, which is why some mine countries export cathode rather than concentrate. Cathode is then melted and cast into rod, billet and cake for wire drawing, tube and rolling mills.


## What is copper used for?

Copper's value lies in conducting electricity and heat, resisting corrosion and being easy to draw into wire. The International Copper Study Group (ICSG) reports that equipment, including motors, transformers and electronics, and building construction are the two largest end-use sectors, each taking roughly a third of refined copper, with infrastructure such as power grids, transport including vehicles and railways, and industrial machinery making up the rest (ICSG, Copper Factbook). About three quarters of copper use is in electrical applications of some kind.

Nearly all of it is used as metal rather than as a chemical, and copper can be recycled repeatedly without losing conductivity. Alloys matter too: brass (copper and zinc) for fittings and ammunition, bronze (copper and tin) for bearings and marine hardware, and copper-nickel for coins and ship pipework. Copper sulfate is used as a fungicide and in mineral supplements, a small share of demand.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Mining is spread across the Americas, Africa and Asia, but smelting and refining are concentrated. {{prod.Refinery production.top1.name}} produced {{prod.Refinery production.top1.share}} of the world's refined copper in 2025 (USGS MCS), most of it from imported concentrate, so the concentrate trade runs in one direction, from the Andes and Africa toward East Asian ports. Chile and Japan are the other large refiners, Chile from its own ore and Japan from imported concentrate. Newer smelters in DR Congo, Zambia, India and Indonesia are intended to keep more of the value at home, and Indonesia has required Grasberg concentrate to be smelted domestically.

Concentrate leaves Chile through Antofagasta, Mejillones and the mine-owned port at Coloso, and leaves Peru through Callao and Matarani. Copperbelt output travels by road and rail through Dar es Salaam, Durban, Walvis Bay and Beira, or west along the Lobito corridor to Angola, and those inland routes are the most fragile links in the chain. Cathode from Chile and Africa flows to Shanghai's bonded zone, to Rotterdam and to New Orleans, and the LME's warehouse network holds the stocks that settle the futures contract.

Single points of failure are mines rather than ports. Escondida in Chile is the largest mine, Grasberg in Indonesia the largest underground operation, and Kamoa-Kakula in DR Congo the fastest-growing; a strike, a geotechnical accident or a legal dispute at any of them shows up in the price within days. The closure of Cobre Panamá in November 2023 after a Supreme Court ruling removed a mine that had opened only four years earlier, and Chile's dependence on desalinated water and imported power leaves its mines exposed to drought and energy prices.


## Key companies

- Codelco: miner, Chile
- BHP: miner, Australia, listed (BHP)
- Freeport-McMoRan: miner, United States, listed (FCX)
- Ivanhoe Mines: miner, Canada, listed (IVN)
- First Quantum Minerals: miner, Canada, listed (FM)
- Rio Tinto: miner, United Kingdom, listed (RIO)

## Timeline

- 1877-01: London Metal Exchange founded. Copper was the first metal traded, and the three-month contract was set to match the sailing time of ore from Chile to London. (https://www.william-rowland.com/news/item/the-history-of-the-lme)
- 1971-07: Chile nationalizes large-scale copper mining. Law 17,450 transferred the largest mines from US owners to the state, the origin of the world's largest copper producer. (https://www.codelco.com/flipbook/memorias/memoria2011/en/history.html)
- 1976-04: Codelco created. The nationalized mines were grouped into a single state company on 1 April 1976, still the largest single copper miner. (https://www.codelco.com/flipbook/memorias/memoria2011/en/history.html)
- 1990-07: Escondida begins production. The Chilean mine that became the world's largest started up in mid-1990. (https://www.fluor.com/projects/minera-escondida-copper-mine-epcm)
- 2012-12: Hong Kong Exchanges buys the LME. Ownership of the benchmark price venue moved to an Asian exchange group as China became the largest consumer. (https://www.william-rowland.com/news/item/the-history-of-the-lme)
- 2017-02: 44-day strike at Escondida. The longest private-sector mining strike in Chile cut output at the largest mine and lifted the copper price. (https://www.mining-technology.com/news/bhp-removes-striking-workers-from-worlds-largest-copper-mine/)
- 2021-05: Kamoa-Kakula produces first concentrate. First concentrate on 25 May 2021 began the fastest ramp-up of a major copper mine this century and moved DR Congo up the world ranking. (https://www.ivanhoemines.com/news-stories/news-release/kamoa-kakula-phase-1-concentrator-plant-produced-first-copper-concentrate-on-may-25-ramp-up-toward-nameplate-capacity-of-3-8-million-tonnes-of-ore-per-year-progressing-smoothly/)
- 2023-11: Panama's Supreme Court voids the Cobre Panamá contract. The ruling of 28 November 2023 shut a mine that had opened only four years earlier and removed a measurable share of world supply. (https://www.first-quantum.com/news/first-quantum-provides-update-on-cobre-panama-2/)
- 2024-05: LME copper sets a nominal record and COMEX is squeezed. Three-month copper reached $11,104.5/t while low New York stocks produced a short squeeze and a $1,000/t gap between exchanges. (https://source.benchmarkminerals.com/article/lme-copper-forward-curve-hits-record-high)
- 2025-07: United States imposes a 50% tariff on semi-finished copper. The proclamation of 30 July 2025 covered semi-finished products but not cathode, after months of metal being pulled into US warehouses. (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/adjusting-imports-of-copper-into-the-united-states/)
- 2025-09: Mud rush halts Grasberg. About 800,000 t of wet material entered the block cave on 8 September 2025; Freeport declared force majeure and cut 2026 output guidance by 35%. (https://www.mining-technology.com/news/freeport-announces-force-majeure-at-grasberg-mine/)
- 2025-10: LME copper passes $11,200/t. The May 2024 record fell on 29 October 2025 as supply losses at Grasberg and Kamoa-Kakula met steady demand. (https://source.benchmarkminerals.com/article/lme-copper-forward-curve-hits-record-high)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most copper

Chile mines more copper than any other country. In 2025 it produced 5.3 million tonnes of copper content in ore, 23% of the world's 23 million tonnes (USGS MCS). DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Peru are the next largest. Mined copper is measured by metal content, not by the weight of ore or concentrate.

### where does copper come from

Copper comes from ore mined mostly in the Andes, the western United States, central Africa and Indonesia, then concentrated, smelted and refined. In 2025 the top five mining countries produced 62% of the world total (USGS MCS). The porphyry deposits along the Pacific coast of South America and the high-grade Copperbelt of DR Congo and Zambia hold most of the largest mines.

### which country exports the most copper

It depends on the form. For copper ores and concentrates (HS 2603), Chile was the largest exporter in 2024, with 29% of world export value (CEPII BACI). For refined copper (HS 7403) the top exporter that year was DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo). China was the biggest importer of concentrate, feeding its smelters.

### what is the price of copper today

This site shows monthly averages, not live quotes. The LME cash, grade A cathode price averaged $14,326/t in August 2026, up 48% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The record monthly average was $14,326/t in August 2026. Live prices come from the London Metal Exchange and COMEX during their trading hours.

### which country has the most copper reserves

Chile holds the largest copper reserves, 18% of the world's 980 million tonnes in 2025 (USGS MCS). Australia and Peru follow. Reserves are the part of known deposits that could be mined at a profit at the time of the estimate, so the figure changes with prices and technology.

### who refines the most copper

{{prod.Refinery production.top1.name}} refined the most copper in 2025, {{prod.Refinery production.top1.share}} of the world's {{prod.Refinery production.world}} of refined output (USGS MCS). Much of that came from imported concentrate. Refined output measures where smelters and refineries operate, which is different from where the ore is mined; Chile and Japan are the other large refiners.

### how is copper priced

Copper is priced on the London Metal Exchange in US dollars per tonne, with cash and three-month quotes, and on COMEX in US cents per pound. The LME copper contract is 25 t of grade A cathode. Physical buyers pay the exchange price plus a regional premium. Concentrate sells at the metal price minus treatment and refining charges. The LME cash price averaged $14,326/t in August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### what is copper used for

Copper is used mainly for conducting electricity. Building wiring, motors, transformers, power cables, electronics and vehicles are the main markets, and ICSG data put equipment and construction at roughly a third of use each. Copper also goes into plumbing tube, roofing, brass and bronze alloys and coins, and a large share of supply is recycled metal.

## Sources

- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries
- 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 does copper come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/copper/.

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# Where does corn come from?

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

Corn comes mainly from the United States, which produced 377.6 million tonnes in 2024, 31% of the world's 1.2 billion tonnes (FAOSTAT). China (24%), Brazil (9.4%) and Argentina (4.7%) follow; the top five together supply 73%. The biggest exporter of corn grain (HS 1005) is the United States (28% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, US No. 2 yellow, Gulf export, was $224/t in August 2026, up 21% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Corn is a warm-season grass domesticated in Mexico that turns summer sun and rain into grain more efficiently than any other cereal, so it dominates wherever hot, wet summers meet deep soils: the US Midwest, the North China Plain and Brazil's cerrado.

*Maize: a cereal grown mostly for animal feed and ethanol, and as a staple food in Africa and Latin America.* Also called: maize, corn grain, maize grain, yellow corn, feed corn.

## Where does corn come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 377.6 million | 31% |
| 2 | China | 294.9 million | 24% |
| 3 | Brazil | 115 million | 9.4% |
| 4 | Argentina | 57.5 million | 4.7% |
| 5 | India | 40.2 million | 3.3% |
| 6 | Ukraine | 26.9 million | 2.2% |
| 7 | Mexico | 24.3 million | 2% |
| 8 | Canada | 15.3 million | 1.3% |
| 9 | Indonesia | 15.1 million | 1.2% |
| 10 | France | 14.7 million | 1.2% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 19% |
| | World | 1.2 billion | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

Corn, called maize outside North America, is a tropical grass that farmers have pushed far into the temperate zone. It photosynthesizes by the C4 pathway, which makes it unusually efficient in heat and strong sunlight, and it wants a frost-free season of four to five months with rain or irrigation during summer. Give it deep, fertile soil and nitrogen and it outyields every other cereal. The world's corn therefore sits on the summer-rain plains of the mid-latitudes and on tropical uplands, not in the cool wheat country to the north or the flooded rice country of the monsoon.

In 2024 United States produced 377.6 million tonnes of corn, 31% of the world's 1.2 billion tonnes (FAOSTAT). The US Corn Belt (Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Minnesota, Indiana) is the densest corn landscape on earth, planted with hybrid seed on flat glacial soils. China (24%) grows corn across the northeast and the North China Plain, mostly for feed. Brazil (9.4%) is different: much of its crop is the safrinha, a second crop sown into soybean stubble in January and February and harvested in the dry season, which is why Brazilian exports arrive when the northern hemisphere is between harvests. Argentina (4.7%) rounds out the big four, and the top five together grew 73% of world output.

Corn is also a staple food, not just a feed grain. In Mexico and Central America it is eaten as tortillas; across eastern and southern Africa, from Kenya to South Africa, white corn ground into meal is the main source of calories, grown largely by smallholders on rain-fed plots with low yields. India, Indonesia and the Philippines grow it for both food and feed. 169 countries reported production in 2024, and 19% of the world's corn came from outside the top ten.

Two technologies made the map. Commercial hybrid seed, sold from 1926, raised yields far beyond what farmers could achieve by saving their own seed, and genetically engineered traits for insect resistance and herbicide tolerance, introduced in 1996, are planted on nearly all of the crop in the United States, Brazil and Argentina but are banned or restricted in much of Europe and Africa.


## Who exports and imports corn?

### Exporters of maize (corn) (HS 1005), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $13.5 billion | 28% |
| 2 | Brazil | $8.3 billion | 18% |
| 3 | Argentina | $7.6 billion | 16% |
| 4 | Ukraine | $5.8 billion | 12% |
| 5 | France | $1.9 billion | 3.9% |
| 6 | South Africa | $931.3 million | 2% |
| 7 | Romania | $863.7 million | 1.8% |
| 8 | Poland | $781 million | 1.6% |
| 9 | Myanmar | $766.5 million | 1.6% |
| 10 | Hungary | $742.4 million | 1.6% |
| 11 | Serbia | $695.9 million | 1.5% |
| 12 | Canada | $498.6 million | 1% |
| 13 | Russia | $476.1 million | 1% |
| 14 | Paraguay | $440.5 million | 0.9% |
| 15 | Austria | $339.5 million | 0.7% |

### Importers of maize (corn) (HS 1005), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mexico | $4.7 billion | 9.8% |
| 2 | Japan | $3.6 billion | 7.5% |
| 3 | South Korea | $2.6 billion | 5.5% |
| 4 | Vietnam | $2.5 billion | 5.3% |
| 5 | China | $2.1 billion | 4.5% |
| 6 | Spain | $1.9 billion | 4% |
| 7 | Egypt | $1.9 billion | 4% |
| 8 | Italy | $1.7 billion | 3.6% |
| 9 | Colombia | $1.6 billion | 3.3% |
| 10 | Saudi Arabia | $1.1 billion | 2.4% |
| 11 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $1.1 billion | 2.3% |
| 12 | Netherlands | $1.1 billion | 2.3% |
| 13 | Iran | $1.1 billion | 2.3% |
| 14 | Algeria | $1 billion | 2.1% |
| 15 | Other Asia, nes | $998.4 million | 2.1% |

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

Corn is traded mainly as grain (HS 1005). In 2024 the largest exporter was United States with 28% of world export value (CEPII BACI), followed by Brazil and Argentina. The United States, Brazil, Argentina and Ukraine supply nearly all of what crosses borders; China grows a great deal but exports almost none. The largest importer was Mexico (9.8% of world import value), ahead of Japan and South Korea; world imports were worth $47.6 billion. Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Egypt and the European Union buy for feed mills, while China's purchases swing sharply from year to year with state policy.

The processed forms of corn travel under other headings and do not appear in this ranking: corn starch, glucose and high-fructose syrup, corn oil, ethanol and the distillers grains left over from ethanol plants. The distillers grains trade is large enough that it matters for feed importers, and the United States is its dominant source. Corn on this page means grain.


## What does corn cost?

- US No. 2 yellow, Gulf export: $224/t in August 2026; 12-month change +21%; 10-year change +49%; all-time high $348.2/t in April 2022; real high (2024 US$) $932.5/t in October 1974 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

The world reference is the CBOT (CME Group) Corn futures contract (ticker ZC): 5,000 bushels per lot, quoted in US cents per bushel, deliverable at shipping stations along the Illinois River and in the Chicago area. A bushel of corn weighs 56 lb (25.4 kg), so about 39.4 bushels make a tonne. The Dalian Commodity Exchange in China and Euronext in Paris list corn futures, and Brazil's B3 lists a contract in reais, but they follow Chicago far more than Chicago follows them.

The series on this page, US No. 2 yellow, Gulf export, is an export quote for loading at the US Gulf: it stood at $224/t in August 2026, up 21% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The series' highest month on record was $348.2/t in April 2022, and its lowest $38/t in November 1960; over ten years it has moved +49%. A Gulf quote equals the futures price plus the Gulf basis, which covers barge freight down the Mississippi, elevation at New Orleans and the local balance of supply and ships. Brazilian corn is quoted FOB Paranaguá or Santos, Argentine corn FOB Rosario or Up-River, and Ukrainian corn FOB Odesa or, when ports are closed, at the Danube.

Grades matter less for corn than for wheat, but they matter. US No. 2 yellow, the contract grade, sets limits on test weight, moisture, damaged kernels and foreign material; importers also test for aflatoxin and, in some markets, for unapproved biotech traits, which is how a single detection can stop cargoes. Ambiguities: corn means maize grain, both yellow and white; sweet corn and popcorn are counted separately as vegetables; and the US Gulf price is one origin's export quote, not a world price.


## What moves the price of corn?

### Weather in the US Midwest

The United States grows about a third of the world's corn and exports a large share of what is traded, so the July weather in Iowa and Illinois is the single most watched variable in grain markets. Heat and drought during pollination in July cut kernel set and cannot be repaired by later rain, as in 2012; a late spring delays planting and pushes the crop into a shorter season; and wind events such as the 2020 derecho can flatten millions of acres in an afternoon.

### Stocks-to-use

The ratio of ending stocks to total use sets how nervous the market is. USDA puts world corn stocks-to-use at 22% for 2026/27, against 24% in 2025/26 (USDA PSD). Because China holds a large and unexported share of world stocks, traders also watch the US ratio alone; when US ending stocks fall toward the level of a few weeks' use, prices react violently to every crop-condition report.

### Ethanol policy

Roughly a third of the US corn crop is distilled into fuel ethanol under the Renewable Fuel Standard, which sets minimum blending volumes, and Brazil has built a corn ethanol industry of its own. Ethanol demand is therefore a policy variable: blending mandates, small-refinery waivers, E15 rules and tax credits shift hundreds of millions of bushels of demand, and crude oil prices decide whether refiners blend more than the mandate. High oil prices lift corn; policy reversals sink it.

### Brazil's second crop and the real

Brazil's safrinha corn is planted after soybeans and harvested from June, arriving at ports in the northern hemisphere's off-season. Its size depends on how early soybeans were harvested and whether the rains held through April. Priced in reais, Brazilian corn gets cheaper in dollars when the real weakens, which pulls export business away from the US Gulf and caps Chicago rallies.

### China's import policy

China is the second-largest producer and a large but erratic importer. Its purchases depend on state reserve management, the tariff-rate quota, domestic price supports, hog herd size and the approval status of biotech traits: cargoes have been rejected over unapproved traits, as with MIR162 in 2013, and imports have swung from small to enormous within a year. A Chinese buying program can absorb an entire Brazilian surplus; a pause leaves exporters looking for buyers.

### Competition with soybeans for acres

In the Americas, corn and soybeans are grown on the same land and farmers choose between them each spring on the ratio of new-crop soybean to corn futures and on fertilizer costs, since corn needs far more nitrogen. A high ratio pulls acres into soybeans and cuts corn supply the following autumn. USDA's March planting intentions and June acreage reports are the market's first hard reading on the outcome.

### Fertilizer and energy

Corn takes more nitrogen per hectare than any other major crop, and nitrogen fertilizer prices track natural gas. When gas and ammonia prices spike, farmers cut application, switch acres to soybeans or accept lower yields, and the cost of drying the harvest with propane rises too. Energy prices reach corn from both sides, through input costs and through ethanol demand.

### Livestock demand and disease

Most corn is fed to animals, so the size of the world's pig, chicken and cattle herds sets baseline demand. Animal disease can remove it suddenly: outbreaks of African swine fever in China's hog herd cut feed demand and imports, and avian influenza does the same for poultry. Meat prices and profit margins for feeders decide how much corn they buy and whether they substitute wheat, sorghum or barley.

## How is corn produced?

Corn is an annual planted from seed each year. In the US Corn Belt it is sown in April and May, pollinates in July, when a silk on each ear must catch pollen from the tassel, and is harvested from September to November once the kernels have dried in the field. Brazil's safrinha follows soybeans, sown in January to March and harvested from June to August; Argentina plants from September and harvests from March. Farmers buy hybrid seed every year, because saved seed loses the hybrid vigor, and in the Americas most of that seed carries biotech traits for insect resistance (Bt) and herbicide tolerance.

Types differ by kernel. Dent corn, with a soft starchy center, is the bulk of the world crop and of all trade; flint corn, harder and preferred by some millers, is grown in Argentina and parts of Europe; white corn is grown for food in Mexico and Africa; sweet corn and popcorn are separate specialty crops. At the elevator, grain is graded on test weight, moisture, damaged kernels, broken corn and foreign material, and dried with heat if it comes in wet. Aflatoxin, a mold toxin produced in hot, dry seasons, is tested because it makes grain unfit for food or dairy feed.

Processing takes three routes. Dry milling grinds the kernel into grits, meal and flour, or into masa for tortillas after alkaline cooking (nixtamalization). Wet milling steeps and separates the kernel into starch, which becomes sweeteners, modified starches and ethanol, plus corn oil from the germ and gluten feed and gluten meal for livestock. Ethanol plants ferment the starch and leave distillers grains, a protein feed, and recover corn oil. Whole grain goes straight into feed rations. By-products from the field include stover, used for silage, bedding and in some places cellulosic ethanol, and cobs. Yields span an enormous range, from irrigated Nebraska fields to rain-fed smallholder plots in East Africa that produce a small fraction as much per hectare.


### Harvest calendar

- United States: harvest Sep, Oct, Nov
- China: harvest Sep, Oct
- Brazil (Safrinha (second crop)): harvest Jun, Jul, Aug. First crop planted September–November, harvested February–April.
- Argentina: harvest Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul
- India (Kharif maize): harvest Sep, Oct
- Mexico (Spring–summer crop): harvest Oct, Nov, Dec
- Ukraine: harvest Sep, Oct, Nov
- South Africa: harvest May, Jun, Jul

## What is corn used for?

Feed is the largest use of corn worldwide: pigs, poultry, cattle and fish eat it as whole grain, cracked or in compound feed, and the distillers grains and gluten feed left over from processing go the same way. Fuel is second in the United States, where the Renewable Fuel Standard channels a large share of the crop into ethanol, and Brazil has followed. Food comes third at the world level but first in Mexico, Central America and eastern and southern Africa, where tortillas and maize meal are the staple.

Industrial uses take the remainder: starch for paper, textiles and adhesives, sweeteners such as glucose and high-fructose corn syrup, corn oil, and bioplastics. The USDA Economic Research Service's feed grains balance sheets divide US use into feed and residual, food, seed and industrial (mostly ethanol) and exports, and feed plus ethanol account for most domestic use in every recent marketing year those tables cover.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Corn moves in bulk. In the United States, farmers deliver to country elevators, which ship by rail to the Pacific Northwest and by barge down the Illinois and Mississippi rivers to the export elevators around New Orleans, the largest corn export gateway in the world. Brazil's corn leaves through Paranaguá and Santos in the south and, increasingly, through the northern arc ports of Itaqui and Barcarena fed by long truck hauls from Mato Grosso. Argentina loads at Rosario and the Up-River terminals on the Paraná; Ukraine at Odesa, Chornomorsk and the Danube ports. Cargoes travel in Panamax and Supramax bulk carriers, and Mexico takes much of its US corn by rail and by ship across the Gulf.

Processing concentrates where the corn is. Ethanol plants are scattered across the Corn Belt near their feedstock; wet mills are large and few, run by ADM, Cargill, Ingredion and Tate and Lyle; feed mills sit near livestock. The trading layer is the same as for wheat and soybeans: ADM, Bunge, Cargill, Louis Dreyfus and COFCO, plus Brazilian cooperatives and Ukrainian exporters. Seed and traits are concentrated in a handful of companies, led by Bayer and Corteva.

Single points of failure: the Mississippi River, where low water or a lock failure strands barges and widens the Gulf basis; the Panama Canal, which carries Gulf corn to Asia and imposes draft limits in drought years; the Paraná River, whose low water limits Argentine loadings; the Black Sea, where war closed Ukrainian ports; and biotech approvals, since a single unapproved trait can halt trade with a major buyer. Because a few exporters supply most of the trade, weather in one of them is a world event.


## Key companies

- ADM (Archer-Daniels-Midland): grain trader and corn processor, United States, listed (ADM)
- Bunge Global: grain trader, United States, listed (BG)
- POET: ethanol producer, United States
- Green Plains: ethanol producer, United States, listed (GPRE)
- Corteva Agriscience (Pioneer): seed and traits, United States, listed (CTVA)
- Ingredion: corn wet miller, United States, listed (INGR)

## Timeline

- 1926: Hi-Bred Corn Company founded. Henry A. Wallace founded the company that became Pioneer to sell hybrid corn seed, starting the shift from saved seed to purchased hybrids that multiplied yields across the Corn Belt. (https://www.pioneer.com/us/about-us/our-history.html)
- 1970: Southern corn leaf blight epidemic. A new race of the fungus destroyed an estimated 15% of the US corn crop because nearly all hybrids shared the Texas male-sterile cytoplasm, a lesson in the risk of genetic uniformity. (https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/60663500/Publications/Bruns/2017/Bruns_2017_Corn%20Leaf%20Blight.pdf)
- 1972-07: Soviet grain purchases. After a drought, the Soviet Union quietly bought a large share of US grain stocks, and within a year some commodity prices had doubled or tripled; USDA built new crop-weather monitoring in response. (https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/general-information/staff-offices/office-chief-economist/newsroom/podcast-usda-now-you-know/podcast-great-grain-robbery)
- 1980-01: US grain embargo on the Soviet Union. President Carter cancelled 17 million tonnes of wheat, corn and soybean sales after the invasion of Afghanistan; Argentina and others filled the gap and US exporters lost market share for years. (https://uswheat.org/wheatletter/effects-of-1980-grain-embargo-echo-through-the-years/)
- 1996: Genetically engineered corn goes on sale. Bt corn resistant to the European corn borer was commercialized in the United States; five years later about a fifth of US corn acres carried Bt seed, and biotech traits are on nearly all of them today. (https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2018/december/trends-in-the-adoption-of-genetically-engineered-corn-cotton-and-soybeans)
- 2005-08: Renewable Fuel Standard created. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 required a minimum volume of renewable fuel in US gasoline, turning corn ethanol into a policy-driven demand source that reshaped the corn balance sheet. (https://www.epa.gov/renewable-fuel-standard/overview-renewable-fuel-standard-program)
- 2007-12: Energy Independence and Security Act. EISA extended and increased the renewable fuel volumes out to 2022 and gave EPA authority to set volumes after that, locking in ethanol as a use for a large share of the US corn crop. (https://www.epa.gov/renewable-fuel-standard/overview-renewable-fuel-standard-program)
- 2009-03: Earliest maize domestication dated. Researchers reported maize starch and phytoliths on tools from the Xihuatoxtla shelter in Mexico's Central Balsas valley dated to about 8,700 years ago, the earliest evidence for domesticated maize. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2664064)
- 2012-08: US drought sends corn to a record. The worst US drought in decades cut the crop and pushed the 2012/13 season-average farm price to a record US$7.10 per bushel, with ending stocks at their lowest since the mid-1990s. (http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/76556)
- 2013-11: China rejects US corn over MIR162. Chinese inspectors began turning away cargoes containing the unapproved Syngenta MIR162 trait, about 180,000 tonnes within weeks, showing how biotech approvals can close a market overnight. (https://www.voanews.com/a/reu-china-rejects-more-us-corn-amid-rising-trade-conflict/1808273.html)
- 2020-08: Derecho flattens Iowa corn. A line of straight-line winds crossed Iowa, Illinois and Indiana on 10 August, flattening corn across a swath visible from satellites and dropping USDA crop condition ratings within days. (https://www.weather.gov/dmx/2020derecho)
- 2024-12: USMCA panel rules against Mexico's GM corn ban. A dispute panel found on all seven US claims that Mexico's ban on genetically engineered corn in tortillas was not science-based, protecting the largest export market for US corn. (https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-releases/2024/december/united-states-prevails-usmca-dispute-biotech-corn)

## Frequently asked questions

### Where does most corn come from?

From the summer-rain plains of the Americas and China. In 2024 United States produced 377.6 million tonnes, 31% of the world's 1.2 billion tonnes (FAOSTAT), followed by China (24%) and Brazil (9.4%). The top five grew 73% of the total. Exports come almost entirely from the United States, Brazil, Argentina and Ukraine.

### Which country produces the most corn?

United States is the largest producer, with 377.6 million tonnes in 2024, or 31% of world output (FAOSTAT). Its output has grown +0.4% a year over ten years. The US Corn Belt states of Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and Minnesota are the densest corn region on earth, planted almost entirely with hybrid seed carrying biotech traits.

### What is corn used for?

Mostly animal feed, then fuel ethanol, then food. Pigs, poultry and cattle eat corn as grain and as distillers grains left over from ethanol plants; the United States turns a large share of its crop into ethanol under the Renewable Fuel Standard. In Mexico and much of Africa corn is the staple food. The world grew 1.2 billion tonnes in 2024 (FAOSTAT).

### Is corn the same as maize?

Yes. Maize is the name used in most of the world and in FAO statistics; corn is the North American and Australian name for the same plant, Zea mays. Both refer to the grain crop, not to sweet corn or popcorn, which are counted separately. The 1.2 billion tonnes produced in 2024 (FAOSTAT) is maize grain by either name.

### Which country exports the most corn?

United States was the largest exporter of corn in 2024, with 28% of world export value (CEPII BACI), ahead of Brazil and Argentina. Brazil's exports come mainly from its second crop, harvested in the northern hemisphere's off-season, and China, despite being a top producer, exports almost none. World corn exports were worth $47.6 billion.

### Who imports the most corn?

Mexico was the largest importer of corn in 2024, taking 9.8% of world import value (CEPII BACI), followed by Japan and South Korea. Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Egypt and the European Union buy for feed mills; China's imports swing widely with state policy. World imports were worth $47.6 billion.

### Why is corn so expensive?

Corn prices follow US and Brazilian weather, the size of stocks and ethanol policy. The benchmark US No. 2 yellow, Gulf export price was $224/t in August 2026, up 21% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). World stocks-to-use stood at 22% in 2026/27 (USDA PSD), and the series' record month was $348.2/t in April 2022, set during a US drought.

### Is corn grown in Africa?

Yes, and it is the main food crop across eastern and southern Africa. South Africa, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Kenya are the largest African growers, mostly of white corn for maize meal, though yields on rain-fed smallholder plots are a fraction of those in the Americas. 169 countries reported corn production in 2024 (FAOSTAT), more than for any other cereal except rice.

### What is the price of corn?

The reference on this page is US No. 2 yellow, Gulf export, an export quote at the US Gulf, which was $224/t in August 2026, up 21% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Futures trade on CBOT in US cents per bushel; a bushel of corn weighs 56 lb, so about 39.4 bushels make a tonne. Physical cargoes add a basis for freight and elevation.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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
- USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, Production, Supply and Distribution (PSD), 2026-09-06. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://apps.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/
- Harvest calendars (curated from USDA FAS IPAD crop calendars and FAO GIEWS country briefs), curated 2026-09. License: Public domain (USDA) with FAO GIEWS cross-reference (attribution). https://ipad.fas.usda.gov/ogamaps/cropcalendar.aspx

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

---

# Where does cotton come from?

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

Cotton comes mainly from China, which produced 5.6 million tonnes in 2023, 23% of the world's 24.7 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India (22%), Brazil (12%) and United States (11%) follow; the top five together supply 75%. The biggest exporter of raw cotton lint (HS 5201) is Brazil (30% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Cotlook A Index, CFR Far East, was $2.11/kg in August 2026, up 22% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Cotton needs a long frost-free season, hot summers and a dry harvest, which it finds in irrigated arid basins such as Xinjiang, the Indus and the Murray-Darling and in the subtropical plains of India, Texas and Brazil's Mato Grosso, where a second crop after soybeans made Brazil a major grower within two decades.

*The seed fibre of the cotton plant, ginned into lint and spun into yarn; the world's main natural textile fibre.* Also called: cotton lint, raw cotton, cotton fibre, cotton fiber, seed cotton.

## Where does cotton come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2023 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 5.6 million | 23% |
| 2 | India | 5.5 million | 22% |
| 3 | Brazil | 2.9 million | 12% |
| 4 | United States | 2.6 million | 11% |
| 5 | Pakistan | 1.7 million | 7% |
| 6 | Australia | 1.3 million | 5.1% |
| 7 | Uzbekistan | 810,644 | 3.3% |
| 8 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 777,000 | 3.1% |
| 9 | Kazakhstan | 327,734 | 1.3% |
| 10 | Greece | 305,000 | 1.2% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 11% |
| | World | 24.7 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2023.

Cotton is a subtropical shrub grown as an annual. It wants around six months without frost, hot days during boll development and dry weather at harvest so the open fiber does not rot or stain. Rain-fed cotton grows on the black soils of central India and the plains of Texas; irrigated cotton, which yields far more per hectare, grows in deserts and semi-deserts where rivers or aquifers supply the water: Xinjiang in western China, Pakistan's Indus valley, Uzbekistan's Fergana and Amu Darya basins, Australia's Murray-Darling, Egypt's Nile and the San Joaquin valley of California.

In 2023 China produced 5.6 million tonnes of cotton lint, 23% of the world's 24.7 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India was second with 5.5 million tonnes (22%), followed by Brazil, United States and Pakistan. The top five countries grew 75% of world lint, and 87 countries reported a crop; world output changed by +0% over the ten years to 2023.

The map has moved. China's crop concentrated in Xinjiang as eastern provinces turned to other uses, and the region's irrigated, mechanized farms yield more than twice the world average. India's area is the largest of any country but yields are low, because most of it is rain-fed and planted with hybrids whose insect resistance has faded. Brazil grows cotton in Mato Grosso and Bahia as a second crop sown in January after an early soybean harvest, a system that expanded quickly through the 2010s and 2020s. The United States grows most of its cotton on the Texas High Plains, where abandonment in dry years swings the national crop. West Africa's franc-zone countries, Benin, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire), grow rain-fed cotton on smallholdings and export almost all of it as lint.


## Who exports and imports cotton?

China, India and Vietnam import lint to spin; the US, Brazil and Australia export lint they grow. Yarn and fabric trade is a separate map.

### Exporters of cotton, not carded or combed (HS 5201), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | $5.1 billion | 30% |
| 2 | United States | $4.9 billion | 28% |
| 3 | Australia | $2.4 billion | 14% |
| 4 | India | $916.4 million | 5.3% |
| 5 | Benin | $505.6 million | 2.9% |
| 6 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $473.7 million | 2.7% |
| 7 | Greece | $464.9 million | 2.7% |
| 8 | Burkina Faso | $351.9 million | 2% |
| 9 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $282.7 million | 1.6% |
| 10 | Afghanistan | $226.1 million | 1.3% |
| 11 | Azerbaijan | $179.8 million | 1% |
| 12 | Argentina | $159.8 million | 0.9% |
| 13 | Mali | $158.6 million | 0.9% |
| 14 | Egypt | $157.7 million | 0.9% |
| 15 | Kazakhstan | $143.2 million | 0.8% |

### Importers of cotton, not carded or combed (HS 5201), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $4.5 billion | 26% |
| 2 | Bangladesh | $2.5 billion | 15% |
| 3 | Vietnam | $2.5 billion | 14% |
| 4 | Pakistan | $1.9 billion | 11% |
| 5 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $1.5 billion | 8.5% |
| 6 | India | $1.1 billion | 6.2% |
| 7 | Indonesia | $774.4 million | 4.5% |
| 8 | Malaysia | $318.8 million | 1.8% |
| 9 | Egypt | $303.7 million | 1.8% |
| 10 | Mexico | $226.8 million | 1.3% |
| 11 | Thailand | $184.1 million | 1.1% |
| 12 | South Korea | $133.4 million | 0.8% |
| 13 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $122.1 million | 0.7% |
| 14 | Guatemala | $117.7 million | 0.7% |
| 15 | Peru | $93.7 million | 0.5% |

### Exporters of cotton yarn (HS 5205), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | $3.4 billion | 30% |
| 2 | Vietnam | $2 billion | 18% |
| 3 | Uzbekistan | $1.2 billion | 11% |
| 4 | United States | $865.6 million | 7.7% |
| 5 | China | $742 million | 6.6% |
| 6 | Pakistan | $716.5 million | 6.3% |
| 7 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $620.3 million | 5.5% |
| 8 | Malaysia | $237.5 million | 2.1% |
| 9 | Indonesia | $219.7 million | 1.9% |
| 10 | Egypt | $158.2 million | 1.4% |
| 11 | Italy | $133.3 million | 1.2% |
| 12 | Other Asia, nes | $86.7 million | 0.8% |
| 13 | Bangladesh | $78.7 million | 0.7% |
| 14 | Turkmenistan | $73 million | 0.6% |
| 15 | El Salvador | $72.6 million | 0.6% |

### Importers of cotton yarn (HS 5205), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $3.2 billion | 28% |
| 2 | Bangladesh | $1.8 billion | 16% |
| 3 | Honduras | $576.5 million | 5.1% |
| 4 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $478 million | 4.2% |
| 5 | Vietnam | $336.8 million | 3% |
| 6 | Portugal | $334.4 million | 3% |
| 7 | Egypt | $327.1 million | 2.9% |
| 8 | Pakistan | $324.9 million | 2.9% |
| 9 | Russia | $320.5 million | 2.8% |
| 10 | Dominican Republic | $278.9 million | 2.5% |
| 11 | South Korea | $278.5 million | 2.5% |
| 12 | Italy | $275.9 million | 2.4% |
| 13 | Peru | $185.9 million | 1.6% |
| 14 | Guatemala | $157.3 million | 1.4% |
| 15 | Germany | $150.7 million | 1.3% |

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

Cotton is traded as lint, ginned but not yet spun, and the spinning countries are not the growing countries. In 2024 world exports of raw cotton lint (HS 5201) were worth $17.3 billion (CEPII BACI). Brazil was the largest exporter with 30% of that value, ahead of United States (28%) and Australia (14%). Australia, the West African countries and, in some years, India complete the list; China and Pakistan grow large crops but spin them at home.

The buyers are mills. China imported 26% of world lint by value in 2024, followed by Bangladesh and Vietnam, with Bangladesh, Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia behind them. The next stage is a different map again: India led exports of cotton yarn (HS 5205) in 2024 with 30% of the value, and fabric and garments move on to Europe and North America. Since 2021 US rules on Xinjiang-origin cotton have pushed mills in Vietnam and Bangladesh to document the origin of every bale, which favors traceable US, Brazilian and Australian lint.


## What does cotton cost?

- Cotlook A Index, CFR Far East: $2.11/kg in August 2026; 12-month change +22%; 10-year change +19%; all-time high $5.06/kg in March 2011; real high (2024 US$) $13.34/kg in January 1974 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

The world price is the Cotlook A Index, an average of the cheapest quotes for middling-grade upland cotton offered to mills in the Far East on a cost-and-freight (CFR) basis, which the World Bank carries as Cotlook A Index, CFR Far East. In August 2026 it stood at $2.11/kg, up 22% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its nominal high was $5.06/kg in March 2011, during the 2010/11 squeeze, and its low since 1960 was $0.6/kg in August 1969. Because the index is delivered to Asian ports, it moves with ocean freight and container rates as well as with the crop.

The futures benchmark is ICE Futures US Cotton No. 2 (ticker CT, 50,000 pounds, quoted in US cents per pound), deliverable at US warehouses for strict low middling grade, 1-1/16 inch staple. Physical cotton is sold at a basis to the nearest ICE month, with premiums and discounts for grade, staple length, strength and micronaire (fiber fineness) as measured by high-volume instrument (HVI) classing on every US bale. Growers in the United States and Brazil often sell on-call against futures and fix the price later, so the volume of unfixed on-call sales is watched as a source of buying pressure. Extra-long staple cotton (pima, Egyptian Giza) trades at a separate premium and has no futures contract.

Three ambiguities. Production is lint, the fiber after ginning; seed cotton as picked weighs roughly two and a half to three times as much. USDA's balance sheet counts 480-pound bales rather than tonnes. And the A Index is a CFR Far East price while ICE is a US warehouse price, so the two diverge whenever freight, US export demand or the dollar move.


## What moves the price of cotton?

### Weather on the Texas High Plains and the Indian monsoon

Texas grows most US cotton on semi-arid land where a dry spring means fields are abandoned before harvest; abandonment above a third of planted area, as in 2022, can cut the US crop by a fifth and lift ICE futures because the US is the exporter that mills fall back on. India's rain-fed crop depends on the monsoon reaching the Deccan on time, and Pakistan's on the Indus and on flood years like 2022, when Sindh lost most of its crop.

### China's reserve and import quota

China's state reserve bought most of its own crop from 2011 to 2013 and then auctioned the pile down over the following years, so the timing of reserve purchases and sales moved world prices more than any single harvest. Imports are metered through a tariff-rate quota and additional sliding-scale quotas issued at the government's discretion; when Beijing issues extra quota, Asian mills' demand for US, Brazilian and Australian lint rises at once.

### Polyester and crude oil

Polyester makes up the larger part of world fiber use, and its price follows crude oil and Chinese PTA and MEG capacity. When cotton trades well above polyester, spinners raise the synthetic share of blends and cotton demand falls; when oil spikes, cotton looks cheap. The ratio between the A Index and the polyester staple price is the market's measure of that substitution.

### Stocks-to-use

The stocks-to-use ratio, ending stocks divided by consumption, tells how much lint is left before the next harvest. USDA put world cotton stocks-to-use at — for 2026/27, against — in 2025/26 (USDA PSD). Traders strip out China's stocks, which are not for export, and watch the ratio in the rest of the world; the 2010/11 spike came when that ex-China ratio fell to a record low.

### Apparel demand and retail inventories

Cotton demand is the demand for clothing and home textiles, and it moves with consumer spending in the United States and Europe and with the inventory cycle of retailers. Overstocking in 2022 led brands to cancel orders, mills in Vietnam and Bangladesh cut runs, and lint prices fell by more than a third in months. Fashion sourcing decisions, and shifts in production between China, Vietnam and Bangladesh, change which import market matters most.

### Trade rules and forced-labor enforcement

The US Withhold Release Order of January 2021 and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, in force from June 2022, presume that anything containing Xinjiang cotton is barred from the United States, so brands demand isotope testing and traceable bales. India has suspended exports (2010) and taxed them, Pakistan has waived import duties, and the US and Brazil settled a decade-long WTO subsidy dispute in 2014. Each rule reroutes lint between origins without changing the world crop.

### Currencies

Brazilian and Australian growers sell in dollars and pay costs in reais and Australian dollars, so a weaker real or A$ makes their lint cheaper for Asian mills relative to US cotton. A weaker rupee lifts Indian farmgate prices above the government's minimum support price and unlocks exports; a stronger one has the reverse effect. Cotton's dollar price therefore tends to fall when the dollar rises, as with other exported farm goods.

### Pests and resistance

Bollworms, pink bollworm, whitefly and, historically, the boll weevil are cotton's main enemies. Bt cotton, commercialized in the United States in 1996 and in India in 2002, cut insecticide use for a decade, but pink bollworm in India and Pakistan has evolved resistance and yields there have stagnated. Boll weevil eradication in the United States, completed in most states, is one reason US yields rose while insecticide use fell.

## How is cotton produced?

Almost all commercial cotton is upland (Gossypium hirsutum), a medium-staple fiber; the long-staple Gossypium barbadense types, pima in the United States and Peru, Giza in Egypt, make up a small premium share used for fine shirting and luxury bedding. Seed is planted in spring, in April and May in the United States and China, June with the monsoon in India, and January for Brazil's second crop; the plant flowers over several weeks and the bolls open sixty to eighty days after flowering. Harvest runs from September to December in the northern hemisphere and from June to August in Brazil and Australia. In mechanized systems a defoliant is applied first, then spindle pickers (or stripper harvesters on the High Plains) gather the seed cotton into modules; in India, Pakistan and Africa the crop is hand-picked over several passes.

The gin separates fiber from seed. Seed cotton is dried, cleaned of leaf and sticks, and fed through saw or roller gins that strip the lint from the seed; roller gins are used for long-staple cotton to preserve fiber length. Lint is roughly a third to two-fifths of the seed cotton by weight and is pressed into bales, 480 pounds in the United States and around 170 to 230 kilograms elsewhere. Each bale is sampled and, in the United States, Brazil and Australia, classed by HVI for color grade, leaf, staple length, strength, micronaire and uniformity, which become the premiums and discounts on the sale.

Cottonseed is the main byproduct: crushed for cottonseed oil and a high-protein meal for cattle, or fed whole to dairy cows. Linters, the short fuzz left on the seed after ginning, become cellulose for paper, film and explosives. At the mill, lint is opened, cleaned, carded and often combed to remove short fibers, drawn into slivers, and spun on ring or open-end frames into yarn whose fineness is measured in counts. Yarn is knitted or woven, dyed and finished, and only then cut into garments, usually in a different country from the one that grew the fiber.


### Harvest calendar

- China (Xinjiang): harvest Sep, Oct, Nov
- India: harvest Jan, Feb, Oct, Nov, Dec
- United States: harvest Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
- Brazil (Mato Grosso second crop): harvest Jun, Jul, Aug
- Pakistan: harvest Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
- Australia: harvest Apr, May, Jun
- Turkey: harvest Sep, Oct, Nov
- Uzbekistan: harvest Sep, Oct

## What is cotton used for?

Cotton is the world's main natural textile fiber, and clothing takes most of it: denim, T-shirts, shirting, underwear and knitwear, followed by home textiles such as sheets, towels and upholstery. Medical and hygiene products use bleached cotton for gauze, swabs and pads. The seed supplies cooking oil and cattle feed, and linters supply cellulose for banknotes, photographic film and nitrocellulose. Cotton's share of total fiber use has fallen for decades as polyester grew cheaper, so its market is set as much by the price of oil-based fibers as by the size of the crop.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Ginning happens near the farm, because seed cotton is bulky and gins must run within weeks of harvest; Texas alone has hundreds of gins, and West African cotton companies run national gin networks that also supply seed and credit to farmers. Spinning concentrates where labor is cheap and mills are close to garment factories: China, India, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia hold most of the world's spindles. Merchants connect the two. Louis Dreyfus, Olam Agri, Cargill, ECOM, Paul Reinhart and the US cooperatives Staplcotn and Calcot buy bales from growers, warehouse and class them, and sell forward to mills on ICE-linked contracts.

Lint moves in containers, not bulk, so the trade depends on container availability and on ports that handle boxes: Houston, Galveston, Savannah, Charleston and Los Angeles-Long Beach for the United States; Santos for Brazil; Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne for Australia; Karachi for Pakistan; and Abidjan, Lomé and Cotonou for West Africa. Landlocked Mali and Burkina Faso rely on rail and road corridors to those ports. Transpacific and Asia-bound routes cross the Panama Canal or the Red Sea, and the 2021 container shortage and 2024 Red Sea diversions both delayed shipments to mills.

The single points of failure are concentration and water. Xinjiang grows most of China's cotton, which makes the largest producer's supply vulnerable to a single region's politics and traceability rules. The Texas High Plains pump the Ogallala aquifer, and Pakistan's and Uzbekistan's crops depend on rivers that upstream users and glaciers control. On the demand side, a handful of Asian spinning countries, led by China, take most of the traded lint, so a slowdown in garment orders reaches growers within a season.


## Key companies

- Louis Dreyfus Company: trader, Netherlands
- Olam Agri: ginner, Singapore
- Cargill: trader, United States
- ECOM Agroindustrial: trader, Switzerland
- Paul Reinhart AG: trader, Switzerland
- Staplcotn: trader, United States
- Calcot: trader, United States

## Timeline

- 1794-03: Eli Whitney patents the saw gin. A machine that cleaned short-staple upland cotton fifty times faster than by hand made the crop profitable across the US South and set upland cotton on the path to dominating world fiber. (https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/patent-for-cotton-gin)
- 1892: Boll weevil crosses the Rio Grande into Texas. The pest spread across the entire Cotton Belt within thirty years, cutting yields and reshaping Southern agriculture until eradication programs began in the 1970s. (https://tbwef.org/about/history-of-boll-weevil/)
- 1996: Bt cotton commercialized in the United States. Insect-resistant varieties cut bollworm losses and insecticide use, and within a decade the trait covered most of the crops in the United States, China, India and Australia. (https://www.cotton.org/journal/2001-05/2/upload/jcs05-121.pdf)
- 2002-03: India approves Bt cotton for commercial planting. India's first genetically modified crop lifted yields for a decade and turned the country from a net importer into a net exporter of lint. (https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt0502-415)
- 2010-04: India suspends cotton export registrations. The de facto ban stranded contracted cargoes, triggered a wave of arbitrations and helped push world prices to their 2011 record. (https://www.cotton.org/issues/2010/upload/NCC-Report_India-and-World-Cotton-Market_October-26-2010_FINAL-3.pdf)
- 2011-03: Cotton prices pass two dollars a pound. A rare combination of Chinese reserve buying, Indian export limits and low world stocks produced the highest price since the US Civil War and a wave of contract defaults. (https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/archive/the-impact-of-soaring-cotton-prices-on-consumer-apparel-prices.pdf)
- 2014: China replaces reserve buying with a target-price subsidy in Xinjiang. Ending the stockpile that had absorbed three years of Chinese crops released a mountain of reserve cotton onto the market and concentrated Chinese production in Xinjiang. (https://ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/outlooks/36244/52550_cws-15c-01.pdf?v=63229)
- 2014-10: United States and Brazil settle the WTO cotton case. A $300 million payment closed a dispute that had found US cotton subsidies illegal and forced changes to US farm programs. (https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2014/10/01/united-states-and-brazil-reach-agreement-end-wto-cotton-dispute)
- 2021-01: US Customs bars cotton products from Xinjiang. The region-wide Withhold Release Order forced brands and mills to prove the origin of their fiber and split the world market into traceable and untraceable cotton. (https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/cbp-issues-region-wide-withhold-release-order-products-made-slave)
- 2022-06: Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act takes effect. A rebuttable presumption that any product with Xinjiang content is made with forced labor extended the import ban to garments finished in third countries. (https://www.npr.org/2022/06/20/1106198717/new-forced-labor-prevention-act-goes-into-effect-june-21)
- 2022-08: Floods destroy most of Sindh's cotton crop. Pakistan, one of the largest growers, lost the bulk of its southern crop and became a heavy importer of lint the following season. (https://reliefweb.int/report/pakistan/2022-pakistan-floods-assessment-crop-losses-sindh-province-using-satellite-data)
- 2024-06: Brazil overtakes the United States as the largest cotton exporter. USDA's 2023/24 estimate ended the US position held since the early 1990s and confirmed Brazil's second-crop system as a permanent competitor for Asian mills. (https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/109581)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most cotton

China produced the most cotton lint in 2023: 5.6 million tonnes, or 23% of the world's 24.7 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India was second with 5.5 million tonnes and Brazil third. Most of China's crop grows in Xinjiang, and India has the largest area but far lower yields.

### which country exports the most cotton

Brazil was the largest exporter of raw cotton lint in 2024, with 30% of the $17.3 billion of world exports (CEPII BACI), ahead of United States and Australia. China and Pakistan grow large crops but spin them at home, so the biggest growers and the biggest exporters are different countries.

### which country imports the most cotton

China imported the most cotton lint in 2024, 26% of world import value (CEPII BACI), followed by Bangladesh and Vietnam. Importers are spinning countries; they turn lint into yarn, and India was the largest yarn exporter in 2024.

### what is the price of cotton today

The world benchmark, the Cotlook A Index delivered to Far East mills, was $2.11/kg in August 2026, up 22% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Futures trade on ICE as Cotton No. 2 in US cents per pound. The index's nominal record was $5.06/kg in March 2011.

### why did cotton prices spike in 2011

China's state reserve was buying, India had suspended exports in 2010, and stocks outside China fell to a record low relative to use. The A Index reached $5.06/kg in March 2011 (World Bank Pink Sheet), the highest since the nineteenth century, and ICE futures passed two dollars a pound in March 2011 before collapsing within months.

### is cotton production measured as lint or seed cotton

Lint. The 2023 world figure of 24.7 million tonnes (FAOSTAT) is fiber after ginning. Seed cotton as picked weighs roughly two and a half to three times as much, because the seed is heavier than the fiber attached to it. USDA counts the same lint in 480-pound bales rather than tonnes.

### how much cotton is in stock worldwide

USDA estimates world cotton stocks-to-use, ending stocks divided by consumption, at — for 2026/27, against — in 2025/26 (USDA PSD). Traders usually exclude China's stocks, which are held for domestic mills, and watch the ratio in the rest of the world as the better guide to export prices.

### why is Xinjiang cotton banned in the United States

US Customs issued a Withhold Release Order on Xinjiang cotton in January 2021, and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, in force from June 2022, presumes goods with Xinjiang content are made with forced labor. Because the region grows most of China's crop, the largest producer's fiber is excluded from the US market unless importers can prove otherwise.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2023. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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
- USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, Production, Supply and Distribution (PSD), 2026-09-06. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://apps.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/
- Harvest calendars (curated from USDA FAS IPAD crop calendars and FAO GIEWS country briefs), curated 2026-09. License: Public domain (USDA) with FAO GIEWS cross-reference (attribution). https://ipad.fas.usda.gov/ogamaps/cropcalendar.aspx

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

---

# Where does crude oil come from?

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

Crude oil comes mainly from the United States, which produced 21,065 thousand barrels daily in 2025, 21% of the world's 100,590 thousand barrels daily (Energy Institute). Saudi Arabia (11%), Russia (11%) and Canada (6.1%) follow; the top five together supply 54%. The biggest exporter of crude oil (HS 2709) is Saudi Arabia (14% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Brent (dated, 38° API), was $90.9/bbl in August 2026, up 33% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Oil accumulates where ancient marine source rocks were buried to the right depth and temperature and then sealed under salt or shale in large sedimentary basins, which is why production concentrates in the Persian Gulf, the Permian and Gulf Coast basins of the United States, West Siberia, Canada's oil sands and Brazil's offshore pre-salt.

*Unrefined petroleum pumped from underground reservoirs and refined into fuels and petrochemical feedstocks.* Also called: oil, petroleum, crude, Brent, WTI, Brent crude, WTI crude, Dubai crude.

## Where does crude oil come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (thousand barrels daily) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 21,065 | 21% |
| 2 | Saudi Arabia | 11,408 | 11% |
| 3 | Russia | 10,737 | 11% |
| 4 | Canada | 6,164 | 6.1% |
| 5 | Iran | 5,184 | 5.2% |
| 6 | Iraq | 4,396 | 4.4% |
| 7 | China | 4,340 | 4.3% |
| 8 | United Arab Emirates | 4,207 | 4.2% |
| 9 | Brazil | 3,881 | 3.9% |
| 10 | Kuwait | 2,820 | 2.8% |
| | Rest of world | 1,190 | 26% |
| | World | 100,590 | 100% |

Source: Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy, Statistical Review 2026.

Crude oil is a mix of hydrocarbons formed from plankton and algae buried in marine sediments tens to hundreds of millions of years ago, cooked by heat and pressure and then migrated into porous reservoir rock beneath an impermeable seal. Large, undisturbed sedimentary basins with rich source rock, good reservoirs and intact traps are rare, and a handful of them hold most of the world's oil. The Arabian basin under Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Iran and the Gulf states is the largest; the Permian basin of Texas and New Mexico, the West Siberian basin, the Alberta oil sands, the pre-salt fields offshore Brazil and the deepwater Gulf of Mexico are the other giants.

In 2025 United States produced 21,065 thousand barrels daily, 21% of the world's 100,590 thousand barrels daily (Energy Institute). Saudi Arabia was second with 11,408 thousand barrels daily and Russia third with 10,737 thousand barrels daily. The top five producers supplied 54% of the total, and 50 countries reported output. World production was +10% compared with ten years earlier; the leading producer grew at +5.1% a year over the decade, driven by horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing in shale formations that were uneconomic before 2008. These figures follow the Energy Institute's definition of oil production, which includes crude oil, shale oil, oil sands, condensates and natural gas liquids (NGLs), so they run higher than crude-only counts.

The producers differ in what they pump. Saudi and Iraqi crude comes from giant conventional fields such as Ghawar and Rumaila, at low cost per barrel, from wells that can flow for decades. United States output is dominated by light, sweet shale oil and by NGLs separated from gas, from wells that decline fast and need constant drilling. Canada's oil is largely bitumen mined or steamed from the Athabasca sands and upgraded or diluted before it can move by pipeline. Russia produces medium, sour Urals-grade crude from West Siberia and the Volga-Urals. Brazil, Guyana and Norway produce from deep water, where a single platform can yield more than a hundred thousand barrels a day.

Production and export are different rankings. The United States is the largest producer and also one of the largest importers, because its refineries were built for heavier grades than shale provides. Saudi Arabia, Russia, Canada, Iraq and the Gulf states export most of what they produce. China, the fourth or fifth largest producer, imports more than it pumps.


## Who exports and imports crude oil?

Refined product exports (HS 2710) are a separate map led by the US, Russia, Singapore, the Netherlands and India.

### Exporters of petroleum oils, crude (HS 2709), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Saudi Arabia | $186.9 billion | 14% |
| 2 | Russia | $124.2 billion | 9.4% |
| 3 | United States | $123.7 billion | 9.3% |
| 4 | United Arab Emirates | $114.4 billion | 8.6% |
| 5 | Canada | $109 billion | 8.2% |
| 6 | Iraq | $97.9 billion | 7.4% |
| 7 | Norway | $50 billion | 3.8% |
| 8 | Malaysia | $46.7 billion | 3.5% |
| 9 | Brazil | $45.9 billion | 3.5% |
| 10 | Nigeria | $40.6 billion | 3.1% |
| 11 | Kazakhstan | $36 billion | 2.7% |
| 12 | Angola | $32.2 billion | 2.4% |
| 13 | Oman | $28.9 billion | 2.2% |
| 14 | Kuwait | $28.8 billion | 2.2% |
| 15 | Libya | $27.7 billion | 2.1% |

### Importers of petroleum oils, crude (HS 2709), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $318.4 billion | 24% |
| 2 | United States | $169.2 billion | 13% |
| 3 | India | $141.8 billion | 11% |
| 4 | South Korea | $84.5 billion | 6.4% |
| 5 | Japan | $73.1 billion | 5.5% |
| 6 | Netherlands | $54.8 billion | 4.1% |
| 7 | Germany | $36.8 billion | 2.8% |
| 8 | Spain | $35.6 billion | 2.7% |
| 9 | Italy | $32.4 billion | 2.4% |
| 10 | Thailand | $32.3 billion | 2.4% |
| 11 | United Kingdom | $31 billion | 2.3% |
| 12 | Singapore | $28.7 billion | 2.2% |
| 13 | France | $28.3 billion | 2.1% |
| 14 | Other Asia, nes | $28 billion | 2.1% |
| 15 | Belgium | $23 billion | 1.7% |

### Exporters of refined petroleum products (HS 2710), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $112.7 billion | 13% |
| 2 | India | $58.2 billion | 6.6% |
| 3 | Singapore | $56.6 billion | 6.4% |
| 4 | South Korea | $51.5 billion | 5.8% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $50.4 billion | 5.7% |
| 6 | United Arab Emirates | $46.2 billion | 5.2% |
| 7 | Russia | $45.1 billion | 5.1% |
| 8 | China | $34.3 billion | 3.9% |
| 9 | Belgium | $33.4 billion | 3.8% |
| 10 | Malaysia | $31.8 billion | 3.6% |
| 11 | Saudi Arabia | $28.9 billion | 3.3% |
| 12 | Kuwait | $24.3 billion | 2.8% |
| 13 | Germany | $21.5 billion | 2.4% |
| 14 | Italy | $17.7 billion | 2% |
| 15 | Canada | $14.9 billion | 1.7% |

### Importers of refined petroleum products (HS 2710), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $59.8 billion | 6.8% |
| 2 | Singapore | $53.8 billion | 6.1% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $39.9 billion | 4.5% |
| 4 | France | $32.7 billion | 3.7% |
| 5 | Australia | $31.5 billion | 3.6% |
| 6 | Mexico | $30.9 billion | 3.5% |
| 7 | China | $28.4 billion | 3.2% |
| 8 | United Kingdom | $26.5 billion | 3% |
| 9 | Malaysia | $26.2 billion | 3% |
| 10 | South Korea | $25.5 billion | 2.9% |
| 11 | Germany | $25.4 billion | 2.9% |
| 12 | Indonesia | $21.3 billion | 2.4% |
| 13 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $19.7 billion | 2.2% |
| 14 | Belgium | $19.4 billion | 2.2% |
| 15 | Japan | $18.4 billion | 2.1% |

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

Crude oil (HS 2709) is the most valuable traded commodity by far. Saudi Arabia was the largest exporter in 2024 with 14% of world export value, and China was the largest importer with 24% of import value (CEPII BACI). World exports of crude oil (HS 2709) were worth $1,324.2 billion. Trade in crude follows refinery configuration as much as price: Gulf Coast refineries built to run heavy Venezuelan and Mexican crude buy Canadian bitumen instead, while Asian refineries take Middle Eastern medium sour grades on long-term contracts.

Refined products (HS 2710) are a separate map. United States was the largest exporter of refined products in 2024, and United States the largest importer (CEPII BACI). Singapore, the Netherlands, South Korea and India export large volumes of diesel, gasoline and jet fuel refined from imported crude, so their product exports have no relation to their own production. Re-export hubs such as Singapore, Rotterdam and Fujairah also blend and transship crude, and since 2022 India and Turkey have imported discounted Russian crude and exported the products, moving Russian oil into markets that no longer buy the crude directly.


## What does crude oil cost?

- Brent (dated, 38° API): $90.9/bbl in August 2026; 12-month change +33%; 10-year change +97%; all-time high $133.9/bbl in July 2008; real high (2024 US$) $191.9/bbl in June 2008 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- Dubai Fateh (32° API): $79.7/bbl in August 2026; 12-month change +17%; 10-year change +82%; all-time high $131.2/bbl in July 2008; real high (2024 US$) $187.9/bbl in July 2008 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- Average of Brent, Dubai and WTI: $84.4/bbl in August 2026; 12-month change +27%; 10-year change +88%; all-time high $132.8/bbl in July 2008; real high (2024 US$) $190.2/bbl in July 2008 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- WTI (Cushing, 40° API): $82.7/bbl in August 2026; 12-month change +29%; 10-year change +85%; all-time high $133.9/bbl in June 2008; real high (2024 US$) $193.2/bbl in June 2008 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

Crude is priced against a small number of benchmark grades, with every other crude sold at a differential that reflects its density, sulfur content and location. Dated Brent is the price of physical cargoes of light, sweet North Sea crude (Brent, Forties, Oseberg, Ekofisk, Troll and, since 2023, WTI Midland delivered to Rotterdam) loading in the coming weeks; roughly two thirds of the world's crude is priced off it. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) is light, sweet crude delivered by pipeline to storage tanks at Cushing, Oklahoma, the reference for the Americas. Dubai and Oman are medium, sour Gulf crudes that price most sales to Asia. Density is measured in API gravity, where higher numbers mean lighter oil, and sulfur above 0.5% makes a crude "sour"; light, sweet crude yields more gasoline and diesel with less processing and so commands a premium.

The futures contracts behind the benchmarks are the ICE Futures Europe Brent Crude contract (ticker B, 1,000 barrels, quoted in US dollars per barrel), which settles in cash against an index of physical Brent trades, and the NYMEX (CME Group) Light Sweet Crude Oil contract (ticker CL, 1,000 barrels, US dollars per barrel), which settles by physical delivery at Cushing. Both trade monthly contracts years into the future; the front-month price is what headlines report. Dubai is priced through the Dubai Mercantile Exchange Oman contract and Platts assessments rather than a large exchange market.

This site's primary series is Brent (dated, 38° API), which averaged $90.9/bbl in August 2026, up 33% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its record monthly average was $133.9/bbl in July 2008; adjusted for US inflation the real peak was $191.9/bbl in June 2008. In the same month WTI averaged $82.7/bbl and Dubai $79.7/bbl; the World Bank's three-benchmark average was $84.4/bbl. A quote is for one barrel of 42 US gallons (159 liters) of the benchmark grade at its delivery point, with no freight, insurance or taxes. "Oil production" on this page includes NGLs and condensate per the Energy Institute, while prices refer to crude alone.


## What moves the price of crude oil?

### OPEC+ production quotas

OPEC and the non-OPEC producers allied with it since 2016, above all Russia, agree on output ceilings for each member and adjust them at meetings roughly every quarter. Together they control about four tenths of world supply and hold nearly all of the spare capacity that can be switched on within months, most of it in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. A decision to cut removes barrels from the market immediately; a decision to raise, or to stop defending a price as in 1986, 2014 and 2020, has driven the largest price falls on record.

### Sanctions and embargoes

Sanctions on Iran, Venezuela and Russia have removed millions of barrels a day from open markets, or rerouted them at a discount to buyers willing to take the compliance risk. The G7 price cap on Russian seaborne crude from December 2022 aimed to keep the oil flowing while cutting revenue. Sanctions work through insurance, shipping and banking rather than by stopping wells, so their effect shows up as wider differentials between benchmark and sanctioned grades and as a shadow fleet of tankers, more than as lost production.

### Commercial inventories

Crude is stored in tank farms at Cushing, the Gulf Coast, Rotterdam, Fujairah and Chinese coastal terminals, and in floating tankers when onshore space is full. The market reads weekly EIA stock data and monthly IEA and OPEC reports as the balance between supply and demand. A drawdown means demand is outrunning supply and supports prices; a build does the opposite. When storage fills, as at Cushing in April 2020, the price of prompt barrels can fall below zero because nobody can take delivery.

### Refinery runs and product margins

Refineries are the only buyers of crude, and they buy according to the margin, or crack spread, between crude cost and the value of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel they make. Seasonal maintenance in spring and fall cuts crude demand for weeks; a hurricane that shuts Gulf Coast plants does the same. Strong diesel margins in Europe or Asia pull in crude from far away, while a glut of products backs up into lower crude prices. Refinery closures in Europe and new mega-refineries in Nigeria, Kuwait and China shift which crudes are wanted where.

### Shale drilling response

United States shale wells produce most of their oil in the first two years, so national output tracks the rig count with a lag of six to nine months. When WTI rises above roughly the cost of a new Permian well, operators add rigs and output climbs within a year; when it falls below, drilling stops and production plateaus or declines. This fast response has made the United States the swing supplier outside OPEC, capping rallies and cushioning slumps, though capital discipline since 2020 has slowed the reaction.

### Economic growth and fuel demand

Oil demand moves with freight, aviation, driving and petrochemical output, so global growth, and China's in particular, sets the baseline. A recession cuts demand by a few percent, which in a market with little spare capacity is enough to halve prices, as in 2008 and 2020. Efficiency standards, electric vehicles and fuel switching change the trend slowly; the year-to-year swings come from the business cycle, from the weather in the Northern Hemisphere winter and from the summer driving season.

### Dollar exchange rate and financial flows

Crude is priced in dollars worldwide, so a weaker dollar makes oil cheaper for buyers in euros, yen or rupees and tends to lift the dollar price. Futures positions held by funds amplify moves in both directions, and the shape of the futures curve, contango (later months higher) or backwardation (later months lower), decides whether it pays to store oil or sell it now. Interest rates feed in through the cost of holding inventory.

### Chokepoint and infrastructure disruptions

Because most exported crude passes through the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Malacca, the Suez Canal and a few pipelines, threats to any of them add a risk premium. Attacks on tankers in the Red Sea in 2024 rerouted shipping around Africa, raising freight and delivery times without removing supply. Pipeline outages, port strikes and drone strikes on export terminals produce short, sharp moves; actual closures of a major strait have not occurred, but the market prices the possibility.

## How is crude oil produced?

An oil field is found by seismic surveys and proved by exploration wells; producing it means drilling many wells into the reservoir and connecting them to gathering lines. In a conventional field the oil flows under natural pressure at first, then is lifted with pumps or pushed with injected water or gas; recovery of a third to a half of the oil in place is typical. In shale the reservoir is the source rock itself, and each well is drilled horizontally for two to three kilometers and fractured with pressurized water and sand to create flow paths. Oil sands are mined in open pits or heated in place with steam, then the bitumen is separated and either upgraded into synthetic crude or diluted with condensate so it can flow through a pipeline.

At the wellhead the fluid is a mixture of oil, gas and water. Separators remove the gas, which is sold, reinjected or flared, and the water, which is treated and reinjected. Stabilization removes the lightest components so the crude can be stored and shipped safely. The result is graded by API gravity and sulfur content: Brent at about 38 degrees API and WTI at about 40 degrees are light and sweet; Dubai at 32 degrees is medium and sour; Maya, Western Canadian Select and Venezuelan Merey are heavy and sour. Each grade has an assay that tells a refiner what fraction of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, fuel oil and coke it will yield.

Crude moves by pipeline to a terminal, then by tanker. Very large crude carriers carry about two million barrels from the Gulf to Asia; smaller Aframax and Suezmax tankers serve the Atlantic basin and routes with draft limits. At the refinery the crude is distilled into fractions by boiling point, then heavier fractions are cracked, reformed and treated to make transport fuels and to remove sulfur. Refined products are traded separately under HS 2710, with their own benchmarks. Petroleum coke, sulfur and asphalt are by-products; naphtha and LPG feed petrochemical plants.


## What is crude oil used for?

Almost all crude oil is refined into fuels. In the IEA's accounting, road transport takes the largest share of oil products, with aviation, shipping and petrochemical feedstocks the other large uses (IEA, World Energy Outlook 2023). Diesel powers trucks, trains, ships and farm machinery; gasoline fuels most cars in the Americas; jet fuel is essentially kerosene; residual fuel oil, now low in sulfur under 2020 shipping rules, runs ships.

The non-fuel uses are plastics, synthetic fibers, solvents, lubricants, asphalt and the naphtha and LPG cracked into ethylene and propylene. Petrochemicals are the fastest growing part of oil demand and the least affected by electric vehicles. Oil is also burned for electricity and heat in the Middle East, South Asia and island economies, though that share has fallen as gas and renewables have replaced it.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The oil supply chain runs through a small number of straits, canals and pipelines. The Strait of Hormuz, between Iran and Oman, carries the exports of Saudi Arabia's east coast, Iraq, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar and Iran, about a fifth of world consumption, with the East-West pipeline to Yanbu on the Red Sea the only large bypass. The Strait of Malacca between Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore is the route from the Gulf to China, Japan and South Korea. The Suez Canal and the SUMED pipeline, together with the Bab el-Mandeb strait at the mouth of the Red Sea, link the Gulf to Europe; Red Sea attacks in 2024 pushed tankers around the Cape of Good Hope. Russian Black Sea exports from Novorossiysk and Kazakh crude from the CPC terminal pass through the Turkish Straits, where tanker size and daylight transit rules limit throughput.

Onshore, a handful of hubs concentrate storage and pricing. Cushing, Oklahoma, is the delivery point for WTI and the largest tank farm in the United States; Rotterdam and Fujairah are the storage and blending hubs for Europe and the Gulf; Ras Tanura in Saudi Arabia and Basra in Iraq are the largest export terminals. Pipelines such as Keystone and Enbridge's Mainline carry Canadian crude to US refineries, and the Trans Mountain expansion opened in 2024 gave Canada its first large Pacific outlet. Attacks on the Abqaiq processing plant in 2019 showed that a single facility can take several million barrels a day offline for weeks.

Refining is the other point of concentration. The United States, China, Russia, India, South Korea and the Gulf states hold most of the world's distillation capacity, and complex refineries able to run heavy, sour crude are fewer still. When European refineries close, the continent depends on imported diesel; when a large Asian refinery starts up, it reroutes Middle Eastern crude flows. Tankers, insurance and finance form a third layer, which is why sanctions targeting shipping have been the main tool for constraining Russian and Iranian exports.


## Key companies

- Saudi Aramco: producer, Saudi Arabia, listed (Saudi Exchange: 2222)
- ExxonMobil: producer, United States, listed (NYSE: XOM)
- Shell: producer, United Kingdom, listed (LSE/NYSE: SHEL)
- Petrobras: producer, Brazil, listed (B3: PETR3/PETR4; NYSE: PBR)
- Rosneft: producer, Russia, listed (MOEX: ROSN)
- Trafigura: trader, Singapore

## Timeline

- 1859-08: Drake well strikes oil at Titusville, Pennsylvania. The first well drilled purposely for oil proved that petroleum could be produced at scale, starting the modern industry. (https://www.drakewell.org/about-us/site-history)
- 1908-05: Oil discovered at Masjid-i-Suleiman in Persia. The first commercial find in the Middle East led to the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later BP, and began the region's rise as the world's main exporter. (https://www.aapg.org/news-and-media/details/explorer/articleid/47495/the-first-oil-field-in-the-middle-east)
- 1938-03: Dammam No. 7 finds commercial oil in Saudi Arabia. After years of dry holes, the well opened the Saudi fields that became the largest source of exportable crude in the world. (https://www.aramcoworld.com/articles/1963/seven-wells-of-dammam)
- 1973-10: Arab oil embargo. Arab producers cut exports to the United States and allies, and the posted price roughly quadrupled within months, ending the era of cheap oil set by the major companies. (https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/oil-shock-of-1973-74)
- 1979-01: Iranian revolution halts exports and triggers the second oil shock. Losing several million barrels a day of Iranian output doubled prices again and pushed consuming countries into conservation, nuclear power and North Sea and Alaskan supply. (https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/oil-shock-of-1978-79)
- 1988-06: Brent crude futures begin trading on the International Petroleum Exchange. An exchange-traded contract on North Sea crude made Brent the benchmark for most of the world's seaborne oil. (https://www.ice.com/evolution-of-brent-its-markets-and-why-its-ecosystem-is-relied-upon-by-commercial-participants)
- 2008-07: Brent reaches a record above $145 a barrel. Rising Asian demand met flat non-OPEC supply, and the spike was followed within months by a collapse as the financial crisis cut consumption. (https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=5590)
- 2014-11: OPEC declines to cut output as prices fall. Saudi Arabia chose market share over price, and crude halved in the second half of 2014, testing whether US shale could survive lower prices. (https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=19451)
- 2016-11: OPEC and non-OPEC producers agree coordinated cuts, forming OPEC+. Russia and other outsiders joined OPEC's quota system, creating the group that has managed supply since. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPEC%2B)
- 2020-04: WTI futures settle below zero. With storage at Cushing nearly full during pandemic lockdowns, the expiring May contract traded to about minus $40 a barrel, the first negative oil price on record. (https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=43495)
- 2022-12: G7 and EU impose a $60 price cap on Russian seaborne crude. The cap, alongside the EU import ban, rerouted Russian crude to India, China and Turkey and split the market into capped and uncapped trade. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_oil_price_cap)

## Frequently asked questions

### where does most of the world's oil come from

In 2025 United States produced 21,065 thousand barrels daily, 21% of world oil production of 100,590 thousand barrels daily (Energy Institute). Saudi Arabia was second and Russia third. The top five producers supplied 54%. These figures include crude oil, condensate and natural gas liquids under the Energy Institute definition.

### which country exports the most crude oil

Saudi Arabia was the largest crude oil exporter (HS 2709) in 2024, with 14% of world export value (CEPII BACI). China was the largest importer, taking 24% of imports. Refined products are traded separately, and United States led those exports in 2024.

### what is the price of oil today

Brent (dated, 38° API) averaged $90.9/bbl in August 2026, up 33% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). WTI averaged $82.7/bbl and Dubai $79.7/bbl in the same month. A quote is for one barrel of 42 US gallons of the benchmark grade at its delivery point, excluding freight and taxes.

### what is the difference between Brent and WTI

Both are light, sweet crudes. Brent is North Sea oil priced for cargoes loading in Europe and is the reference for most seaborne crude; WTI is US oil delivered by pipeline to Cushing, Oklahoma. In August 2026 Brent averaged $90.9/bbl and WTI $82.7/bbl (World Bank Pink Sheet). The gap reflects freight and US export capacity.

### what is the highest oil price in history

The highest monthly average for Brent (dated, 38° API) was $133.9/bbl in July 2008 (World Bank Pink Sheet). Adjusted for US inflation, the real peak was $191.9/bbl in June 2008. The lowest monthly average in the series, which begins in 1960, was $1.2/bbl in January 1970.

### is the US the biggest oil producer

The Energy Institute ranks United States first in 2025 with 21,065 thousand barrels daily, 21% of the world total, ahead of Saudi Arabia with 11,408 thousand barrels daily (Energy Institute). The count includes natural gas liquids and condensate, which are a large part of US output. The United States still imports crude because its refineries need heavier grades than shale provides.

### how much oil does the world produce per day

World oil production was 100,590 thousand barrels daily in 2025, +10% compared with ten years earlier (Energy Institute). The figure covers crude oil, shale oil, oil sands, condensate and natural gas liquids. 50 countries reported production, but the top five accounted for 54% of it.

### why did oil prices go negative in 2020

On April 20, 2020, the expiring May WTI futures contract traded to about minus $40 a barrel. Pandemic lockdowns had cut demand while storage tanks at Cushing, Oklahoma, the contract's delivery point, were nearly full, so holders paid to avoid taking delivery. Brent, which settles in cash, stayed positive. WTI averaged $82.7/bbl in August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

## Sources

- Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy, Statistical Review 2026. License: Free to use with attribution (Energy Institute terms). https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review
- 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 does crude oil come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/crude-oil/.

---

# Where do dates come from?

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

Dates come mainly from Saudi Arabia, which produced 1.9 million tonnes in 2024, 19% of the world's 9.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Egypt (18%), Algeria (13%) and Iran (12%) follow; the top five together supply 68%. The biggest exporter of dates (HS 080410) is Saudi Arabia (18% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The date palm needs its feet in water and its head in fire, as the Arabic saying has it: intense summer heat to ripen the fruit and irrigation or groundwater at the roots, a combination found in desert oases from Morocco to Pakistan.

*The fruit of the date palm, dried on the tree in desert oases and eaten year-round.* Also called: date palm, medjool, deglet nour.

## Where do dates come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Saudi Arabia | 1.9 million | 19% |
| 2 | Egypt | 1.8 million | 18% |
| 3 | Algeria | 1.3 million | 13% |
| 4 | Iran | 1.2 million | 12% |
| 5 | Pakistan | 604,243 | 6.1% |
| 6 | Iraq | 587,190 | 5.9% |
| 7 | Sudan | 443,134 | 4.5% |
| 8 | Oman | 400,655 | 4% |
| 9 | Tunisia | 400,219 | 4% |
| 10 | United Arab Emirates | 333,632 | 3.4% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 9.7% |
| | World | 9.9 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 Saudi Arabia produced 1.9 million tonnes, 19% of the world's 9.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Egypt followed with 18%, then Algeria (13%), Iran (12%) and Pakistan (6.1%). The top five account for 68%, 36 countries reported output and 9.7% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +34% over the ten years to 2024 and -0% on the previous year.

Date growing follows a belt of hot arid country across North Africa, the Middle East and into South Asia, and it is one of the oldest cultivated crops on earth, domesticated in Mesopotamia thousands of years ago. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Algeria and Iraq dominate, with the United States and Israel producing smaller quantities of high-value varieties for export markets.

Varieties matter more here than in most fruit. Medjool and Deglet Nour dominate the international premium trade, the first a large soft date and the second a semi-dry variety that stores and ships well, while dozens of regional varieties are eaten locally and rarely leave their country of origin.

## Who exports and imports dates?

### Exporters of dates, fresh or dried (HS 080410), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Saudi Arabia | $441.6 million | 18% |
| 2 | Tunisia | $366.9 million | 15% |
| 3 | Israel | $266.6 million | 11% |
| 4 | United Arab Emirates | $249 million | 10% |
| 5 | Iran | $188.9 million | 7.7% |
| 6 | Algeria | $167.8 million | 6.8% |
| 7 | Egypt | $104.9 million | 4.3% |
| 8 | Iraq | $101.8 million | 4.1% |
| 9 | United States | $66.1 million | 2.7% |
| 10 | Palestine | $57.6 million | 2.3% |
| 11 | Pakistan | $53.4 million | 2.2% |
| 12 | France | $51 million | 2.1% |
| 13 | Jordan | $42.7 million | 1.7% |
| 14 | Netherlands | $39.6 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $34.8 million | 1.4% |

### Importers of dates, fresh or dried (HS 080410), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | $287.3 million | 12% |
| 2 | Morocco | $244.5 million | 9.9% |
| 3 | United Arab Emirates | $201.1 million | 8.2% |
| 4 | France | $128.3 million | 5.2% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $113.4 million | 4.6% |
| 6 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $112.3 million | 4.6% |
| 7 | Germany | $109.9 million | 4.5% |
| 8 | United States | $106.3 million | 4.3% |
| 9 | United Kingdom | $101.2 million | 4.1% |
| 10 | Indonesia | $77.4 million | 3.1% |
| 11 | Canada | $66.9 million | 2.7% |
| 12 | Malaysia | $56.6 million | 2.3% |
| 13 | Spain | $56.6 million | 2.3% |
| 14 | Russia | $48.2 million | 2% |
| 15 | Italy | $44.6 million | 1.8% |

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

Saudi Arabia was the largest exporter of dates (HS 080410) in 2024 with 18% of world export value, ahead of Tunisia (15%), on world trade of $2.5 billion (CEPII BACI). India was the largest importer with 12%.

The trade divides into two quite different markets. The premium trade in named varieties, Medjool above all, sells whole graded fruit into North America, Europe and the Gulf at high prices per kilogram. The bulk trade moves lower-grade dates for paste, syrup and industrial use, and for the very large Ramadan demand across the Muslim world, at a fraction of the price.

That second market has a pronounced annual rhythm: buying builds ahead of Ramadan and collapses afterwards, and the timing shifts each year with the lunar calendar, which producers and traders plan around.

## What do dates cost?

### How they are priced

There is no futures market and no free public benchmark price for this crop, so this site quotes none. Dates are sold by variety, grade, size and moisture content, negotiated between packers and importers. Prices for premium Medjool are several times those of bulk industrial fruit, so an average date price would be close to meaningless.

The visible references are wholesale market reports in importing countries and, in producing countries, government or cooperative purchase prices. Because dates dry naturally on the palm and store for months or years without refrigeration, the market has far more inventory flexibility than any fresh fruit, which damps price volatility considerably.

## What moves the price of dates?

### Ramadan demand

Consumption concentrates sharply around Ramadan, when dates are traditionally eaten to break the fast, and the buying season shifts about eleven days earlier each year with the lunar calendar. Traders position inventory months in advance around that date.

### Water availability

Date palms are irrigated from groundwater or oasis springs in some of the driest inhabited regions on earth. Aquifer depletion in the Gulf and North Africa is a genuine long-run constraint on planting, and one that does not respond to price.

### Red palm weevil

An invasive beetle that bores into the trunk has spread across the Middle East and North Africa, killing mature palms that take years to replace. Control is difficult because the damage is hidden until the tree is nearly dead.

### Harvest weather

Rain or high humidity during ripening splits and spoils fruit on the palm, and because the harvest window is short, a single unseasonal storm can destroy a large share of a region's crop.

### Variety premium

Medjool and other premium varieties command multiples of the bulk price, so a shift in planting toward them raises the value of a country's crop without raising its tonnage, and vice versa.

## How are dates produced?

The date palm is dioecious, meaning male and female trees are separate, so orchards are planted almost entirely with females and pollinated by hand or by machine from a small number of males. Palms are propagated from offshoots or, increasingly, from tissue culture, because seedlings do not reproduce the parent variety.

A palm begins bearing four to eight years after planting and produces for decades. Bunches are thinned to improve fruit size, bagged to protect from rain, birds and insects, and harvested by hand from ladders or platforms, often in several passes as fruit ripens unevenly.

Dates pass through recognized ripening stages, and different varieties are harvested at different ones: some are picked at the crisp stage, most at the soft ripe stage. After harvest fruit is fumigated or frozen to control insects, graded, washed, sometimes rehydrated or dried to a target moisture, and packed. Lower grades are pitted and pressed into paste, or pressed for syrup.

## What are dates used for?

Most dates are eaten as fruit, whole or pitted, and their role in Ramadan gives them a cultural significance far beyond their tonnage. Date paste is used in baking, confectionery and cereal bars, and date syrup is both a traditional sweetener and a growing natural-sugar substitute in food manufacture.

By-products are used thoroughly in producing regions. Pits are milled for animal feed or roasted as a coffee substitute and pressed for oil; the palm's fronds, fiber and trunk are used for building, basketry and fuel. Lower-grade fruit and processing residue are fed to livestock or fermented.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is unusually forgiving because the product is dry. Dates need no cold chain for bulk grades, store for months at ambient temperature and travel in ordinary containers, so the logistics constraints that dominate fresh fruit barely apply. Premium soft varieties like Medjool are chilled or frozen to maintain texture, which is a cost but not a fragility.

Processing is concentrated in packhouses near the growing regions, where fumigation or freezing for insect control, grading and packing take place. Insect disinfestation is a real requirement rather than a formality, and importing countries specify it.

The structural risks are water and the red palm weevil. Both are slow-moving and neither responds to price. A palm killed by weevil takes the better part of a decade to replace, so losses accumulate rather than reverse.

## Timeline

- 4000 BCE: Date palms are domesticated in Mesopotamia. One of the earliest cultivated fruit crops, the date palm underpinned oasis agriculture and remains grown in broadly the same belt today. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 1900s: Offshoots are imported to California and Arizona. Introduction of Medjool and Deglet Nour to the American southwest created a high-value production region that supplies premium export markets. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 1980s: Red palm weevil begins spreading westward. An invasive borer moved from South Asia into the Gulf and then North Africa, killing mature palms and imposing a permanent control cost on the industry. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 2000s: Tissue culture propagation scales up. Producing genetically identical palms in the laboratory allowed rapid expansion of premium varieties and reduced dependence on limited offshoot supply. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 2015: Date syrup and paste enter mainstream food manufacture. Demand for natural sweeteners created an industrial market for lower-grade fruit, raising the value of crop that had previously gone to animal feed. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most dates

Saudi Arabia produced 1.9 million tonnes in 2024, 19% of the world's 9.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Egypt was second with 18%. Production is concentrated in the hot arid belt from North Africa through the Middle East into South Asia.

### why do date prices vary so much by variety

Because premium varieties such as Medjool sell for several times the price of bulk fruit destined for paste and syrup. An average date price would be meaningless, and the trade quotes by variety, grade, size and moisture content.

### why does date demand peak before Ramadan

Dates are traditionally eaten to break the fast, so consumption concentrates sharply during the month. Because Ramadan moves about eleven days earlier each year with the lunar calendar, traders position inventory around a shifting date rather than a fixed season.

### how are date palms pollinated

By hand or machine. The palm is dioecious, with separate male and female trees, so orchards are planted almost entirely with females and pollen from a few males is applied to the flower clusters, which gives growers control over fruit set.

### what is the red palm weevil

An invasive beetle whose larvae bore into the palm trunk, killing mature trees. It spread from South Asia across the Middle East and North Africa, and because damage stays hidden until the tree is nearly dead, control is difficult and losses accumulate over years.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where do eggs come from?

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

Eggs come mainly from China, which produced 30.9 million tonnes in 2024, 35% of the world's 89.3 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India (9.1%), Indonesia (7.4%) and United States (7.2%) follow; the top five together supply 62%. The biggest exporter of eggs (HS 0407) is the Netherlands (17% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Eggs are laid close to where they are eaten because a shell egg is fragile, perishable and mostly water, so the largest producers are simply the largest populations with the grain to feed a laying flock.

*Hen eggs in shell, produced close to where they are eaten because they are fragile and perishable.* Also called: hen eggs, chicken eggs, shell eggs, table eggs.

## Where do eggs come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 30.9 million | 35% |
| 2 | India | 8.1 million | 9.1% |
| 3 | Indonesia | 6.6 million | 7.4% |
| 4 | United States | 6.5 million | 7.2% |
| 5 | Brazil | 3.7 million | 4.1% |
| 6 | Mexico | 3.3 million | 3.7% |
| 7 | Russia | 2.6 million | 2.9% |
| 8 | Japan | 2.5 million | 2.8% |
| 9 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 1.3 million | 1.5% |
| 10 | Pakistan | 1.2 million | 1.3% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 25% |
| | World | 89.3 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 China produced 30.9 million tonnes, 35% of the world's 89.3 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India followed with 9.1%, then Indonesia (7.4%), United States (7.2%) and Brazil (4.1%). The top five account for 62%, 172 countries reported output and 25% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +27% over the ten years to 2024 and +1% on the previous year.

The producer list is close to a list of populations, because egg production follows people and feed rather than climate. A modern laying house is enclosed and climate-controlled, and the same hybrid layer genetics and similar feed formulations are used from Java to Iowa, so latitude sets little.

Two industries share the word. Table eggs are laid for eating; hatching eggs are laid to become broiler chicks and never reach a shop. The series here counts hen eggs in shell, so duck and quail eggs, which matter in parts of Asia, sit outside it.


## Who exports and imports eggs?

### Exporters of birds’ eggs, in shell, fresh, preserved or cooked (HS 0407), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Netherlands | $992.8 million | 17% |
| 2 | United States | $616.4 million | 10% |
| 3 | Poland | $484.9 million | 8.2% |
| 4 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $479.5 million | 8.1% |
| 5 | Germany | $353 million | 6% |
| 6 | China | $288.7 million | 4.9% |
| 7 | Belgium | $284.9 million | 4.8% |
| 8 | Spain | $218 million | 3.7% |
| 9 | France | $191.9 million | 3.3% |
| 10 | United Kingdom | $147.5 million | 2.5% |
| 11 | Brazil | $145 million | 2.5% |
| 12 | Malaysia | $123.4 million | 2.1% |
| 13 | India | $108 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | Czechia | $91.6 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | Ukraine | $89.4 million | 1.5% |

### Importers of birds’ eggs, in shell, fresh, preserved or cooked (HS 0407), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Germany | $811.1 million | 14% |
| 2 | Netherlands | $451 million | 7.6% |
| 3 | Hong Kong | $301.2 million | 5.1% |
| 4 | Iraq | $235 million | 4% |
| 5 | Russia | $231.7 million | 3.9% |
| 6 | Canada | $220 million | 3.7% |
| 7 | Belgium | $209.5 million | 3.6% |
| 8 | France | $202.4 million | 3.4% |
| 9 | Mexico | $194.8 million | 3.3% |
| 10 | Singapore | $186.5 million | 3.2% |
| 11 | United Arab Emirates | $160 million | 2.7% |
| 12 | United Kingdom | $147.5 million | 2.5% |
| 13 | Spain | $113.3 million | 1.9% |
| 14 | Saudi Arabia | $101.2 million | 1.7% |
| 15 | Italy | $99.2 million | 1.7% |

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

Netherlands was the largest exporter of eggs (HS 0407) in 2024 with 17% of world export value, ahead of United States (10%), on world trade of $5.9 billion (CEPII BACI). Germany was the largest importer with 14%.

Trade is small against production, and it is regional rather than global. Eggs are bulky, fragile and short-lived, so they move by road between neighbors more readily than by sea between continents: Dutch and Polish eggs into Germany, Turkish eggs into the Middle East. Part of the flow is hatching eggs shipped to stock broiler farms, which is trade in future chickens rather than breakfast.

Because the traded share is thin, it responds violently to disease. A country that loses a large part of its laying flock bids for eggs abroad and appears high in the import table for a season, then drops out once its own hens are laying again.


## What do eggs cost?

### How they are priced

There is no futures market in eggs and no free public benchmark price carried on this site, so none is quoted here. Eggs are sold on weekly negotiated wholesale quotations and on retail supply contracts that are formula-priced off private market assessments, with cooperatives pooling members' output and paying an average. Housing system, egg weight, grade and pack format each carry their own price.

The visible references are government market reports in the main producing countries and the weekly average prices European member states report to the European Commission. Cage, barn, free-range and organic eggs trade at settled premiums to each other, so a single national egg price says less as the housing mix shifts, and retailers increasingly contract by system rather than by the egg.


## What moves the price of eggs?

### Avian influenza

An outbreak in a laying complex is followed by depopulation, and a replacement hen does not lay until roughly five months after the chick is placed. That lag turns one winter of losses into most of a year of reduced supply, which is why egg prices move faster on disease news than on feed.

### Feed cost

Grain and oilseed meal make up the largest part of the cost of producing an egg, so movements in corn and soybean meal reach the farm gate within months. Feed is bought locally, which is one reason egg prices differ between countries facing the same world grain market.

### Housing system rules

Cage bans and retailer commitments to cage-free supply force producers to rebuild sheds at lower stocking density. The capital cost and the lost bird places raise the cost per egg, and the transition takes years, so rules announced long in advance still tighten supply when they bite.

### Flock cycle

Laying flocks are placed in batches and produce for about a year before being replaced or molted. Supply adjusts with a lag set by biology rather than by price, so producers who cut placements in a weak market create a shortage a year later.

### Short shelf life

Eggs cannot be stored for long or shipped far without loss, so a local shortage cannot be covered from another continent in the way a grain deficit can. Regional prices can diverge and stay apart, because the arbitrage that would close the gap does not physically work.

## How are eggs produced?

Layer chicks are reared in pullet houses for about four months, then moved into the laying house as they come into lay. A commercial hen lays close to an egg a day through a production cycle of roughly a year, after which she is replaced or molted to start a shorter second cycle.

Eggs roll onto collection belts and travel to a grading floor, where they are candled for cracks and blood spots, weighed into size classes and packed. Practice then splits. The United States washes eggs and requires refrigeration, which removes surface contamination along with the natural cuticle; the European Union leaves class A eggs unwashed at ambient temperature, on the argument that the cuticle is the better defense.

Eggs that fail grading or are produced for manufacture go to breaking plants, where they are cracked, separated, pasteurized and sold as liquid, frozen or dried whole egg, white or yolk.


## What are eggs used for?

Most eggs are eaten as eggs, at home or in food service. The next largest outlet is food manufacture, which buys egg in liquid, frozen or powdered form for mayonnaise and sauces, bakery, pasta and prepared meals, where the egg is bought for what it does rather than what it is: whites whip and set, yolks emulsify and color.

Shells are milled for calcium supplements and feed, spent hens enter processed meat and pet food, and surplus eggs go to fertilizer. Embryonated eggs are also the substrate on which much of the world's influenza vaccine is grown, which makes hatching egg supply a public health input as well as an agricultural one.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is short, local and rebuilt every year. Grandparent and parent stock produce day-old layer chicks, pullet rearers grow them out, and a packing center grades and boxes for retailers usually within the same country.

The concentration is upstream. A very small number of primary breeding companies supply the hybrid laying genetics used across most of the world, and their multiplication pyramids take years to expand, so the genetic base of egg supply is narrower than the number of farms suggests.

The chokepoints are biosecurity and pullets. A large complex can be emptied by one infection, and the queue for replacement birds is set by hatchery capacity booked months ahead. Feed mills and packing centers are the other weak points, because a laying flock cannot pause: hens eat and lay whether or not the eggs can be moved.


## Timeline

- 1999-07: The EU adopts its laying hens directive. Directive 1999/74/EC set minimum space and enrichment standards and put an end date on unenriched cages, committing the largest egg-importing bloc to rebuild its housing stock. (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:31999L0074)
- 2012-01: Conventional cages are banned in the European Union. The prohibition took effect on 1 January 2012, forcing producers into enriched cages, barns or free-range systems and raising the cost of an EU egg against imported egg products. (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:31999L0074)
- 2015: Avian influenza empties United States laying houses. More than 50 million birds were lost in the 2014 to 2015 outbreak, including 43 million egg layers, and egg output stayed about 10 percent below the prior year from May to December 2015. (https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/86663)
- 2017-07: Fipronil is found in European eggs. An unauthorized insecticide used against red mite on laying farms led to millions of eggs being withdrawn across the EU and showed how fast a single service contractor can contaminate a national flock. (https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/press/news/180503)
- 2018-11: California voters pass Proposition 12. The measure set cage-free requirements for eggs sold in the state regardless of where they were laid, extending housing rules to producers in other states and countries. (https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/AHFSS/AnimalCare/)
- 2022: H5N1 becomes endemic in wild birds across continents. Year-round infection pressure from migratory birds replaced the old seasonal pattern, making depopulation of laying flocks a recurring cost rather than a rare shock. (https://www.woah.org/en/disease/avian-influenza/)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most eggs

China produced 30.9 million tonnes in 2024, 35% of the world's 89.3 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India was second with 9.1%. The ranking follows population and feed supply, because eggs are produced close to the people who eat them. Output was reported by 172 countries, and the top five accounted for 62%.

### why are eggs so expensive

Usually because a laying flock has been lost to avian influenza and cannot be replaced quickly: a hen starts laying about five months after the chick is placed. Feed cost is the other lever, since grain and oilseed meal are the largest input, and cage-free housing rules raise the cost per egg.

### why are eggs not refrigerated in europe

Because class A eggs there are not washed. Washing removes the cuticle that seals the shell, so the United States washes and then requires refrigeration, while the European Union leaves the cuticle intact and keeps eggs at ambient temperature. Both systems work; mixing them does not.

### why is so little egg traded internationally

Because shell eggs are fragile, perishable and mostly water, so they travel badly and cheaply lose their value. World exports were $5.9 billion in 2024 (CEPII BACI), and most of that moved between neighboring countries by road rather than between continents.

### what does cage-free actually mean

That hens are not kept in cages, but not that they go outside. Barn and aviary systems house birds indoors at lower density with perches and nest boxes; free-range adds outdoor access. The EU banned unenriched cages from January 2012, and California required cage-free eggs under Proposition 12, passed in November 2018.

### who imports the most eggs

Germany, with 14% of world import value in 2024 (CEPII BACI). Import rankings move around more than production rankings, because countries that lose flocks to disease buy heavily for a season and then withdraw once their own hens are laying again.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where does fishmeal come from?

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

The biggest exporter of fish and meat meal (HS 2301) is Peru (17% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Any origin, 64-65% protein, CIF Hamburg, was $2,500/t in August 2026, up 43% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Fishmeal comes from wherever cold, nutrient-rich water pushes to the surface and feeds enormous shoals of small oily fish, which is why one upwelling off Peru, one shallow sea in northern Europe and one current off northwest Africa supply most of what the world trades.

*Dried, ground fish, mostly small pelagic species such as anchoveta, fed to farmed fish, pigs and poultry.* Also called: fish meal, fish feed, anchoveta meal, fish oil.

## Who exports and imports fishmeal?

Peru's anchoveta season sets the world price; Chile, Denmark, Morocco and Mauritania supply the rest, and China is the dominant buyer for its aquaculture industry.

### Exporters of flours, meals and pellets of meat or fish, unfit for human consumption (HS 2301), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Peru | $1.6 billion | 17% |
| 2 | United States | $1.1 billion | 11% |
| 3 | Chile | $493.5 million | 5.2% |
| 4 | Denmark | $476.7 million | 5.1% |
| 5 | Russia | $312.3 million | 3.3% |
| 6 | Vietnam | $300.8 million | 3.2% |
| 7 | Germany | $293.1 million | 3.1% |
| 8 | India | $271.5 million | 2.9% |
| 9 | Spain | $266.4 million | 2.8% |
| 10 | Norway | $247.4 million | 2.6% |
| 11 | Thailand | $245.5 million | 2.6% |
| 12 | Iceland | $237.7 million | 2.5% |
| 13 | Brazil | $223.4 million | 2.4% |
| 14 | Poland | $215.6 million | 2.3% |
| 15 | Morocco | $212.8 million | 2.3% |

### Importers of flours, meals and pellets of meat or fish, unfit for human consumption (HS 2301), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $3.3 billion | 35% |
| 2 | Vietnam | $567.4 million | 6% |
| 3 | Norway | $436.7 million | 4.6% |
| 4 | Indonesia | $360.8 million | 3.8% |
| 5 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $313.5 million | 3.3% |
| 6 | Japan | $276.6 million | 2.9% |
| 7 | Thailand | $255.2 million | 2.7% |
| 8 | United States | $237.3 million | 2.5% |
| 9 | Germany | $237.1 million | 2.5% |
| 10 | United Kingdom | $233 million | 2.5% |
| 11 | Other Asia, nes | $193.9 million | 2.1% |
| 12 | France | $190 million | 2% |
| 13 | Canada | $184.3 million | 2% |
| 14 | Greece | $183.1 million | 1.9% |
| 15 | Italy | $178.7 million | 1.9% |

### Exporters of flours and meals of fish or crustaceans (HS 230120), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Peru | $1.6 billion | 26% |
| 2 | Chile | $489 million | 7.8% |
| 3 | Denmark | $439 million | 7% |
| 4 | Russia | $311.7 million | 4.9% |
| 5 | Vietnam | $299.7 million | 4.8% |
| 6 | India | $269.5 million | 4.3% |
| 7 | Thailand | $241.7 million | 3.8% |
| 8 | Iceland | $237.5 million | 3.8% |
| 9 | Norway | $236.7 million | 3.8% |
| 10 | Morocco | $212.6 million | 3.4% |
| 11 | Mexico | $206.5 million | 3.3% |
| 12 | United States | $189.2 million | 3% |
| 13 | Ecuador | $113.6 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | Germany | $109.5 million | 1.7% |
| 15 | Mauritania | $97.9 million | 1.6% |

### Importers of flours and meals of fish or crustaceans (HS 230120), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $3 billion | 48% |
| 2 | Norway | $434.7 million | 6.9% |
| 3 | Japan | $273.7 million | 4.3% |
| 4 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $254.1 million | 4% |
| 5 | United Kingdom | $211 million | 3.3% |
| 6 | Other Asia, nes | $156 million | 2.5% |
| 7 | Vietnam | $144.6 million | 2.3% |
| 8 | United States | $137.7 million | 2.2% |
| 9 | Greece | $130.4 million | 2.1% |
| 10 | Spain | $123.8 million | 2% |
| 11 | Canada | $120.4 million | 1.9% |
| 12 | South Korea | $109.1 million | 1.7% |
| 13 | Germany | $103.2 million | 1.6% |
| 14 | Denmark | $102.3 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | Italy | $93.5 million | 1.5% |

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

The buying side is more concentrated than the selling side. China took 48% of world imports of fish meals by value in 2024, followed by Norway on 6.9%, Japan on 4.3%, Turkey (Türkiye) on 4% and United Kingdom on 3.3% (CEPII BACI). Chinese aquaculture and its pig sector absorb close to half the traded volume, so Chinese port stocks and buying interest are the demand-side variable everyone watches. On the broader HS 2301 basket, which includes meat meals, China took 35% and Vietnam 6% of $9.4 billion.

Several countries appear on both sides. Norway lands industrial species and makes meal, and also buys a great deal of it for salmon feed; Vietnam produces by-product meal from its pangasius and shrimp processing and imports higher-grade meal for the same feed mills; Denmark's plants in Skagen and Esbjerg run North Sea sandeel, sprat and blue whiting and ship meal into Norwegian and Scottish salmon feed. Peru and Chile are the pure exporters, selling almost everything they make, and West African plants in Mauritania and Morocco have grown into the trade on sardinella since the 2010s. Fish oil, pressed out during the same process, is a separate and far more valuable trade per tonne, sold into salmon feed and omega-3 supplements, and a plant's economics depend on both products together.


## What does fishmeal cost?

- Any origin, 64-65% protein, CIF Hamburg: $2,500/t in August 2026; 12-month change +43%; 10-year change +62%; all-time high $2,500/t in August 2026; real high (2024 US$) $2,608/t in January 2013 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

Fishmeal has no futures contract. Prices are assessed by reporting agencies from physical deals, quoted in dollars per tonne either FOB Peru or CIF China and Northern Europe, and grades are defined by protein content, freshness and processing temperature. Peruvian meal is sold as super prime, prime, thermal or standard, distinguished by the total volatile nitrogen and histamine in the raw fish at landing and by drying method, since steam drying preserves amino acid digestibility that flame drying degrades. A cargo is specified by protein percentage, moisture, fat, ash, salt and sand, digestibility and antioxidant treatment, and it is sold in one-tonne bags or 50 kilogram sacks rather than in bulk holds.

The series used here is Any origin, 64-65% protein, CIF Hamburg, which stood at $2,500/t in August 2026, up 43% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). That is also the series' nominal record, $2,500/t in August 2026; adjusted for US consumer prices the peak was $2,608/t in January 2013, so in real terms the earlier spike was the larger one. The low since the series began in 1979 was $254/t in July 1985. Over ten years the series was +62% and over five +66%.

Two things to hold apart when reading a fishmeal quote. First, meal made from whole fish and meal made from processing trimmings are not the same product: trimmings meal has lower and more variable protein, a different amino acid balance and less oil, and it trades at a discount, but it is the fastest-growing part of supply. Second, fishmeal's price ceiling is set outside its own market. Feed formulators can cut inclusion rates and substitute soybean meal, poultry by-product meal and synthetic amino acids for part of the protein, so the fishmeal-to-soybean-meal ratio, rather than the absolute price, is what determines how much demand survives a rally.


## What moves the price of fishmeal?

### Peru's quota decisions

Peru's research institute surveys anchoveta biomass before each of the two annual seasons and the fisheries ministry sets a catch limit, which it can cut, suspend or cancel if the survey finds too little fish or too many juveniles. Because Peru supplies about a quarter of the fishmeal that crosses borders, and because the decision arrives as an announcement rather than as a gradual shortfall, the price can move by double digits within days of a survey result. No other supplier can add volume quickly enough to offset it.

### El Nino and the Humboldt upwelling

In an El Nino year warm water pushes over the cold upwelling off Peru, the plankton bloom fails, and anchoveta scatter, move deeper or fail to spawn. The fishery has collapsed on this cycle before, most severely in the early 1970s. Forecasts of sea surface temperature anomalies therefore trade as supply forecasts months ahead of any actual shortfall, and the market prices the probability of a cancelled season rather than waiting for one.

### Chinese aquaculture demand

China buys close to half the fishmeal that crosses a border, for farmed shrimp, marine fish and eels and for piglet starter diets. Its port inventories are published and watched closely: a large stock overhang lets buyers stay out of the market through a Peruvian season, while low stocks force them to chase cargoes. Because a single country's purchasing decisions clear so much of world supply, Chinese demand can hold prices up through a good fishing season or cap them through a bad one.

### The soybean meal ratio

Feed formulators use fishmeal for its amino acid profile and palatability, not because it is irreplaceable, and they respond to price by cutting inclusion rates and making up the protein with soybean meal, poultry by-product meal and synthetic lysine and methionine. That substitution sets the effective ceiling on fishmeal. When the ratio of fishmeal to soybean meal prices widens far enough, formulations change within a feed season, and the demand lost does not return immediately when the price falls.

### By-product meal and novel proteins

A growing share of supply comes from trimmings left after filleting other fish rather than from directed fisheries, which adds volume without any new fishing effort but at lower and more variable protein. Alongside it, insect meal, single-cell protein, fermented bacterial biomass and algal oils have taken small shares of aquafeed formulations. Neither stream replaces whole-fish meal at scale, but both blunt the top of price spikes by giving formulators somewhere else to go.

### North Atlantic quota advice and coastal state disputes

The Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic reduction fisheries run on quotas set from scientific advice for sandeel, sprat, Norway pout, capelin and blue whiting, and those stocks fluctuate sharply with recruitment. Some are shared across national boundaries, and when coastal states cannot agree a sharing arrangement, the sum of unilateral quotas exceeds the advice. The result is a supply source that swings on committee decisions and stock assessments as much as on weather.

### Fish oil, the co-product

A reduction plant sells meal and oil from the same fish, and fish oil is worth several times more per tonne because salmon feed and omega-3 supplements compete for it. When oil is strong, plants can afford to buy raw fish that meal alone would not justify, which keeps meal supply flowing; when oil is weak, marginal plants stop. The two products also respond to different customers, so meal and oil prices regularly diverge even though their supply is fixed in a single ratio.

### West African access and food security politics

Plants in Mauritania, Senegal, the Gambia and Morocco have grown into the export trade on sardinella, buying fish that local markets also eat. That has drawn sustained criticism and periodic regulatory response, including restrictions on which species may be reduced and on foreign vessel access. Because the region has become a meaningful supplier, changes to access agreements or to landing rules there affect a market otherwise dominated by the South Pacific and the North Sea.

## How is fishmeal produced?

A reduction fishery is a race against decay. Anchoveta caught by purse seine are pumped into refrigerated seawater holds and must reach the plant within hours, because protein quality is measured by how little the fish has broken down: total volatile nitrogen and histamine rise from the moment of capture, and the difference between super prime and standard meal is set on the boat, not in the factory. Vessels land at plants strung along the coast, and the fish is pumped ashore and weighed.

In the plant the fish is cooked with steam at around 95 degrees Celsius, which coagulates the protein and ruptures the cells so that oil and water can be squeezed out. A twin-screw press separates a solid presscake from a liquid press liquor. The liquor is decanted and centrifuged into crude fish oil and a watery fraction called stickwater, which is evaporated down to a concentrate of about 40 percent solids and added back to the presscake; meal made this way is called whole meal and captures protein that would otherwise be discharged. The recombined cake is dried, either by indirect steam at low temperature, which preserves digestibility and is what prime grades require, or by direct flame at higher temperature, which is cheaper and degrades amino acids.

Dried meal is milled to a uniform particle size, treated with an antioxidant such as ethoxyquin or a tocopherol blend to stop the residual oil from self-heating in storage, cooled, and packed into 50 kilogram sacks or one-tonne bulk bags. Roughly a fifth to a quarter of the live weight of anchoveta becomes meal and about 5 percent becomes oil, the remainder leaving as water. Crude fish oil is separately refined, and where it is destined for supplements it is winterized, deodorized and concentrated into ethyl esters or triglycerides with elevated EPA and DHA content. By-product plants attached to filleting operations run the same steps on heads, frames and viscera, with lower and more variable yields.


## What is fishmeal used for?

Fishmeal used to be a pig and poultry feed and is now overwhelmingly an aquaculture ingredient. It goes into feed for farmed salmon and trout, marine fish such as sea bass and sea bream, shrimp, and eels, where its amino acid profile, palatability and digestibility let a formulator hit performance targets that plant proteins alone cannot reach, particularly in the first weeks of a fish's life. Its remaining terrestrial market is concentrated in the same place: piglet starter and broiler starter diets, where young animals with immature digestive systems need highly digestible protein.

The inclusion rates have fallen a long way. Salmon diets that were once built on fishmeal now use it as a minor ingredient alongside soy protein concentrate, rapeseed meal, poultry by-product meal and synthetic amino acids, and the same substitution has run through shrimp feed. Fish oil, the co-product, follows the opposite path: it remains hard to replace in salmon diets because of its long-chain omega-3 content, and it competes with the human supplement market for the same tonnes. Pet food takes a small premium share, and hydrolysates and fish protein concentrates made by the same industry are sold into aquaculture starter feeds and pet palatants.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Processing sits on the beach. Peru's plants line the coast at Chimbote, Chancay, Callao, Pisco and Paita, close enough to the fishing grounds that a vessel can land within hours; Chile's cluster around Iquique and Talcahuano; Denmark's at Skagen, Hanstholm and Esbjerg; Norway's, Iceland's and the Faroes' at their own landing ports; and West Africa's at Nouadhibou and along the Moroccan and Senegalese coast. That geography is not a choice. Because raw fish quality falls by the hour, the plant must be near the boat, and the whole industry is therefore a set of coastal clusters with no ability to relocate when a fishery moves.

Meal moves in bags rather than in bulk holds, in containers or in bagged breakbulk parcels, from Callao and Chimbote across the Pacific to Chinese ports, to Vietnam and to Japan, and from Danish and Norwegian ports by short sea into Scotland, Norway and the Faroes. The Peru to China route carries the largest single flow, and container availability and freight rates on it are a real component of the delivered price. Fish oil travels separately in parcel tankers and in flexitanks.

The concentration runs in both directions and there is nothing behind it. One country supplies about a quarter of world fish meal exports from a single species in a single current system that fails on a climate cycle; one country buys close to half of what is traded. There is no futures contract to hedge with, no strategic reserve, and no substitute that matches the amino acid and omega-3 profile at the volumes aquaculture needs. The market's only real shock absorber is the feed formulator's ability to lower inclusion rates, which is a slow, partial and one-way adjustment.


## Key companies

- Tecnologica de Alimentos (TASA): processor, Peru
- Pesquera Exalmar: processor, Peru, listed
- Skretting: feed producer, Norway
- Cargill: feed producer, United States
- Thai Union Group: feed producer, Thailand, listed

## Timeline

- 1960: Peru's anchoveta boom makes it the world's largest fishing nation. A fishery that barely existed in 1950 became the biggest in the world within a decade, and created the reduction industry that still sets the world fishmeal price. (https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/how-climate-works/el-nino-fish-tale)
- 1970: Peruvian anchoveta catches reach their historic peak. The peak defined the upper bound of what the Humboldt system can yield, a level no subsequent management regime has attempted to return to. (https://www.fao.org/4/y5852e/Y5852E07.htm)
- 1972: El Nino and overfishing collapse the Peruvian anchoveta fishery. The collapse of the world's largest fishery in a single season established that fishmeal supply is a climate variable, and it remains the reference event for the market. (https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/how-climate-works/el-nino-fish-tale)
- 1995-10: FAO adopts the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries. The code became the reference framework for the stock assessments and precautionary catch limits that now govern every major reduction fishery. (https://www.fao.org/iuu-fishing/international-framework/code-of-conduct-for-responsible-fisheries/en)
- 1998: El Nino cuts Peruvian anchoveta biomass to a fraction of normal. A second climate-driven collapse a quarter century after the first confirmed the pattern and pushed feed formulators to begin designing diets with lower fishmeal inclusion. (https://www.fao.org/4/y5852e/Y5852E07.htm)
- 2008: Peru gives its anchoveta fleet individual vessel quotas. Replacing a race to fish with allocated shares spread landings over months, improved the freshness of raw material and raised the average quality grade of Peruvian meal. (https://www.actualidadambiental.pe/historia-y-balance-como-se-ha-manejado-la-pesca-de-anchoveta-en-el-peru/)
- 2009: IFFO launches responsible supply certification for fishmeal plants. A plant-level standard gave salmon and shrimp feed buyers a way to specify sourcing, and split the market between certified and uncertified meal. (https://www.iffo.com/node/378)
- 2013-01: Fishmeal reaches its inflation-adjusted peak price. A short Peruvian season against rising aquaculture demand produced a real price that later nominal records have not exceeded. (https://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=fish-meal&months=300)
- 2016-07: Peru ends its first anchovy season early. The shortest season on record demonstrated that the quota system will stop fishing mid-season on survey evidence, which is now priced as a standing risk each year. (https://thefishsite.com/articles/record-short-first-fishmeal-and-fish-oil-season-in-peru)
- 2019-10: Investigation into West African fishmeal plants and local food security. Public scrutiny of plants reducing sardinella that local markets also eat brought regulatory attention to a fast-growing new supply region. (https://changingmarkets.org/report/fishing-for-catastrophe/)
- 2023: Peru cancels its entire first anchoveta season. A survey finding warm water and juvenile fish removed the world's largest single source of fishmeal for a whole season, and the price rose for the next two years. (https://weareaquaculture.com/news/feed/peru-closes-anchovy-season-with-unfulfilled-quota)
- 2026-08: Fishmeal reaches a record nominal price. Tight Peruvian supply against Chinese aquaculture demand pushed the assessed price to its highest nominal level, though still below the inflation-adjusted peak of 2013. (https://aquaculturemag.com/2026/08/31/perus-anchovy-fishery-crisis-a-systemic-alert-for-the-global-industry/)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most fishmeal

This page does not carry production-by-country data, because reduction-fishery output comes from FAO fisheries statistics that are not yet included here. On exports, Peru led in 2024 with 26% of the $6.3 billion traded, ahead of Chile on 7.8% (CEPII BACI).

### what is fishmeal made from

Small oily fish caught for the purpose, cooked, pressed, dried and ground into a powder of roughly 62 to 68 percent protein. Peruvian anchoveta is the largest single source, alongside sandeel, sprat, capelin, blue whiting, herring, menhaden and sardinella. A growing share is made from trimmings left after other fish are filleted, which trades at a discount.

### what is the price of fishmeal per tonne

Any origin, 64-65% protein, CIF Hamburg averaged $2,500/t in August 2026, up 43% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). That is also the nominal record, $2,500/t in August 2026, though adjusted for inflation the peak was $2,608/t in January 2013. There is no futures contract, so prices are assessed from physical deals.

### why is fishmeal so expensive

Supply is capped by biology and by quota, not by price. Peru surveys anchoveta biomass before each season and can cancel it outright, and no other supplier can add volume quickly. The series was +62% over ten years and +66% over five to August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet). Demand from aquaculture keeps growing while the resource does not.

### who buys the most fishmeal

China imported 48% of world fish meal by value in 2024, far ahead of Norway on 6.9% and Japan on 4.3% (CEPII BACI). Chinese aquaculture and piglet feed absorb close to half the traded volume, so Chinese port stocks are the demand indicator the market watches.

### what is fishmeal used for

Mostly aquaculture feed, for farmed salmon, trout, sea bass, sea bream, shrimp and eels, where its amino acid profile and digestibility matter most in the first weeks of life. The remaining land-animal use is concentrated in piglet and broiler starter diets, and a small premium share goes to pet food. Inclusion rates in salmon and shrimp diets have fallen sharply over the past two decades.

### how much fishmeal comes from a tonne of fish

Roughly 200 to 240 kilograms of meal and about 50 kilograms of oil per tonne of whole anchoveta, with the rest leaving as water. Plants running trimmings from filleting operations get lower and more variable yields, and the resulting meal has lower protein than whole-fish meal and trades at a discount.

### why did Peru cancel the anchoveta season

Peru's research institute surveys anchoveta biomass acoustically before each season, and the fisheries ministry cancels or curtails fishing when the survey finds too little biomass or too high a share of juveniles, usually in warm-water years. It cancelled an entire first season in 2023, and the price rose steeply afterwards, reaching $2,500/t in August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### what can replace fishmeal in feed

Feed formulators substitute soybean meal, soy protein concentrate, rapeseed meal, poultry by-product meal and synthetic lysine and methionine for part of the protein, and insect meal, single-cell protein and algal oils have taken small shares. None matches fishmeal's amino acid and omega-3 profile at scale, so substitution lowers inclusion rates rather than eliminating the ingredient.

## Sources

- 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 does fishmeal come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/fishmeal/.

---

# Where does ginger come from?

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

Ginger comes mainly from India, which produced 2.3 million tonnes in 2024, 48% of the world's 4.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Nigeria (16%), China (12%) and Nepal (5.9%) follow; the top five together supply 85%. The biggest exporter of ginger (HS 091011) is China (56% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Ginger is an underground rhizome that grows in any warm, wet place with deep loose soil, so production follows domestic appetite across the tropics, while the export trade is a separate business that China organized around washing, grading and cold storage.

*An underground rhizome sold fresh, dried or preserved, grown mostly in India, Nigeria and China.* Also called: root ginger, fresh ginger, zingiber.

## Where does ginger come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | 2.3 million | 48% |
| 2 | Nigeria | 768,922 | 16% |
| 3 | China | 585,378 | 12% |
| 4 | Nepal | 289,330 | 5.9% |
| 5 | Indonesia | 190,257 | 3.9% |
| 6 | Thailand | 173,768 | 3.6% |
| 7 | Bangladesh | 83,175 | 1.7% |
| 8 | Peru | 81,707 | 1.7% |
| 9 | Cameroon | 52,978 | 1.1% |
| 10 | Sri Lanka | 52,019 | 1.1% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 5.7% |
| | World | 4.9 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 India produced 2.3 million tonnes, 48% of the world's 4.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Nigeria followed with 16%, then China (12%), Nepal (5.9%) and Indonesia (3.9%). The top five account for 85%, 43 countries reported output and 5.7% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +112% over the ten years to 2024 and +2% on the previous year.

The production figure is harvested weight of raw rhizome, which mixes young ginger destined for preserving with mature ginger destined for the fresh trade or for drying. Because dried ginger loses most of that weight, tonnage comparisons between a fresh-market country and a drying country overstate the first.

The growing regions differ in what they sell. India grows ginger in Kerala, Karnataka, Meghalaya and the northeast, largely for its own kitchens. Nigeria's crop is concentrated in southern Kaduna and is split and sun-dried. China's is centered on Shandong and grown to a size and cleanliness the export trade specifies, and Nepal, Indonesia and Peru supply their own niches.


## Who exports and imports ginger?

### Exporters of ginger, neither crushed nor ground (HS 091011), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $722.6 million | 56% |
| 2 | Peru | $112.6 million | 8.7% |
| 3 | Thailand | $86.5 million | 6.6% |
| 4 | Brazil | $80.5 million | 6.2% |
| 5 | India | $79.5 million | 6.1% |
| 6 | Netherlands | $63.3 million | 4.9% |
| 7 | Myanmar | $24.6 million | 1.9% |
| 8 | Germany | $21.1 million | 1.6% |
| 9 | Vietnam | $9.3 million | 0.7% |
| 10 | Nigeria | $8.9 million | 0.7% |
| 11 | Spain | $7.5 million | 0.6% |
| 12 | Indonesia | $7.3 million | 0.6% |
| 13 | Honduras | $5.2 million | 0.4% |
| 14 | Costa Rica | $5.1 million | 0.4% |
| 15 | United States | $5.1 million | 0.4% |

### Importers of ginger, neither crushed nor ground (HS 091011), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Netherlands | $166.3 million | 13% |
| 2 | United States | $157.3 million | 12% |
| 3 | Bangladesh | $105.5 million | 8.1% |
| 4 | United Arab Emirates | $84.5 million | 6.5% |
| 5 | Japan | $76.3 million | 5.9% |
| 6 | Pakistan | $63 million | 4.8% |
| 7 | Germany | $60.1 million | 4.6% |
| 8 | United Kingdom | $52 million | 4% |
| 9 | Canada | $44.7 million | 3.4% |
| 10 | Vietnam | $37.6 million | 2.9% |
| 11 | Malaysia | $37.4 million | 2.9% |
| 12 | Morocco | $34.1 million | 2.6% |
| 13 | Saudi Arabia | $30 million | 2.3% |
| 14 | Spain | $21.7 million | 1.7% |
| 15 | Poland | $19.3 million | 1.5% |

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

China was the largest exporter of ginger (HS 091011) in 2024 with 56% of world export value, ahead of Peru (8.7%), on world trade of $1.3 billion (CEPII BACI). Netherlands was the largest importer with 13%.

The gap between growing and exporting is the widest on this page. India grew 48% of world output in 2024 but supplied 6.1% of export value, while China grew 12% and supplied 56%. Most ginger is eaten in the country that grew it; exporting is a distinct business built on washing lines, grading and cold stores.

The heading also narrows the picture. HS 091011 covers ginger neither crushed nor ground, so preserved ginger, ginger in syrup and ground ginger sit elsewhere. And Netherlands leads the import table as a repacking and re-export hub rather than as a large consumer.


## What does ginger cost?

### How it is priced

There is no futures market for ginger and no free public benchmark price, so this site quotes none. Fresh ginger is sold by grade, size and condition in negotiated lots between exporters and importers, with wholesale market reports in destination countries the only visible reference. Dried ginger is a separate market priced on moisture, fiber, cleanliness and volatile oil content.

Two features make the price unusually jumpy. A large part of the export trade moves out of cold store rather than straight from the field, so the volume held and the pace at which it is released matter as much as the harvest. And ginger can be left in the ground when prices are poor, which means planted area is a weak guide to what will actually be lifted.


## What moves the price of ginger?

### Disease in the seed rhizome

Ginger is propagated from pieces of the previous crop, so bacterial wilt, rhizome rot and blight travel with the planting material. An outbreak destroys the standing crop and the seed for the following season at the same time, which is why losses in one district can persist for years.

### Cold storage volumes

Much of the fresh export trade ships from store rather than from the field, so the quantity held at the end of a harvest and the speed at which it is released set prices through the year. A large stored crop can hold prices down long after a poor harvest would suggest otherwise.

### Residue enforcement

Ginger is a root crop treated against soil pests, and residue findings have led to crop destruction and closed markets. Because testing regimes differ by destination, an origin's access to the highest-value buyers depends on documented practice rather than on the size of its crop.

### Demand from beverages and remedies

Ginger sells as a vegetable, as a beverage ingredient and as a household remedy, and interest in the last two raises demand in ways that do not fade with a season the way a weather shock does. That demand falls mainly on the fresh and extract trades rather than on dried ginger.

### Harvest labor

Rhizomes are lifted by hand or with light machinery, then washed and graded, and none of that is cheap. When prices are marginal the labor cost decides whether a field is dug at all, so supply responds to price through the harvest decision as much as through planting.

## How is ginger produced?

Zingiber officinale is a herbaceous perennial grown as an annual. Pieces of rhizome carrying viable buds are planted in loose, well-drained soil, usually on ridges and often under partial shade, and a mature crop takes roughly eight to ten months.

When it is lifted decides what it becomes. Young ginger dug early is pale, tender and low in fiber and goes to preserving, pickling and confectionery. Mature ginger lifted after the tops die back is pungent and fibrous, and goes either to the fresh trade or to drying, where it is peeled or scraped, sometimes limed, and sun-dried.

Fresh export ginger is washed, brushed, graded by size and appearance, treated against sprouting and mold, packed and cooled. Dried ginger is milled into powder, steam-distilled for oil or solvent-extracted for oleoresin. Undersized rhizomes are kept back as seed for the next planting rather than sold.


## What is ginger used for?

Fresh ginger is both a vegetable and a seasoning across Asian cooking, and dried ground ginger goes into baking, spice blends and beverages. Preserved ginger in syrup, crystallized ginger and pickled ginger are confectionery and condiment products with their own trade. Ginger oleoresin and essential oil supply soft drinks, brewing, confectionery and fragrance.

Ginger is also one of the largest ingredients in traditional medicine and in the supplements trade, which is a real share of demand rather than a curiosity. By-products are used through: peel and fiber from grinding go to feed and compost, and spent rhizome left after oleoresin extraction is sold as low-grade spice or burned as fuel.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain splits by product. Fresh ginger is a cold-chain business of washing and packing lines, cold stores and refrigerated containers, concentrated in Shandong for China and in the Junín valleys for Peru's organic trade. Dried ginger is the opposite: village-level drying, bagging and storage, with no cooling required at any point.

European importers, the Netherlands above all, repack and re-export, which is why an import ranking overstates where ginger is actually eaten and understates consumption in producing countries that never trade it.

The chokepoints are the health of the seed rhizome, cold store capacity at origin, and residue testing at the border. The first is the most serious, because a seed-borne disease removes both this year's crop and next year's planting material.


## Timeline

- 1525: Spanish settlers plant ginger in Jamaica. The transplant took hold, and Caribbean ginger supplied Europe in quantity for the first time, breaking Asia's monopoly on the dried spice. (https://wwwchem.uwimona.edu.jm/lectures/ginger.html)
- 1930: Adulterated Jamaica ginger extract paralyzes thousands in the United States. A cheap plasticizer used to bulk out a prohibition-era ginger extract caused mass nerve damage, and the case became a landmark in American food and drug enforcement. (https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/50475/cdc_50475_DS1.pdf)
- 1930s: Jamaica ranks among the largest ginger exporters. Jamaica sat alongside India and Sierra Leone in the dried ginger trade, the last period in which the Caribbean rather than Asia set its terms. (https://wwwchem.uwimona.edu.jm/lectures/ginger.html)
- 2013-05: Chinese state television reports banned pesticide use on ginger in Shandong. Aldicarb applied to a crop it was never approved for led to crops being destroyed and shops closed, and it hardened residue testing of Chinese ginger abroad. (https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2013-05/06/content_16477657.htm)
- 2020: Peru's organic ginger exports expand sharply. Growers in Junín built a premium organic trade to the United States and Europe rather than competing with China on conventional volume, creating a second fresh-export model. (https://andina.pe/ingles/noticia-gingers-commercial-potential-enriches-peruvian-exports-basket-830410.aspx)
- 2023-08: Blight destroys most of southern Kaduna's ginger crop in Nigeria. A fungal epidemic in Nigeria's main growing area wiped out the great majority of the harvest and the seed rhizome with it, so the shortfall carried into later seasons. (https://colead.link/news/tackling-an-epidemic-that-is-wiping-out-ginger-production-in-nigeria-an-example-of-a-successful-progressive-and-participatory-approach/)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most ginger

India produced 2.3 million tonnes in 2024, 48% of the world's 4.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Nigeria was second with 16% and China third with 12%. Most of that crop is eaten in the country that grew it, so the production ranking and the export ranking look almost nothing alike.

### why does china dominate ginger exports

Because exporting fresh ginger is a processing business rather than a growing one. China took 56% of world export value in 2024 on 12% of production (CEPII BACI, FAOSTAT), supplying graded, washed rhizome from cold store through the year rather than only at harvest.

### is ginger a root

No, it is a rhizome: a thickened underground stem that stores starch and carries buds, which is why new plants are grown from pieces of last year's crop rather than from seed. That also means diseases in the planting material carry straight into the following season.

### what is the difference between fresh and dried ginger

Timing and processing decide it. Young ginger lifted early is pale, tender and low in fiber, and goes to preserving, pickling and confectionery. Mature ginger lifted after the tops die back is pungent and fibrous, and is either sold fresh or peeled and sun-dried, losing most of its weight and shifting its aroma toward the dried spice used in baking.

### who imports the most ginger

Netherlands was the largest importer of ginger (HS 091011) in 2024 with 13% of world import value, ahead of United States at 12% and Bangladesh at 8.1% (CEPII BACI). The Dutch total reflects repacking and re-export into the rest of Europe rather than Dutch consumption, so the ranking is about trade routing as much as appetite.

### how are ginger prices set

By negotiation on grade, size and condition, with no futures contract and no free public benchmark, so this site quotes none. Prices move on stored volume as much as on harvest size, because much of the export trade ships from cold store, and growers can leave a crop in the ground.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where does gold come from?

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

Gold comes mainly from China, which produced 380 tonnes in 2025, 12% of the world's 3,300 tonnes (USGS MCS). Russia (9.4%), Australia (8.5%) and Canada (6.1%) follow; the top five together supply 40%. The biggest exporter of gold (HS 7108) is Switzerland (18% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, London PM fix, was $4,411/troy oz in August 2026, up 31% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Gold concentrates where ancient crust was cracked and flushed by hot fluids, so the largest producers sit on Precambrian shields and greenstone belts in China, Russia, Australia, Canada and West Africa, on the old Witwatersrand basin of South Africa, and along the young volcanic arcs of the Andes and Indonesia.

*A precious metal mined from ore and recycled from jewellery, held as bars and coins by central banks and investors and worn as jewellery.* Also called: gold bullion, gold ore, Au, bullion.

## Where does gold come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 380 | 12% |
| 2 | Russia | 310 | 9.4% |
| 3 | Australia | 280 | 8.5% |
| 4 | Canada | 200 | 6.1% |
| 5 | United States | 160 | 4.8% |
| 6 | Ghana | 150 | 4.5% |
| 7 | Mexico | 140 | 4.2% |
| 8 | Kazakhstan | 130 | 3.9% |
| 9 | Uzbekistan | 130 | 3.9% |
| 10 | Peru | 110 | 3.3% |
| | Rest of world | 1,000 | 40% |
| | World | 3,300 | 100% |

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026.

Gold is mined in more countries than almost any other metal, and no single country dominates the way Chile does copper or Australia iron ore. Production on this page means mine output of gold metal in tonnes, not refined or recycled gold. In 2025 China mined 380 tonnes, 12% of the world's 3,300 tonnes (USGS MCS). Russia and Australia followed closely, the top five countries together mined 40% of the total, and production outside the top ten accounted for 40%, spread across 13 countries. World mine output changed not available for a ten-year span in this source over the ten years to 2025.

The map reflects two kinds of geology. Most large deposits are orogenic: gold carried by hot fluids into fractures in ancient crust during mountain building, which explains the greenstone belts of Western Australia, Canada's Abitibi, West Africa's Birimian rocks in Ghana, Mali and Burkina Faso, and the goldfields of Siberia and China's Shandong province. South Africa's Witwatersrand, which supplied a large share of all gold ever mined, is different: ancient river gravels that concentrated gold more than two billion years ago and were later buried kilometers deep. The second kind is young: epithermal and porphyry deposits along volcanic arcs in Nevada, the Andes, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, where gold is often a by-product of copper mining.

Reserves, the part of known deposits that could be mined at a profit under conditions at the time of the estimate, were 66,000 tonnes in 2025. Australia held 20%, with Russia and South Africa next (USGS MCS). Reserves are only a fraction of the gold that has already been mined and still exists above ground in bars, coins and jewelry, and that stock, not new mining, is what makes the gold market unlike other commodities.


## Who exports and imports gold?

Switzerland, the UK, Hong Kong and the UAE top the export table because they refine, vault and trade gold; the mine table is the origin map.

### Exporters of gold, unwrought or in semi-manufactured forms (HS 7108), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Switzerland | $106.4 billion | 18% |
| 2 | United Arab Emirates | $57.9 billion | 9.9% |
| 3 | Canada | $52.4 billion | 8.9% |
| 4 | Hong Kong | $35.6 billion | 6.1% |
| 5 | Australia | $30.3 billion | 5.2% |
| 6 | South Africa | $29 billion | 4.9% |
| 7 | United States | $23.4 billion | 4% |
| 8 | Japan | $19.7 billion | 3.4% |
| 9 | Germany | $16.4 billion | 2.8% |
| 10 | United Kingdom | $15.1 billion | 2.6% |
| 11 | China | $13.6 billion | 2.3% |
| 12 | Peru | $12.9 billion | 2.2% |
| 13 | Russia | $12.3 billion | 2.1% |
| 14 | Singapore | $10.8 billion | 1.8% |
| 15 | Uzbekistan | $9.7 billion | 1.6% |

### Importers of gold, unwrought or in semi-manufactured forms (HS 7108), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Switzerland | $112.2 billion | 19% |
| 2 | United Kingdom | $83.1 billion | 14% |
| 3 | Hong Kong | $63.2 billion | 11% |
| 4 | China | $62.9 billion | 11% |
| 5 | India | $58.5 billion | 10% |
| 6 | United Arab Emirates | $32.1 billion | 5.5% |
| 7 | United States | $27.4 billion | 4.7% |
| 8 | Singapore | $17.6 billion | 3% |
| 9 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $15.2 billion | 2.6% |
| 10 | Thailand | $14.1 billion | 2.4% |
| 11 | Italy | $10.1 billion | 1.7% |
| 12 | Canada | $9.7 billion | 1.6% |
| 13 | Saudi Arabia | $8.1 billion | 1.4% |
| 14 | Australia | $6.5 billion | 1.1% |
| 15 | France | $6.5 billion | 1.1% |

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

The export table for gold (HS 7108, unwrought and semi-manufactured gold) does not show where gold is mined. It shows where gold is refined, vaulted and traded. In 2024 Switzerland was the largest exporter, with 18% of the world's $587.7 billion of gold exports (CEPII BACI), and United Arab Emirates and Canada were next. Switzerland has the largest refining capacity in the world and turns doré from mines and scrap from jewelry into bars of 999.9 fineness. The United Kingdom hosts the London vaults that back the LBMA market, Hong Kong is the gateway to mainland China, and the United Arab Emirates (Dubai) is the trading hub for gold from Africa and South Asia. Each of them imports and exports far more gold than it mines, which is none.

Importers show where gold is bought. Switzerland was the largest importer in 2024, taking 19% of world imports (CEPII BACI), and the largest flows in physical terms run from London and Switzerland to China, India, Turkey (Türkiye) and the Gulf. Mine countries appear lower in the table because much of their output is shipped as doré, an unrefined alloy, and refined elsewhere before it is counted again as an export of the refining country.


## What does gold cost?

- London PM fix: $4,411/troy oz in August 2026; 12-month change +31%; 10-year change +229%; all-time high $5,020/troy oz in February 2026; real high (2024 US$) $4,809/troy oz in February 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

Gold has two reference prices and they are linked by arbitrage. The LBMA Gold Price is set twice a day, at 10:30 and 15:00 London time, in an electronic auction run by ICE Benchmark Administration in which banks and traders submit orders until buying and selling balance, and the result in US$/troy oz is the benchmark for mine sales, central bank transactions and most physical contracts. It replaced the London gold fix in March 2015, which had been set by a small group of banks since 1919. The London market itself trades loco London, meaning unallocated gold held in London vaults, in 400 oz good delivery bars.

In the United States, the COMEX Gold contract (ticker GC) trades 100 troy oz lots quoted in US$/troy oz and can be delivered in 100 oz or kilo bars into approved New York vaults. Futures carry a premium over spot equal to interest and storage cost, and when the premium diverges, as it did in early 2025 when tariff fears pulled metal into New York, bars are flown across the Atlantic to close it. The Shanghai Gold Exchange sets a yuan benchmark that usually trades at a premium to London when Chinese demand is strong and a discount when it is weak, and Indian import duties create a separate local premium.

The series charted here is London PM fix. In August 2026 it averaged $4,411/troy oz, up 31% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The nominal high was $5,020/troy oz in February 2026; in inflation-adjusted terms the record was $4,809/troy oz in February 2026, and the lowest monthly average since the series began in 1960 was $35/troy oz in January 1960. Mines are price takers: they sell doré to refiners at the London price minus refining and transport charges, and a mine's margin is the gap between that and its cost per ounce.


## What moves the price of gold?

### Real interest rates and the US dollar

Gold pays no interest, so its main cost is the yield given up by not holding bonds. When real yields, meaning bond yields minus expected inflation, fall, that cost shrinks and gold tends to rise; when real yields rise, gold tends to fall. The dollar works alongside this: gold is priced in dollars, and a weaker dollar makes it cheaper for buyers elsewhere and lifts the dollar price. Expectations of Federal Reserve rate cuts therefore move gold before the cuts happen.

### Central bank buying

Central banks hold gold as a reserve asset that carries no counterparty risk and cannot be frozen by another government. After the freezing of Russian reserves in 2022, emerging-market central banks led by China, Poland, Turkey (Türkiye) and India bought at the fastest pace on record, more than 1,000 tonnes a year according to the World Gold Council. Official buying absorbs a large share of annual mine supply and, unlike investor demand, does not reverse quickly when prices rise.

### Investment demand and ETF flows

Exchange-traded funds backed by physical gold let investors hold bars without a vault, and their holdings are a visible gauge of western investment demand. Since the first US fund launched in November 2004, inflows during crises such as 2008, 2020 and 2025 have coincided with rallies, and outflows during 2013 and 2021 to 2022 with declines. Bar and coin buying in Germany, India, China and the United States is the retail counterpart and tends to rise when local currencies weaken.

### Jewelry demand in India and China

Jewelry is the largest single use of gold, and India and China are the largest markets. Their demand is seasonal, peaking around Indian weddings and festivals in the fourth quarter and Chinese New Year, and price sensitive: when gold rises sharply, jewelry buying falls and recycled gold flows back to refiners, which cushions the price. Import duties in India and the strength of the rupee and yuan shape how much of a dollar rally reaches consumers.

### Geopolitical risk and crises

Gold is bought when trust in other assets falls: wars, sanctions, banking failures, sovereign debt worries and disputes over central bank independence have each produced rallies. The effect is strongest when the crisis also lowers expected interest rates. Because the above-ground stock is large and always for sale at some price, these moves are about shifts in who wants to hold gold, not about shortage, and they fade when the risk passes unless rates have also changed.

### Mine supply, costs and recycling

Mine output responds slowly to price because a new mine takes a decade or more to permit and build, and total mine supply is small relative to the stock above ground. What responds quickly is recycling: high prices bring old jewelry and scrap to refiners within weeks. Mining costs, measured as all-in sustaining cost per ounce, set a floor below which marginal mines close, and rising costs for energy, labor and lower ore grades have lifted that floor over time.

## How is gold produced?

Most gold is mined in open pits from low-grade ore of one to two grams per tonne; the deep mines of South Africa and some Canadian and Australian operations mine higher-grade veins underground, in South Africa's case at depths beyond three kilometers. Ore is crushed and ground, and the gold is dissolved in a dilute cyanide solution, a process called cyanidation, then collected on activated carbon and stripped and plated out by electrowinning. Low-grade ore is treated by heap leaching, stacking crushed rock on a lined pad and dripping cyanide solution through it for months. Refractory ores, where gold is locked in sulfide minerals, must first be roasted, pressure-oxidized or bacterially treated to free the metal.

The product at the mine is doré, a bar of roughly 60% to 95% gold with silver and base metals, which is shipped under guard to a refinery. Refiners melt and chlorinate the doré to remove base metals and silver, then dissolve and electrolytically refine the gold to 999.9 fineness, casting it into the 400 oz good delivery bars used in London, kilo bars used in Asia, or smaller bars and grains for jewelers. Recycled jewelry and industrial scrap enter the same refineries and become indistinguishable from mined gold.

Gold is also recovered as a by-product. Copper anode slimes from electrorefining are a significant source, and some of the largest gold producers are copper mines such as Grasberg. Artisanal and small-scale miners, working alluvial deposits by hand in Africa, South America and Asia, produce a meaningful share of world supply, often using mercury rather than cyanide, and their output reaches the market through traders in Dubai and elsewhere.


## What is gold used for?

Gold is unusual in that most of it is not consumed. The World Gold Council's demand data show jewelry as the largest use, followed by investment in bars, coins and exchange-traded funds, then central bank purchases, with technology, mainly electronics connectors and dental work, taking a small share of under 10% (World Gold Council, Gold Demand Trends). Jewelry in India and China alone represents a large fraction of world demand, and much of it is bought as a store of wealth as well as ornament.

Because gold does not corrode and is easily recovered, nearly all the gold ever mined still exists, held in vaults, jewelry boxes and central bank reserves. That stock is many decades of mine output, which is why the price behaves like a currency or a financial asset rather than like an industrial metal, and why annual mine supply, however large, is a small part of what is available for sale.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Mining is dispersed but refining and trading are concentrated. A few large refineries in Switzerland, together with plants in Australia, South Africa, the United States, Hong Kong, the UAE, India and China, process most of the world's doré and scrap into good delivery bars, and the LBMA's good delivery list determines which refiners' bars are accepted in London and at central banks. Switzerland was the largest gold exporter in 2024 with 18% of world export value (CEPII BACI), a position that reflects its refineries rather than any mines.

The physical market runs through vaults rather than ports. London vaults, operated by the Bank of England and commercial custodians, hold the gold behind the LBMA market; New York vaults hold COMEX stocks; Zurich, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Dubai hold regional stocks. Gold moves between them by secure air freight, and the flows reverse with price differences: bars go east to China and India when Asian premiums are high and return to London when western investors buy. Chinese imports pass mainly through Hong Kong and Shanghai under a licensing system, and India's imports are shaped by customs duty.

The chain has few physical chokepoints but several policy ones. Export bans or royalty disputes in producing countries, sanctions that exclude Russian bars from London and New York after 2022, tariff decisions on bars entering the United States, and licensing of imports into China and India each redirect flows. Artisanal gold from conflict areas in Africa and South America enters the market through traders in the Gulf and refiners with weaker controls, which is why responsible-sourcing rules from the LBMA and the OECD are a supply-chain issue in their own right.


## Key companies

- Newmont: miner, United States, listed (NEM)
- Barrick Mining: miner, Canada, listed (B)
- Zijin Mining Group: miner, China, listed (2899)
- State Street Global Advisors (SPDR Gold Shares): trader, United States, listed (GLD)
- ICE Benchmark Administration: trader, United Kingdom, listed (ICE)

## Timeline

- 1886-07: Gold discovered on the Witwatersrand. The main reef found at Langlaagte in 1886 became the largest goldfield in history and founded Johannesburg within months. (https://sahistory.org.za/article/discovery-gold-1884)
- 1933-04: United States orders private gold surrendered. Executive Order 6102 of 5 April 1933 required citizens to hand gold to the Federal Reserve, ending private ownership in the largest economy for four decades. (https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-6102-forbidding-the-hoarding-gold-coin-gold-bullion-and-gold-certificates)
- 1934-01: Gold Reserve Act sets $35 an ounce. The act of 30 January 1934 devalued the dollar and fixed the official price that would anchor the world monetary system until 1971. (https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/gold-reserve-act)
- 1944-07: Bretton Woods conference. Forty-four nations agreed to peg their currencies to a dollar convertible into gold at $35 an ounce, making gold the base of the postwar monetary order. (https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/bretton-woods-created)
- 1968-03: London Gold Pool collapses. Central banks stopped defending $35 in the open market on 15 March 1968, creating a two-tier system with a free price for private buyers. (https://www.lbma.org.uk/wonders-of-gold/items/march-1968-and-the-london-gold-fixing)
- 1971-08: United States ends dollar convertibility into gold. On 15 August 1971 foreign governments lost the right to exchange dollars for gold at $35, and the price has floated ever since. (https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/gold-convertibility-ends)
- 1974-12: COMEX gold futures begin and US ownership is legalized. Both happened on 31 December 1974, creating the New York futures market that now shares price discovery with London. (https://mises.org/mises-wire/happy-new-year-toast-50-years-legalized-gold)
- 1999-09: First Central Bank Gold Agreement. Fifteen European central banks agreed on 26 September 1999 to cap sales at 400 t a year, ending the uncoordinated selling that had depressed the price through the 1990s. (https://www.gold.org/what-we-do/official-institutions/central-bank-gold-agreements/first-central-bank-gold-agreement)
- 2004-11: First US gold ETF launches. SPDR Gold Shares began trading on 18 November 2004 and gave investors a way to hold physical gold through a brokerage account, adding a new source of demand. (https://www.ssga.com/us/en/intermediary/etfs/spdr-gold-shares-gld)
- 2007-12: China becomes the largest gold producer. China overtook South Africa in 2007, ending more than a century of South African leadership as the Witwatersrand mines deepened and declined. (https://www.gold.org/goldhub/research/gold-investor/gold-investor-october-2018/13383)
- 2015-03: LBMA Gold Price replaces the London fix. From 20 March 2015 an electronic auction run by ICE Benchmark Administration set the benchmark, replacing a process that had run since 1919. (https://ir.theice.com/press/news-details/2015/ICE-Benchmark-Administration-Launches-LBMA-Gold-Price-Transitions-Gold-Price-to-Transparent-Electronic-Auction-Process/default.aspx)
- 2022-12: Central banks buy a record 1,136 t. Official purchases in 2022 were the highest since records began in 1950, as reserve managers sought assets outside the dollar system. (https://www.gold.org/goldhub/research/gold-demand-trends/gold-demand-trends-full-year-2022/central-banks)
- 2025-10: Gold passes $4,000 an ounce. The price crossed $4,000 on 8 October 2025, its forty-fifth record of the year, on investment demand, rate-cut expectations and a weaker dollar. (https://www.gold.org/goldhub/gold-focus/2025/10/gold-hits-us4000oz-trend-or-turning-point)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most gold

China mined the most gold in 2025: 380 tonnes, 12% of the world's 3,300 tonnes (USGS MCS). Russia and Australia were close behind. Gold mining is spread widely, and the top five countries produced only 40% of the total, a lower concentration than for copper or iron ore.

### where does gold come from

Gold comes from mines on ancient shield rocks and greenstone belts in China, Russia, Australia, Canada, West Africa and South Africa, and from younger volcanic deposits in the Americas and Indonesia, often as a by-product of copper. In 2025 mines in 13 countries produced 3,300 tonnes (USGS MCS). Recycled jewelry and scrap add a further large share of annual supply.

### which country exports the most gold

Switzerland was the largest gold exporter in 2024, with 18% of world export value for HS 7108 (CEPII BACI). It mines no gold; it refines and trades it. The United Kingdom, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates rank high for the same reason. The largest importer was Switzerland. Mine countries mostly ship unrefined doré, which is counted again when the refining country exports bars.

### what is the price of gold

This site shows monthly averages, not live quotes. The London PM fix averaged $4,411/troy oz in August 2026, up 31% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The record monthly average was $5,020/troy oz in February 2026. Live prices come from the LBMA auction at 10:30 and 15:00 London time and from COMEX futures in New York.

### how is the gold price set

The benchmark is the LBMA Gold Price, an electronic auction run twice a day in London by ICE Benchmark Administration since March 2015, quoted in US dollars per troy ounce. COMEX gold futures in New York trade 100 oz lots and are linked to London by arbitrage. Shanghai and Dubai set regional prices. Mines sell doré at the London price minus refining charges.

### which country has the most gold reserves in the ground

Australia held the largest mineable gold reserves in 2025, 20% of the world's 66,000 tonnes (USGS MCS), followed by Russia and South Africa. These are USGS reserves of unmined gold that could be extracted at a profit, not the bullion reserves held by central banks, which are a separate measure reported by the IMF and the World Gold Council.

### why is gold going up

Gold tends to rise when real interest rates fall, when the US dollar weakens, when central banks buy, and when investors seek protection from crises. The World Gold Council recorded record central bank purchases of 1,136 t in 2022, and the price passed $4,000 an ounce in October 2025. The series here averaged $4,411/troy oz in August 2026, up 31% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### what is gold used for

Jewelry is the largest use of gold, followed by investment in bars, coins and exchange-traded funds and purchases by central banks, with electronics and dentistry taking under 10% (World Gold Council). India and China are the largest jewelry markets. Because gold does not corrode, almost all the gold ever mined still exists, so the above-ground stock, not annual mining, governs the price.

## Sources

- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries
- 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 does gold come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/gold/.

---

# Where do grapes come from?

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

Grapes come mainly from China, which produced 16.8 million tonnes in 2024, 22% of the world's 75.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Italy (10%), Spain (7.1%) and United States (6.5%) follow; the top five together supply 52%. The biggest exporter of grapes (HS 0806) is Peru (14% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The vine wants a long dry summer and a cool winter to rest in, so grapes cluster in the Mediterranean and in its climatic twins: California, Chile, western Argentina, the Cape and the dry interior of northwestern China.

*Fruit of the vine, split between wine grapes, table grapes and raisins, each a different market.* Also called: table grapes, wine grapes, raisins, vine.

## Where do grapes come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 16.8 million | 22% |
| 2 | Italy | 7.6 million | 10% |
| 3 | Spain | 5.4 million | 7.1% |
| 4 | United States | 4.9 million | 6.5% |
| 5 | France | 4.7 million | 6.3% |
| 6 | India | 3.9 million | 5.1% |
| 7 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 3.5 million | 4.6% |
| 8 | Chile | 2.5 million | 3.2% |
| 9 | Argentina | 1.9 million | 2.5% |
| 10 | South Africa | 1.9 million | 2.5% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 30% |
| | World | 75.9 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 China produced 16.8 million tonnes, 22% of the world's 75.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Italy followed with 10%, then Spain (7.1%), United States (6.5%) and France (6.3%). The top five account for 52%, 96 countries reported output and 30% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +3% over the ten years to 2024 and +1% on the previous year.

FAOSTAT counts wine grapes, table grapes and grapes grown for drying as a single crop, which is why the ranking mixes wine countries with table-grape countries. Italy, Spain and France crush most of what they grow. China and India grow table grapes for very large domestic markets. Turkey (Türkiye), Iran and the United States split their crop three ways.

The three markets barely compete for the same fruit. They use different varieties, trellises and harvest methods, and sell to different buyers. A wine grape is picked at high sugar and crushed within hours, a table grape is picked for appearance and packed to travel, and a raisin grape is left to dry.

## Who exports and imports grapes?

### Exporters of grapes, fresh or dried (HS 0806), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Peru | $1.8 billion | 14% |
| 2 | Chile | $1.3 billion | 10% |
| 3 | China | $1.3 billion | 9.7% |
| 4 | South Africa | $1.1 billion | 8.7% |
| 5 | United States | $987.8 million | 7.5% |
| 6 | Italy | $966.5 million | 7.4% |
| 7 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $724.1 million | 5.5% |
| 8 | Mexico | $644 million | 4.9% |
| 9 | Spain | $576.8 million | 4.4% |
| 10 | India | $552.7 million | 4.2% |
| 11 | Netherlands | $495.7 million | 3.8% |
| 12 | Australia | $383.7 million | 2.9% |
| 13 | Egypt | $365.8 million | 2.8% |
| 14 | Uzbekistan | $266.7 million | 2% |
| 15 | Afghanistan | $172.3 million | 1.3% |

### Importers of grapes, fresh or dried (HS 0806), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $2.3 billion | 18% |
| 2 | Netherlands | $1.2 billion | 9.5% |
| 3 | Germany | $973.5 million | 7.4% |
| 4 | United Kingdom | $948.2 million | 7.2% |
| 5 | Canada | $582.7 million | 4.4% |
| 6 | Indonesia | $418.8 million | 3.2% |
| 7 | Russia | $414.6 million | 3.2% |
| 8 | China | $386.8 million | 2.9% |
| 9 | Vietnam | $358.8 million | 2.7% |
| 10 | Mexico | $351.8 million | 2.7% |
| 11 | France | $317.2 million | 2.4% |
| 12 | Thailand | $257.1 million | 2% |
| 13 | Poland | $241.5 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | Spain | $216.6 million | 1.7% |
| 15 | Japan | $171.3 million | 1.3% |

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

Peru was the largest exporter of grapes (HS 0806) in 2024 with 14% of world export value, ahead of Chile (10%), on world trade of $13.1 billion (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 18%.

Most of the world's grapes never cross a border as grapes. Wine grapes leave as wine, under a different code, so the fresh and dried trade counted here is a fraction of the crop. The exporters are the table-grape countries with counter-seasonal windows and the dried-fruit countries of the eastern Mediterranean.

On the import side the Netherlands is a re-export hub rather than a final market, so its share overstates Dutch consumption. The United States, Germany and the United Kingdom buy through the northern winter from the southern hemisphere and through the summer from Europe and California.

## What do grapes cost?

### How they are priced

There is no futures market and no free public benchmark price for grapes, so this site quotes none. Wine grapes are contracted by district and variety at a price per tonne, adjusted for sugar and quality at the weighbridge. Table grapes are negotiated by the box, week by week. Raisins are sold on contract or through grower bargaining bodies.

An average grape price would be close to meaningless, because a tonne of premium wine fruit and a tonne of raisin fruit differ by an order of magnitude. The visible references are district crush reports where regulators publish them, destination wholesale market reports for table grapes, and the field price announced each year for dried fruit.

## What moves the price of grapes?

### Harvest rain and rot

Ripe grapes split when it rains, and tight bunches hold the water where botrytis takes hold. Because the harvest window is short and the fruit is at its most valuable inside it, one wet spell in the wrong week can take a large share of a region's crop and change the wine that gets made from what is left.

### Wine consumption

Most of the world's grapes end as wine, so grape prices follow wine demand. Falling consumption in the traditional producing countries has left vineyard area in surplus, and governments have paid growers to pull vines out. That surplus presses on wine grape prices far more persistently than any single weather event.

### Water and drought

Table and raisin grapes are irrigated crops in dry regions, and wine grapes are increasingly irrigated too. Allocation cuts in California, Chile and Peru limit what can be planted and what can be carried through a dry year, and water rights trade at prices that decide where new vineyards go.

### Counter-seasonal windows

Table grapes from Peru, Chile and South Africa are worth most in the weeks before northern hemisphere fruit arrives. An early or late southern harvest, or a shipping delay, drops fruit into a week when the window has closed and the premium has gone.

### Vine pests and the replanting lag

Phylloxera forced the world onto grafted vines, and soil pests, viruses and trunk diseases still shorten vineyard life. Replanting takes three years to a crop and longer to quality, so supply answers price slowly and tends to arrive after the shortage that prompted it has passed.

## How are grapes produced?

Vines are grown from cuttings grafted onto resistant rootstock, trained on wire trellises and pruned hard each winter to set the size of the crop. They begin bearing in the third year and stay productive for decades. Summer canopy work and bunch thinning decide how much sunlight reaches the fruit, and therefore its sugar, color and flavor.

Wine grapes are often machine harvested at night, when the fruit is cool, and must reach a winery within hours before fermentation starts on its own. Table grapes are cut by hand bunch by bunch, trimmed and packed in the field or a nearby shed, cooled quickly, and shipped with sulfur dioxide pads that suppress mold.

Raisins are made by laying bunches on paper trays between the rows for two or three weeks, or by cutting the cane and letting the fruit dry on the vine. The dried fruit is then cleaned, graded, sometimes stemmed, and stored at ambient temperature.

## What are grapes used for?

Wine takes most of the crop by weight and nearly all of it by value. Table grapes are eaten fresh. Dried grapes, sold as raisins, sultanas or currants depending on variety and treatment, go into baking, cereal and snack manufacture. Grape juice and concentrated must are sold as drinks and as a sweetener, and distillation turns wine into brandy and industrial alcohol.

By-products are worked hard. Pomace yields grape seed oil, tartaric acid and polyphenol extracts, lees are distilled, and skins and stalks go to compost and stock feed.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

Wine grapes cannot travel, so the processing sits in the vineyard: a winery within a short drive is a condition of growing them at all. That ties a district's growers to a small number of local crushers, and a winery that will not take fruit in a big year leaves it on the vine.

Table grapes move on a cold chain, packed within hours of picking and shipped for three to six weeks in refrigerated containers. Dried fruit needs no cold chain and stores for a season or more, which makes it the flexible part of the crop and the part least exposed to freight.

The structural risks are water, harvest labor and the slowness of replanting. A vineyard is a twenty-year investment that produces nothing for three years, so shortages persist longer than they should and surpluses take a decade of pulling vines to clear.

## Timeline

- 1860s: Phylloxera reaches French vineyards on American vines. A root-feeding insect carried in on imported plants destroyed European vineyards and permanently changed how vines are planted. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1435410/)
- 1881: Grafting onto American rootstock is accepted as the remedy. A congress judged that grafted vines made acceptable wine, and large-scale replanting began; virtually all wine grapes are still grown on grafted vines. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1435410/)
- 1989-03: The United States bans Chilean fruit after cyanide is found in two grapes. An eleven-day embargo cost the Chilean fruit industry heavily and showed how a food safety scare can close a counter-seasonal export market overnight. (https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/united-states-bans-chilean-fruit-after-cyanide-scare)
- 2015-06: The Supreme Court ends the American raisin reserve. Horne v. Department of Agriculture struck down a marketing order that required growers to surrender part of their crop, removing a supply control that had operated since 1949. (https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/14-275)
- 2016: The European Union replaces vine planting rights with authorisations. Planting was reopened under an annual authorisation scheme, changing how fast vineyard area in the largest wine-producing bloc can grow or shrink. (https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/farming/crop-productions-and-plant-based-products/wine/eu-wine-legislation_en)
- 2023: Peru becomes the largest table grape exporter. Coastal desert plantings under irrigation gave Peru a long counter-seasonal window and pushed it past Chile in export volume. (https://www.freshfruitportal.com/news/2024/01/18/agronometrics-in-charts-peru-becomes-the-worlds-leading-exporter-of-table-grapes/)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most grapes

China produced 16.8 million tonnes in 2024, 22% of the world's 75.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Italy was second with 10%. The figure covers wine grapes, table grapes and grapes grown for drying together, which is why the ranking looks unlike a wine production ranking.

### are wine grapes and table grapes the same

No. Wine grapes are smaller, thicker skinned and much higher in sugar and acid, and they are crushed within hours of picking. Table grapes are bred for size, crunch and appearance, are usually seedless, and are packed to survive weeks of shipping. Different varieties, different vineyards, different buyers.

### which country exports the most grapes

Peru led exports of grapes (HS 0806) in 2024 with 14% of world export value, ahead of Chile (10%), on world trade of $13.1 billion (CEPII BACI). The figure covers fresh and dried grapes only, most of it table fruit moving counter-seasonally into northern hemisphere winters. Wine leaves the country under a different code entirely.

### how many grapes are used to make wine

Most of the world crop is crushed, though FAOSTAT does not split its total of 75.9 million tonnes in 2024 by end use (FAOSTAT). That is why traded volumes of fresh and dried grapes look small against production: the wine share never appears in fruit trade figures at all.

### why are grapes grafted onto american rootstock

Because phylloxera, a root-feeding insect from North America, kills European vines and does not kill American ones. After it reached France in the 1860s, growers began grafting European fruiting varieties onto American roots, a solution accepted in 1881 and still used for nearly all wine grapes.

### how are raisins made

By drying grapes, usually in the sun. Bunches are cut and laid on paper trays between the vine rows for two or three weeks, or the fruiting cane is severed so the grapes dry hanging on the vine. The dried fruit is then cleaned, graded and stored without refrigeration.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where does graphite come from?

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

Graphite comes mainly from China, which produced 1.4 million tonnes in 2025, 78% of the world's 1.8 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Madagascar (4.4%), Tanzania (4.2%) and Brazil (3.6%) follow; the top five together supply 93%. The biggest exporter of natural graphite (HS 2504) is China (42% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Natural graphite forms where carbon-rich sediments were cooked by regional metamorphism, which is why the flake deposits that matter sit in old metamorphic belts in China, Mozambique, Madagascar and Brazil rather than anywhere carbon happens to be abundant.

*A crystalline form of carbon, mined as flake or amorphous ore and processed into battery anodes, refractories and lubricants.* Also called: natural graphite, flake graphite, anode material, spherical graphite.

## Where does graphite come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 1.4 million | 78% |
| 2 | Madagascar | 80,000 | 4.4% |
| 3 | Tanzania | 75,000 | 4.2% |
| 4 | Brazil | 65,000 | 3.6% |
| 5 | Mozambique | 60,000 | 3.3% |
| 6 | Russia | 25,000 | 1.4% |
| 7 | India | 17,000 | 0.9% |
| 8 | North Korea | 8,000 | 0.4% |
| 9 | Canada | 8,000 | 0.4% |
| 10 | Norway | 6,600 | 0.4% |
| | Rest of world | 47,120 | 3.1% |
| | World | 1.8 million | 100% |

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026.

In 2025 China mined 1.4 million tonnes of natural graphite, 78% of the world's 1.8 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Madagascar followed with 4.4%, then Tanzania (4.2%), Brazil (3.6%) and Mozambique (3.3%). The top five account for 93%. Reserves are held more widely: China holds 32% of the world's 310 million tonnes (USGS MCS).

Graphite comes in three commercial forms and they are not interchangeable. Flake graphite, crystalline plates disseminated through metamorphic rock, is the type batteries need. Amorphous graphite, microcrystalline material from metamorphosed coal, goes into refractories, foundry facings and pencils. Vein or lump graphite, found in commercial quantity essentially only in Sri Lanka, is the purest natural form and serves specialty markets.

As with rare earths, the mining table understates concentration downstream. Turning flake graphite into battery anode material requires shaping it into spheres, purifying it to over 99.95 percent carbon and coating it, and that capacity is overwhelmingly Chinese. Synthetic graphite, made by baking petroleum coke at very high temperature, competes directly for the same anode market and is also made mostly in China, so it does not diversify supply.

World output changed +16% on the previous year, with new African mines adding volume while Chinese output has been constrained periodically by environmental enforcement.

## Who exports and imports graphite?

China both mines the most flake graphite and dominates the spheroidizing and coating steps that turn it into anode material, so downstream concentration is higher than mine concentration.

### Exporters of natural graphite (HS 2504), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $227.8 million | 42% |
| 2 | Madagascar | $53.7 million | 10% |
| 3 | Mozambique | $44 million | 8.2% |
| 4 | Germany | $37.6 million | 7% |
| 5 | Brazil | $23.1 million | 4.3% |
| 6 | United States | $20.3 million | 3.8% |
| 7 | Canada | $19.1 million | 3.5% |
| 8 | Tanzania | $19.1 million | 3.5% |
| 9 | South Korea | $17.6 million | 3.3% |
| 10 | Norway | $10.7 million | 2% |
| 11 | Japan | $10.1 million | 1.9% |
| 12 | Netherlands | $10.1 million | 1.9% |
| 13 | Mexico | $6.6 million | 1.2% |
| 14 | Austria | $6.4 million | 1.2% |
| 15 | Sri Lanka | $5.4 million | 1% |

### Importers of natural graphite (HS 2504), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $98.1 million | 18% |
| 2 | Japan | $60.3 million | 11% |
| 3 | Germany | $50.5 million | 9.4% |
| 4 | South Korea | $44 million | 8.2% |
| 5 | India | $40.2 million | 7.5% |
| 6 | China | $33.4 million | 6.2% |
| 7 | Poland | $33.1 million | 6.1% |
| 8 | Austria | $16.5 million | 3.1% |
| 9 | Indonesia | $13.4 million | 2.5% |
| 10 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $13.4 million | 2.5% |
| 11 | Other Asia, nes | $13 million | 2.4% |
| 12 | Belgium | $11.2 million | 2.1% |
| 13 | Netherlands | $10.4 million | 1.9% |
| 14 | France | $9.9 million | 1.8% |
| 15 | Italy | $7.8 million | 1.4% |

### Exporters of artificial graphite and preparations (HS 3801), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $1.9 billion | 53% |
| 2 | Germany | $293.5 million | 8.1% |
| 3 | Japan | $222.6 million | 6.1% |
| 4 | United States | $207.4 million | 5.7% |
| 5 | South Korea | $155.9 million | 4.3% |
| 6 | France | $137.3 million | 3.8% |
| 7 | Norway | $73.2 million | 2% |
| 8 | India | $66.4 million | 1.8% |
| 9 | Switzerland | $57.1 million | 1.6% |
| 10 | Poland | $55.9 million | 1.5% |
| 11 | Spain | $47.9 million | 1.3% |
| 12 | Mexico | $45.5 million | 1.2% |
| 13 | Netherlands | $39.2 million | 1.1% |
| 14 | Austria | $39.1 million | 1.1% |
| 15 | Brazil | $30.1 million | 0.8% |

### Importers of artificial graphite and preparations (HS 3801), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $454.9 million | 12% |
| 2 | Malaysia | $417.7 million | 11% |
| 3 | Hungary | $288.4 million | 7.9% |
| 4 | Indonesia | $253.6 million | 7% |
| 5 | China | $248.8 million | 6.8% |
| 6 | Poland | $242.4 million | 6.7% |
| 7 | South Korea | $224.2 million | 6.2% |
| 8 | Germany | $188 million | 5.2% |
| 9 | Japan | $169.7 million | 4.7% |
| 10 | India | $126.1 million | 3.5% |
| 11 | France | $125.3 million | 3.4% |
| 12 | Mexico | $66.8 million | 1.8% |
| 13 | Italy | $55.6 million | 1.5% |
| 14 | Brazil | $44 million | 1.2% |
| 15 | Canada | $42.4 million | 1.2% |

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

China was the largest exporter of natural graphite (HS 2504) in 2024 with 42% of world export value, ahead of Madagascar (10%), on world trade of $538.7 million (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 18%.

Two things distort that picture. First, the natural graphite heading does not capture synthetic graphite, which supplies a large share of the anode market under a separate code, so the traded volumes here understate the anode material trade considerably. Second, much of the value added happens after the concentrate crosses a border: African and Brazilian flake is shipped to Chinese processors, spheronized and coated, and leaves again as anode material worth several times the concentrate price.

## What does graphite cost?

### How it is priced

This page quotes no graphite price, because no free, citable series exists. Flake graphite is assessed privately by grade, with price varying strongly by flake size and carbon content, and spherical and coated anode material is assessed separately again. Synthetic graphite prices track petroleum needle coke and electricity costs and are assessed by the same private agencies. Publishing a number here would require a license this site does not hold.

How the market actually works is simple enough to describe. Flake concentrate is sold by mesh size and carbon percentage, with large flake commanding a substantial premium over fine because it is worth more in refractories and expandable applications. Anode material is sold on multi-year qualified contracts to cell makers, because a battery producer must test and approve a specific anode from a specific plant before using it, which makes switching suppliers slow and gives incumbents pricing power.

The competitive reference that matters most is the synthetic graphite price. Because synthetic and natural anode material substitute for one another, and synthetic is made from petroleum coke with very large electricity input, the natural graphite price is effectively capped by the cost of baking coke in a Chinese furnace. When electricity or needle coke gets expensive, natural graphite gains share, and the reverse.

## What moves the price of graphite?

### Battery anode demand

Every lithium-ion cell has a graphite anode, and an anode uses roughly ten times as much graphite by weight as the cathode uses lithium. Electric vehicle and storage growth therefore drives graphite demand hard, and unlike cathode chemistry there is no commercial way yet to remove graphite from a cell entirely.

### Competition from synthetic graphite

Synthetic anode material made from petroleum needle coke performs better in fast charging and lasts longer, but costs more and uses enormous amounts of electricity. The split between natural and synthetic anodes shifts with the price of needle coke and power, and that split determines how much natural flake the market needs.

### Chinese processing and export policy

Spheronisation, purification and coating are concentrated in China, and export licensing on graphite items has been used to restrict flows. Because a qualified anode cannot be swapped quickly, licensing decisions transmit to cell makers within a quarter.

### Flake size distribution

A deposit's value depends on how much large flake it yields, since large flake sells at a premium to fine. Two mines with the same tonnage and grade can have very different economics, and this is why grade alone is a poor guide to a graphite project's viability.

### Purification cost and environment

Battery anode graphite must reach very high purity, and the cheapest route uses hydrofluoric acid, which carries serious environmental and permitting burdens. Thermal purification avoids the acid but uses much more energy. Which route a jurisdiction will permit largely determines whether processing can be built there.

### New African supply

Large flake deposits in Mozambique, Madagascar and Tanzania have added mine capacity outside China for the first time at scale. Whether that translates into supply diversification depends entirely on whether anode processing follows, and so far most of it has not.

### Refractory and steel demand

The traditional market, refractory bricks and crucibles for steelmaking, magnesia-carbon linings and foundry facings, still absorbs a large volume of amorphous and fine flake graphite. Steel output therefore sets the floor under demand for the grades batteries do not use.

## How is graphite produced?

Flake graphite is mined in open pits from weathered metamorphic rock, then crushed gently, because crushing destroys the large flakes that carry the premium, and floated. Graphite is naturally hydrophobic, so flotation works well, and a concentrate of ninety to ninety-five percent carbon is achieved with multiple gentle regrind and cleaning stages. The concentrate is screened into mesh fractions and sold by flake size.

Turning that into anode material takes three more steps. Spheronisation rounds the angular flakes into potato-shaped particles in a high-speed mill, which improves packing density in the electrode but wastes a large fraction of the input as fines, so yield is low. Purification removes silicates and metals to above 99.95 percent carbon, either by hydrofluoric acid leaching or by heating to around three thousand degrees. Coating with a thin carbon layer improves cycle life and stops the electrolyte reacting with the graphite surface.

Synthetic graphite skips the mine entirely: petroleum needle coke is mixed with pitch, formed, baked and then graphitised at close to three thousand degrees in electric furnaces over several weeks. The energy consumption is very large, which is why synthetic graphite economics follow electricity prices.

Amorphous graphite requires far less processing and is used more or less as mined after grinding, which is why it sells for a fraction of the price of battery-grade material.

## What is graphite used for?

Battery anodes are the growth market and now the largest by value. Both natural and synthetic graphite serve it, often blended, and the quantity per vehicle is large: an electric car anode contains tens of kilograms of graphite.

Refractories remain the largest traditional use. Magnesia-carbon bricks line steel converters and ladles, graphite crucibles hold molten metal, and foundry facings give castings a clean surface. Steelmaking is therefore graphite's oldest and steadiest customer. Graphite electrodes for electric arc furnaces are a separate and important market, but they are made from synthetic graphite rather than natural flake.

Other uses spread across lubricants where oil would burn or contaminate, brake linings and friction materials, gaskets and seals made from expanded graphite foil, carbon brushes in motors, pencils, and the moderator and reflector blocks in some nuclear reactor designs. Expandable graphite, made by treating large flake with acid, puffs up when heated and is used as a flame retardant in construction foams.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is mine, concentrate, spheronize, purify, coat, cell, and the middle three steps are the constraint. They are concentrated in China, they are chemically demanding, and the qualification process at the far end means a cell maker cannot change anode supplier quickly even when an alternative exists. That combination is why graphite appears on every critical minerals list despite being one of the most abundant materials on earth.

Purification is the specific chokepoint for anyone trying to build capacity elsewhere. The acid route is cheap and permits poorly outside a few jurisdictions; the thermal route permits more easily and costs more. Several announced Western anode plants have been delayed on exactly this question.

Physically, moving graphite is easy: concentrate ships in bulk bags and containers, and there is no phytosanitary or hazard classification issue at concentrate stage. The logistics constraints are ordinary port and container matters in Mozambique, Madagascar and Tanzania rather than anything specific to the mineral.

The structural risk is that mine diversification without processing diversification achieves nothing. A great deal of new African flake capacity now exists, and most of it still travels to China to be made useful. Until spheronization, purification and coating capacity is built and qualified at scale outside China, the supply picture for battery anodes will look much as it does today.

## Key companies

- Syrah Resources: miner and anode processor, Australia, listed (SYR)
- BTR New Material Group: anode material maker, China, listed (835185)
- Shanshan Technology: anode material maker, China, listed (600884)
- Northern Graphite: miner, Canada, listed (NGC)
- Talga Group: miner and anode developer, Australia, listed (TLG)
- Imerys: graphite and carbon processor, France, listed (NK)

## Timeline

- 1564: The Borrowdale deposit is discovered in England. The only large vein graphite deposit ever worked in Europe supplied pencils and cannonball molds and was guarded as a strategic resource, the first instance of graphite treated as a security matter. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/graphite-statistics-and-information)
- 1896: Synthetic graphite is produced in an electric furnace. Baking carbon at extreme temperature created an alternative to mining that now supplies electrodes and a large share of battery anodes, and permanently linked graphite supply to electricity prices. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 1991-06: Lithium-ion commercialisation makes graphite a battery material. The graphite anode was part of the first commercial lithium-ion cell and has remained the standard ever since, creating a demand source larger than all traditional uses combined. (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2019/summary/)
- 2012: Environmental enforcement closes Chinese mines. A campaign against polluting small-scale graphite mining and processing in Shandong and Heilongjiang cut output and prompted the first serious search for supply elsewhere. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 2017-08: Mozambique's Balama mine starts up. The first large-scale flake graphite operation outside China began production, proving that non-Chinese mine supply could be built even as processing remained concentrated. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 2020-05: Graphite is added to critical minerals lists. Formal designation in the United States, European Union and elsewhere unlocked policy support for anode processing projects outside China and reframed graphite as a security question. (https://www.iea.org/topics/critical-minerals)
- 2022-08: Anode plant investment begins outside China. Incentives in North America and Europe prompted announcements of spheronization and coating capacity, though permitting for purification chemistry has repeatedly slowed delivery. (https://www.iea.org/topics/critical-minerals)
- 2023-10: China introduces export licensing for graphite items. Licence requirements on certain graphite products disrupted anode supply planning and accelerated qualification of alternative sources by cell makers. (https://www.mofcom.gov.cn/)
- 2024-05: Synthetic graphite gains anode share. Falling needle coke costs and better fast-charging performance shifted the anode mix toward synthetic material, weakening demand growth for natural flake even as battery output rose. (https://www.iea.org/topics/critical-minerals)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most graphite

China mined 1.4 million tonnes of natural graphite in 2025, 78% of the world's 1.8 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Madagascar was second with 4.4%. Processing into battery anode material is far more concentrated than mining.

### why is there no graphite price on this page

No free, citable public series exists. Flake graphite is assessed privately by flake size and carbon content, and spherical coated anode material separately again. This site does not publish figures it cannot source, so it explains how the market prices instead.

### what is the difference between natural and synthetic graphite

Natural graphite is mined and purified; synthetic is made by baking petroleum needle coke at close to three thousand degrees. Synthetic performs better in fast charging and lasts longer but costs more and uses enormous electricity. Both serve the anode market and their relative price sets the split.

### how much graphite is in an electric car battery

Tens of kilograms in the anode, roughly ten times the weight of lithium in the cathode. Unlike cobalt, which cell designers have reduced or removed, there is no commercial way yet to build a lithium-ion cell without a graphite anode.

### what is flake graphite

Crystalline plates of graphite disseminated through metamorphic rock, and the type batteries need. It is sold by mesh size, with large flake commanding a premium. The other commercial forms are amorphous graphite from metamorphosed coal, used in refractories, and vein graphite found commercially only in Sri Lanka.

### what is graphite used for besides batteries

Refractory bricks and crucibles for steelmaking, which is its oldest and steadiest market, plus foundry facings, lubricants that work where oil would burn, brake linings, expanded graphite gaskets and foils, carbon brushes, flame retardants, pencils and nuclear reactor moderator blocks.

### how much graphite is left

China holds 32% of world reserves of 310 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Reserves are widely distributed and large relative to demand, which confirms that the constraint in this market is processing capability rather than geology.

## Sources

- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries
- 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

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

---

# Where do hazelnuts come from?

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

Hazelnuts come mainly from Turkey (Türkiye), which produced 717,000 tonnes in 2024, 59% of the world's 1.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Italy (9.9%), United States (7.2%) and Azerbaijan (6.2%) follow; the top five together supply 89%. The biggest exporter of shelled hazelnuts (HS 080222) is Turkey (Türkiye) (62% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Hazelnut is a temperate bush that wants mild wet winters and cool humid summers, and the terraced slopes of Turkey's Black Sea coast give it exactly that on ground too steep for any other crop, which is why one coastline grows most of the world's supply.

*A temperate nut grown overwhelmingly on the Turkish Black Sea coast and bought largely by confectioners.* Also called: hazelnut, filbert, cobnut.

## Where do hazelnuts come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 717,000 | 59% |
| 2 | Italy | 120,520 | 9.9% |
| 3 | United States | 87,820 | 7.2% |
| 4 | Azerbaijan | 75,698 | 6.2% |
| 5 | Chile | 73,274 | 6% |
| 6 | Georgia | 43,600 | 3.6% |
| 7 | China | 25,437 | 2.1% |
| 8 | Iran | 13,806 | 1.1% |
| 9 | Poland | 9,800 | 0.8% |
| 10 | Serbia | 8,910 | 0.7% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 3% |
| | World | 1.2 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 Turkey (Türkiye) produced 717,000 tonnes, 59% of the world's 1.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Italy followed with 9.9%, then United States (7.2%), Azerbaijan (6.2%) and Chile (6%). The top five account for 89%, 39 countries reported output and 3% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +71% over the ten years to 2024 and +9% on the previous year.

These are nuts in shell; the traded product is kernel, so the two weights are not comparable. Turkish growing runs along the Black Sea littoral from Sakarya and Düzce in the west to Giresun, Ordu and Trabzon in the east, on holdings of a hectare or two terraced into hillsides. Nuts from the eastern provinces, sold as Giresun quality, carry a recognized premium over the Levant grades grown further west.

Everywhere else supplements. Italy grows in Piedmont, Campania, Lazio and Sicily and feeds its own confectionery industry; Oregon's Willamette Valley is the only significant United States region; Azerbaijan and Georgia sit on the same Black Sea climate; and Chile has planted heavily, harvesting counter-seasonally into northern markets.


## Who exports and imports hazelnuts?

### Exporters of hazelnuts, in shell, fresh or dried (HS 080221), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $42.3 million | 29% |
| 2 | Spain | $22.9 million | 15% |
| 3 | France | $15.9 million | 11% |
| 4 | Poland | $8.6 million | 5.8% |
| 5 | Georgia | $7.9 million | 5.3% |
| 6 | Hong Kong | $7.2 million | 4.8% |
| 7 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $6.7 million | 4.5% |
| 8 | Chile | $6.1 million | 4.1% |
| 9 | Serbia | $5.7 million | 3.9% |
| 10 | Romania | $4.1 million | 2.7% |
| 11 | Italy | $3.1 million | 2.1% |
| 12 | Bulgaria | $2.5 million | 1.7% |
| 13 | Portugal | $2.3 million | 1.5% |
| 14 | Croatia | $2.1 million | 1.4% |
| 15 | Azerbaijan | $2 million | 1.3% |

### Importers of hazelnuts, in shell, fresh or dried (HS 080221), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Italy | $56.1 million | 38% |
| 2 | Germany | $17.3 million | 12% |
| 3 | China | $10 million | 6.8% |
| 4 | Hong Kong | $9 million | 6.1% |
| 5 | France | $7.8 million | 5.3% |
| 6 | Vietnam | $7.2 million | 4.8% |
| 7 | Spain | $3.8 million | 2.5% |
| 8 | Thailand | $3.7 million | 2.5% |
| 9 | United Arab Emirates | $2.8 million | 1.9% |
| 10 | Poland | $2.6 million | 1.8% |
| 11 | Greece | $2.4 million | 1.6% |
| 12 | Malaysia | $2.3 million | 1.5% |
| 13 | United Kingdom | $1.7 million | 1.1% |
| 14 | Uzbekistan | $1.5 million | 1% |
| 15 | Canada | $1.5 million | 1% |

### Exporters of hazelnuts, shelled, fresh or dried (HS 080222), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $1.4 billion | 62% |
| 2 | Chile | $238.3 million | 10% |
| 3 | Italy | $161.3 million | 7% |
| 4 | United States | $155.1 million | 6.8% |
| 5 | Azerbaijan | $128.8 million | 5.6% |
| 6 | Georgia | $76.6 million | 3.3% |
| 7 | Germany | $35.1 million | 1.5% |
| 8 | Netherlands | $23.7 million | 1% |
| 9 | Spain | $8.2 million | 0.4% |
| 10 | Czechia | $7.5 million | 0.3% |
| 11 | Hungary | $5.8 million | 0.3% |
| 12 | Bulgaria | $5.7 million | 0.2% |
| 13 | France | $4.6 million | 0.2% |
| 14 | Slovakia | $3.4 million | 0.1% |
| 15 | Austria | $3.4 million | 0.1% |

### Importers of hazelnuts, shelled, fresh or dried (HS 080222), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Germany | $547.4 million | 24% |
| 2 | Italy | $434.4 million | 19% |
| 3 | Poland | $189.4 million | 8.3% |
| 4 | Canada | $166.4 million | 7.3% |
| 5 | France | $162 million | 7.1% |
| 6 | Russia | $89 million | 3.9% |
| 7 | Switzerland | $69.9 million | 3.1% |
| 8 | Brazil | $68.4 million | 3% |
| 9 | Spain | $48.8 million | 2.1% |
| 10 | China | $44.4 million | 1.9% |
| 11 | Algeria | $38.7 million | 1.7% |
| 12 | Netherlands | $31.5 million | 1.4% |
| 13 | Mexico | $29.7 million | 1.3% |
| 14 | Austria | $27 million | 1.2% |
| 15 | Australia | $26.6 million | 1.2% |

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

Turkey (Türkiye) was the largest exporter of shelled hazelnuts (HS 080222) in 2024 with 62% of world export value, ahead of Chile (10%), on world trade of $2.3 billion (CEPII BACI). Germany was the largest importer with 24%.

The in-shell line is far smaller and differently shaped. In 2024 United States led exports with 29% of a trade worth $148.3 million, ahead of Spain (15%), while Italy took 38% of imports.

Almost everything that crosses a border does so as kernel, because shelling at origin drops the weight and because industrial buyers want a graded, sized, often blanched or roasted kernel rather than a nut. The buyers are confectioners: Germany and Italy lead imports as the home of chocolate and spread manufacture, not as eaters of whole nuts.


## What do hazelnuts cost?

### How they are priced

There is no futures market and no free public benchmark price for hazelnuts, so this site quotes none. The visible anchor is the floor purchase price that Turkey's state agricultural board announces before each harvest, at which it will buy from growers. That announcement sets expectations for the season and the private trade prices around it, while growers otherwise sell to village merchants and to exporters who shell, grade and sell on.

Kernels are then contracted by quality group, by kernel diameter in millimetres and by processing state, whether natural, blanched, roasted, diced or milled to paste, with Giresun quality above Levant. Transactions are reported by trade newsletters and through buyers' tenders rather than any exchange, and because a few confectionery groups take much of the crop, published prices are scarce.


## What moves the price of hazelnuts?

### Frost on the Black Sea coast

Hazelnut flowers in winter and sets early, so a cold snap in March, or hail later, can destroy a crop months before harvest. Because production sits in one narrow strip of coast, a single weather event moves the world price rather than a regional one.

### The announced floor price

Turkey's state board declares a purchase price before harvest and buys at it, putting a floor under grower returns and shaping what exporters can pay. When the price is set high, the state accumulates stock that hangs over the following season.

### Concentrated buying

Most kernels end up in chocolate, spreads and pralines, and a few confectionery groups account for a large share of demand, one of them by a wide margin. Their coverage decisions and contract timing move the market more than retail consumption, which changes slowly.

### Brown marmorated stink bug

An invasive bug that feeds on developing kernels reached the Caucasus and then the Turkish Black Sea provinces, leaving shrivelled and blank nuts that fail on grade. Control is hard on steep smallholdings, and damage shows up as lost kernel yield rather than lost tonnage.

### Harvest labor and the lira

The crop is picked by hand because the slopes rule out machinery, so wages and the supply of seasonal workers feed straight into cost. It is also bought in lira and sold in dollars and euros, which makes the exchange rate part of the price.

## How are hazelnuts produced?

Hazelnut grows as a multi-stemmed bush rather than a tree, suckering from the base, and Turkish groves are managed as clumps of stems renewed by cutting out old wood. It is wind-pollinated and flowers in the depths of winter, which is why a cold snap can end a crop before spring. Bushes bear from the fourth or fifth year.

Nuts fall or are picked in August and September. On the Black Sea terraces this is handwork, done by families and seasonal crews moving along the coast as the crop ripens; in Oregon and Chile nuts are swept from a level orchard floor by machine. They are then dried, because a humid coastal harvest molds quickly.

Shelling, sizing and grading happen in coastal plants. Kernels are sorted by diameter, blanched to remove the skin, then roasted, diced, sliced or milled to paste to order. Aflatoxin testing runs through the whole chain, since slow drying after a wet harvest is exactly what produces it.


## What are hazelnuts used for?

Most hazelnuts are eaten inside something else. Chocolate and cocoa-hazelnut spread take the largest share, followed by pralines, nougat, biscuits, ice cream and bakery. Whole roasted kernels and in-shell nuts sold at retail are a small part of demand, which is why the market answers to a handful of manufacturers rather than to shoppers.

By-products are modest but real. Shells are burned for heat and used as mulch and abrasive; the skins removed in blanching are rich in polyphenols and go to extracts and animal feed. Kernels that fail on size or color are milled into paste and pressed for oil, where appearance no longer prices the product.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is short but geographically pinched. Nuts come off terraces in a strip of coast a few hundred kilometers long, pass through village merchants to shelling plants in Ordu, Giresun and Trabzon, and leave through Turkish ports for Italy and Germany. Very little travels far in the shell.

Because kernels are dry and stable the logistics are undemanding: ordinary containers, no cold chain, vacuum packing for long storage. The binding constraints are quality control and aflatoxin certification, which importing countries enforce at the border and buyers audit upstream.

The structural risk is that one coastline, exposed to frost, hail and an invasive pest, supplies most of the world with a raw material its buyers cannot easily substitute. Chile, Azerbaijan and Georgia have expanded partly for that reason, but not yet on a scale that would cushion a Turkish frost year.


## Timeline

- 1938: Turkey creates the state board that later sets a hazelnut floor price. The board's announced purchase price before each harvest became the reference around which the Turkish crop, and therefore most of world supply, is traded. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 2009: Blight-resistant hazelnut varieties are released to Oregon growers. Eastern filbert blight had been killing Willamette Valley orchards; resistant varieties allowed replanting and a large expansion of the only significant United States growing region. (https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/fruit-and-tree-nuts)
- 2014-03: A frost destroys much of the Turkish hazelnut crop. Freezing weather along the Black Sea coast cut the harvest sharply and pushed kernel prices to their highest in a decade, leaving confectioners scrambling for cover. (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2014/9/4/turkeys-hazelnut-crop-devastated-by-frost)
- 2014-07: Ferrero acquires the Oltan Group. The largest buyer of hazelnuts bought the largest processor in the same year a frost had shown how exposed a confectioner is to a single origin. (https://www.ferrero.com/int/en/news-stories/news/ferrero-group-continues-investing-turkey-hazelnut-sector)
- 2016: Brown marmorated stink bug devastates Georgia's hazelnut crop. An invasive bug that feeds on developing kernels destroyed about a third of the Georgian harvest and then spread into the Turkish Black Sea provinces. (https://www.cabi.org/news-article/cabi-shares-expertise-on-brown-marmorated-stink-bug-which-threatens-70-of-worlds-hazelnut-supply/)
- 2019: Harvest labor conditions come under buyer scrutiny. Assessments of seasonal migrant and child labor on Turkish hazelnut farms pushed confectionery buyers into traceability and monitoring programmes for the crop. (https://www.fairlabor.org/)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most hazelnuts

Turkey (Türkiye) produced 717,000 tonnes in 2024, 59% of the world's 1.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Italy was second with 9.9%. Almost all of the Turkish crop grows on terraced smallholdings along the Black Sea coast.

### why are hazelnuts mostly sold as kernels

Because the buyers are manufacturers, not shoppers. Shelling at origin removes weight before shipping, and chocolate and spread makers want kernels graded by diameter and often blanched or roasted. In 2024 shelled hazelnuts were a trade worth $2.3 billion against $148.3 million for in-shell nuts (CEPII BACI).

### who buys the most hazelnuts

Germany was the largest importer of shelled hazelnuts (HS 080222) in 2024 with 24% of the trade, ahead of Italy with 19% (CEPII BACI). Both rank high because they manufacture chocolate and cocoa-hazelnut spread rather than because they eat whole nuts.

### why did hazelnut prices spike in 2014

A frost hit the Turkish Black Sea coast in March 2014, before the crop had set, and destroyed a large part of the harvest. Because one region supplies most of world output, the loss could not be sourced elsewhere and kernel prices reached their highest level in about a decade.

### what is giresun quality hazelnut

A regional grade. Nuts grown in the eastern Black Sea provinces around Giresun are rounder and generally considered better for blanching and roasting than the Levant grades from further west, and they trade at a premium. Contracts specify the quality group as well as kernel diameter.

### what is damaging hazelnut crops in turkey and georgia

The brown marmorated stink bug, an invasive insect that pierces developing nuts and leaves them shrivelled or empty. It destroyed roughly a third of Georgia's crop in 2016 and has spread into the Turkish Black Sea provinces, where steep smallholdings make control difficult.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where does honey come from?

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

Honey comes mainly from China, which produced 444,800 tonnes in 2024, 24% of the world's 1.8 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India (7.9%), Turkey (Türkiye) (5.2%) and Ethiopia (4.7%) follow; the top five together supply 46%. The biggest exporter of honey (HS 0409) is New Zealand (11% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Honey output follows managed colonies rather than climate, so the leading producers are the countries that keep bees in the millions, whether in the truck-borne commercial apiaries of China and Argentina or the forest hives of Ethiopia.

*Nectar concentrated by honeybees, sold by floral source and increasingly tested for adulteration.* Also called: natural honey, bee honey, manuka.

## Where does honey come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 444,800 | 24% |
| 2 | India | 146,000 | 7.9% |
| 3 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 95,492 | 5.2% |
| 4 | Ethiopia | 85,960 | 4.7% |
| 5 | Iran | 80,249 | 4.4% |
| 6 | Argentina | 69,298 | 3.8% |
| 7 | Brazil | 67,314 | 3.7% |
| 8 | Russia | 65,455 | 3.6% |
| 9 | United States | 60,960 | 3.3% |
| 10 | Mexico | 57,430 | 3.1% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 36% |
| | World | 1.8 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 China produced 444,800 tonnes, 24% of the world's 1.8 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India followed with 7.9%, then Turkey (Türkiye) (5.2%), Ethiopia (4.7%) and Iran (4.4%). The top five account for 46%, 121 countries reported output and 36% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +5% over the ten years to 2024 and -3% on the previous year.

Honey output is set by an insect's foraging and scales with hive numbers rather than land, which is why the producer list mixes industrial and traditional beekeeping. Commercial apiaries are trucked between crops in flower and worked for a surplus; traditional beekeeping puts very large numbers of hives in forest and woodland, each yielding little. The reported series counts honey declared through official channels, so household beekeeping is thinly captured.

Honey is also not one product. It is graded and sold by floral source, color and flavor, and the gap between a certified monofloral honey and a bulk blending honey is one of kind rather than degree, so tonnage says little about the value of a country's crop.


## Who exports and imports honey?

### Exporters of natural honey (HS 0409), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Zealand | $249.8 million | 11% |
| 2 | China | $237.2 million | 10% |
| 3 | Argentina | $206.2 million | 9% |
| 4 | India | $187.1 million | 8.1% |
| 5 | Ukraine | $164.3 million | 7.1% |
| 6 | Germany | $134.2 million | 5.8% |
| 7 | Spain | $102.7 million | 4.5% |
| 8 | Brazil | $101 million | 4.4% |
| 9 | Hungary | $77.2 million | 3.4% |
| 10 | Vietnam | $65.1 million | 2.8% |
| 11 | Mexico | $62.8 million | 2.7% |
| 12 | Belgium | $53.6 million | 2.3% |
| 13 | Australia | $45.4 million | 2% |
| 14 | Canada | $44.5 million | 1.9% |
| 15 | Bulgaria | $41.6 million | 1.8% |

### Importers of natural honey (HS 0409), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $629 million | 27% |
| 2 | Germany | $253.1 million | 11% |
| 3 | Japan | $133.7 million | 5.8% |
| 4 | United Kingdom | $118 million | 5.1% |
| 5 | France | $115.2 million | 5% |
| 6 | Netherlands | $76.1 million | 3.3% |
| 7 | Belgium | $70.2 million | 3% |
| 8 | Spain | $70 million | 3% |
| 9 | Italy | $68.2 million | 3% |
| 10 | Saudi Arabia | $65.5 million | 2.8% |
| 11 | Poland | $54.8 million | 2.4% |
| 12 | Canada | $47.4 million | 2.1% |
| 13 | China | $47.1 million | 2% |
| 14 | United Arab Emirates | $39.2 million | 1.7% |
| 15 | Switzerland | $38 million | 1.7% |

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

New Zealand was the largest exporter of honey (HS 0409) in 2024 with 11% of world export value, ahead of China (10%), on world trade of $2.3 billion (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 27%.

That ranking is by value, which flatters origins selling expensive honey in small jars. New Zealand's position rests on manuka sold against a certified potency grade, while Argentina, India and Ukraine ship drummed bulk honey that is blended before anyone sees a label.

Honey moves as an ingredient more than a finished good: importing packers buy drums from several origins, blend to a color and flavor specification, and sell under their own brand. Blending is efficient and it obscures origin, which is why provenance and laboratory results, not freight or tariffs, are the contested part of this trade.


## What does honey cost?

### How it is priced

There is no futures market for honey and no free public benchmark price carried on this site, so none is quoted here. Honey is priced drum by drum on packer contracts against a written specification: floral source, color on the Pfund scale, moisture, hydroxymethylfurfural, antibiotic residues, and declared origin. Cooperative pools pay their members on the same criteria.

The visible references are private trade assessments, the unit values implied by customs data, and published cooperative payouts. Laboratory results enter the price directly, because a lot that fails an authenticity screen cannot be sold as honey at all, and trade defense duties create origin-specific price levels that have nothing to do with the honey in the drum.


## What moves the price of honey?

### Adulteration and authenticity testing

Honey can be stretched with rice, corn or beet syrup that is cheap and hard to taste. Buyers screen with carbon isotope ratio analysis and nuclear magnetic resonance profiling, and a failed screen removes a lot from the food market. Testing capacity, and disagreement over which method is authoritative, moves this market as much as weather does.

### Colony health

The parasitic mite Varroa destructor and the viruses it carries raise overwintering losses and make treatment a permanent cost. Beekeepers replace dead colonies by splitting survivors, so a bad winter cuts the following summer's honey crop as well as the hive count.

### Nectar flow and weather

Hive numbers say nothing about yield. A cold or wet spell during the main flowering, or drought that stops plants secreting nectar, can leave a full apiary with nothing to extract. Because flows are local and short, national crops swing more than the colony count behind them.

### Trade remedies and origin rules

Antidumping duties, residue standards and origin documentation have repeatedly redirected honey between exporters. A duty on one origin raises the value of honey from every other origin, and creates the incentive to disguise where a drum came from that enforcement then chases.

### Pollination income

In large commercial beekeeping countries, renting colonies to orchard growers can pay better than selling honey. When pollination fees are high, hives are placed for the fee rather than the nectar, and honey becomes the by-product of a pollination business rather than the point of it.

## How is honey produced?

A colony gathers nectar, adds its own enzymes, and evaporates water until the sugar concentration is high enough that nothing will ferment; the bees then cap the comb. The beekeeper adds boxes above the brood nest, so surplus honey is stored away from the queen's laying area and can be taken without harming the colony.

Full frames are removed, the wax cappings sliced off, and the honey spun out in a centrifugal extractor, then strained, settled and warmed gently so it flows into drums. Heavier heating and fine filtration extend shelf life and delay crystallization, but they strip pollen and aroma and push up hydroxymethylfurfural, which is why lightly handled honey earns a premium and processing history is part of the specification.

Yields depend on the flow. Migratory operations chase successive crops across a season; stationary beekeepers take one or two harvests from what grows nearby.


## What is honey used for?

Most honey is eaten directly as a spread and sweetener. Food manufacture takes the next largest share into cereals, bakery, sauces and drinks, where honey is chosen for flavor, browning and label appeal rather than sweetness, since sugar and glucose syrup are cheaper. Fermented with water it makes mead, and sterilized medical-grade honey is used in wound dressings.

Beeswax goes into candles, cosmetics, food coatings and comb foundation for the next season's hives; propolis, royal jelly and bee-collected pollen are sold as supplements. The largest by-product by value is not a substance at all but pollination, without which several fruit, nut and seed crops could not be grown at their present scale.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is short and physically forgiving. Honey needs no refrigeration, keeps for years, and ships in steel or plastic drums or in flexitanks at ambient temperature, so the cold-chain problems that dominate other food trades barely arise. What travels with the drum is paperwork: origin declarations, residue certificates and test reports.

Value concentrates in packing and blending, which happens in the importing countries rather than at origin. Large packers in North America and Europe buy from many suppliers, blend to a house specification and own the brands, so beekeepers sell into a market with far fewer buyers than sellers.

The single points of failure are biological and analytical. Colony losses cannot be fixed by paying more within a season, and the authority to call a consignment genuine rests with a small number of laboratories and reference databases, so a dispute over method can strand cargo already on the water.


## Timeline

- 1987: Varroa destructor is found in the United States. The parasitic mite spread through managed colonies and made chemical treatment and higher winter losses a permanent condition of commercial beekeeping. (https://www.ars.usda.gov/oc/br/ccd/index/)
- 2001: The European Union adopts its honey directive. Directive 2001/110/EC defined honey and barred the addition of any other ingredient, giving regulators a legal test that adulteration cases are still argued against. (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32001L0110)
- 2001-12: The United States imposes antidumping duties on honey from China. The duties redrew honey trade routes and created the commercial incentive to disguise origin that enforcement has pursued ever since. (https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ice-and-cbp-announce-charges-linked-major-commercial-fraud-enterprise)
- 2006-10: Beekeepers report colony collapse disorder. United States beekeepers reported losing 30 to 90 percent of hives to colonies that emptied of adult bees, and no single cause was ever proven, which pushed hive health to the center of the industry. (https://www.ars.usda.gov/oc/br/ccd/index/)
- 2013-02: Charges are announced in a honey transshipment case. Two companies and five individuals were charged with mislabeling and transshipping Chinese-origin honey to avoid more than $180 million in antidumping duties, showing how deep origin fraud ran. (https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ice-and-cbp-announce-charges-linked-major-commercial-fraud-enterprise)
- 2023-03: An EU coordinated action reports on honey authenticity. Of 320 honey consignments sampled at the EU border between November 2021 and February 2022, 147, or 46 percent, carried at least one marker of added sugar, against 14 percent in the 2015 to 2017 exercise. (https://food.ec.europa.eu/food-safety/eu-agri-food-fraud-network/eu-coordinated-actions/honey-2021-2022_en)
- 2024: The European Union requires origin listing on honey blends. Directive (EU) 2024/1438 replaced the blend-of-EU-honeys formula with named countries of harvest in descending order of weight, making provenance a labeled fact rather than a trade secret. (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2024/1438/oj)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most honey

China produced 444,800 tonnes in 2024, 24% of the world's 1.8 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India was second with 7.9%. Production follows hive numbers rather than acreage, so both industrial and traditional beekeeping countries appear near the top. Output was reported by 121 countries, and 36% came from outside the top ten.

### how do you tell if honey is fake

By laboratory testing, not taste. Carbon isotope ratio analysis detects cane and corn syrup, nuclear magnetic resonance profiling compares a sample against reference honeys, and pollen analysis checks the declared floral source. In an EU border exercise reported in March 2023, 46 percent of sampled consignments showed at least one marker of added sugar.

### why is manuka honey so expensive

Because it is a small, certified crop sold by potency rather than by weight. It is graded on measured methylglyoxal content and marketed for wound care and health claims, which is why New Zealand held 11% of world honey export value in 2024 on a modest tonnage (CEPII BACI).

### why are honey bees dying

Mostly from combined pressures rather than one cause. Varroa destructor, found in the United States in 1987, feeds on bees and spreads viruses; poor forage, pesticide exposure and cold winters add to losses. Colony collapse disorder, reported from October 2006, was never traced to a single agent (USDA ARS).

### who imports the most honey

United States, with 27% of world import value in 2024, on world honey trade of $2.3 billion (CEPII BACI). Most imports arrive as bulk drums that packers blend to a house specification before retail, rather than as jars ready for the shelf.

### does honey go bad

Not in the usual sense. Its low moisture and high sugar content stop microbes growing, so sealed honey keeps for years, and crystallization is a change of texture rather than spoilage. Quality still drifts: heat and age raise hydroxymethylfurfural, which buyers specify limits for in every contract.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where does iron ore come from?

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

Iron ore comes mainly from Australia, which produced 980 million tonnes in 2025, 38% of the world's 2.5 billion tonnes (USGS MCS). Brazil (16%), India (12%) and China (11%) follow; the top five together supply 82%. The biggest exporter of iron ore (HS 2601) is Australia (55% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, 62% Fe fines, CFR China spot, was $96.3/dmtu in August 2026, down 3% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The great iron ore districts are banded iron formations laid down on Precambrian shields more than two billion years ago, which is why the Pilbara in Australia, the Carajás and Iron Quadrangle in Brazil and the Simandou range in Guinea hold the richest deposits.

*Rock rich in iron oxides, mined in bulk and shipped to blast furnaces to make steel; the most traded dry-bulk cargo.* Also called: iron, iron ore fines, hematite, magnetite, iron ore pellets, 62% Fe.

## Where does iron ore come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Australia | 980 million | 38% |
| 2 | Brazil | 420 million | 16% |
| 3 | India | 310 million | 12% |
| 4 | China | 290 million | 11% |
| 5 | Iran | 93 million | 3.7% |
| 6 | Russia | 86 million | 3.4% |
| 7 | Canada | 69 million | 2.7% |
| 8 | South Africa | 66 million | 2.6% |
| 9 | Ukraine | 52 million | 2% |
| 10 | United States | 38 million | 1.5% |
| | Rest of world | 64 million | 5.6% |
| | World | 2.5 billion | 100% |

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026.

Iron ore is rock rich enough in iron oxides to be worth mining, crushing and shipping to a steelworks. Production on this page means usable ore, the tonnage that leaves the mine after crushing and screening, unless iron content is named. In 2025 Australia mined 980 million tonnes, 38% of the world's 2.5 billion tonnes of usable ore (USGS MCS). Brazil and India followed, and the top five countries produced 82% of the total across 17 mining countries. World output changed not available for a ten-year span in this source over the ten years to 2025.

Tonnes of ore and tonnes of iron are different things. Australian and Brazilian hematite ores run above 60% iron, while much Chinese ore is low-grade magnetite that needs heavy processing, so China ranks higher by usable ore than by contained metal. Measured by iron content, the largest producer in 2025 was {{prod.Mine production: Iron content.top1.name}}, out of a world total of {{prod.Mine production: Iron content.world}} of contained iron (USGS MCS).

The deposits are old. Most of the ore mined today comes from banded iron formations, layered sediments of iron oxide and silica that settled on the floors of shallow seas between about 2.5 and 1.8 billion years ago, when oxygen produced by early life first combined with dissolved iron. Those seas lay on the ancient continental cores, the cratons, that survive as the Pilbara and Yilgarn blocks of Western Australia, the Amazonian and São Francisco cratons of Brazil, the West African craton under Guinea and Liberia, and the shields of India, Ukraine, Russia and Canada. Later weathering enriched some of these formations into the high-grade hematite that can be shipped with little processing.

Reserves of crude ore stood at 193 billion tonnes in 2025, with Australia holding 31% and Russia and Brazil next (USGS MCS). Reserves measure what could be mined at a profit under conditions at the time of the estimate; because iron is common in the earth's crust, the constraint is grade, location and rail access rather than the amount of iron that exists.


## Who exports and imports iron ore?

### Exporters of iron ores and concentrates (HS 2601), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Australia | $87.4 billion | 55% |
| 2 | Brazil | $31.3 billion | 20% |
| 3 | Canada | $6.7 billion | 4.2% |
| 4 | South Africa | $6.6 billion | 4.2% |
| 5 | India | $2.9 billion | 1.8% |
| 6 | Ukraine | $2.9 billion | 1.8% |
| 7 | Sweden | $2.6 billion | 1.6% |
| 8 | Oman | $1.8 billion | 1.1% |
| 9 | Bahrain | $1.8 billion | 1.1% |
| 10 | Peru | $1.8 billion | 1.1% |
| 11 | Chile | $1.6 billion | 1% |
| 12 | Mauritania | $1.5 billion | 0.9% |
| 13 | United States | $1.3 billion | 0.8% |
| 14 | Malaysia | $1.2 billion | 0.7% |
| 15 | Iran | $1.1 billion | 0.7% |

### Importers of iron ores and concentrates (HS 2601), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $112.6 billion | 71% |
| 2 | Japan | $8.5 billion | 5.3% |
| 3 | South Korea | $7.8 billion | 4.9% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $3 billion | 1.9% |
| 5 | Other Asia, nes | $2.2 billion | 1.4% |
| 6 | Malaysia | $2.1 billion | 1.3% |
| 7 | Germany | $1.7 billion | 1.1% |
| 8 | Indonesia | $1.5 billion | 0.9% |
| 9 | Vietnam | $1.5 billion | 0.9% |
| 10 | Egypt | $1.4 billion | 0.9% |
| 11 | Bahrain | $1.4 billion | 0.9% |
| 12 | Saudi Arabia | $1.1 billion | 0.7% |
| 13 | Oman | $1 billion | 0.6% |
| 14 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $923.7 million | 0.6% |
| 15 | Algeria | $857.5 million | 0.5% |

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

Iron ore is the largest dry-bulk cargo at sea, and the trade is unusually one-directional. Two exporters and one importer dominate. In 2024 Australia shipped 55% of the world's $159.7 billion of iron ore exports (HS 2601), with Brazil second (CEPII BACI). China bought 71% of world imports, and the next importers, Japan and South Korea, are far smaller. Because steel is made where it is used, exporters are mine countries and importers are steel countries, with very little re-export.

Ore is traded in three forms. Fines, which are particles smaller than about 6 mm, are the largest volume and must be sintered into lumps before they enter a blast furnace. Lump ore can be charged directly and earns a premium. Pellets are fines rolled into balls and fired, and high-grade pellets are the feed for direct reduced iron plants that run on gas rather than coke. Concentrates from magnetite ores are a fourth form, sold to pellet plants. Contracts specify iron content, silica, alumina, phosphorus and moisture, and every shipment is priced by adjusting an index for these qualities.


## What does iron ore cost?

- 62% Fe fines, CFR China spot: $96.3/dmtu in August 2026; 12-month change -3%; 10-year change +58%; all-time high $214.4/dmtu in June 2021; real high (2024 US$) $290.3/dmtu in November 2007 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

Iron ore has no exchange-traded physical benchmark in the way copper has the LME. Until 2010, prices were set once a year in negotiations between the largest miners and Japanese and Chinese steelmakers. That system ended in the second quarter of 2010, when the big three producers moved to quarterly and then monthly pricing tied to spot indices. The reference today is a daily assessment of 62% iron fines delivered to a northern Chinese port, published by price reporting agencies such as Platts and Fastmarkets, quoted in US dollars per dry metric tonne. Higher-grade 65% Fe and lower-grade 58% Fe indices trade at premiums and discounts that widen when steel margins are high, because richer ore lets a blast furnace make more steel with less coke.

Derivatives settle against these indices. The SGX Iron Ore CFR China (62% Fe) contract (ticker FEF) trades 100 t lots in US$/dmt and is cash settled, with no physical delivery. The Dalian Commodity Exchange Iron Ore contract (ticker I) trades 100 t lots in CNY/t and can be physically delivered in China, and its volume is the largest of any iron ore derivative. The two markets move together, and the Dalian night session often sets the tone for the next day's index.

The series on this page is 62% Fe fines, CFR China spot, quoted in $/dmtu, a dry metric tonne unit being one percent of iron in a tonne of ore. In August 2026 it averaged $96.3/dmtu, down 3% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The nominal high was $214.4/dmtu in June 2021; in inflation-adjusted terms the record was $290.3/dmtu in November 2007. The lowest monthly average since the series began in 1960 was $8.8/dmtu in January 1968.


## What moves the price of iron ore?

### Chinese steel output and property construction

China makes more than half of the world's crude steel and imports most of the ore it uses, so its steel production is the single largest driver of the iron ore price. Steel demand comes from housing, infrastructure, machinery and exports of manufactured goods. When property starts fall, mills cut output and ore stocks build at ports; when Beijing orders production cuts for air quality or to limit total steel output, the same happens from the supply side of steel. Port inventories in China are watched as a daily gauge of this balance.

### Supply from the big four miners

Rio Tinto, BHP, Vale and Fortescue ship the bulk of seaborne ore, and their quarterly production reports and annual guidance move the market. Their costs are low, well below the price in most years, so they keep producing through downturns and the burden of adjustment falls on high-cost Chinese and other domestic mines. New capacity from these companies or from Simandou in Guinea adds supply in steps that take years to plan and months to ramp up.

### Weather, cyclones and dam failures

The Pilbara export ports close for tropical cyclones between December and April, and Brazil's wet season disrupts rail and mine operations in the first quarter, which is why first-quarter shipments are usually the lowest of the year. Tailings dam failures at Samarco in 2015 and Brumadinho in 2019 removed tens of millions of tonnes of Brazilian supply for years and forced Vale to decommission other dams, one of the largest supply shocks the market has seen.

### Steel mill margins and grade premiums

Mills choose the grade of ore that maximizes profit. When steel prices are high relative to coke and ore, mills pay up for high-grade ore and lump to raise furnace productivity and cut coke use, and the 65% Fe premium widens. When margins are thin, mills blend in cheaper low-grade fines and the discount for 58% Fe narrows. Environmental rules that limit sintering also favor lump and pellets, shifting demand among products even when total ore demand is unchanged.

### Freight and the Capesize market

The index price is delivered to China, so ocean freight is part of it. Brazil to China is roughly three times the distance of Australia to China, and when Capesize rates rise the netback to Brazilian miners falls more than to Australian ones. Fuel costs, port congestion and the number of new ships all feed into freight, which can swing the delivered price by several dollars a tonne without any change at the mine.

### Scrap, electric arc furnaces and direct reduction

Steel made from scrap in electric arc furnaces uses no iron ore. As China's scrap pool grows with its stock of old cars and buildings, and as steelmakers outside China build electric furnaces to cut emissions, the share of steel that needs ore declines. Direct reduced iron plants, which use gas or hydrogen instead of coke, need high-grade pellets, which supports demand for premium ore even as demand for standard fines softens.

### Policy and trade measures

Governments intervene in this trade more than in most. China has used state buying through the China Mineral Resources Group to consolidate purchasing, has set steel output caps and has adjusted export rebates for steel products. India has raised and cut export duties on ore to protect its own mills. Guinea's approval and terms for Simandou, and Australia's royalty settings, shape long-term supply. Each measure moves the balance between exporters and importers rather than the total amount of ore in the ground.

## How is iron ore produced?

Almost all iron ore is mined in open pits. Overburden is stripped, ore is drilled and blasted, and giant trucks or conveyors carry it to a crushing plant. For high-grade hematite in the Pilbara and Carajás, processing is simple: crushing and screening separate lump from fines, and some ores are washed to remove clay. Because these mines sell tens of millions of tonnes a year at low margins per tonne, the economics depend on the scale of the pit, the length of the rail line and the depth of the port more than on the ore itself.

Lower-grade ores need beneficiation. Magnetite ore is ground finely and separated with magnets to produce a concentrate of 65% iron or more; hematite fines can be upgraded by gravity and flotation. Beneficiation uses large amounts of energy and water and produces tailings that must be stored, which is why the two dam failures in Brazil were at operations that processed lower-grade ore. Concentrates are too fine to charge into a furnace and are turned into pellets, balls of about 10 to 15 mm bound with bentonite and hardened by firing.

At the steelworks, fines are sintered, heated with coke breeze and limestone into a porous cake, and then charged with lump, pellets and coke into a blast furnace, where carbon monoxide strips the oxygen from the iron oxides to produce liquid pig iron. About 1.6 t of ore is needed for each tonne of pig iron from a typical blast furnace. The alternative route, direct reduction, removes the oxygen with natural gas or hydrogen at lower temperatures to produce solid sponge iron, which is melted in an electric arc furnace; it needs pellets above roughly 67% iron, a small but growing part of the ore market.


## What is iron ore used for?

Iron ore has one use: making iron and steel. The World Steel Association reports that about 98% of mined iron ore goes into steel, and the remainder is used in cement, pigments, coal washing and ballast (World Steel Association). Steel demand is therefore the demand for ore, and construction takes the largest share of finished steel, roughly half of global use, followed by machinery, automotive and metal products (World Steel Association, steel statistical yearbook).

Because steel is endlessly recyclable, the world's stock of steel in buildings, vehicles and infrastructure is a future source of iron that competes with ore. Regions with a mature steel stock, such as North America and Europe, already make much of their steel from scrap; regions still building, such as India and Southeast Asia, rely on ore.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The seaborne iron ore chain is built around a few very large mine-rail-port systems. In Western Australia, Rio Tinto, BHP, Fortescue and Roy Hill each run their own railways from Pilbara mines to Port Hedland, Dampier and Cape Lambert, and Port Hedland alone handles more iron ore than any other port in the world. In Brazil, Vale's Northern System runs from Carajás along the Carajás Railway to Ponta da Madeira near São Luís, and its Southern and Southeastern Systems in Minas Gerais ship through Tubarão and Itaguaí. Each of these systems is a single company's asset; a rail washout, a port closure or a licensing dispute affects a large share of world supply at once.

On the buying side, China received 71% of world iron ore imports in 2024 (CEPII BACI), through ports such as Qingdao, Caofeidian, Rizhao and Tangshan that serve the steel belt of Hebei and Shandong. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan (Chinese Taipei) take most of the rest of Asian imports, and European mills in Germany, the Netherlands and France buy Brazilian, Swedish and Canadian ore through Rotterdam and Dunkirk. Ore moves in Capesize and larger Valemax vessels, and freight from Brazil is the swing cost.

The chokepoints of the next decade are new rather than old. Simandou in Guinea, whose first ore was railed to port in November 2025, adds a third major exporting country and a 600 km railway to a single new port. Vale's recovery from dam-safety restrictions, Australia's cyclone season and Chinese import policy remain the recurring risks, and the shift to higher-grade ore for lower-carbon steelmaking means the market for premium pellets, supplied mainly by Brazil, Canada and Sweden, is tighter than the market for standard fines.


## Key companies

- Rio Tinto: miner, United Kingdom, listed (RIO)
- BHP: miner, Australia, listed (BHP)
- Vale: miner, Brazil, listed (VALE)
- Fortescue: miner, Australia, listed (FMG)
- Samarco Mineração: miner, Brazil
- China Baowu Steel Group: smelter, China

## Timeline

- 1942-06: Companhia Vale do Rio Doce founded. The Brazilian state company created in June 1942 became the largest iron ore producer in the world after privatization in 1997. (https://vale.com/en/history-center)
- 1960-12: Australia grants its first iron ore export license. A 1938 ban on iron ore exports was relaxed on 1 December 1960, opening the Pilbara to Japanese buyers. (https://www.robertmenziesinstitute.org.au/on-this-day/menziess-mining-boom/)
- 1966-06: First Pilbara iron ore shipment. The Harvey S Mudd sailed from Finucane Island, Port Hedland, on 1 June 1966, the first cargo of what became the world's largest export trade. (https://www.waminingclub.asn.au/was-iron-ore-industry/)
- 1985-02: Carajás begins production. The N4E mine started in 1985 alongside the Carajás Railway, giving Brazil the highest-grade large deposit in the world. (https://ibram.org.br/en/noticia/extracao-em-carajas-completa-25-anos/)
- 2010-04: Annual benchmark pricing ends. From the second quarter of 2010 the largest miners priced ore against spot indices instead of a yearly negotiated price. (https://www.fastmarkets.com/insights/iron-ore-pricing-explained/)
- 2013-09: China approves Dalian iron ore futures. The CSRC approved a physically deliverable contract on 13 September 2013, which grew into the most traded iron ore derivative. (http://www.csrc.gov.cn/csrc_en/c102030/c1370652/content.shtml)
- 2015-11: Fundão tailings dam fails at Samarco. The 5 November 2015 collapse killed 19 people, polluted the Doce River and halted a pellet producer owned by Vale and BHP. (https://www.samarco.com/collapse/?lang=en)
- 2015-12: Iron ore price bottoms. The IMF monthly price fell to $40.88/t in December 2015 as new Australian supply met slowing Chinese steel growth. (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/data/PIORECRUSDM.txt)
- 2019-01: Brumadinho dam collapse. Vale's Dam I failed on 25 January 2019, killing about 270 people; the company cut roughly 40 million t of annual capacity and prices rose 18% within two weeks. (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-12/iron-ore-price-explainer-after-mining-dam-collapse/10800698)
- 2021-06: Iron ore monthly price peaks. The IMF monthly average reached $215.82/t in June 2021 on China's post-pandemic steel surge, then fell to $90.13/t by November after output caps. (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/data/PIORECRUSDM.txt)
- 2025-11: Simandou starts operations. Guinea, Rio Tinto and Chinese partners marked the start of railing ore on 11 November 2025, a system designed for up to 120 million t a year. (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/863064/000086306425000023/ex3d11simandoumr.htm)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most iron ore

Australia produced the most iron ore in 2025: 980 million tonnes of usable ore, 38% of the world's 2.5 billion tonnes (USGS MCS). Brazil and India came next. Ranked by iron content rather than ore tonnage, {{prod.Mine production: Iron content.top1.name}} was first, because ore grades differ widely between countries.

### where does iron ore come from

Iron ore comes from banded iron formations on ancient continental cores, mined in open pits. The Pilbara in Western Australia, Carajás and Minas Gerais in Brazil, and deposits in India, Russia, Ukraine, Canada, South Africa and Guinea supply most of the world. In 2025 the top five countries mined 82% of world usable ore (USGS MCS).

### which country exports the most iron ore

Australia was the largest iron ore exporter in 2024, with 55% of world export value for HS 2601 (CEPII BACI). Brazil was second. Between them the two countries supply most of the seaborne trade, shipping from Port Hedland, Dampier, Ponta da Madeira and Itaguaí to steelmakers in Asia and Europe.

### who buys the most iron ore

China was the largest importer in 2024, taking 71% of the world's $159.7 billion of iron ore imports (CEPII BACI). It makes more than half of the world's steel and its own ore is mostly low grade. Japan and South Korea are the next largest importers and also depend on Australian and Brazilian ore.

### what is the iron ore price

The benchmark is 62% iron fines delivered to China. In August 2026 the 62% Fe fines, CFR China spot price averaged $96.3/dmtu, down 3% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The record monthly average was $214.4/dmtu in June 2021. Prices are quoted per dry metric tonne unit, one percent of iron in a tonne of ore, or per dry tonne.

### how is iron ore priced

Since 2010 iron ore has been priced against daily spot indices for 62% iron fines delivered to northern China, published by Platts and Fastmarkets, rather than yearly contracts. Shipments are adjusted for iron, silica, alumina and moisture. Futures on the SGX (100 t, cash settled, US$/dmt) and the Dalian Commodity Exchange (100 t, CNY/t, deliverable) let miners, mills and traders hedge.

### which country has the most iron ore reserves

Australia held the largest crude iron ore reserves in 2025, 31% of the world's 193 billion tonnes (USGS MCS). Russia and Brazil follow. Reserves count only ore that could be mined at a profit under conditions at the time of the estimate, and grade and distance to a port matter more than the amount of iron in the ground.

### what is iron ore used for

Iron ore is used almost entirely to make steel. The World Steel Association puts about 98% of mined ore into steelmaking, either through sintering and a blast furnace or through direct reduction and an electric furnace. Construction takes roughly half of the world's finished steel, with machinery, vehicles and metal products taking most of the rest.

## Sources

- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries
- 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 does iron ore come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/iron-ore/.

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# Where does jute come from?

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

Jute comes mainly from Bangladesh, which produced 2.1 million tonnes in 2024, 56% of the world's 3.7 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India (38%), Cambodia (4.1%) and Uzbekistan (0.5%) follow; the top five together supply 99%. The biggest exporter of jute (HS 5303) is Bangladesh (69% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Jute needs heat, monsoon rain, alluvial soil and slow clean water to rot the stems in, a combination the Ganges and Brahmaputra delta supplies better than anywhere else, so the crop has stayed where it started.

*A bast fibre retted from stems in the Ganges delta and woven into sacking, twine and geotextiles.* Also called: jute fibre, hessian, burlap, golden fibre.

## Where does jute come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bangladesh | 2.1 million | 56% |
| 2 | India | 1.4 million | 38% |
| 3 | Cambodia | 153,318 | 4.1% |
| 4 | Uzbekistan | 19,140 | 0.5% |
| 5 | Nepal | 10,220 | 0.3% |
| 6 | China | 9,632 | 0.3% |
| 7 | South Sudan | 3,732 | 0.1% |
| 8 | Zimbabwe | 2,770 | 0.1% |
| 9 | Egypt | 2,279 | 0.1% |
| 10 | Brazil | 926 | <0.1% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | <0.1% |
| | World | 3.7 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 Bangladesh produced 2.1 million tonnes, 56% of the world's 3.7 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India followed with 38%, then Cambodia (4.1%), Uzbekistan (0.5%) and Nepal (0.3%). The top five account for 99%, 18 countries reported output and <0.1% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +8% over the ten years to 2024 and +1% on the previous year.

Two countries grow almost all of it, and they are the two halves of one delta. Jute is a bast fiber, taken from the stem rather than a seed head or leaf, and it must be separated by retting: cut stems are steeped in slow water for two to three weeks until bacteria rot away the tissue holding the fiber bundles together. Clean, still, warm water is the scarce input, and the floodplain has it.

The crop is smallholder grown, sown with the pre-monsoon rains and cut at flowering about four months later. This series counts raw and retted fiber, not the sacking, yarn and carpet backing that jute is turned into, which is a much larger business.


## Who exports and imports jute?

### Exporters of jute and other textile bast fibres, raw or retted (HS 5303), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bangladesh | $146.4 million | 69% |
| 2 | Tanzania | $21.7 million | 10% |
| 3 | India | $15.5 million | 7.3% |
| 4 | Kenya | $9.1 million | 4.3% |
| 5 | Belgium | $4.1 million | 1.9% |
| 6 | China | $3 million | 1.4% |
| 7 | Egypt | $1.5 million | 0.7% |
| 8 | Germany | $1.5 million | 0.7% |
| 9 | United States | $1.1 million | 0.5% |
| 10 | Netherlands | $903,292 | 0.4% |
| 11 | Indonesia | $810,531 | 0.4% |
| 12 | Malaysia | $509,413 | 0.2% |
| 13 | Spain | $502,013 | 0.2% |
| 14 | Philippines | $452,137 | 0.2% |
| 15 | Madagascar | $363,245 | 0.2% |

### Importers of jute and other textile bast fibres, raw or retted (HS 5303), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | $88.1 million | 42% |
| 2 | China | $29.5 million | 14% |
| 3 | Pakistan | $22.5 million | 11% |
| 4 | Nepal | $14.1 million | 6.7% |
| 5 | Nigeria | $13.3 million | 6.3% |
| 6 | Brazil | $5 million | 2.4% |
| 7 | United Kingdom | $3.4 million | 1.6% |
| 8 | Tunisia | $2.9 million | 1.4% |
| 9 | Ghana | $2.7 million | 1.3% |
| 10 | South Korea | $2.5 million | 1.2% |
| 11 | Germany | $2.5 million | 1.2% |
| 12 | United States | $2.3 million | 1.1% |
| 13 | Spain | $1.9 million | 0.9% |
| 14 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $1.9 million | 0.9% |
| 15 | Czechia | $1.9 million | 0.9% |

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

Bangladesh was the largest exporter of jute (HS 5303) in 2024 with 69% of world export value, ahead of Tanzania (10%), on world trade of $210.9 million (CEPII BACI). India was the largest importer with 42%.

The flow is short and old. Bangladesh sells raw fiber; India, Pakistan, Nepal and China buy it for mills that consume more than their own crops supply. India is both the second largest grower and the largest importer, which is the clearest sign that spinning and weaving capacity, not land, is what limits the industry.

Two cautions. The code covers jute together with other bast fibers, so some exporters here ship related fibers rather than jute, and raw fiber is only a fraction of export value: bags, yarn, twine, carpet backing and geotextiles leave under different codes and are worth far more than the fiber in them.


## What does jute cost?

### How it is priced

There is no futures market for jute and no free public benchmark price carried on this site, so none is quoted here. Raw jute is bought by graded lot at local markets and by mill agents, sorted by color, strength, length, root content and defects under national grading schemes, and both India and Bangladesh set official minimum prices, with state agencies buying when the market falls below them.

Prices are therefore administered as much as traded. Packaging laws that require foodgrain and sugar to be bagged in jute create a floor under mill demand, procurement by state corporations absorbs surplus fiber, and export duties have been used to keep fiber at home for domestic mills. The visible references are government market reports, mill purchase quotations and jute goods prices, which move before the raw fiber does.


## What moves the price of jute?

### Polypropylene substitution

Woven plastic sacks do the same job for less money and shrug off damp, and they took most of the bulk packaging market from the 1970s onwards. Jute's price is capped by what the plastic alternative costs, so a rally in fiber simply pushes buyers back to synthetics.

### Mandatory packaging rules

India and Bangladesh both require certain goods to be packed in jute, and that legislated demand supports a large share of mill output. Changes to the covered list, or to how strictly the rules are enforced, move the market more than any harvest.

### Monsoon timing and retting water

The crop is rainfed, and retting needs standing water at harvest. A late monsoon leaves growers retting in muddy ditches, which stains and weakens the fiber, so weather affects grade and price as much as it affects tonnage.

### State support prices and procurement

Minimum support prices and government buying set a floor for growers and shape planting decisions in the following season. Because both major producers intervene, the fiber price reflects policy choices in Dhaka and Delhi alongside supply and demand.

### Plastic restrictions and green procurement

Bans on single-use plastic bags and demand for biodegradable packaging and erosion-control fabric give jute a market that synthetics cannot serve. This is the one direction of demand that has been growing, and it depends on regulation rather than on cost.

## How is jute produced?

Seed is broadcast or drilled before the monsoon, and the crop is cut at flowering, when fiber strength and yield are best balanced. Cut stems are bundled, left to shed their leaves, then submerged under weights in ponds, ditches or slow channels for two to three weeks, which is the retting.

Retted stems are stripped by hand: the fiber is pulled from the woody core in long ribbons, washed, wrung and hung to dry in the sun, since drying evenly keeps the color bright. Dried fiber is bundled, graded and baled for the mills. Where water is short, growers strip green ribbons and ret only the fiber, which uses less water and gives a cleaner product but costs more labor.

At the mill, fiber is softened with oil and water emulsion, carded, drawn and spun into coarse yarn, then woven into hessian and sacking or tufted into carpet backing.


## What is jute used for?

Jute's traditional market is packaging: sacks and hessian for grain, sugar, coffee, cocoa and cement, plus twine, rope and the backing cloth behind carpets. It breathes and takes rough handling, which suited it to agricultural produce, and it holds that work where regulation or preference keeps plastic out.

The growth uses are environmental. Jute geotextiles hold soil on slopes and embankments while vegetation establishes, then rot away; jute felt, board and fiber-reinforced composites go into insulation, furniture and automotive panels; and shopping bags trade on being biodegradable. The leaves of one cultivated species are eaten as a vegetable, and jute stick and mill waste feed pulp, paper and charcoal.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is compact and mostly domestic. Millions of smallholders sell retted fiber to village traders, who bale it for mills clustered around Khulna, Narayanganj and Dhaka in Bangladesh and along the Hooghly above Kolkata in India, where it becomes yarn and cloth for domestic use and export.

That geography is a historical accident with a long tail: partition in 1947 left the mills on one side of a new border and most of the growing area on the other, and both sides spent decades rebuilding what the split had separated, which is part of why raw fiber still crosses it.

The weak points are seed, water and mills. Seed supply depends heavily on imports, retting depends on ponds that are drying up or being built over, and mill capacity is old, labor-intensive and slow to modernize, so gains in fiber quality often stop at the factory gate.


## Timeline

- 1855: The first power-driven jute mill opens on the Hooghly. Machinery and expertise from Dundee were set up near Calcutta, turning a local handloom fiber into an industrial commodity and making Bengal the center of world jute manufacture. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 1947: Partition separates the crop from the mills. The fields ended up in East Bengal and almost all the mills in and around Calcutta, forcing both new countries to build the half of the industry they lacked. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 1971: Bangladesh becomes independent. Jute was the new country's dominant export earner, which tied national income to a single fiber just as its main market was about to be taken by plastics. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 1970s: Polypropylene sacking displaces jute. Cheap woven plastic bags took over bulk packaging worldwide, permanently capping jute demand and beginning a long contraction of mills in both producing countries. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/fibers/jute-and-hard-fibers/en)
- 2010: Bangladesh legislates mandatory jute packaging. Requiring named goods to be packed in jute rather than plastic created a legislated home market for mills, and made policy rather than cost the main support for demand. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/fibers/jute-and-hard-fibers/en)
- 2021: Reference genomes of both cultivated jute species are published. Chromosome-level assemblies of Corchorus capsularis and Corchorus olitorius gave breeders a map for fiber quality and disease resistance that earlier draft genomes could not. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8541789/)
- 2020s: Plastic restrictions revive interest in natural fiber. Bans on single-use plastics and demand for biodegradable packaging and geotextiles gave jute its first growing market in decades, though from a much reduced base. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/fibers/jute-and-hard-fibers/en)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most jute

Bangladesh produced 2.1 million tonnes in 2024, 56% of the world's 3.7 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India was second with 38%. Between them they grow almost the whole crop, because both sit on the delta that supplies the water jute needs for retting.

### what is jute used for

Sacking, hessian and twine for agricultural produce, carpet backing, and increasingly geotextiles that hold soil on slopes until vegetation takes over. Jute board and fiber composites go into insulation and vehicle panels, and the woody stick left after stripping is burned as fuel or made into particle board.

### what is retting

The controlled rotting that frees the fiber from the stem. Cut jute is weighted under slow, clean water for two to three weeks while bacteria break down the tissue binding the fiber bundles, after which the fiber is stripped by hand, washed and sun dried. Dirty water stains the fiber and cuts its grade.

### why did jute decline

Because woven polypropylene sacks did the same job for less money from the 1970s onward, and the bulk packaging market that jute had held for a century went to plastic. What has kept the crop alive since is packaging legislation in India and Bangladesh and, more recently, demand for biodegradable materials.

### which country imports the most jute

India, with 42% of world import value in 2024 (CEPII BACI). It is also the second largest grower, and buys fiber because its spinning and weaving capacity exceeds what its own farmers produce. World trade in raw fiber was $210.9 million.

### is jute environmentally friendly

It compares well with synthetics on the points that matter to buyers: it is annually renewable, biodegradable and needs little fertilizer or pesticide. The main environmental cost is local, since retting in ponds and channels loads the water with organic matter, which is why ribbon retting using less water is promoted.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

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# Where does lamb come from?

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

Lamb comes mainly from China, which produced 2.6 million tonnes in 2024, 23% of the world's 11.5 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India (11%), Australia (8%) and Turkey (Türkiye) (4.4%) follow; the top five together supply 50%. The biggest exporter of sheep and goat meat (HS 0204) is Australia (42% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, New Zealand, frozen carcass, wholesale London, was $7.43/kg in August 2026, up 19% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Sheep are the animal for land that grows grass and little else, so the flocks sit on hill country, rangeland, steppe and dryland across the world, but the export trade comes almost entirely from the two southern-hemisphere countries where that land is temperate, fenced and within a truck ride of a freezing works.

*Meat from sheep, sold as lamb (under a year old) or mutton, and traded mostly frozen.* Also called: sheep meat, mutton, lamb meat, ovine meat.

## Where does lamb come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 2.6 million | 23% |
| 2 | India | 1.3 million | 11% |
| 3 | Australia | 927,230 | 8% |
| 4 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 509,539 | 4.4% |
| 5 | New Zealand | 449,606 | 3.9% |
| 6 | Algeria | 363,929 | 3.2% |
| 7 | Sudan | 272,421 | 2.4% |
| 8 | Uzbekistan | 266,110 | 2.3% |
| 9 | United Kingdom | 265,500 | 2.3% |
| 10 | Chad | 258,922 | 2.2% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 37% |
| | World | 11.5 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

On this page "lamb" means the meat of sheep, measured in carcass weight on the FAO basis. In the trade the word is narrower: lamb is an animal under about twelve months, hogget is older, and mutton is an adult sheep, and the three sell at very different prices. In 2024 China produced 2.6 million tonnes, 23% of the world's 11.5 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India followed with 1.3 million tonnes (11%), then Australia with 927,230 tonnes (8%), Turkey (Türkiye) (4.4%) and New Zealand (3.9%). World output was +23% against ten years earlier and -1% on the previous year. 176 countries reported production and 37% came from outside the top ten, because sheep are kept almost everywhere that cattle cannot be.

Sheep occupy the land nothing else wants. They graze short, dry and steep country, tolerate cold and drought, and turn rough pasture into meat, milk, wool and skins, which is why the flocks follow the world's marginal grazing: the loess uplands and northern grasslands of China, the drylands of India and Pakistan, the Anatolian plateau, the North African and Sahelian steppe, the Central Asian rangelands, the hill country of Britain and Ireland, the Australian rangelands and the wet green hills of New Zealand. The same ecology explains why sheep numbers are large in poor, dry countries with little arable land, and why sheep meat is a small industry in global terms compared with chicken or pork.

Where the flock is kept, however, tells you very little about where the meat is sold. The two largest producers, China and India, consume essentially all of their own output and China imports a great deal more on top; their sheep are the property of very many smallholders and are killed close to home. Australia and New Zealand, between them a much smaller share of world production, run large fenced flocks alongside a concentrated processing industry built specifically to export, and they supply most of what crosses a border. Britain, Ireland and Spain occupy a middle position, exporting into the European market while importing frozen product from the south.

History bent that pattern more than once. Refrigerated shipping from 1882 turned New Zealand into a distant protein supplier for Britain; Britain's entry into the European Economic Community in 1973 forced a search for new markets; the collapse of Australia's wool price support in 1991 pushed Australian farmers from wool-focused Merino flocks toward meat breeds and crossbred lambs. More recently New Zealand's sheep flock has shrunk as pasture was converted first to dairying and then to forestry, which is why its output has grown at -0.8% a year over the decade to 2024 while India grew at +9.3% (FAOSTAT).


## Who exports and imports lamb?

China grows the largest flock and eats its own output; New Zealand and Australia supply most of what crosses a border.

### Exporters of live sheep and goats (HS 0104), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sudan | $727.4 million | 29% |
| 2 | Somalia | $294.2 million | 12% |
| 3 | Spain | $244.6 million | 9.9% |
| 4 | Romania | $244.1 million | 9.9% |
| 5 | Iran | $152.6 million | 6.2% |
| 6 | Jordan | $127.3 million | 5.1% |
| 7 | Djibouti | $82 million | 3.3% |
| 8 | Portugal | $74.5 million | 3% |
| 9 | Hungary | $63.2 million | 2.6% |
| 10 | Georgia | $50.7 million | 2% |
| 11 | Australia | $48.5 million | 2% |
| 12 | Namibia | $45.7 million | 1.8% |
| 13 | France | $38.1 million | 1.5% |
| 14 | Syria | $26.9 million | 1.1% |
| 15 | Kyrgyzstan | $23.4 million | 0.9% |

### Importers of live sheep and goats (HS 0104), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Saudi Arabia | $1.3 billion | 52% |
| 2 | Morocco | $156.7 million | 6.3% |
| 3 | Jordan | $139.9 million | 5.7% |
| 4 | Kuwait | $139 million | 5.6% |
| 5 | Qatar | $114.4 million | 4.6% |
| 6 | Italy | $83.5 million | 3.4% |
| 7 | Israel | $66.2 million | 2.7% |
| 8 | South Africa | $44.6 million | 1.8% |
| 9 | Libya | $36.9 million | 1.5% |
| 10 | Germany | $30.7 million | 1.2% |
| 11 | Uzbekistan | $27.5 million | 1.1% |
| 12 | France | $25.5 million | 1% |
| 13 | Greece | $25.2 million | 1% |
| 14 | Spain | $22.3 million | 0.9% |
| 15 | Ireland | $22.2 million | 0.9% |

### Exporters of meat of sheep or goats, fresh, chilled or frozen (HS 0204), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Australia | $3.8 billion | 42% |
| 2 | New Zealand | $2.2 billion | 25% |
| 3 | United Kingdom | $696.1 million | 7.7% |
| 4 | Ireland | $425.6 million | 4.7% |
| 5 | Spain | $292.9 million | 3.3% |
| 6 | France | $233.1 million | 2.6% |
| 7 | Netherlands | $206.5 million | 2.3% |
| 8 | Kenya | $131.5 million | 1.5% |
| 9 | India | $89.4 million | 1% |
| 10 | South Africa | $84.1 million | 0.9% |
| 11 | Pakistan | $76.5 million | 0.8% |
| 12 | Greece | $71.1 million | 0.8% |
| 13 | Germany | $63.2 million | 0.7% |
| 14 | Belgium | $63 million | 0.7% |
| 15 | Uruguay | $62.4 million | 0.7% |

### Importers of meat of sheep or goats, fresh, chilled or frozen (HS 0204), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $1.5 billion | 17% |
| 2 | China | $1.2 billion | 13% |
| 3 | France | $868.9 million | 9.6% |
| 4 | United Arab Emirates | $426.6 million | 4.7% |
| 5 | Germany | $412.8 million | 4.6% |
| 6 | United Kingdom | $407.7 million | 4.5% |
| 7 | Netherlands | $341.2 million | 3.8% |
| 8 | Belgium | $304.6 million | 3.4% |
| 9 | Saudi Arabia | $266.8 million | 3% |
| 10 | Italy | $215.4 million | 2.4% |
| 11 | South Korea | $208.6 million | 2.3% |
| 12 | Canada | $206.6 million | 2.3% |
| 13 | Malaysia | $206.3 million | 2.3% |
| 14 | Kuwait | $193.9 million | 2.2% |
| 15 | Iran | $187.9 million | 2.1% |

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

In 2024 the largest exporter of sheep and goat meat (HS 0204) was Australia, with $3.8 billion, or 42% of the world's $9 billion of export value (CEPII BACI), and New Zealand was second with $2.2 billion (25%). No one else is close: United Kingdom (7.7%) and Ireland (4.7%) follow. The largest importer was United States with $1.5 billion, 17% of the world's $9 billion, then China (13%), France (9.6%) and United Arab Emirates (4.7%). The customs heading covers goat meat as well as sheep meat, while the production table above counts sheep alone, so the two are not directly comparable.

A second trade runs alongside the meat: live animals. Under HS 0104 the world traded $2.5 billion of live sheep and goats in 2024, and it is a completely different map. Saudi Arabia took 52% of imports, far ahead of Morocco (6.3%) and Jordan (5.7%), while Sudan (29%) and Somalia (12%) led the exporters. That trade exists because buyers in the Gulf and North Africa want animals slaughtered locally, above all for Eid al-Adha, and it is supplied largely from the Horn of Africa and from Romania and Spain. It is also the most contested part of the sheep business, and Australia has legislated to end its live sheep export trade by sea.


## What does lamb cost?

- New Zealand, frozen carcass, wholesale London: $7.43/kg in August 2026; 12-month change +19%; 10-year change +9%; all-time high $10.28/kg in May 2011; real high (2024 US$) $14.34/kg in May 2011 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

There is no international futures contract for sheep meat, so price discovery happens in three separate places. Farmers sell either through saleyard auction or, more often, direct to a processor on an over-the-hooks schedule, a published grid of prices per kilogram of carcass weight that varies by weight band and fat score. Industry bodies publish indicators built from those transactions, such as Australia's national trade lamb indicator in cents per kilogram carcass weight and New Zealand's farmgate schedules. Exporters then sell cuts into destination markets at negotiated prices, and wholesale quotations in the importing markets complete the picture.

The series charted here is New Zealand, frozen carcass, wholesale London, a wholesale quotation in an importing market rather than a farmgate price. In August 2026 it stood at $7.43/kg, up 19% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The record monthly average is $10.28/kg, set in May 2011, and unusually that month is also the real record once US consumer prices are taken into account, at $14.34/kg. The lowest month in a series that begins in 1971 was $0.75/kg in July 1971. A frozen carcass quotation prices a whole bone-in carcass, which is why the number is far below what a retail rack or loin fetches and why it moves differently from the cut prices exporters actually earn.

Three ambiguities are worth carrying into any lamb price. The first is age: lamb, hogget and mutton are different products with different values, and a headline sheep meat figure blends them. The second is form and destination, because the same animal yields chilled racks and loins bound for restaurants in the United States and Europe at one price and frozen flaps and forequarter cuts bound for China at another, so an exporter's realized value depends on where each part of the carcass is sold rather than on a single number. The third is that this is one origin quoted in one market: a New Zealand carcass price quoted in London says nothing directly about what an Australian lamb fetched at Wagga or what a Chinese buyer paid at Qingdao.


## What moves the price of lamb?

### Chinese demand for lower-value cuts

China is both the largest producer and one of the largest importers, and what it buys is mostly the cuts western markets do not want: flaps, breast, forequarter and bone-in shoulder. That demand supports the value of half the carcass, so when Chinese buying slows the exporter cannot simply sell those cuts elsewhere at the same price and the whole carcass value falls. Chinese domestic flock policy, cold-store inventories and the timing of festival buying therefore move southern hemisphere farmgate prices directly.

### The flock cycle

Sheep biology is slow. A ewe produces one lamb crop a year, and rebuilding a flock means retaining ewe lambs instead of selling them, which cuts supply in the short run in order to raise it two years later. Liquidation does the opposite, flooding the market with mutton and depressing prices while shrinking future capacity. That two-year lag turns modest changes in farmer intentions into large swings in supply, and it is why sheep meat prices trend for years rather than mean-revert quickly.

### Drought and pasture growth

Almost all export lamb is finished on grass, so rainfall decides both how many lambs reach weight and when they arrive. Drought in eastern Australia forces early sale of lambs and ewes, briefly glutting the market and then leaving a hole; a wet season holds animals on farm and lets farmers rebuild. In New Zealand a dry summer in Canterbury or Hawke's Bay does the same thing on a smaller scale. Because both exporters sit in the southern hemisphere, their seasons coincide rather than offset.

### Wool prices and the dual-purpose choice

A sheep produces two saleable products, and the balance between them decides which breeds farmers keep. When wool is valuable, flocks tilt toward Merino and similar fine-wool types that grow slowly and yield a lighter carcass; when wool is cheap, farmers move to terminal meat breeds and crossbred lambs that grow fast. Australia's shift from wool to meat after its wool price support scheme collapsed in 1991 is the clearest example, and it permanently changed the composition of world lamb supply.

### Competing land uses in the exporting countries

Sheep country is worth something else. In New Zealand, pasture has been converted first to dairying and more recently to production forestry and carbon forestry, and each hectare converted is permanently out of sheep. In Australia, cropping has expanded into former grazing land where rainfall allows. Because these conversions are effectively irreversible on any short horizon, they set a slowly declining ceiling on how much exportable lamb can exist, independently of price.

### Tariff quotas and trade agreements

Sheep meat is one of the most quota-bound trades in agriculture. New Zealand's access to the European market has always run through a country-specific tariff quota, which had to be divided between the European Union and the United Kingdom after Brexit, and free trade agreements with China, the United Kingdom and others have progressively removed duties on southern hemisphere product. Because the volumes involved are large relative to the trade, a change in quota administration reallocates cargoes between hemispheres rather than changing how much meat exists.

### Festival demand and the live trade

A large share of world sheep consumption is tied to the Islamic calendar, above all Eid al-Adha, when animals are slaughtered ritually and demand concentrates into a few days. That drives the live export trade from the Horn of Africa, Romania and Spain to the Gulf, and it lifts prices for whole carcasses and for particular weight ranges in the weeks beforehand. Because the Islamic calendar moves against the solar one, the peak drifts through the seasons and interacts differently with southern hemisphere supply each year.

## How is lamb produced?

Export lamb is a grass system. Ewes are mated in autumn and lamb in spring, so the southern hemisphere's peak kill runs from late spring through summer and the northern hemisphere's from summer into autumn. Lambs are weaned at a few months and finished on pasture, forage crops such as brassicas, or grain in drier systems, and are drafted for slaughter when they reach a target weight and fat cover. Genetics divide by purpose: fine-wool Merino types for wool with meat as a by-product, maternal breeds such as Romney and Coopworth for ewe flocks, and terminal sires such as Suffolk, Texel and Poll Dorset crossed over those ewes to produce fast-growing meat lambs.

At the works the animal is stunned and bled, the pelt is removed mechanically, the carcass is eviscerated, washed and moved into a chiller. Much of the export kill in both countries is halal-certified, which changes the slaughter procedure and the staffing but not the subsequent handling, and it is what makes Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian markets accessible. Carcasses are graded on weight and on fat cover, measured in New Zealand and Australia at a fixed point on the carcass, and it is that grid that determines what the farmer is paid per kilogram.

Boning follows. A carcass is broken into primals and then into the cuts each market wants: French-trimmed racks and loins, which are chilled, vacuum-packed and flown or shipped in refrigerated containers to restaurants in the United States, Europe and the Gulf; legs and shoulders for retail; and flaps, breasts and forequarter cuts, frozen and containerized for China. Chilled product earns far more but has a short shelf life and demands an unbroken cold chain, while frozen product can wait for a market. The rest of the animal has value too: pelts and wool-on skins for leather and shearling, wool grease refined into lanolin, tallow, casings from the intestines, blood and bone meal, and rendered meat meal for pet food.


## What is lamb used for?

Sheep meat is eaten, and how it is eaten varies more by region than almost any other meat. Northern European and American consumers buy racks, loins and legs and treat lamb as an occasional premium meat; Middle Eastern and North African consumers buy whole or halved carcasses and prefer younger animals; Chinese consumers use thin-sliced flap and forequarter for hotpot and skewers; South Asian and Central Asian cooking uses mutton in slow-cooked dishes where the stronger flavour of an older animal is wanted rather than avoided. Those preferences are what make the carcass tradeable at all, because they let an exporter sell every part into the market that values it most.

The non-meat products are old and still significant. Sheepskins become leather, shearling and rugs, the wool recovered from them is scoured and sold, and the grease from that wool is refined into lanolin for cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. Tallow goes into soap, feed and biodiesel; natural casings from the intestines are used for sausages; bones, blood and trimmings are rendered into meal and fat. On the live animal, wool is a separate industry with its own market, and in the Mediterranean and Middle East sheep milk supports a large cheese and yoghurt trade that never appears in meat statistics at all.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The export chain is short, seasonal and highly concentrated. New Zealand and Australia between them run a few dozen large processing plants that handle the great majority of exportable sheep meat, and those plants are sized for the summer peak, which means capacity is the binding constraint for a few months and idle for the rest of the year. Farmers book space weeks ahead, and when the kill backs up during a drought-driven rush the schedule price falls regardless of what overseas buyers are paying. Labour availability at the works is a recurring limit, because boning is skilled, seasonal and hard to staff.

From the plant, chilled product moves in refrigerated containers or by air to the United States, Europe, the United Kingdom and the Gulf, and frozen product moves in containers to China, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. New Zealand ships through Napier, Tauranga, Lyttelton and Port Chalmers, Australia through Melbourne, Adelaide, Fremantle and Brisbane. Voyages to Europe take several weeks, which is why the chilled trade depends on vacuum packaging and precise temperature control and why any port delay is expensive. The live trade runs separately, on specialized livestock carriers from the Horn of Africa, Romania and Spain to Gulf ports.

The vulnerabilities are concentration on both ends. Two countries supply most of the traded meat, so a drought or a disease event in either is felt worldwide; one destination market takes a large share of the low-value cuts, so a downturn in Chinese demand cuts carcass value even when demand for racks in New York is strong. Foot-and-mouth disease is the standing threat, since a single confirmed case in Australia or New Zealand would close export markets immediately, as the 2001 outbreak did to Britain. Reefer container availability, plant labor, and the tariff quota arrangements that govern access to Europe complete the list of things that can stop the trade without any change in how many sheep exist.


## Key companies

- Silver Fern Farms: processor and exporter, New Zealand
- Alliance Group: processor and exporter, New Zealand
- ANZCO Foods: processor and exporter, New Zealand
- Fletcher International Exports: processor and exporter, Australia
- JBS Australia: processor, Australia, listed (JBSS3)
- Dawn Meats: processor, Ireland

## Timeline

- 1882-02: The first frozen meat cargo leaves New Zealand. The sailing ship Dunedin left Port Chalmers with more than four thousand frozen sheep and lamb carcasses and reached London in good condition after ninety-eight days, creating the long-distance meat trade that still shapes the market. (https://teara.govt.nz/en/sheep-farming/page-5)
- 1973-01: Britain joins the European Community. New Zealand's guaranteed access to its principal market was replaced by negotiated quotas, forcing exporters to find buyers across the Middle East, Asia and North America. (https://teara.govt.nz/en/sheep-farming/page-5)
- 1980-10: The European sheepmeat regime sets the quota system. The Community's common organization of the sheepmeat market created the tariff quota framework under which New Zealand and Australian lamb still enters Europe. (https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/farming/animal-products/beef-and-veal-sheep-and-goat_en)
- 2001-02: Foot-and-mouth disease closes British livestock exports. Around six and a half million animals were culled over two hundred and twenty-one days and the European Commission banned all British meat, milk and livestock exports, at a cost later put near eight billion pounds. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5585142/)
- 2008-10: The New Zealand-China free trade agreement takes effect. The first such agreement China signed with a developed country phased out meat tariffs by 2016 and turned China into New Zealand's largest sheepmeat market by volume. (https://www.mfat.govt.nz/en/trade/free-trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements-in-force/nz-china-free-trade-agreement/overview)
- 2011-05: Lamb reaches its highest monthly benchmark price. The frozen New Zealand carcass quotation in London peaked in the World Bank series as Chinese buying met a shrinking southern-hemisphere flock. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets)
- 2019-08: African swine fever redirects Chinese meat demand. The loss of a large share of China's pig herd pulled in every substitute protein, and sheepmeat imports rose with it, tightening the small pool of exportable lamb. (https://www.woah.org/en/disease/african-swine-fever/)
- 2020-01: Australian flock hits a multi-decade low after drought. Years of dry weather cut the national flock to its smallest since the early twentieth century, and the rebuild that followed held lambs back from slaughter and kept supply tight. (https://www.mla.com.au/prices-markets/)
- 2021-12: Prices hold near record levels on tight supply. The benchmark carcass price averaged close to its 2011 peak for a second year as both major exporters rebuilt flocks rather than sold them. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets)
- 2023-05: The Australia-United Kingdom agreement opens tariff-free lamb. Phased quotas moving to unrestricted access changed the competitive map in Britain for the first time since 1973. (https://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/agreements/in-force/aukfta)

## Frequently asked questions

### Which country produces the most lamb?

China produced more sheep meat than any other country in 2024, 2.6 million tonnes in carcass weight, 23% of the world's 11.5 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India was second with 11% and Australia third with 8%. China and India consume essentially all of their own output, so neither appears near the top of the export table.

### Where does lamb come from?

From sheep grazed on land too dry, steep or poor for other farming. In 2024 the world produced 11.5 million tonnes of sheep meat across 176 countries (FAOSTAT), led by China (23%), India (11%) and Australia (8%). Almost all of the lamb that crosses a border comes from Australia and New Zealand.

### Which country exports the most lamb?

Australia was the largest exporter of sheep and goat meat (HS 0204) in 2024, with $3.8 billion, 42% of the world's $9 billion of export value (CEPII BACI), and New Zealand second with 25%. Together they supply most of the traded meat. The customs heading includes goat meat as well as sheep meat.

### Who imports the most lamb?

United States was the largest importer of sheep and goat meat in 2024, taking $1.5 billion, or 17% of the world's $9 billion (CEPII BACI), followed by China (13%) and France (9.6%). Western buyers take chilled racks and legs while China takes flaps and forequarter cuts, so the two are buying different parts of the same animal.

### What is the difference between lamb and mutton?

Age. Lamb is a sheep under about twelve months, hogget is older but has not yet cut its permanent teeth, and mutton is an adult sheep. Lamb is milder and more tender and sells at a large premium; mutton is stronger and is used in slow cooking. Statistics on this page cover all sheep meat together: 11.5 million tonnes in 2024 (FAOSTAT).

### What is the price of lamb?

This site shows monthly averages, not live quotes. The New Zealand, frozen carcass, wholesale London quotation was $7.43/kg in August 2026, up 19% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The record monthly average was $10.28/kg in May 2011. There is no international futures contract for sheep meat, so prices come from saleyards, processor schedules and wholesale quotations.

### Why is lamb so expensive?

Because supply is small and slow to change. A ewe produces one lamb crop a year, most export lamb is finished on grass and therefore hostage to rainfall, and the two supplying countries have been losing sheep country to dairying, cropping and forestry. The benchmark was $7.43/kg in August 2026, up 19% from a year earlier, against a record of $10.28/kg in May 2011 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### Why does New Zealand export so much lamb?

Because refrigerated shipping from 1882 built an industry aimed at distant markets, and the country has more sheep country than domestic demand. New Zealand produced 449,606 tonnes of sheep meat in 2024, 3.9% of world output, yet was the second-largest exporter in 2024 with 25% of world export value (FAOSTAT, CEPII BACI).

### Where does live sheep export go?

Mostly to the Gulf and North Africa, where buyers want animals slaughtered locally, especially for Eid al-Adha. In 2024 Saudi Arabia took 52% of the world's $2.5 billion of live sheep and goat imports (CEPII BACI), and Sudan (29%) was the largest exporter. Australia has legislated to end its seaborne live sheep trade.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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 2026-09-06. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where does lamb come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/lamb/.

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# Where does lead come from?

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

Lead comes mainly from China, which produced 1.9 million tonnes in 2025, 42% of the world's 4.5 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Australia (11%), Peru (6.4%) and United States (6.2%) follow; the top five together supply 71%. The biggest exporter of unwrought lead (HS 7801) is India (10% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, LME cash, was $1,855/t in August 2026, down 5% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Lead travels with zinc in the same sulfide beds laid down on ancient sea floors, so the mine map follows Australia's Mount Isa and Broken Hill, the Chinese and Peruvian polymetallic belts and the carbonate-hosted deposits of Missouri, but most of the world's refined lead now comes from scrapyards rather than from rock.

*A dense, soft metal used overwhelmingly in lead-acid batteries, and the most recycled of the base metals.* Also called: Pb, lead ore, lead concentrate, refined lead, secondary lead.

## Where does lead come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 1.9 million | 42% |
| 2 | Australia | 480,000 | 11% |
| 3 | Peru | 290,000 | 6.4% |
| 4 | United States | 280,000 | 6.2% |
| 5 | Russia | 260,000 | 5.8% |
| 6 | India | 220,000 | 4.9% |
| 7 | Mexico | 200,000 | 4.4% |
| 8 | Bolivia | 100,000 | 2.2% |
| 9 | Sweden | 70,000 | 1.6% |
| 10 | Iran | 70,000 | 1.6% |
| | Rest of world | 500,000 | 14% |
| | World | 4.5 million | 100% |

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026.

Lead is the only major metal for which the mine table is the smaller half of the story. On this page lead production means mined lead measured by its metal content, unless refined or secondary lead is named. World refined lead output is roughly three times world mine output, because recycled batteries supply the difference. In 2025 China mined 1.9 million tonnes, 42% of the world's 4.5 million tonnes of mined lead (USGS MCS). Australia was second at 11%, then Peru at 6.4%, United States at 6.2% and Russia at 5.8%. Countries outside the 12 listed separately accounted for 14%, and world mine output changed -2% from the previous year.

That mine ranking understates supply, and the gap is the central fact of the lead market. Most of the world's refined lead is secondary, recovered from spent lead-acid batteries: the International Lead and Zinc Study Group puts secondary production at between 55% and 65% of refined output over the years from 2005 to 2022, and above 60% every year since 2016 (ILZSG, World Lead Factbook 2023). In the United States the figure is effectively all of it, because the country has had no primary lead refinery since 2013. Lead is the most recycled metal in general use because its main product is a heavy, standardized, valuable object that is collected at the point of replacement: a car battery is worth taking back. So a chart of mine production describes where the ore is, while a chart of refined production describes where the scrap is, and the two are only loosely connected.

Where lead is mined, it is almost never mined alone. Galena, the lead sulfide, forms alongside sphalerite in the same sediment-hosted beds that make zinc deposits, so Mount Isa, McArthur River, Broken Hill, Red Dog and the Peruvian and Chinese polymetallic districts appear on both lists. Carbonate-hosted deposits of the Mississippi Valley type give the higher-grade, lead-dominant mines of southeast Missouri. Silver rides with lead in most of these ores, and silver credits often decide whether a lead mine is worth operating.

Reserves, the part of identified deposits that could be mined economically at the time of the estimate, stood at 95 million tonnes in 2025, with Australia holding 36%, China 23% and Russia 9.4% (USGS MCS). Because so much demand is met by recycling, reserve life means less for lead than for other metals: the working stock of lead already in circulation, most of it in batteries, is turned over every few years and returned to smelters.


## Who exports and imports lead?

More than half of world lead supply is recycled from batteries rather than mined, so the mine table understates where refined lead comes from.

### Exporters of lead ores and concentrates (HS 2607), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mexico | $1.1 billion | 18% |
| 2 | United States | $960.2 million | 16% |
| 3 | Russia | $673.2 million | 11% |
| 4 | Australia | $506.4 million | 8.3% |
| 5 | Peru | $437.9 million | 7.1% |
| 6 | Bolivia | $282.8 million | 4.6% |
| 7 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $207.6 million | 3.4% |
| 8 | Spain | $144.9 million | 2.4% |
| 9 | Sweden | $132.8 million | 2.2% |
| 10 | Tajikistan | $118.1 million | 1.9% |
| 11 | South Africa | $115.1 million | 1.9% |
| 12 | Morocco | $106.8 million | 1.7% |
| 13 | Argentina | $103.3 million | 1.7% |
| 14 | Serbia | $99.4 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | Canada | $90.6 million | 1.5% |

### Importers of lead ores and concentrates (HS 2607), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $2.3 billion | 37% |
| 2 | South Korea | $1.7 billion | 27% |
| 3 | Germany | $440 million | 7.2% |
| 4 | Kazakhstan | $301.5 million | 4.9% |
| 5 | Canada | $284.5 million | 4.6% |
| 6 | Japan | $254.2 million | 4.1% |
| 7 | Belgium | $227.9 million | 3.7% |
| 8 | Australia | $205.2 million | 3.3% |
| 9 | United States | $89.6 million | 1.5% |
| 10 | Bulgaria | $85.8 million | 1.4% |
| 11 | Netherlands | $45.5 million | 0.7% |
| 12 | Montenegro | $37.4 million | 0.6% |
| 13 | Mexico | $36.9 million | 0.6% |
| 14 | United Kingdom | $36.1 million | 0.6% |
| 15 | Sweden | $33.8 million | 0.6% |

### Exporters of unwrought lead (HS 7801), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | $877.2 million | 10% |
| 2 | South Korea | $764.5 million | 8.7% |
| 3 | Australia | $756 million | 8.6% |
| 4 | United Kingdom | $476.3 million | 5.4% |
| 5 | Malaysia | $418.7 million | 4.8% |
| 6 | Germany | $411.3 million | 4.7% |
| 7 | Belgium | $366.6 million | 4.2% |
| 8 | Canada | $334.5 million | 3.8% |
| 9 | Kazakhstan | $291.7 million | 3.3% |
| 10 | Bulgaria | $277.6 million | 3.2% |
| 11 | Mexico | $254.1 million | 2.9% |
| 12 | Poland | $220.2 million | 2.5% |
| 13 | Saudi Arabia | $178 million | 2% |
| 14 | Singapore | $175.8 million | 2% |
| 15 | Japan | $159.6 million | 1.8% |

### Importers of unwrought lead (HS 7801), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | $963.2 million | 11% |
| 2 | United States | $928.3 million | 11% |
| 3 | Vietnam | $635 million | 7.3% |
| 4 | Singapore | $549.9 million | 6.3% |
| 5 | Germany | $502.8 million | 5.8% |
| 6 | China | $484.8 million | 5.5% |
| 7 | United Kingdom | $423.1 million | 4.8% |
| 8 | Czechia | $388.7 million | 4.4% |
| 9 | South Korea | $354.1 million | 4.1% |
| 10 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $302.9 million | 3.5% |
| 11 | Italy | $253.2 million | 2.9% |
| 12 | Spain | $203 million | 2.3% |
| 13 | Poland | $198.9 million | 2.3% |
| 14 | Malaysia | $188.3 million | 2.2% |
| 15 | Greece | $168.5 million | 1.9% |

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

Two flows matter. Concentrate (HS 2607) moves from mines to primary smelters; in 2024 Mexico was the largest exporter with 18% of a trade worth $6.1 billion, ahead of United States and Russia, while China took 37% and South Korea 27% of imports (CEPII BACI). Refined lead (HS 7801) is the finished metal. In 2024 India led exports of unwrought lead (HS 7801) with 10% of the world's $8.7 billion, followed by South Korea and Australia, and India was the largest importer at 11%.

A third flow is harder to see. Used lead-acid batteries and battery scrap are traded internationally as hazardous waste, and their movement is controlled under the Basel Convention, which restricts exports to countries that cannot handle them safely. Because the material is bulky, dirty and regulated, most recycling happens close to where the batteries were used, which is why refined lead output tracks vehicle fleets and telecom infrastructure more closely than it tracks orebodies. Countries that export refined lead often do so because they host large secondary smelters, not large mines, and a country can be a substantial exporter of metal with almost no mine production at all.


## What does lead cost?

- LME cash: $1,855/t in August 2026; 12-month change -5%; 10-year change +1%; all-time high $3,720/t in October 2007; real high (2024 US$) $6,005/t in June 1979 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- Lead, 99.97% pure, LME spot (IMF): $1,843/t in July 2026; 12-month change -8%; 10-year change +0%; all-time high $3,723/t in October 2007; real high (2024 US$) $5,582/t in October 2007 (IMF PCPS).

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

### How it is priced

The benchmark is the London Metal Exchange lead contract, ticker PB, traded in 25 t lots quoted in US$/t and settled by delivery of refined lead of at least 99.97% purity into an LME warehouse. There is a cash price for delivery in two days and a three-month price, and the spread between them shows whether nearby metal is tight. The Shanghai Futures Exchange lists a yuan contract, and it quotes primary and secondary lead separately, which is unusual and reflects how much of Chinese supply comes from recycling. Physical buyers pay the exchange price plus a regional premium.

The series charted here is LME cash. In August 2026 it averaged $1,855/t, down 5% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The highest monthly average was $3,720/t in October 2007; adjusted for US inflation the real high was $6,005/t in June 1979, and the lowest monthly average since the series began in 1960 was $141/t in August 1962. Lead trades in a narrower range than the other base metals, because recycled supply expands quickly when prices rise and contracts when they fall, which damps both ends of the cycle.

Two different pricing mechanisms sit under that single quote. Primary smelters buy concentrate at the exchange value of the contained lead minus a treatment charge, negotiated annually and traded spot, with credits for silver and gold and penalties for impurities; those charges are the primary smelter's margin and move with concentrate availability. Secondary smelters buy scrap batteries at a discount to the exchange price that has to cover collection, breaking, smelting, refining and the cost of managing the acid and the plastic. The scrap discount is the real driver of refined supply: when it is wide, recyclers run hard and refined metal is plentiful; when battery scrap gets scarce or environmental compliance gets dearer, the discount narrows, recyclers idle and the metal market tightens even though no mine has changed its plan.


## What moves the price of lead?

### Battery scrap availability and the scrap discount

Secondary smelters compete for a limited flow of spent batteries, and the price they must pay relative to the exchange quote decides whether they run. Because battery returns depend on how many were sold three to five years earlier rather than on today's metal price, the supply of scrap is close to fixed in the short run. A surge in recycler capacity therefore bids up scrap and squeezes margins, and a wave of closures does the opposite, so refined supply swings on collection economics rather than on mining.

### Vehicle fleets and replacement batteries

Most lead demand is replacement batteries for vehicles already on the road, not batteries for new ones, which makes it unusually steady. Every combustion car, and almost every battery-electric car too, carries a low-voltage lead-acid battery for starting, lighting and electronics, and it is replaced every few years. Cold winters kill weak batteries and lift demand; mild ones defer it. The size and age of the fleet in China, India, the United States and Europe therefore matters more than new vehicle sales.

### Environmental regulation of smelters

Lead is a neurotoxin, and the rules governing emissions, worker blood-lead levels, soil contamination and waste disposal are among the strictest applied to any metal. Enforcement campaigns close small secondary smelters, particularly in China and South Asia, and compliance costs have closed primary smelters in high-income countries outright. Each tightening removes refining capacity faster than it removes demand, so regulation is a supply-side driver, and the location of refining has shifted accordingly.

### Substitution in stationary storage and start-stop systems

Lead-acid batteries are cheap, recyclable and tolerant of abuse, but they are heavy and store little energy for their weight. Lithium-ion has taken most of the market for forklifts, telecom backup and grid storage, and it competes for the low-voltage automotive slot as well. Against that, start-stop systems and the growing electrical load in vehicles have raised the size and specification of the batteries that remain. The net effect is slow and structural rather than cyclical.

### Zinc mine economics

Because lead comes out of the same mines as zinc and silver, lead concentrate supply is decided by prices the lead market does not set. A wave of zinc mine closures cuts lead concentrate supply as a side effect; a zinc expansion adds lead nobody asked for. This is why primary lead output can move sharply while lead demand is flat, and why the treatment charges paid to primary lead smelters often move in step with those in zinc.

### Exchange stocks and warehouse flows

Lead's visible inventory is small relative to consumption, so deliveries into and out of exchange warehouses move the spreads sharply. Metal is also stored off-warrant, outside the exchange system, which means reported stocks can jump when off-market metal is warranted rather than because anything real has changed. Traders watch the cash-to-three-month spread and the concentration of warrant holdings for signs that a dominant position is squeezing nearby delivery dates.

### Trade rules on hazardous waste

Used batteries are regulated as hazardous waste, so their movement across borders is licensed and sometimes barred. Tighter enforcement of the Basel Convention, national import bans and customs scrutiny redirect scrap toward domestic recyclers and away from cheaper informal processing abroad. That raises the cost of recycled lead in some regions and lowers it in others, which shows up as regional premium differences and as shifts in where refined metal is produced rather than as a change in world supply.

## How is lead produced?

The primary route starts with galena, mined underground with sphalerite and silver minerals. The ore is crushed, ground and floated in stages to give a lead concentrate that typically runs well above half lead by weight, plus separate zinc and sometimes copper concentrates. The concentrate is sintered or roasted to convert sulfide to oxide and capture sulfur as sulfuric acid, then reduced with coke in a blast furnace or a direct smelting furnace to produce lead bullion. Bullion is refined either pyrometallurgically, by successive drossing steps that remove copper, arsenic, antimony, tin, silver and bismuth, or electrolytically. The silver recovered at this stage is a large share of world silver supply and often worth more than the lead.

The secondary route is shorter and cheaper, which is why it dominates. Spent batteries are broken in a hammer mill and separated into three streams: metallic grids and terminals, lead paste, which is a mixture of lead oxide and lead sulfate, and polypropylene cases; the sulfuric acid is drained and either neutralized or recovered as sodium sulfate. The paste is desulfurized and then reduced in a rotary or reverberatory furnace with coke and fluxes, and the resulting bullion is refined and alloyed with antimony, calcium or tin to the specification the battery maker wants. The plastic is washed and pelletized into new cases. A modern plant recovers almost all the lead that enters it.

The two routes make chemically identical metal but face different constraints. A primary smelter is tied to concentrate supply, sulfur capture and a long refining train; a secondary smelter is tied to a collection network, to furnace emissions control and to the disposal of slag that carries lead and other metals. Because the secondary route is so much less capital-intensive, capacity can be added quickly, which is one reason lead prices spend long stretches near the cost of recycling.


## What is lead used for?

Batteries are the market. The International Lead and Zinc Study Group put lead-acid batteries at 86% of world refined lead use in 2022, ahead of rolled and extruded products at 7% and lead compounds at 5%, with the battery share reaching 92% in China and the United States (ILZSG, World Lead Factbook 2023). Automotive starting, lighting and ignition batteries are the largest single application, with industrial batteries for backup power, forklifts and grid support behind them. The chemistry has barely changed in a century and a half: lead and lead dioxide plates in sulfuric acid, delivering a high burst of current at low cost and surviving deep cold. Every combustion vehicle carries one, and so does almost every electric vehicle, which still needs a low-voltage battery for its electronics.

Everything else is a remainder. Lead sheet is used for roofing, flashing and radiation shielding in hospitals and laboratories, where its density stops X-rays and gamma rays. Lead alloys go into cable sheathing, solders, bearings and ammunition. Lead compounds still appear in some specialist glass, ceramics and pigments, and lead-zirconate-titanate is the standard piezoelectric material in sensors and actuators. The historic uses that made lead notorious have been legislated away: leaded gasoline, lead paint, lead water pipes and lead solder in food cans have all been phased out across most of the world.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Refining sits close to consumption rather than close to ore. Because more than half of refined supply comes from batteries collected locally, the map of lead refining follows vehicle fleets: China, the United States, India, South Korea and Europe. Primary smelting is a smaller and shrinking business concentrated in China, South Korea, Kazakhstan, Australia, Mexico and a handful of European plants; several high-income countries have closed their last primary smelter and now run entirely on secondary metal. That is why India led exports of refined lead in 2024 at 10% of world export value (CEPII BACI) while ranking well down the mine table.

Concentrate still moves long distances. It leaves Australia through Townsville and Port Pirie, Peru through Callao, Mexico through Manzanillo and the Missouri mines through Gulf ports, mostly bound for smelters in China and South Korea, which together take a large share of world concentrate imports (CEPII BACI). LME warehouses in Asia and Europe hold the deliverable stocks, and the small size of those stocks relative to consumption makes the spreads volatile.

The single points of failure are unusual for a metal. One is regulatory: a smelter can lose its license over emissions or blood-lead findings and never reopen, and the loss of one large primary plant can remove a country's entire primary capacity. Another is the collection network, which depends on scrapyards, garages and informal collectors; when scrap prices fall, batteries pile up uncollected and refined supply drops months later. A third is the acid market, because primary smelting produces sulfuric acid that must be sold or neutralized, so a weak acid market raises the cost of running a smelter. Finally, a handful of polymetallic mines carry a large share of concentrate, and their decisions are driven by zinc and silver, not by lead.


## Key companies

- Glencore: trader, Switzerland, listed (GLEN)
- The Doe Run Company: miner, United States
- Nyrstar: smelter, Netherlands
- Trafigura: trader, Singapore
- Korea Zinc: refiner, South Korea, listed (010130)
- Ecobat: refiner, United States
- Hindustan Zinc: miner, India, listed (500188)

## Timeline

- 1881-04: Faure patents the pasted-plate battery. Applying lead oxide paste to a grid replaced the slow electrochemical forming of earlier cells and made the lead-acid battery mass-producible, creating the demand that still dominates lead. (https://patents.google.com/patent/US252002A/en)
- 1959-01: International Lead and Zinc Study Group established. The United Nations set up the intergovernmental body that still publishes the authoritative split between primary and secondary refined lead. (https://www.ilzsg.org/wp-content/uploads/SitePDFs/1_ILZSG%20World%20Lead%20Factbook%202023.pdf)
- 1973-11: United States begins phasing lead out of gasoline. The rules announced on 28 November 1973 started a twenty-five year retreat from the largest dispersive use lead ever had. (https://www.epa.gov/archive/epa/aboutepa/epa-requires-phase-out-lead-all-grades-gasoline.html)
- 1978-02: United States bans lead-containing paint. The Consumer Product Safety Commission rule applied to products made after 27 February 1978 and closed a second dispersive use. (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2024-title16-vol2/pdf/CFR-2024-title16-vol2-part1303.pdf)
- 1989-03: Basel Convention adopted. Bringing transboundary movements of hazardous waste under international control shaped where spent lead-acid batteries may legally be shipped for recycling. (https://www.basel.int/TheConvention/Overview/TextoftheConvention/tabid/1275/Default.aspx)
- 1996-01: Leaded gasoline banned for US on-road vehicles. The ban took effect on 1 January 1996, ending more than seventy years of leaded fuel in the largest vehicle market. (https://www.epa.gov/archive/epa/aboutepa/epa-takes-final-step-phaseout-leaded-gasoline.html)
- 2000-09: EU End-of-Life Vehicles Directive enters into force. Making carmakers responsible for take-back and setting recycling targets built the collection system that feeds European secondary lead smelters. (https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/end-life-vehicles_en)
- 2003-01: EU restricts lead in electrical equipment. The RoHS directive pushed lead out of electronic solder and glass, concentrating what remained of demand into batteries. (https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/rohs-directive_en)
- 2007-12: China confirmed as the largest refined lead producer. USGS put China at more than a third of world refined lead output for 2007, marking the shift of smelting from the Atlantic to Asia. (https://d9-wret.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/production/mineral-pubs/lead/myb1-2007-lead.pdf)
- 2013-12: The last US primary lead smelter closes. Herculaneum in Missouri stopped smelting at the end of December 2013 under a settlement over air quality standards, leaving the United States entirely dependent on recycled lead. (https://doerun.com/media/news/the-doe-run-company-provides-update-on-closure-of-last-primary-lead-smelter-in-us/)
- 2021-08: Leaded petrol ends worldwide. The United Nations announced on 30 August 2021 that the last country using leaded petrol had stopped, closing a century-long chapter in lead demand. (https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/08/1098792)
- 2021-10: European smelters curtail on power costs. Curtailments of up to half of output at European base-metal smelters showed how exposed electrolytic and pyrometallurgical refining is to wholesale electricity prices. (https://www.nyrstar.com/resource-center/press-releases/nyrstar-curtails-production-at-its-european-smelters)
- 2023-08: EU Batteries Regulation enters into force. Binding collection, recycling-efficiency and lead-recovery targets replaced the 2006 directive and set the strictest recycling mandate lead has faced. (https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/batteries-and-accumulators_en)
- 2025-08: Australian governments fund Port Pirie and Hobart. Public support of A$135 million to keep Australia's only lead refinery and its zinc smelter running showed how thin smelting margins had become. (https://www.nyrstar.com/resource-center/press-releases/transitionary-funding-secured-for-nyrstar-australias-critical-metals-processing)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most lead

China mines the most lead. In 2025 it produced 1.9 million tonnes of lead content in ore, 42% of the world's 4.5 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Australia was second at 11% and Peru third. Refined lead output is about three times mine output, because most refined metal is recycled from batteries rather than mined.

### where does lead come from

Most refined lead comes from recycled lead-acid batteries, not from mines. The mined part comes from galena, a lead sulfide found with zinc and silver in sediment-hosted deposits in Australia, China and Peru and in the carbonate rocks of Missouri. In 2025 mines produced 4.5 million tonnes of lead content (USGS MCS), and secondary smelters produced more than that again.

### is lead recycled

Yes, more than any other metal in general use. The International Lead and Zinc Study Group puts secondary metal at 55% to 65% of world refined lead output since 2005 and above 60% since 2016; in the United States it is effectively all of it. Batteries are collected at the point of replacement, broken into lead, paste and plastic, and smelted back into new plates, usually within a few weeks.

### what is lead used for

Lead-acid batteries took 86% of refined lead in 2022, mostly replacement batteries for vehicles already on the road, plus industrial batteries for backup power and forklifts (ILZSG). The rest goes into radiation shielding sheet, cable sheathing, solders, bearings, ammunition and piezoelectric ceramics. Leaded gasoline, lead paint, lead water pipes and lead solder in food cans have been phased out almost everywhere.

### what is the price of lead today

This site shows monthly averages, not live quotes. The LME cash price averaged $1,855/t in August 2026, down 5% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The highest monthly average was $3,720/t in October 2007; the real, inflation-adjusted peak was $6,005/t in June 1979. Live quotes come from the London Metal Exchange.

### why is lead cheaper than other base metals

Because recycled supply responds quickly to price. When lead rises, secondary smelters bid harder for battery scrap and refined output expands within months, which caps rallies; when it falls, recyclers idle and supply shrinks, which limits declines. Demand is also unusually steady, since replacement batteries track the existing vehicle fleet rather than new sales. The result is a narrower trading range than copper, nickel or tin.

### which country has the most lead reserves

Australia holds the largest lead reserves, 36% of the world's 95 million tonnes in 2025, ahead of China at 23% and Russia at 9.4% (USGS MCS). Reserve life matters less for lead than for other metals, because the working stock already circulating in batteries is recovered and reused every few years.

### which country exports the most lead

For refined lead (HS 7801), India led exports in 2024 with 10% of the world's $8.7 billion (CEPII BACI), and India was the largest importer at 11%. For lead ores and concentrates (HS 2607) the largest exporter was Mexico at 18%, with China the biggest buyer.

## Sources

- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries
- 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
- IMF Primary Commodity Price System (PCPS), 2026-08-06, fetched 6 September 2026. License: © International Monetary Fund. All rights reserved (IMF terms of use). https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS

Text last reviewed 2026-09-06. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where does lead come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/lead/.

---

# Where do lentils come from?

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

Lentils come mainly from Canada, which produced 2.4 million tonnes in 2024, 31% of the world's 7.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India (23%), Australia (16%) and Kazakhstan (5.8%) follow; the top five together supply 81%. The biggest exporter of lentils (HS 071340) is Canada (38% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Lentils are a short-season legume that needs a dry finish to harvest cleanly, so the world's exportable surplus grows on the semi-arid plains of Saskatchewan, southern Australia and northern Kazakhstan, while the largest consuming country, India, grows a crop its own kitchens absorb.

*A fast-cooking pulse grown in dry temperate zones and traded heavily into South Asia.* Also called: lentil, red lentils, masoor, dal.

## Where do lentils come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Canada | 2.4 million | 31% |
| 2 | India | 1.8 million | 23% |
| 3 | Australia | 1.3 million | 16% |
| 4 | Kazakhstan | 455,960 | 5.8% |
| 5 | United States | 410,460 | 5.2% |
| 6 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 405,000 | 5.1% |
| 7 | Russia | 239,886 | 3% |
| 8 | Bangladesh | 184,819 | 2.3% |
| 9 | China | 167,596 | 2.1% |
| 10 | Nepal | 152,936 | 1.9% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 4.8% |
| | World | 7.9 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 Canada produced 2.4 million tonnes, 31% of the world's 7.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India followed with 23%, then Australia (16%), Kazakhstan (5.8%) and United States (5.2%). The top five account for 81%, 43 countries reported a crop and 4.8% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +67% over the ten years to 2024 and +16% on the previous year.

The gap between where lentils grow and where they are eaten defines the crop. Canada and Australia grow lentils they barely eat, on dry land where a short-season legume fits neatly into a cereal rotation and where harvest falls in settled weather. India and its neighbors eat lentils daily and grow less than they consume.

Color and size divide the crop again. Red lentils, dehulled and split, cook in minutes and dominate South Asian and Middle Eastern demand, while large green lentils hold their shape and go to Europe, North Africa and North America. Kazakhstan's rapid entry came from converting grain land, and most of its crop moves to Turkey (Türkiye).


## Who exports and imports lentils?

### Exporters of lentils, dried and shelled (HS 071340), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Canada | $1.6 billion | 38% |
| 2 | Australia | $909 million | 22% |
| 3 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $619.6 million | 15% |
| 4 | United States | $333.1 million | 8% |
| 5 | India | $182.8 million | 4.4% |
| 6 | Russia | $148.6 million | 3.6% |
| 7 | Kazakhstan | $109.5 million | 2.6% |
| 8 | United Arab Emirates | $76.1 million | 1.8% |
| 9 | Egypt | $26.7 million | 0.6% |
| 10 | Belgium | $16.8 million | 0.4% |
| 11 | Netherlands | $13.2 million | 0.3% |
| 12 | Ukraine | $11.5 million | 0.3% |
| 13 | Bahrain | $10.7 million | 0.3% |
| 14 | Germany | $10.4 million | 0.2% |
| 15 | Argentina | $10.2 million | 0.2% |

### Importers of lentils, dried and shelled (HS 071340), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | $844.5 million | 20% |
| 2 | Bangladesh | $427.3 million | 10% |
| 3 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $411.9 million | 9.9% |
| 4 | United Arab Emirates | $221.1 million | 5.3% |
| 5 | Iraq | $216.6 million | 5.2% |
| 6 | Egypt | $189.5 million | 4.5% |
| 7 | Algeria | $133.9 million | 3.2% |
| 8 | Sri Lanka | $122.4 million | 2.9% |
| 9 | Pakistan | $107.5 million | 2.6% |
| 10 | Canada | $105.9 million | 2.5% |
| 11 | Colombia | $105.5 million | 2.5% |
| 12 | Sudan | $88.6 million | 2.1% |
| 13 | United States | $82 million | 2% |
| 14 | Italy | $75.2 million | 1.8% |
| 15 | Morocco | $71.8 million | 1.7% |

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

Canada was the largest exporter of lentils (HS 071340) in 2024 with 38% of world export value, ahead of Australia (22%), on world trade of $4.2 billion (CEPII BACI). India was the largest importer with 20%.

Turkey appears near the top of both tables, and that is a processing business rather than a contradiction. It buys whole red lentils, dehulls, splits, polishes and repacks them, then re-exports into the Middle East and North Africa. Canada supplies both the raw material and, in competition, the finished article.

India is the market everything else orbits. Its own rabi harvest, its stocks and its import duty decide how much of the Canadian and Australian crop finds a home, and Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq take much of the rest.


## What do lentils cost?

### How they are priced

There is no futures market for lentils and no free public benchmark price, so this site quotes none. Prices are physical and specific: grower bids posted by Canadian and Australian processors for a named grade, fob offers from exporters, and mandi prices in India. Private newsletters publish assessments, but they are subscription products.

Much of the crop is sold before it is grown. Processors offer production contracts at a fixed price for a stated tonnage, usually with an act of God clause that releases the grower if the crop fails, and the balance is sold spot at harvest. Importing governments add a second layer, buying by public tender, and those awards are among the few prices anyone outside the trade can see.


## What moves the price of lentils?

### India's import duty and its own crop

India is the largest importer and moves its lentil duty between zero and punitive rates within a few seasons to manage domestic prices. With the size of its own rabi harvest, that decision determines whether Canadian and Australian growers face a deep market or a thin one.

### Prairie growing-season weather

Much of the world's exportable lentil supply comes from one dry region of western Canada, so a heat wave or drought there removes tonnage the rest of the world cannot replace. The 2021 Prairie drought cut the Canadian crop sharply and tightened export availability for a full year.

### Color and quality rather than tonnage

Rain at harvest stains and sprouts lentils and can drop a lot from human-consumption grade to feed within days. Because the premium sits in appearance for green lentils and milling yield for red, two crops of identical weight can be worth very different amounts.

### Rotation limits and root disease

Lentils fix nitrogen and break cereal disease cycles, as [chickpeas](/commodities/chickpeas/) do, but aphanomyces root rot persists in soil for years and forces long gaps between pulse crops. That caps how far area can expand in the established growing regions whatever the price does.

### New supply from central Asia

Kazakhstan and its neighbors have converted grain land to lentils and supply Turkey in volume, changing the arithmetic for Canadian and Australian sellers into the Mediterranean. Supply that arrives by rail and truck competes on different freight economics from supply shipped in containers.

## How are lentils produced?

Lentils are a small bushy annual, seeded shallow and often into standing cereal stubble that shelters the crop and holds moisture. They nodulate and fix their own nitrogen, flower and pod over a few weeks, and mature in roughly three months, short enough to fit between a cereal harvest and a hard frost.

Harvest is the difficult part. The plant is short and the lowest pods sit close to the ground, so growers either desiccate the crop and straight-cut it or swath and pick it up, and either way stones are a constant hazard. The seed is then cleaned, sized and color sorted.

Red lentils are processed further. The seed coat is scoured off and the cotyledons split, producing the fast-cooking orange splits sold across South Asia and the Middle East, and the splits are usually polished. Green lentils are sold whole with the seed coat intact, because the appearance is the product.


## What are lentils used for?

Lentils are almost entirely a food crop. Red splits cook down into dal, soups and purees in twenty minutes and need no soaking, which is much of their appeal, while green and brown lentils hold their shape for salads and canning. Lentil flour and lentil protein have found a place in snacks, pasta and plant-based foods.

The by-products are feed and fertility. Hulls, screenings and chaff from cleaning go to livestock, and lentil straw is fed as fodder. The larger by-product is agronomic: the nitrogen the crop fixes and the disease break it gives the following cereal, which is why growers plant lentils even in a poor price year.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Canadian lentils move from farm bins to pulse plants across southern Saskatchewan, where they are cleaned, sized and color sorted and red lentils are dehulled and split. From there they are containerized inland and railed to Vancouver, Montreal and Thunder Bay, or trucked south into the United States.

Australia runs a similar chain out of South Australia and Victoria through Melbourne, Adelaide and Port Kembla, while Kazakhstan's crop moves overland by rail and truck toward Turkey. Turkey then acts as the region's processing and re-export hub, so a lentil can cross several borders before it is eaten.

The vulnerabilities are concentration and containers. One dry region supplies much of world trade, so a single bad season is a world event, and because pulses move in boxes rather than bulk, container availability and freight rates feed straight through into the delivered price in South Asia.


## Timeline

- 1960s: Saskatchewan farmers begin growing pulses for export. The first commercial peas and lentils on the Canadian prairies established a crop that would come to dominate world lentil trade. (https://esask.uregina.ca/entry/pulse_crops_and_industry.html)
- 1978: The Laird lentil is released. A large green variety bred at the Crop Development Centre in Saskatoon, released as drought cut the American Palouse crop, turned Saskatchewan into the world's lentil supplier. (https://news.usask.ca/articles/research/2021/lentils-first-breakthrough-in-cdc-history-of-re-shaping-prairie-agriculture.php)
- 1996: Red lentil area begins expanding in Saskatchewan. Adding red lentils to a green-lentil industry opened the far larger South Asian and Middle Eastern market and reshaped what the prairies grew. (https://esask.uregina.ca/entry/pulse_crops_and_industry.html)
- 2016: The UN runs an International Year of Pulses. The campaign put the nitrogen-fixing and nutritional case for lentils in front of food manufacturers and agronomists at the same time. (https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/From-butter-beans-to-pigeon-peas-UN-launches-International-Year-of-Pulses/en)
- 2017: India imposes duties on imported lentils. Tariffs applied to protect Indian growers cut the world's largest buyer out of the market and collapsed the share of North American pulse exports going to India. (https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2019/september/u-s-exports-of-chickpeas-lentils-and-dry-peas-have-dropped-sharply-due-to-a-steep-decline-in-shipments-to-india)
- 2021: Drought cuts the Canadian prairie crop. Heat and moisture deficit through June and July collapsed Saskatchewan lentil crop ratings and forced export rationing from the origin that supplies most of world trade. (https://saskpulse.com/resources/canadian-pea-and-lentil-outlook/)
- 2024: Kazakhstan reaches record lentil exports. A new origin shipping mostly to Turkey showed that lentil supply can be built quickly on converted grain land, adding competition in the Mediterranean market. (https://ukragroconsult.com/en/news/kazakhstan-heads-for-a-new-lentil-export-record/)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most lentils

Canada produced 2.4 million tonnes in 2024, 31% of the world's 7.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India was second with 23%, and the top five together accounted for 81%. Almost all of Canada's crop comes from Saskatchewan and almost all of it is exported, which is why Canada also leads the export table.

### why does india import so many lentils

Because it eats far more than it grows. India was the largest importer of lentils in 2024, taking 20% of world import value (CEPII BACI), even though it was also the second largest producer. Its own rabi crop and its import duty decide how much it buys in any year.

### what is the difference between red and green lentils

Red lentils are dehulled and split, so they cook in about twenty minutes and break down into dal and soups. Green and brown lentils keep their seed coat, hold their shape and take longer to cook. They are graded and priced separately, and they serve different markets.

### why does turkey both import and export lentils

Because it processes them. Turkish plants buy whole red lentils, dehull, split, polish and repack them, then re-export into the Middle East and North Africa. That is why Turkey appears near the top of both the import and the export tables in 2024 (CEPII BACI).

### are lentils good for the soil

They fix atmospheric nitrogen through bacteria in their root nodules, leaving nitrogen for the following crop, and they break the disease cycles that build up under continuous cereals. The limit is root rot: aphanomyces persists in soil for years, so growers must leave long gaps between pulse crops.

### how are lentils priced

By grade, color and size in physical markets, with no futures contract and no published world benchmark. Growers take production contracts from processors before seeding, sell the balance spot at harvest, and importing governments buy by public tender. Indian mandi prices are the reference for the largest consuming market.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where does linseed come from?

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

Linseed comes mainly from Russia, which produced 1.2 million tonnes in 2024, 39% of the world's 3 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Kazakhstan (25%), China (9.3%) and Canada (8.6%) follow; the top five together supply 86%. The biggest exporter of linseed (HS 1204) is Russia (38% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Flax is a cool-season annual that ripens on a short summer with modest rain and tolerates thin soil, so the oilseed form has settled on the steppe of Russia and Kazakhstan and the Canadian prairies, with China and India growing it for home use.

*The seed of the flax plant, crushed for a drying oil used in paint and linoleum and eaten whole as flaxseed.* Also called: flaxseed, flax, linseed oil.

## Where does linseed come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Russia | 1.2 million | 39% |
| 2 | Kazakhstan | 759,591 | 25% |
| 3 | China | 280,000 | 9.3% |
| 4 | Canada | 257,974 | 8.6% |
| 5 | India | 112,693 | 3.8% |
| 6 | Ethiopia | 82,000 | 2.7% |
| 7 | Ukraine | 66,160 | 2.2% |
| 8 | United States | 61,470 | 2% |
| 9 | France | 39,620 | 1.3% |
| 10 | United Kingdom | 31,038 | 1% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 4.3% |
| | World | 3 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 Russia produced 1.2 million tonnes, 39% of the world's 3 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Kazakhstan followed with 25%, then China (9.3%), Canada (8.6%) and India (3.8%). The top five account for 86%, 53 countries reported output and 4.3% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +13% over the ten years to 2024 and +10% on the previous year.

Two naming points matter. FAOSTAT calls the crop linseed, as does the paint trade, while food labels almost always say flaxseed; they are the same seed from the same species. The real distinction is between short, branched varieties bred for seed and the tall, unbranched varieties grown for the bast fiber that becomes linen, a separate crop centred on France, Belgium and Belarus.

Oilseed flax has moved decisively eastward. Canada was the classic exporter, growing it on the prairies in rotation with wheat and canola. Russia and Kazakhstan have since expanded planting hard on the steppe, and now supply most of what crosses a border. Chinese and Indian crops are large but mostly consumed at home.


## Who exports and imports linseed?

### Exporters of linseed (HS 1204), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Russia | $471.5 million | 38% |
| 2 | Kazakhstan | $239.7 million | 19% |
| 3 | Canada | $151.9 million | 12% |
| 4 | Belgium | $72.1 million | 5.8% |
| 5 | Poland | $66.6 million | 5.4% |
| 6 | Ukraine | $38.9 million | 3.1% |
| 7 | India | $28.9 million | 2.3% |
| 8 | Netherlands | $25.1 million | 2% |
| 9 | France | $14.4 million | 1.2% |
| 10 | Germany | $13.1 million | 1.1% |
| 11 | United Kingdom | $11.8 million | 0.9% |
| 12 | Czechia | $10.7 million | 0.9% |
| 13 | United States | $10.3 million | 0.8% |
| 14 | Austria | $10.2 million | 0.8% |
| 15 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $10.2 million | 0.8% |

### Importers of linseed (HS 1204), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $349.6 million | 28% |
| 2 | Belgium | $276.6 million | 22% |
| 3 | Germany | $111 million | 8.9% |
| 4 | United States | $106.6 million | 8.6% |
| 5 | Poland | $71.4 million | 5.7% |
| 6 | Netherlands | $51.1 million | 4.1% |
| 7 | France | $36.4 million | 2.9% |
| 8 | Italy | $28.9 million | 2.3% |
| 9 | Austria | $20.2 million | 1.6% |
| 10 | United Kingdom | $17.4 million | 1.4% |
| 11 | Latvia | $16.9 million | 1.4% |
| 12 | Afghanistan | $16.2 million | 1.3% |
| 13 | Canada | $13.7 million | 1.1% |
| 14 | Czechia | $11.4 million | 0.9% |
| 15 | Russia | $10.1 million | 0.8% |

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

Russia was the largest exporter of linseed (HS 1204) in 2024 with 38% of world export value, ahead of Kazakhstan (19%), on world trade of $1.2 billion (CEPII BACI). China was the largest importer with 28%.

Two kinds of buyer sit behind those import figures. China crushes for oil and meal on its own account. Belgium, with 22%, is a processing and re-export hub rather than a final market: European crushers and the linoleum industry pull seed in, press it, and send oil and meal onward.

The trade is small next to the major oilseeds, which is part of why it moves so sharply. A change in one origin's export policy, or one destination's specification, can redirect a large share of a trade this size, with no futures contract anywhere to absorb the shock.


## What does linseed cost?

### How it is priced

There is no futures market and no free public benchmark price for linseed, so this site quotes none. Canadian growers sell to grain companies and crushers on cash contracts, often priced as a basis to canola, since the two compete for the same acres. In Russia and Kazakhstan exporters buy the crop for shipment to China and Europe and price it in dollars against those destinations.

Contracts specify oil content, moisture and dockage, and for Europe the absence of unapproved genetic material, a clause dating from a contamination episode that has outlived it. Food-grade seed for milling and bakery is bought on cleanliness and color and pays a premium over crushing grade. Publicly there is customs data and, in Canada, cash bids, and nothing like a world quotation.


## What moves the price of linseed?

### Acreage competition

Flax competes for land with canola, wheat and sunflower and yields less per hectare than any of them. Growers plant it when the price ratio justifies it or when it suits a rotation, so acreage, and therefore supply, swings far more than demand does.

### Chinese crushing demand

One country takes more than a quarter of world imports and crushes it for oil and meal, so its buying decides where Black Sea and prairie seed goes. Overland rail into China has grown as a route, shortening the journey from Kazakhstan and western Siberia.

### Black Sea export policy

Russia has used export duties on oilseeds to keep raw material at home for its crushers, including a temporary duty on flax seed in 2022. Because one origin supplies a large share of traded seed, a duty or licensing change reroutes the market within a season.

### Substitution by synthetic binders

Linseed oil dries by oxidizing and polymerizing into a solid film, which is what made oil paint, putty and linoleum possible. Synthetic alkyds and water-based emulsions took most of that market in the twentieth century, so industrial demand now grows only at the specialist end.

### Food demand for flaxseed

Milled flaxseed sells on its alpha-linolenic acid and fiber content into bread, cereal and supplements, and whole seed goes into feed marketed for omega-3 enriched eggs and milk. That demand pays better than crushing and has grown while industrial use has not.

## How is linseed produced?

Flax is a slender annual, sown in spring on the prairies and the steppe or in winter in India, and cut three to four months later. Oilseed varieties are short and branched to carry more capsules; fiber varieties are tall and unbranched to give long stems. The crop is combined like a cereal, though the tough stems are hard on machinery and the straw is slow to break down.

Crushing is straightforward pressing, with solvent extraction for industrial volume. Cold-pressed oil is used where flavour or raw character matters, in food and in fine art and wood finishing. Industrial grades are refined, and boiled linseed oil is not boiled but treated with metallic driers to speed the oxidation that hardens it.

Seed for food is cleaned, sometimes roasted, and milled, because whole flaxseed passes through the gut largely undigested. Milled seed goes rancid quickly, since the same unsaturation that makes the oil dry also makes it oxidize, so it is stabilized, packed under nitrogen or kept cold.


## What is linseed used for?

The oil's defining property is that it dries. Exposed to air it oxidizes and polymerizes into a tough film, which made it the binder of traditional oil paint, putty, varnish, wood finishes and linoleum, a name taken from the linseed oil and cork it is made from. Synthetics replaced most of that, but artists' materials, heritage restoration and natural flooring still rely on it.

As food the same seed is sold as flaxseed for its alpha-linolenic acid and fiber, whole or milled into bread, cereal and supplements. The press cake is a valued protein feed, especially for horses and dairy cattle, and the coarse straw is usable in particleboard, specialty papers and insulation.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is short: farm to elevator or trader, then either to a crusher or into containers and bulk vessels for export. Canadian seed moves by rail to Thunder Bay and Vancouver; Russian and Kazakh seed goes by rail to Black Sea and Baltic ports and increasingly overland eastward.

Belgium's position among importers reflects European crushing and linoleum manufacture rather than consumption: seed arrives, oil and meal leave. Seed is dry, dense and non-perishable, though the pressed oil must be kept from air and heat, because it begins to polymerize on its own.

The structural exposure is concentration and policy sensitivity. Exports come from a few Black Sea and prairie origins, and in a trade this small an export duty, a rail bottleneck or a tightened border specification can redirect world flows within a season.


## Timeline

- 1860: Frederick Walton patents oxidized linseed oil, then linoleum. The 1860 patent on oxidizing the oil and the 1863 patent on the flooring named after it created the largest industrial market the crop has ever had. (https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Frederick_Walton)
- 1950s: Synthetic alkyd and emulsion paints displace linseed oil binders. Faster-drying synthetic resins took most of the paint and coatings market, and industrial demand for linseed oil never returned to its earlier scale. (https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/soybeans-and-oil-crops)
- 1996: A genetically modified flax variety is approved in Canada, then withdrawn. CDC Triffid was registered and later deregistered without ever being grown commercially, which is why its reappearance in exports was a regulatory rather than a safety problem. (https://cban.ca/gmos/products/not-on-the-market/flax/)
- 2009: Triffid material is detected in Canadian flax shipped to Europe. The European Union allows no unapproved genetic material, so the finding closed Canada's largest market, cut prairie acreage sharply and imposed years of testing protocols. (https://cban.ca/gmos/products/not-on-the-market/flax/)
- 2010s: Russia and Kazakhstan expand linseed planting. Steppe farms took up a short-season crop that tolerates thin soils and sells for export, and the Black Sea displaced Canada as the main source of traded seed. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 2022-03: Russia imposes a temporary export duty on oil flax seed. A duty on the largest exporting origin held seed back for domestic crushers and redirected flows, showing how sensitive a small trade is to one government's decision. (https://globaltradealert.org/intervention/103240-russian-federation-temporary-increase-in-the-export-duty-on-flaxseed-oil)

## Frequently asked questions

### is linseed the same as flaxseed

Yes. They are the same seed from the same plant, and the word used depends on the industry. FAOSTAT and the paint and coatings trade say linseed; food labels, supplements and bakery say flaxseed. This site follows the agricultural statistics and calls the crop linseed throughout.

### which country produces the most linseed

Russia produced 1.2 million tonnes in 2024, 39% of the world's 3 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Kazakhstan was second with 25% and China third with 9.3%. Most traded seed now comes from the Black Sea rather than from Canada.

### what is linseed oil used for

Industrially, as a binder that hardens: traditional oil paint, putty, varnish, wood finishes and linoleum flooring, which takes its name from the oil. As food it is sold as flaxseed oil for its alpha-linolenic acid. The meal left after pressing is a protein feed for horses and dairy cattle.

### why does linseed oil dry

Because it is unusually unsaturated. Exposed to air, the fatty acids oxidize and cross-link into a solid film rather than simply evaporating, which is what a drying oil means. Boiled linseed oil is not boiled but treated with metallic driers that speed the same reaction up.

### why did canada lose its european flax market

In 2009 traces of CDC Triffid, a genetically modified variety that had been deregistered and never grown commercially, were found in Canadian flax shipped to Europe. The European Union permits no unapproved genetic material, so the market closed, prairie acreage fell sharply and long testing protocols followed.

### what is the difference between linseed and linen flax

Different varieties of the same species grown for different parts of the plant. Oilseed types are short and branched to carry more seed capsules; fiber types are tall and unbranched so the stems yield long bast fibers for linen. The two are grown in different countries and traded separately.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where does lithium come from?

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

Lithium comes mainly from Australia, which produced 92,000 tonnes in 2025, 32% of the world's 290,000 tonnes (USGS MCS). China (21%), Chile (19%) and Zimbabwe (9.7%) follow; the top five together supply 90%. The biggest exporter of lithium carbonate (HS 283691) is Chile (73% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Lithium metal, 99% battery grade, was $156,809/t in July 2026, up 103% from a year earlier (IMF PCPS). Lithium comes from two geological accidents that have nothing in common: granite pegmatites in old, deeply eroded cratons like Western Australia, and salt-lake brines in the high, closed, arid basins of the Andes where evaporation has concentrated lithium for millions of years.

*A light metal extracted from hard-rock spodumene or salt-lake brine and refined into carbonate, hydroxide or metal for battery cathodes.* Also called: Li, lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide, spodumene, brine lithium, battery metal.

## Where does lithium come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Australia | 92,000 | 32% |
| 2 | China | 62,000 | 21% |
| 3 | Chile | 56,000 | 19% |
| 4 | Zimbabwe | 28,000 | 9.7% |
| 5 | Argentina | 23,000 | 7.9% |
| 6 | Brazil | 12,000 | 4.1% |
| 7 | Mali | 9,400 | 3.2% |
| 8 | Canada | 5,600 | 1.9% |
| 9 | Portugal | 380 | 0.1% |
| | Rest of world | 1,620 | 0.6% |
| | World | 290,000 | 100% |

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026.

In 2025 Australia mined 92,000 tonnes of lithium content, 32% of the world's 290,000 tonnes (USGS MCS). China followed with 21%, then Chile (19%), Zimbabwe (9.7%) and Argentina (7.9%). The top five account for 90% and only 9 countries mine lithium at all. Reserves are less concentrated than production: Chile holds 25% of the world's 37 million tonnes (USGS MCS).

One caveat before reading those numbers. The United States Geological Survey withholds United States production to avoid disclosing individual company data and excludes it from its world total, so the world figure is slightly understated and the United States does not appear in the ranking even though it produces lithium.

The two sources are worth separating because they behave differently. Hard-rock mining extracts spodumene from pegmatite in Western Australia, Zimbabwe, Brazil, Canada, China and Portugal, producing a concentrate that must be shipped to a converter. It can be scaled up in two to three years and responds to price like a normal mine. Brine operations pump lithium-rich water from beneath salt flats in Chile, Argentina and China into evaporation ponds, where sun and wind concentrate it over twelve to eighteen months. Brine is cheaper to run but far slower to expand, and it is exposed to rainfall, altitude and water-rights politics in a way a hard-rock mine is not.

Production means mined lithium content unless stated. It is not refined chemical: a very large share of the world's spodumene is shipped to converters elsewhere, which is why the mining map and the chemical map are different, and why the country that mines the most is not the country that sells the most battery-grade material.

## Who exports and imports lithium?

Australia mines spodumene concentrate and ships it to China, which refines most of the world's battery-grade chemicals; Chile exports finished carbonate directly.

### Exporters of mineral substances not elsewhere specified (includes spodumene) (HS 2530), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Australia | $3.2 billion | 51% |
| 2 | Zimbabwe | $836.7 million | 13% |
| 3 | Brazil | $299.5 million | 4.8% |
| 4 | China | $214.5 million | 3.4% |
| 5 | Germany | $212.5 million | 3.4% |
| 6 | United States | $165.9 million | 2.6% |
| 7 | Nigeria | $160.1 million | 2.5% |
| 8 | South Africa | $103.7 million | 1.6% |
| 9 | Russia | $102.2 million | 1.6% |
| 10 | Spain | $88.9 million | 1.4% |
| 11 | Netherlands | $74.2 million | 1.2% |
| 12 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $71.1 million | 1.1% |
| 13 | United Arab Emirates | $65.9 million | 1% |
| 14 | Italy | $45.8 million | 0.7% |
| 15 | Mexico | $43.8 million | 0.7% |

### Importers of mineral substances not elsewhere specified (includes spodumene) (HS 2530), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $4.5 billion | 72% |
| 2 | South Korea | $159.6 million | 2.5% |
| 3 | United States | $121.7 million | 1.9% |
| 4 | Germany | $104.7 million | 1.7% |
| 5 | France | $99 million | 1.6% |
| 6 | India | $94.9 million | 1.5% |
| 7 | Indonesia | $73.8 million | 1.2% |
| 8 | Japan | $72.1 million | 1.1% |
| 9 | Netherlands | $71.3 million | 1.1% |
| 10 | Italy | $63.1 million | 1% |
| 11 | United Arab Emirates | $60.2 million | 1% |
| 12 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $54.4 million | 0.9% |
| 13 | Poland | $54.1 million | 0.9% |
| 14 | Spain | $42.4 million | 0.7% |
| 15 | Malaysia | $41.9 million | 0.7% |

### Exporters of lithium oxide and hydroxide (HS 282520), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $2 billion | 74% |
| 2 | Chile | $270.9 million | 10% |
| 3 | United States | $178.5 million | 6.6% |
| 4 | Australia | $60.4 million | 2.2% |
| 5 | South Korea | $46.4 million | 1.7% |
| 6 | Japan | $36 million | 1.3% |
| 7 | Netherlands | $35.4 million | 1.3% |
| 8 | Russia | $16.6 million | 0.6% |
| 9 | Germany | $6.4 million | 0.2% |
| 10 | Belgium | $5.5 million | 0.2% |
| 11 | United Kingdom | $5 million | 0.2% |
| 12 | Brazil | $4.6 million | 0.2% |
| 13 | France | $4.6 million | 0.2% |
| 14 | Sweden | $3.6 million | 0.1% |
| 15 | Nigeria | $2.5 million | 0.1% |

### Importers of lithium oxide and hydroxide (HS 282520), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Korea | $1.6 billion | 60% |
| 2 | Japan | $659.6 million | 25% |
| 3 | China | $101.2 million | 3.8% |
| 4 | Germany | $54.3 million | 2% |
| 5 | Sweden | $53.7 million | 2% |
| 6 | Belgium | $34.7 million | 1.3% |
| 7 | India | $24.4 million | 0.9% |
| 8 | Poland | $24 million | 0.9% |
| 9 | Netherlands | $18.4 million | 0.7% |
| 10 | United Kingdom | $13.6 million | 0.5% |
| 11 | United States | $12.2 million | 0.5% |
| 12 | Singapore | $8.3 million | 0.3% |
| 13 | France | $8 million | 0.3% |
| 14 | Other Asia, nes | $6.2 million | 0.2% |
| 15 | United Arab Emirates | $5.7 million | 0.2% |

### Exporters of lithium carbonate (HS 283691), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chile | $2.8 billion | 73% |
| 2 | Argentina | $721.1 million | 19% |
| 3 | South Korea | $69.3 million | 1.8% |
| 4 | China | $62.6 million | 1.6% |
| 5 | Germany | $55.7 million | 1.5% |
| 6 | United Kingdom | $24.8 million | 0.6% |
| 7 | United States | $24.2 million | 0.6% |
| 8 | Netherlands | $18.7 million | 0.5% |
| 9 | Bolivia | $15.8 million | 0.4% |
| 10 | France | $8 million | 0.2% |
| 11 | Belgium | $5.4 million | 0.1% |
| 12 | Brazil | $4.5 million | 0.1% |
| 13 | India | $3.8 million | 0.1% |
| 14 | Italy | $2.8 million | 0.1% |
| 15 | Laos | $1.4 million | <0.1% |

### Importers of lithium carbonate (HS 283691), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $2.6 billion | 67% |
| 2 | South Korea | $426.1 million | 11% |
| 3 | Japan | $215.1 million | 5.6% |
| 4 | United States | $194.9 million | 5.1% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $110.5 million | 2.9% |
| 6 | Belgium | $78.1 million | 2% |
| 7 | Germany | $52.1 million | 1.4% |
| 8 | United Kingdom | $36.5 million | 1% |
| 9 | France | $29.1 million | 0.8% |
| 10 | India | $15 million | 0.4% |
| 11 | Italy | $11.4 million | 0.3% |
| 12 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $10.5 million | 0.3% |
| 13 | Spain | $9.4 million | 0.2% |
| 14 | Hungary | $9 million | 0.2% |
| 15 | Other Asia, nes | $7.7 million | 0.2% |

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

Chile was the largest exporter of lithium carbonate (HS 283691) in 2024 with 73% of world export value, ahead of Argentina (19%), on world trade of $3.8 billion (CEPII BACI). China was the largest importer with 67%.

That table is about chemicals, not rock, and it shows the split in the industry clearly. Chile exports finished lithium carbonate directly from its brine operations, so it leads the carbonate trade. Australia mines more lithium than anyone but exports it as spodumene concentrate under a different customs heading, and the concentrate goes overwhelmingly to Chinese converters that turn it into carbonate and hydroxide for cathode makers. Read the export table as a map of chemical conversion, and the production table as the map of geology.

## What does lithium cost?

- Lithium metal, 99% battery grade: $156,809/t in July 2026; 12-month change +103%; 10-year change +50%; all-time high $490,008/t in April 2022; real high (2024 US$) $532,694/t in April 2022 (IMF PCPS).

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

### How it is priced

Be careful with the number on this page. The series shown is Lithium metal, 99% battery grade, which was $156,809/t in July 2026, up 103% from a year earlier (IMF PCPS). That is lithium **metal**, not the carbonate or hydroxide that battery makers actually buy. Lithium metal is a further refining step beyond the chemicals and trades at a large multiple of their price, so this series is useful for direction and useless as a contract reference. Its nominal high was $490,008/t in April 2022.

The prices that matter commercially are battery-grade lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide delivered into China, Japan and Korea, plus spodumene concentrate on a specified lithium oxide content. All of them are assessed by private price reporting agencies rather than published free, which is why this site cannot quote them. CME and other exchanges list futures that settle against those private assessments, and the CME lithium hydroxide contract referenced in the registry is one of them.

Historically most lithium moved on long-term contracts at negotiated prices, and the spot market was thin. The 2021 to 2023 price cycle changed that: contracts increasingly reference an index, and converters and cathode makers now hedge. Grade and impurity specifications are unusually important, because a battery cathode is intolerant of sodium, potassium, iron and magnesium, so chemical-grade and battery-grade material are genuinely different products with a persistent price gap.

## What moves the price of lithium?

### Electric vehicle sales

Batteries take the overwhelming majority of lithium demand, and an electric car contains tens of kilograms of lithium carbonate equivalent against grams in a phone. Vehicle sales growth, subsidy changes and the mix between battery chemistries therefore set demand almost entirely, and forecasts of that growth move the price years ahead of any physical shortage.

### Cathode chemistry

Lithium iron phosphate cells use lithium carbonate and no nickel or cobalt; high-nickel cells use lithium hydroxide. The market share of each chemistry decides not just how much lithium is needed but which chemical, and converters cannot switch product instantly. A shift toward iron phosphate raises carbonate demand relative to hydroxide even if total lithium demand is unchanged.

### Spodumene supply response

Hard-rock mines can be brought on in two to three years, far faster than brine, so they set the marginal supply. When prices spike, Australian and African spodumene expands first and hardest, which is why the 2021 to 2023 boom ended in oversupply rather than persistent shortage.

### Conversion capacity

Mining lithium and making battery-grade chemical are separate businesses in separate countries. Converter capacity, concentrated in China, is the real bottleneck between rock and cathode, and a shortage of qualified conversion capacity can leave concentrate stranded while chemical prices rise.

### Water and community consent in the brine triangle

Brine extraction moves large volumes of water in some of the driest inhabited places on earth, and the resulting disputes over water rights, indigenous consent and royalties have delayed projects in Chile and Argentina for years. This is a permitting constraint rather than a geological one, and it does not respond to price.

### Resource nationalism

Chile has moved toward state participation in new lithium projects, Mexico nationalised its lithium, Indonesia and Zimbabwe have restricted raw exports, and Argentina's provincial governments set their own terms. Ownership rules change the timing and location of new supply more reliably than the price does.

### Recycling

Battery recycling returns lithium along with nickel and cobalt, but the volume available depends on how many batteries reached end of life a decade ago, not on today's price. Recycling will eventually damp the cycle; for now the fleet is too young for it to matter much.

## How is lithium produced?

Hard-rock production starts with an open pit in a pegmatite. The ore is crushed and passed through dense media separation and flotation to produce a spodumene concentrate of about six percent lithium oxide, which is what actually gets shipped. At the converter, the concentrate is roasted at over a thousand degrees to convert the crystal structure into a form that acid can attack, then leached with sulfuric acid, purified, and precipitated as lithium carbonate or reacted further to lithium hydroxide.

Brine production is slower and stranger. Lithium-bearing water is pumped from beneath a salt flat into a sequence of shallow evaporation ponds, where over roughly a year and a half sun and wind remove water and successive salts crystallize out: first halite, then sylvite, then carnallite, leaving a concentrated lithium liquor. That liquor is treated to remove magnesium and boron and precipitated as carbonate. Yield is modest and recovery from the ponds is imperfect, which is why direct lithium extraction technologies, which pull lithium from brine with sorbents and return the water, attract so much attention.

Battery-grade material must then be purified to very tight limits on sodium, potassium, iron, calcium and magnesium, because these contaminate the cathode and shorten cell life. Qualification of a new chemical plant by a cathode maker takes many months of testing, which is why converter capacity cannot simply be switched on.

The industry quotes several units and they are easy to confuse: lithium content, lithium carbonate equivalent, lithium oxide in concentrate, and metal. The figures on this page are lithium content as reported by the United States Geological Survey. Multiplying by about 5.32 converts lithium content to lithium carbonate equivalent.

## What is lithium used for?

Rechargeable batteries dominate and the share has grown steadily; electric vehicles, grid storage and consumer electronics together take the great majority of world lithium supply. Within that, the split between lithium iron phosphate and nickel-rich chemistries determines whether the demand is for carbonate or hydroxide.

The older industrial uses persist but are now a small minority. Lithium compounds lower the melting point and improve durability in ceramics and glass, including glass-ceramic cooktops and specialty glass; lithium greases stay stable across a wide temperature range and are used in vehicles and aviation; lithium is used in continuous casting mold flux for steel, in air treatment as a carbon dioxide absorber, in aluminium smelting, in polymer catalysis and in pharmaceuticals as a mood stabiliser. Lithium metal itself, which is what the price series on this page tracks, is used in primary batteries, in alloys with aluminium and magnesium for aerospace, and as a chemical reagent.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain has an unusual shape: mining is spread across Australia, South America and Africa, while conversion is concentrated overwhelmingly in China, and cathode and cell manufacturing are concentrated in China, Korea and Japan. The narrow point is not the ore, of which there is a great deal, but the qualified chemical conversion capacity in between, and the fact that so much of it sits in one country is the reason lithium appears on every critical minerals list.

Logistics themselves are undemanding. Spodumene concentrate is a bulk mineral shipped in ordinary carriers, and lithium carbonate travels in bags and containers. The constraints are upstream and downstream: pond capacity and water permits in the brine triangle, and cathode qualification schedules at the far end.

The genuine single points of failure are political and hydrological rather than industrial. A change in Chilean or Argentine ownership rules, an Indonesian or Zimbabwean export restriction, or a drought in the Atacama affects more supply than any plant outage would. Meanwhile the price cycle itself is a risk: the 2021 to 2023 spike drew in so much hard-rock capacity that the subsequent slump closed marginal mines, and that stop-start pattern is likely to repeat because demand growth is policy-driven and supply growth is capital-driven.

## Key companies

- Albemarle: miner and converter, United States, listed (ALB)
- SQM (Sociedad Química y Minera): brine producer and converter, Chile, listed (SQM)
- Ganfeng Lithium: converter and miner, China, listed (002460)
- Tianqi Lithium: converter and miner, China, listed (002466)
- Pilbara Minerals: spodumene miner, Australia, listed (PLS)
- Arcadium Lithium (Rio Tinto Lithium): brine and hard-rock producer, United Kingdom

## Timeline

- 1991-06: The lithium-ion battery is commercialised. The first commercial lithium-ion cells created a demand source that would eventually consume most of world lithium production and turned an industrial chemical into a strategic mineral. (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2019/summary/)
- 1997: Atacama brine production scales up. Low-cost Chilean brine displaced North American and Russian mineral production and set the cost floor that constrained hard-rock projects for the next fifteen years. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 2010-01: Western Australian spodumene begins its expansion. Greenbushes and later projects showed that hard-rock lithium could be scaled quickly, giving the market a supply source that responds to price in years rather than decades. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 2016: Chinese conversion capacity takes over the chemical step. Converters built to process imported spodumene made China the source of most battery-grade carbonate and hydroxide, separating the mining map from the chemical map permanently. (https://www.iea.org/topics/critical-minerals)
- 2020-09: Lithium iron phosphate returns to favor. Cell designs that removed nickel and cobalt raised demand for lithium carbonate relative to hydroxide and changed which converters were valuable. (https://www.iea.org/topics/critical-minerals)
- 2021-01: The price cycle begins. Electric vehicle sales outran conversion capacity and lithium chemical prices rose by an order of magnitude over two years, triggering a global exploration and construction boom. (https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS)
- 2022-04: Mexico nationalises lithium. A reform reserving lithium to the state removed a prospective supplier from private investment and signalled a wider turn toward resource nationalism in the sector. (https://www.gob.mx/)
- 2023-04: Chile announces state participation in new projects. The largest brine producer moved to a model of state involvement in future contracts, adding political timing risk to the world's lowest-cost supply source. (https://www.gob.cl/)
- 2023-12: Oversupply arrives. Australian and African spodumene expansions commissioned during the spike met slower-than-expected demand growth, and chemical prices fell back sharply, closing marginal mines. (https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS)
- 2025-01: Direct lithium extraction reaches commercial scale. Sorbent-based extraction that returns water to the aquifer began operating at scale, offering faster ramp-up than evaporation ponds and opening brine resources outside the Andes. (https://www.iea.org/topics/critical-minerals)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most lithium

Australia mined 92,000 tonnes of lithium content in 2025, 32% of the world's 290,000 tonnes (USGS MCS). China was second with 21%. The United States Geological Survey withholds United States output from its world total, so both figures slightly understate the true total.

### where does lithium come from geologically

From two settings. Granite pegmatites in old eroded cratons yield spodumene, mined in Australia, Zimbabwe, Brazil, Canada and China. Salt-lake brines in high, closed, arid basins in Chile, Argentina and China yield lithium-rich water concentrated by evaporation. Hard rock scales in years; brine takes far longer.

### how much lithium is left

Chile holds 25% of world reserves of 37 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Reserves mean the portion economically extractable at current prices and technology, so the number rises with price and with drilling. Known resources are considerably larger than reserves.

### why did lithium prices crash after 2023

The 2021 to 2023 spike drew in Australian and African hard-rock capacity that can be built in two to three years. When that supply arrived while electric vehicle growth slowed, the market moved from shortage to surplus and prices fell sharply, closing the highest-cost mines.

### is the lithium price on this page what battery makers pay

No. The series is lithium metal, a further refining step beyond battery chemicals, and it trades at a large multiple of carbonate and hydroxide prices. The chemicals battery makers buy are assessed by private agencies and are not published free, so this site shows direction rather than a contract reference.

### what is lithium used for

Rechargeable batteries take the great majority, principally for electric vehicles, grid storage and electronics. Smaller established uses include ceramics and glass, lubricating greases, steel casting flux, air treatment, aluminium smelting, polymer catalysis and pharmaceuticals.

### why is China so important to lithium if it does not mine the most

Because mining and chemical conversion are separate businesses. Most spodumene concentrate is shipped to Chinese converters that turn it into battery-grade carbonate and hydroxide. Conversion capacity, not ore, is the narrow point in the chain, and it is heavily concentrated.

### what moves the lithium price

Electric vehicle sales and battery chemistry mix on the demand side; spodumene expansion speed, conversion capacity, water and consent constraints in the Andes, and resource nationalism on the supply side. Because demand is policy-driven and supply is capital-driven, the market swings between shortage and glut.

## Sources

- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries
- 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
- IMF Primary Commodity Price System (PCPS), 2026-08-06, fetched 6 September 2026. License: © International Monetary Fund. All rights reserved (IMF terms of use). https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS

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

---

# 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/.

---

# Where does manganese come from?

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

Manganese comes mainly from South Africa, which produced 7.6 million tonnes in 2025, 38% of the world's 20 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Gabon (25%), Ghana (10%) and Australia (8%) follow; the top five together supply 85%. The biggest exporter of manganese ore (HS 2602) is South Africa (49% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Electrolytic manganese metal, CIF Northwest Europe, was $2,843/t in July 2026, up 40% from a year earlier (IMF PCPS). Manganese sits in sedimentary and volcanogenic deposits laid down when the early oceans first turned oxygen-rich, and the Kalahari basin in South Africa holds by far the largest of them, which is why one country dominates a mineral that every steelmaker on earth must buy.

*A metal used almost entirely in steelmaking, where it removes oxygen and sulfur and adds strength; also a battery cathode ingredient.* Also called: Mn, manganese ore, ferromanganese, silicomanganese, manganese content.

## Where does manganese come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Africa | 7.6 million | 38% |
| 2 | Gabon | 5 million | 25% |
| 3 | Ghana | 2 million | 10% |
| 4 | Australia | 1.6 million | 8% |
| 5 | Brazil | 800,000 | 4% |
| 6 | India | 790,000 | 4% |
| 7 | China | 700,000 | 3.5% |
| 8 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | 350,000 | 1.8% |
| | Rest of world | 1.3 million | 5.8% |
| | World | 20 million | 100% |

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026.

In 2025 South Africa mined 7.6 million tonnes of manganese content, 38% of the world's 20 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Gabon followed with 25%, then Ghana (10%), Australia (8%) and Brazil (4%). The top five account for 85% and 8 countries mine it. Reserves are more concentrated still: Australia holds 34% of the world's 1.7 billion tonnes (USGS MCS).

Production is measured as contained manganese, not as ore tonnage, which matters because ore grades range from around twenty percent to over forty-five percent manganese. A tonne of high-grade Kalahari ore and a tonne of low-grade ore are very different products, and the price difference between them is large.

The map is straightforward. South Africa's Kalahari manganese field is the largest known deposit by a wide margin. Gabon's Moanda and Australia's Groote Eylandt are high-grade operations serving the export market. Ghana, Brazil, Ukraine and India contribute, and China mines a substantial tonnage of low-grade ore for its own alloy plants. Almost none of the countries that mine manganese are the countries that use it, because the users are steel mills.

There is essentially no such thing as a manganese-only market decision. Manganese is not optional in steel: it removes oxygen and sulfur during refining and adds hardness and toughness, and there is no cheap substitute for that function. Every tonne of steel made anywhere consumes manganese, which is why demand tracks world steel output almost exactly.

## Who exports and imports manganese?

South Africa, Gabon and Australia ship ore; China smelts most of the world's manganese alloys for its own steel industry.

### Exporters of manganese ores and concentrates (HS 2602), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Africa | $3.1 billion | 49% |
| 2 | Gabon | $1.7 billion | 26% |
| 3 | Ghana | $556.1 million | 8.7% |
| 4 | Australia | $505.8 million | 7.9% |
| 5 | Brazil | $88.7 million | 1.4% |
| 6 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $79.6 million | 1.2% |
| 7 | Myanmar | $59.2 million | 0.9% |
| 8 | China | $54.4 million | 0.9% |
| 9 | Zambia | $27.6 million | 0.4% |
| 10 | Mexico | $24.4 million | 0.4% |
| 11 | Guyana | $22.8 million | 0.4% |
| 12 | Morocco | $21.8 million | 0.3% |
| 13 | Malaysia | $18.4 million | 0.3% |
| 14 | France | $17.1 million | 0.3% |
| 15 | Namibia | $12.1 million | 0.2% |

### Importers of manganese ores and concentrates (HS 2602), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $3.9 billion | 60% |
| 2 | India | $1.1 billion | 17% |
| 3 | Norway | $257.9 million | 4% |
| 4 | Japan | $201.5 million | 3.2% |
| 5 | Malaysia | $172.1 million | 2.7% |
| 6 | Singapore | $105.7 million | 1.7% |
| 7 | United States | $92.6 million | 1.5% |
| 8 | South Korea | $87.6 million | 1.4% |
| 9 | Indonesia | $78.4 million | 1.2% |
| 10 | France | $73.2 million | 1.1% |
| 11 | Latvia | $59.4 million | 0.9% |
| 12 | Spain | $33.8 million | 0.5% |
| 13 | Australia | $28.6 million | 0.4% |
| 14 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $28.2 million | 0.4% |
| 15 | Vietnam | $24 million | 0.4% |

### Exporters of ferro-alloys including ferromanganese (HS 7202), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indonesia | $13.8 billion | 31% |
| 2 | South Africa | $4.9 billion | 11% |
| 3 | Brazil | $3.9 billion | 8.7% |
| 4 | India | $2.8 billion | 6.3% |
| 5 | Kazakhstan | $2.7 billion | 6% |
| 6 | China | $1.5 billion | 3.4% |
| 7 | Netherlands | $1.4 billion | 3.1% |
| 8 | South Korea | $1.4 billion | 3.1% |
| 9 | Norway | $1.3 billion | 3% |
| 10 | Malaysia | $1.1 billion | 2.5% |
| 11 | New Caledonia | $691.7 million | 1.5% |
| 12 | Russia | $567.1 million | 1.3% |
| 13 | Colombia | $561.5 million | 1.3% |
| 14 | Canada | $516.5 million | 1.2% |
| 15 | United Kingdom | $462.8 million | 1% |

### Importers of ferro-alloys including ferromanganese (HS 7202), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $18.8 billion | 42% |
| 2 | Netherlands | $2.7 billion | 6.1% |
| 3 | United States | $2.6 billion | 5.9% |
| 4 | Japan | $2.1 billion | 4.7% |
| 5 | South Korea | $1.7 billion | 3.9% |
| 6 | Indonesia | $1.7 billion | 3.8% |
| 7 | Germany | $1.5 billion | 3.4% |
| 8 | Italy | $1.2 billion | 2.8% |
| 9 | Mozambique | $1.2 billion | 2.6% |
| 10 | India | $993.2 million | 2.2% |
| 11 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $816.6 million | 1.8% |
| 12 | Belgium | $785.1 million | 1.8% |
| 13 | Other Asia, nes | $784.8 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | Spain | $556.8 million | 1.2% |
| 15 | Sweden | $521.6 million | 1.2% |

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

South Africa was the largest exporter of manganese ore (HS 2602) in 2024 with 49% of world export value, ahead of Gabon (26%), on world trade of $6.4 billion (CEPII BACI). China was the largest importer with 60%.

The ore trade and the alloy trade are separate businesses with different maps. South Africa, Gabon and Australia ship ore; China smelts the majority of world manganese alloys, silicomanganese and ferromanganese, largely for its own steel industry, and also exports alloy. South Africa has tried repeatedly to move up the chain into alloy smelting at home, and has been frustrated by the same electricity constraints described on the platinum page, since alloy smelting is enormously power-hungry.

## What does manganese cost?

- Electrolytic manganese metal, CIF Northwest Europe: $2,843/t in July 2026; 12-month change +40%; 10-year change +71%; all-time high $7,507/t in January 2022; real high (2024 US$) $8,335/t in January 2022 (IMF PCPS).

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

### How it is priced

The series shown is Electrolytic manganese metal, CIF Northwest Europe, which was $2,843/t in July 2026, up 40% from a year earlier (IMF PCPS). Read that carefully: it is electrolytic manganese metal delivered into Northwest Europe, a high-purity refined product used in aluminium and specialty steel alloying and increasingly in battery cathodes. It is **not** manganese ore, which sells for a small fraction of the metal price.

Ore itself is priced per dry metric tonne unit, a unit that trips up newcomers: one dry metric tonne unit is one percent of manganese content in a tonne of ore, so a 44 percent ore priced at five dollars per dry metric tonne unit costs 220 dollars a tonne. Benchmark assessments cover 44 percent lumpy ore delivered to Chinese ports and are published by private price reporting agencies rather than an exchange, so this site cannot quote them.

Alloys price separately again. Silicomanganese and high-carbon ferromanganese are assessed regionally and are driven as much by electricity tariffs and reductant costs as by ore. Because a smelter converts ore plus power plus coke into alloy, the spread between the ore price and the alloy price, not either one alone, decides whether furnaces run.

## What moves the price of manganese?

### World steel output

More than nine-tenths of manganese ends up in steel, and there is no substitute for its deoxidising and desulfurizing role, so demand follows crude steel production almost one for one. Chinese construction activity is therefore the single largest determinant of manganese demand, as it is for iron ore.

### Electricity prices at smelters

Turning ore into silicomanganese or ferromanganese consumes a great deal of power in submerged arc furnaces. When electricity tariffs rise or supply is rationed, alloy production falls and ore accumulates at ports, so the ore price can weaken while the alloy price rises.

### South African rail and port capacity

Ore from the Kalahari must travel roughly eight hundred kilometers by rail to Port Elizabeth or by road to Durban. Rail performance has been poor enough that a large share moves by truck at higher cost, and export volumes are constrained by logistics rather than by mining capacity.

### Ore grade and the dry metric tonne unit

Because ore is priced per unit of contained manganese, a shift in the mix between high and low grade changes the average price without any change in the underlying market. Buyers blend grades to hit a target, so the premium for high-grade lump moves with the availability of cheap fines.

### Chinese port inventories

Manganese ore stockpiles at Chinese ports are large relative to monthly consumption and are watched closely as a short-term price signal. A build-up caused by weak alloy production depresses prices for months regardless of what mines are doing.

### Battery cathode demand

Lithium manganese iron phosphate and high-manganese cathodes use high-purity manganese sulfate rather than ore or alloy. Volumes are small next to steel, but this is the growth market and it requires a purification chain that barely exists outside China.

### Supply disruption at a small number of mines

Because a handful of operations supply most of the seaborne trade, a cyclone at Groote Eylandt, a rail failure in South Africa or unrest in Gabon removes a meaningful share of world supply at once, and the market has no deep inventory to absorb it.

## How is manganese produced?

Manganese ore is mined by open pit and underground methods, crushed and screened into lump and fines, and sometimes upgraded by dense media separation or washing. Little chemical processing happens at the mine; the ore is essentially sorted and shipped.

The main conversion step is smelting into ferroalloy. Ore, a carbon reductant such as coke, and a flux are fed into a submerged arc furnace, where electricity supplies the heat that reduces manganese oxides to metal. High-carbon ferromanganese and silicomanganese, the latter made with quartz added to bring silicon into the alloy, are the two main products, and both are added directly to molten steel. Refined ferromanganese with low carbon requires a further oxygen-blowing step.

Electrolytic manganese metal, the product the price series tracks, follows a different route: ore is leached with sulfuric acid, the solution is purified, and manganese is plated onto cathodes. Battery-grade manganese sulfate uses the same leach and purification chemistry, taken to much tighter impurity limits, and this is the chain the battery industry needs built.

All figures on this page are contained manganese. Converting to ore tonnage requires dividing by grade, and comparing across countries without doing so produces badly misleading results.

## What is manganese used for?

Steel takes the overwhelming majority. Manganese is added to essentially every grade of steel to remove oxygen and sulfur during refining and to increase hardness, strength and wear resistance. Hadfield steel, a high-manganese alloy, is used where extreme abrasion resistance is needed, in rock crushers, railway crossings and excavator teeth.

Aluminium alloying is the second use: small manganese additions improve corrosion resistance and strength in the alloys used for beverage cans and building products. Manganese dioxide is the cathode material in ordinary alkaline dry-cell batteries, a large-volume and long-standing market entirely separate from lithium-ion.

The growth use is lithium-ion cathodes. Nickel-manganese-cobalt chemistries have used manganese for years, and lithium manganese iron phosphate is a newer chemistry that raises energy density over plain iron phosphate at modest cost. Both need high-purity manganese sulfate, and building that supply outside China is an open problem. Smaller uses include chemical oxidants, fertilizer micronutrients, animal feed supplements, glass decolourising and ceramic pigments.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is short but has a serious logistics problem in the middle of it. The world's largest deposit sits deep inland in South Africa's Northern Cape, and the rail line to Port Elizabeth has for years carried less than the mines could produce, forcing a large share of exports onto trucks for an eight-hundred-kilometer road haul. This raises delivered cost, damages roads and caps export volume in a way that has nothing to do with reserves or mining capacity. Rail performance is genuinely the binding constraint on South African manganese exports.

Smelting concentration is the second feature. China converts most of the world's manganese ore into alloy, so an ore producer's real customer is a Chinese furnace, and alloy production decisions made for reasons of Chinese power policy or steel margins set the demand for ore worldwide.

Seaborne trade itself is straightforward bulk shipping from Port Elizabeth, Owendo in Gabon, Groote Eylandt in Australia and Brazilian ports to Chinese and Indian ports, with tropical cyclones the main weather risk on the Australian route.

The vulnerability that matters for the future is purification. If manganese becomes a significant battery cathode input at scale, the industry will need high-purity sulfate capacity, and today that capacity is almost entirely in China. That is the same pattern as graphite and rare earths: abundant ore, narrow processing.

## Key companies

- South32: miner, Australia, listed (S32)
- Eramet: miner and alloy producer, France, listed (ERA)
- Assmang: miner and alloy producer, South Africa
- Vale: miner, Brazil, listed (VALE3)
- Ningxia Tianyuan Manganese Industry: electrolytic manganese producer, China
- Jupiter Mines: miner, Australia, listed (JMS)

## Timeline

- 1856: Manganese makes the Bessemer process work. Adding spiegeleisen to remove oxygen and sulfur solved the brittleness problem that had stalled bulk steelmaking, and manganese has been indispensable to steel ever since. (https://worldsteel.org)
- 1882: Hadfield manganese steel is patented. A high-manganese alloy that work-hardens under impact created a class of wear-resistant steels still used in crushers, railway crossings and excavation equipment. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 1955: The Kalahari manganese field enters production. Development of the world's largest known deposit established South Africa's dominance of manganese reserves and, eventually, of the seaborne ore trade. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 1966: Gabon's Moanda mine begins exporting. A high-grade operation with a dedicated rail link gave the seaborne market a second major supplier and made manganese a significant part of Gabon's economy. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 2008-06: Manganese prices spike with the steel boom. Chinese steel growth outran ore supply and alloy capacity, and both ore and alloy prices multiplied before collapsing with the financial crisis. (https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS)
- 2015-12: A steel downturn closes alloy smelters. Weak steel margins and low ore prices forced smelter closures across South Africa, Europe and Australia, concentrating alloy production further in China. (https://worldsteel.org)
- 2020-03: South African logistics constrain exports. Deteriorating rail performance pushed an increasing share of Kalahari ore onto trucks, raising costs and capping export volumes independently of mining capacity. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 2022-08: Battery cathodes create a high-purity demand stream. Lithium manganese iron phosphate and high-manganese nickel cathodes made high-purity manganese sulfate a strategic product, a chain that barely exists outside China. (https://www.iea.org/topics/critical-minerals)
- 2024-03: A cyclone halts Groote Eylandt exports. Storm damage to port infrastructure at one of the highest-grade operations removed a meaningful share of seaborne supply for months and lifted ore prices sharply. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most manganese

South Africa mined 7.6 million tonnes of manganese content in 2025, 38% of the world's 20 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Gabon was second with 25%. Figures are contained manganese, not ore tonnage, and ore grades range from about twenty to over forty-five percent.

### what is manganese used for

More than nine-tenths goes into steel, where it removes oxygen and sulfur during refining and adds hardness and toughness. Other uses are aluminium alloying, manganese dioxide in alkaline batteries, lithium-ion cathodes, fertilizer micronutrients, animal feed and glass decolourising.

### is the manganese price on this page the ore price

No. The series is electrolytic manganese metal delivered into Northwest Europe, a refined high-purity product. Ore sells for a small fraction of that and is quoted per dry metric tonne unit, meaning one percent of contained manganese in a tonne, assessed privately rather than on an exchange.

### what is a dry metric tonne unit

One percent of manganese content in one tonne of dry ore. A 44 percent ore priced at five dollars per dry metric tonne unit therefore costs 220 dollars a tonne. The convention exists because ore is bought for its contained metal, not its bulk weight.

### can steel be made without manganese

Not practically. Manganese removes oxygen and sulfur during refining and adds hardness and toughness, and no cheap substitute performs that combination of jobs. This is why manganese demand tracks world crude steel output almost exactly.

### how much manganese is left

Australia holds 34% of world reserves of 1.7 billion tonnes (USGS MCS). Reserves are highly concentrated, but the practical constraint on South African supply has been rail and port capacity rather than ore in the ground.

### what moves the manganese price

World steel output above all, then electricity prices at alloy smelters, South African rail performance, ore grade mix, Chinese port inventories and disruption at the small number of mines that supply the seaborne trade.

## Sources

- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries
- 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
- IMF Primary Commodity Price System (PCPS), 2026-08-06, fetched 6 September 2026. License: © International Monetary Fund. All rights reserved (IMF terms of use). https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS

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

---

# Where do mangoes come from?

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

Mangoes come mainly from India, which produced 27.8 million tonnes in 2024, 45% of the world's 62.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Indonesia (6.6%), China (6.6%) and Mexico (4.3%) follow; the top five together supply 66%. The biggest exporter of mangoes (HS 080450) is Thailand (18% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Mango needs a hot tropical climate with a distinct dry season to trigger flowering, and it has been cultivated in South Asia for thousands of years, which is why India and its neighbors grow far more than anywhere else and eat almost all of it themselves.

*A tropical stone fruit, mostly eaten where it grows; FAOSTAT counts mangoes with guavas and mangosteens.* Also called: mango, guavas, mangosteen.

## Where do mangoes come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | 27.8 million | 45% |
| 2 | Indonesia | 4.1 million | 6.6% |
| 3 | China | 4.1 million | 6.6% |
| 4 | Mexico | 2.7 million | 4.3% |
| 5 | Brazil | 2.4 million | 3.9% |
| 6 | Pakistan | 2.1 million | 3.5% |
| 7 | Bangladesh | 2.1 million | 3.4% |
| 8 | Egypt | 1.9 million | 3% |
| 9 | Vietnam | 1.6 million | 2.5% |
| 10 | Thailand | 1.5 million | 2.4% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 19% |
| | World | 62.2 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 India produced 27.8 million tonnes, 45% of the world's 62.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Indonesia followed with 6.6%, then China (6.6%), Mexico (4.3%) and Brazil (3.9%). The top five account for 66%, 101 countries reported output and 19% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +25% over the ten years to 2024 and +3% on the previous year.

One thing about the ranking needs saying immediately: FAOSTAT counts mangoes together with guavas and mangosteens in a single item, so these figures are slightly broader than mango alone. Even allowing for that, South Asian dominance is real and long-standing.

The crop's requirement is specific. Mango flowers in response to a cool or dry period after a warm growing season, so it fruits reliably in monsoon climates with a marked dry spell and poorly in the wet equatorial tropics. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Thailand fit that pattern, as do parts of Mexico, Brazil and west Africa. India grows hundreds of named varieties, most of them regional and never exported, while the export trade runs on a handful of firm-fleshed types that survive shipping.

## Who exports and imports mangoes?

### Exporters of guavas, mangoes and mangosteens, fresh or dried (HS 080450), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Thailand | $733.5 million | 18% |
| 2 | Mexico | $714.4 million | 17% |
| 3 | Brazil | $421.8 million | 10% |
| 4 | Peru | $327.1 million | 7.8% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $184.7 million | 4.4% |
| 6 | Egypt | $173.5 million | 4.2% |
| 7 | India | $160.6 million | 3.9% |
| 8 | Indonesia | $151.3 million | 3.6% |
| 9 | Spain | $130.9 million | 3.1% |
| 10 | Pakistan | $111.3 million | 2.7% |
| 11 | Cambodia | $109.6 million | 2.6% |
| 12 | China | $103.2 million | 2.5% |
| 13 | Ghana | $68.7 million | 1.6% |
| 14 | Ecuador | $67.1 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | Dominican Republic | $59.5 million | 1.4% |

### Importers of guavas, mangoes and mangosteens, fresh or dried (HS 080450), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $924.4 million | 22% |
| 2 | China | $638.4 million | 15% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $336.1 million | 8.1% |
| 4 | United Kingdom | $266.7 million | 6.4% |
| 5 | Canada | $173.5 million | 4.2% |
| 6 | South Korea | $160.6 million | 3.9% |
| 7 | Germany | $139.4 million | 3.3% |
| 8 | Spain | $131.9 million | 3.2% |
| 9 | Vietnam | $123.3 million | 3% |
| 10 | France | $109.4 million | 2.6% |
| 11 | United Arab Emirates | $105.4 million | 2.5% |
| 12 | Russia | $102.2 million | 2.5% |
| 13 | Portugal | $84 million | 2% |
| 14 | Saudi Arabia | $75.3 million | 1.8% |
| 15 | Italy | $51.4 million | 1.2% |

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

Thailand was the largest exporter of mangoes (HS 080450) in 2024 with 18% of world export value, ahead of Mexico (17%), on world trade of $4.2 billion (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 22%.

The gap between production and export shares is among the widest of any fruit on this site. India grows an enormous crop and exports a small fraction of it, because domestic demand absorbs the harvest and because many prized Indian varieties are too soft and too short-lived to ship. Mexico, Peru, Brazil and Thailand dominate the export trade instead, growing firmer varieties near ports and markets.

Phytosanitary treatment is the gatekeeper. Mango is a host for fruit flies, so importing countries require hot water treatment, vapor heat or irradiation before entry, and only approved facilities can process fruit for a given market.

## What do mangoes cost?

### How they are priced

There is no futures market and no free public benchmark for mangoes, so this site quotes none. Fruit is sold by variety, size count per box and grade, negotiated between exporters and importers, with destination wholesale market reports providing the visible reference.

Prices swing with the arrival of each origin's season and with treatment capacity. Because approved treatment facilities are limited and the season is short, a bottleneck at a hot water treatment plant can hold fruit back and raise prices even when the crop is large. In producing countries, farm-gate prices collapse during the peak weeks of the local harvest because so much fruit arrives at once and cannot be stored.

## What moves the price of mangoes?

### Monsoon timing

Flowering depends on a dry period followed by warmth, so unseasonal rain at flowering can destroy a crop before it sets. Indian and Pakistani harvests vary sharply year to year for exactly this reason, and the effect is on fruit numbers rather than on tree health.

### Alternate bearing

Many mango varieties crop heavily one year and lightly the next, so regional supply oscillates even with stable acreage. Growers manage it with pruning and nutrition but cannot eliminate it.

### Fruit fly treatment capacity

Access to most high-value markets requires hot water, vapor heat or irradiation treatment at approved facilities. The number of those facilities, not the size of the crop, often limits how much fruit an origin can export in a short season.

### Short shelf life

Mango ripens quickly and bruises easily, so it must move fast and cannot be stored to smooth supply. That makes the market unusually seasonal and means gluts and shortages within a single origin's harvest are common.

### Variety and market fit

The varieties most prized in producing countries are often too soft to export, while export varieties are chosen for firmness and shelf life rather than flavour. This split means production growth does not automatically translate into export growth.

## How are mangoes produced?

Mango is an evergreen tree, usually grafted onto seedling rootstock because seedlings do not reproduce the parent variety reliably. Trees begin bearing three to five years after planting and can live and produce for decades. Flowering follows a dry or cool period, and only a tiny fraction of the thousands of flowers on a panicle set fruit.

Harvest is by hand, cutting fruit with a short stem to prevent sap burn, at a maturity judged by shape, shoulder fill and internal color rather than softness. Fruit destined for export is washed, treated against fruit fly by hot water immersion, vapor heat or irradiation depending on the destination's protocol, then graded, packed by count and cooled.

Ripening happens after shipping, sometimes with ethylene, and the fruit is sold ready to eat or a day or two short of it. Processing takes fruit that is out of grade or surplus to the fresh market: pulp and puree are extracted, pasteurized and packed aseptically or frozen, and dried mango slices are a growing product.

## What are mangoes used for?

Fresh eating dominates. Beyond that, mango pulp and puree are large industrial products, used in juices, nectars, dairy, baby food and confectionery, and India is the major supplier of aseptic pulp to world beverage manufacturers. Dried mango, canned slices, chutneys and pickles absorb further volume, and green unripe mango is a vegetable in its own right across South and Southeast Asia, used in pickles, salads and curries.

The by-products have modest uses: kernels yield a fat similar to cocoa butter and used in cosmetics, and peel and pomace are used for pectin and animal feed.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The fresh chain is short, fast and treatment-constrained. Fruit is picked, treated, packed and shipped within days, moving by sea in refrigerated containers for volume trade and by air for premium early-season fruit. Because treatment facilities must be approved by each importing country's authority, the capacity to serve a given market is a licensing question as much as a logistical one.

The pulp chain is entirely different: it is an industrial processing business with year-round shipping of aseptic packs and frozen product, insulated from the perishability that constrains fresh fruit, and it is why India can be a major supplier to world beverage manufacturers despite exporting relatively little fresh fruit.

The structural constraints are shelf life and phytosanitary access. Neither responds to price, and both explain why the largest producing country is not the largest exporter.

## Timeline

- 1498: Mango spreads beyond Asia. Portuguese voyages carried the tree to Africa and then to Brazil, beginning the distribution that eventually made mango a pantropical crop and created the western hemisphere export industry. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 1940s: Hot water treatment is developed for fruit fly. A quarantine treatment that killed fruit fly larvae without ruining the fruit opened high-value markets to tropical produce and remains the gatekeeper of the mango export trade. (https://www.aphis.usda.gov/)
- 1970s: Aseptic pulp processing scales up in India. Extracting and aseptically packing mango pulp let the largest producer supply world beverage manufacturers year-round despite the fruit's short fresh season. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 2007-04: India regains access to the United States market. An irradiation protocol agreed after eighteen years of prohibition reopened a premium market to Indian fruit, though volumes remained limited by treatment capacity. (https://www.aphis.usda.gov/)
- 2020: Air freight disruption hits premium mango exports. The collapse in passenger belly cargo capacity cut off the early-season air-freighted trade, shifting volume to sea freight and firmer varieties. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most mangoes

India produced 27.8 million tonnes in 2024, 45% of the world's 62.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Note FAOSTAT counts mangoes together with guavas and mangosteens in one item, so the figure is slightly broader than mango alone.

### why does India export so few mangoes

Because domestic demand absorbs the crop and because many prized Indian varieties are too soft and short-lived to ship. Export markets also require fruit fly treatment at approved facilities, and that capacity, not the size of the harvest, limits how much can be sent.

### why do mangoes need treatment before export

Because mango hosts fruit flies, which importing countries exclude strictly. Hot water immersion, vapor heat or irradiation kills the larvae without ruining the fruit, and only facilities approved by the destination country's authority may treat fruit for that market.

### how are mangoes priced

By variety, size count per box and grade, negotiated between exporters and importers, with no futures contract and no free public benchmark. Prices swing with each origin's short season and with treatment capacity, and farm-gate prices collapse during peak local harvest weeks.

### what is mango pulp used for

Juices, nectars, dairy products, baby food and confectionery. Aseptically packed or frozen pulp is a large industrial product, and it lets producing countries supply world beverage manufacturers year-round despite the fresh fruit's short season and poor shelf life.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where does milk come from?

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

Milk comes mainly from India, which produced 135 million tonnes in 2024, 17% of the world's 788.6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). United States (13%), China (5.2%) and Brazil (4.7%) follow; the top five together supply 44%. The biggest exporter of milk powders (HS 0402) is New Zealand (28% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Milk, USDA Class III spot, United States, was $20.71/cwt in July 2026, down 3% from a year earlier (IMF PCPS). Milk is produced almost everywhere people keep cattle, because it is perishable and heavy and cannot travel far, so the map of production follows population and pasture rather than any comparative advantage in dairying.

*Raw cow's milk, most of it drunk or processed close to where it is produced; only powders, butter and cheese travel far.* Also called: raw milk, dairy, cow milk, milk powder, butter, cheese.

## Where does milk come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | 135 million | 17% |
| 2 | United States | 102.5 million | 13% |
| 3 | China | 40.8 million | 5.2% |
| 4 | Brazil | 36.8 million | 4.7% |
| 5 | Germany | 33.8 million | 4.3% |
| 6 | Russia | 32.8 million | 4.2% |
| 7 | Pakistan | 24.8 million | 3.1% |
| 8 | France | 24.2 million | 3.1% |
| 9 | New Zealand | 21.5 million | 2.7% |
| 10 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 21 million | 2.7% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 40% |
| | World | 788.6 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 India produced 135 million tonnes of raw cow milk, 17% of the world's 788.6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). United States followed with 13%, then China (5.2%), Brazil (4.7%) and Germany (4.3%). The top five account for 44%, and 183 countries reported production with 40% coming from outside the top ten. Very few commodities on this site are as widely produced.

Two things about that table need saying. First, it counts cow milk only; buffalo milk, which is a large part of South Asian dairying and much higher in fat, is a separate FAOSTAT item, so India's total dairy output is understated here. Second, production and yield are very different stories. A herd in the United States, the Netherlands or Denmark produces several times as much milk per cow per year as one in India or Pakistan, so a country can rank high on volume through herd size rather than productivity.

Systems differ as much as yields. New Zealand and Ireland run seasonal, pasture-based systems where cows calve together in spring and milk production follows the grass curve, dropping to almost nothing in winter. The United States, the Netherlands and increasingly China run housed, year-round systems on conserved forage and concentrate feed. The first is low-cost and inflexible; the second is higher-cost and can supply fresh milk all year, which is why the two systems specialize in different products.

World output changed +20% over the ten years to 2024 and +0% on the previous year, growth driven mainly by rising Asian consumption.

## Who exports and imports milk?

Raw milk barely crosses borders; New Zealand, the European Union and the United States dominate the powder, butter and cheese trade that stands in for it.

### Exporters of milk and cream, concentrated or sweetened (powders) (HS 0402), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Zealand | $6.2 billion | 28% |
| 2 | United States | $2.1 billion | 9.6% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $2 billion | 9.1% |
| 4 | Germany | $1.6 billion | 7.4% |
| 5 | France | $1.1 billion | 5.1% |
| 6 | Belgium | $988.6 million | 4.5% |
| 7 | Australia | $958.5 million | 4.4% |
| 8 | Uruguay | $606.1 million | 2.8% |
| 9 | Ireland | $589.6 million | 2.7% |
| 10 | Argentina | $508.8 million | 2.3% |
| 11 | Poland | $476.7 million | 2.2% |
| 12 | Hong Kong | $378 million | 1.7% |
| 13 | Saudi Arabia | $320.6 million | 1.5% |
| 14 | Malaysia | $265 million | 1.2% |
| 15 | Sweden | $254.9 million | 1.2% |

### Importers of milk and cream, concentrated or sweetened (powders) (HS 0402), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $2.7 billion | 12% |
| 2 | Algeria | $1.3 billion | 6.1% |
| 3 | Mexico | $1 billion | 4.7% |
| 4 | Saudi Arabia | $912.9 million | 4.2% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $910.9 million | 4.2% |
| 6 | Indonesia | $821.5 million | 3.8% |
| 7 | United Arab Emirates | $672.1 million | 3.1% |
| 8 | Brazil | $653.4 million | 3% |
| 9 | Germany | $632.7 million | 2.9% |
| 10 | Malaysia | $594.1 million | 2.7% |
| 11 | Philippines | $588.1 million | 2.7% |
| 12 | Belgium | $460.6 million | 2.1% |
| 13 | Singapore | $437.4 million | 2% |
| 14 | Italy | $437.3 million | 2% |
| 15 | Thailand | $432.3 million | 2% |

### Exporters of butter and other fats derived from milk (HS 0405), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Zealand | $2.9 billion | 23% |
| 2 | Netherlands | $1.8 billion | 14% |
| 3 | Ireland | $1.8 billion | 14% |
| 4 | Germany | $1 billion | 8.1% |
| 5 | France | $940.6 million | 7.3% |
| 6 | Belgium | $912.6 million | 7.1% |
| 7 | Denmark | $461.6 million | 3.6% |
| 8 | Poland | $440 million | 3.4% |
| 9 | India | $341.3 million | 2.6% |
| 10 | United States | $236.6 million | 1.8% |
| 11 | Finland | $210.8 million | 1.6% |
| 12 | United Kingdom | $186.6 million | 1.4% |
| 13 | Australia | $141.9 million | 1.1% |
| 14 | Iran | $124.2 million | 1% |
| 15 | Spain | $121.5 million | 0.9% |

### Importers of butter and other fats derived from milk (HS 0405), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | France | $1.5 billion | 12% |
| 2 | Netherlands | $968.2 million | 7.5% |
| 3 | China | $957.7 million | 7.4% |
| 4 | Germany | $876.5 million | 6.8% |
| 5 | United States | $850.2 million | 6.6% |
| 6 | Belgium | $626.2 million | 4.9% |
| 7 | Italy | $508 million | 3.9% |
| 8 | Saudi Arabia | $451.2 million | 3.5% |
| 9 | United Kingdom | $396.4 million | 3.1% |
| 10 | Spain | $278.5 million | 2.2% |
| 11 | Australia | $257.5 million | 2% |
| 12 | Canada | $235.9 million | 1.8% |
| 13 | Indonesia | $206.6 million | 1.6% |
| 14 | United Arab Emirates | $206.2 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | South Korea | $199.2 million | 1.5% |

### Exporters of cheese and curd (HS 0406), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Germany | $6.6 billion | 15% |
| 2 | Italy | $5.7 billion | 13% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $5.6 billion | 13% |
| 4 | France | $4.2 billion | 9.4% |
| 5 | United States | $2.5 billion | 5.6% |
| 6 | Denmark | $2.4 billion | 5.3% |
| 7 | New Zealand | $1.7 billion | 3.8% |
| 8 | Ireland | $1.7 billion | 3.8% |
| 9 | Belgium | $1.4 billion | 3.1% |
| 10 | Poland | $1.3 billion | 3% |
| 11 | Greece | $1.1 billion | 2.4% |
| 12 | Austria | $980.4 million | 2.2% |
| 13 | United Kingdom | $914.3 million | 2% |
| 14 | Spain | $898.8 million | 2% |
| 15 | Switzerland | $812.7 million | 1.8% |

### Importers of cheese and curd (HS 0406), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Germany | $6 billion | 13% |
| 2 | France | $3.1 billion | 7% |
| 3 | Italy | $2.8 billion | 6.3% |
| 4 | United Kingdom | $2.6 billion | 5.8% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $2.3 billion | 5.2% |
| 6 | Belgium | $2.1 billion | 4.6% |
| 7 | Spain | $2.1 billion | 4.6% |
| 8 | United States | $2 billion | 4.4% |
| 9 | Japan | $1.3 billion | 2.8% |
| 10 | Mexico | $1.1 billion | 2.4% |
| 11 | Saudi Arabia | $947 million | 2.1% |
| 12 | Sweden | $857.2 million | 1.9% |
| 13 | China | $854.9 million | 1.9% |
| 14 | Austria | $837.8 million | 1.9% |
| 15 | Poland | $788.7 million | 1.8% |

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

Raw milk barely crosses borders, and that is the single most important fact about dairy trade. It is roughly seven-eighths water, it spoils in days and it needs refrigeration, so shipping it any distance makes no economic sense. What travels instead is milk with the water removed and the shelf life extended: skim and whole milk powder, butter and butterfat, cheese, and whey and protein concentrates.

New Zealand was the largest exporter of milk powders (HS 0402) in 2024 with 28% of world export value, ahead of United States (9.6%), on world trade of $21.8 billion (CEPII BACI). China was the largest importer with 12%.

The result is a trade dominated by a few surplus regions, New Zealand, the European Union and the United States, selling into a long list of deficit ones across Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. New Zealand is the extreme case: it produces a small share of world milk but exports the overwhelming majority of what it makes, because its population is tiny relative to its herd. Read the export table as a map of surplus, not of dairying.

## What does milk cost?

- Milk, USDA Class III spot, United States: $20.71/cwt in July 2026; 12-month change -3%; 10-year change +36%; all-time high $29.16/cwt in July 2022; real high (2024 US$) $37.48/cwt in May 2004 (IMF PCPS).

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

### How it is priced

The series shown is Milk, USDA Class III spot, United States, which was $20.71/cwt in July 2026, down 3% from a year earlier (IMF PCPS). The unit is dollars per hundredweight, an American convention meaning per hundred pounds of milk. The nominal high was $29.16/cwt in July 2022.

Be clear about what that is: a United States domestic price, set under a federal milk marketing order system that classifies milk by end use. Class III is milk used for hard cheese, and its price is calculated from formulas based on the wholesale prices of cheese, whey and butterfat. It is a real and important price, and it is what American dairy futures settle against, but it is not a world price.

The international reference is the Global Dairy Trade auction, held twice monthly, where New Zealand and other suppliers sell whole milk powder, skim milk powder, butter and anhydrous milk fat to global buyers in an open bidding process. That auction is the closest thing dairy has to a world price discovery mechanism, and this site links to it rather than republishing its results. European prices are reported separately by the Commission's milk market observatory.

Farmers themselves are usually paid not for volume but for components: kilograms of milk fat and protein, adjusted for somatic cell count and bacterial quality. A cooperative that processes its members' milk typically pays an advance during the season and a final payment once products are sold, so the farm-gate price is only known in full after the fact.

## What moves the price of milk?

### Chinese import demand

China is the largest single buyer of internationally traded dairy, and its purchasing swings with domestic milk production, stock levels and infant formula demand. A year when China steps back from the Global Dairy Trade auction depresses world powder prices regardless of what happens in supplying countries.

### Feed costs

Housed systems buy corn, soymeal and forage, so their margins compress when grain prices rise. Because milk supply responds within months, through feeding rate and culling decisions rather than herd size, feed price spikes translate into milk supply changes faster than in beef.

### Weather in pasture systems

New Zealand and Irish output depends on grass growth, so a drought or a cold spring cuts production sharply and immediately. Because those countries supply so much of the traded market, their weather moves world powder prices in a way their share of world milk production would not suggest.

### European policy

The end of European milk quotas in 2015 released a wave of production that depressed world prices for years. Support measures, intervention buying and environmental regulation on nitrogen and methane continue to shape how much milk Europe produces.

### Fat versus protein demand

Butterfat and protein are priced separately and their relative value has swung dramatically as dietary advice changed. The rehabilitation of butter raised fat values relative to skim powder, changing what processors make from the same milk and therefore what reaches the export market.

### Environmental regulation

Nitrogen leaching limits in the Netherlands and New Zealand, methane pricing proposals and water quality rules now constrain herd size directly in several exporting countries. This is a supply constraint that does not respond to price at all.

### Herd cycles and culling

Milk supply adjusts through feeding intensity and culling rates rather than through herd building, which takes years. A price collapse leads to heavier culling, which briefly increases beef supply and then reduces milk output for several years afterwards.

## How is milk produced?

A dairy cow calves once a year and produces milk for around ten months of it, with output peaking a few weeks after calving and declining thereafter. That lactation curve is why seasonal pasture systems concentrate calving in spring and why their production collapses in winter. Cows are milked twice or, in some systems, three times daily.

Raw milk is cooled on farm immediately, collected by insulated tanker every day or two, and tested for fat, protein, somatic cells and antibiotic residues before it is accepted. At the processing plant it is separated into cream and skim by centrifuge, standardized to a target fat content, and pasteurized.

From there the routes diverge. Liquid milk is homogenised and bottled, or ultra-heat treated for ambient shelf life. Butter is made by churning cream until the fat globules coalesce, leaving buttermilk. Cheese is made by adding starter culture and rennet to coagulate the casein, cutting and heating the curd, draining the whey, salting, pressing and aging. Powder is made by evaporating milk under vacuum and then spray-drying it into a fine powder that keeps for a year or more without refrigeration.

Whey, once a disposal problem for cheesemakers, is now a valuable product in its own right, concentrated and dried into whey powder or ultrafiltered into whey protein concentrates and isolates for sports nutrition and infant formula. That shift transformed cheese plant economics.

The FAOSTAT figures on this page are raw milk at the farm. A tonne of milk makes roughly a tenth of a tonne of cheese or a twelfth of a tonne of milk powder, so production and trade figures are not directly comparable.

## What is milk used for?

Most milk is consumed close to where it is produced, as liquid milk, yoghurt and fresh dairy products. Those markets are local because the products are perishable, and they take the majority of world milk in volume terms.

Cheese is the largest processed use in Europe and North America and the fastest-growing dairy category in much of Asia, driven partly by pizza and food service. Butter and butterfat go into cooking, baking and food manufacture, and their value rose considerably as dietary advice on saturated fat softened.

Powders are the products that make dairy tradeable. Whole and skim milk powder reconstitute into liquid milk, are used in confectionery, bakery and beverages, and are the raw material for recombined dairy in countries without a domestic industry. Infant formula is the highest-value powder market by a wide margin and the reason dairy trade became strategically important to several countries.

Whey proteins serve sports nutrition, clinical nutrition and infant formula, and lactose is used in pharmaceuticals as a tablet excipient. Casein and caseinates go into processed foods and industrial applications. Almost nothing in a modern dairy plant is discarded, which is a considerable change from fifty years ago.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is defined by the cold chain and by the fact that a cow does not stop. Milk must be collected every day or two whether or not a plant can take it, so processing capacity has to match peak production, which in seasonal systems means plants that run flat out for a few months and idle for the rest of the year. Drying capacity in particular is expensive and seasonal, and a plant breakdown at peak means milk with nowhere to go.

Concentration in processing is high in the exporting countries. A small number of cooperatives and companies handle most of the milk in New Zealand, Ireland, the Netherlands and Denmark, and they own the drying and cheese capacity that connects farmers to world markets. That gives them scale but also means a single food safety incident can affect a country's entire export position, as has happened.

Internationally, powder and cheese move in ordinary containers and butter in refrigerated ones, so shipping is not a constraint. The constraints are regulatory: dairy is among the most tightly controlled foods in international trade, with plant-by-plant approvals, residue testing and certification requirements that differ by destination. Losing an export listing removes market access regardless of price.

The structural pressure is environmental. Nitrogen, phosphate and methane rules in the Netherlands, New Zealand, Ireland and Denmark now cap herd numbers in the countries that supply most of the traded market. Unlike price-driven constraints, these do not relax when milk becomes profitable, and they are the main reason the long-run growth in exportable surplus is expected to come from elsewhere.

## Key companies

- Fonterra: cooperative processor and exporter, New Zealand, listed (FCG)
- Lactalis: processor, France
- Nestlé: processor, Switzerland, listed (NESN)
- Dairy Farmers of America: cooperative processor, United States
- FrieslandCampina: cooperative processor, Netherlands
- Arla Foods: cooperative processor, Denmark

## Timeline

- 1864: Pasteurisation is developed. Heat treatment that killed pathogens without ruining flavour made milk safe to sell beyond the farm and created the urban dairy industry. (https://fil-idf.org)
- 1878: The continuous centrifugal separator is patented. Mechanical separation of cream from skim made butter and cheese production industrial and is still the first step in every dairy plant. (https://fil-idf.org)
- 1882-02: Refrigerated shipping opens the long-distance dairy trade. The same voyage that carried the first frozen meat from New Zealand also carried butter, beginning the export trade that made southern hemisphere dairying viable. (https://teara.govt.nz/en/sheep-farming/page-5)
- 1984-04: The European Community introduces milk quotas. Production limits imposed to control surpluses shaped European dairying for three decades and constrained the world's largest producing bloc. (https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/farming/animal-products/milk-and-dairy-products_en)
- 2008-07: The Chinese melamine adulteration scandal. Contaminated infant formula killed several children and destroyed domestic consumer confidence, turning China into the world's dominant dairy importer almost overnight. (https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/melamine)
- 2008-07: Global Dairy Trade auctions begin. A twice-monthly electronic auction gave the internationally traded dairy market its first transparent price discovery mechanism, now the reference for powder and butterfat worldwide. (https://fil-idf.org)
- 2015-04: European milk quotas end. Removing production limits released a wave of European milk that depressed world prices for several years and permanently raised the European share of the traded market. (https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/farming/animal-products/milk-and-dairy-products_en)
- 2020-03: Food service closures disrupt dairy demand. The abrupt loss of restaurant, hotel and school demand left processors with milk configured for the wrong products, and some was discarded while retail shelves emptied. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 2022-06: Feed and energy costs squeeze margins worldwide. Grain, fertilizer and energy price increases raised the cost of housed milk production sharply, and herd contraction in several countries followed. (https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS)
- 2023-11: Nitrogen rules begin capping herds in the Netherlands. Environmental limits on nitrogen deposition forced buyouts and herd reductions in one of the most productive dairy exporters, a supply constraint that does not respond to price. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most milk

India produced 135 million tonnes of raw cow milk in 2024, 17% of the world's 788.6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). United States was second with 13%. These figures cover cow milk only; buffalo milk, important in South Asia, is counted separately.

### why is milk barely traded internationally

Because it is roughly seven-eighths water, perishable within days and needs refrigeration. What travels instead is milk with the water removed and shelf life extended: milk powders, butter, cheese and whey proteins. Read the dairy trade table as a map of surplus regions, not of dairying.

### is the milk price on this page a world price

No. It is the United States Class III price, meaning milk used for hard cheese, calculated under federal marketing orders from wholesale cheese, whey and butterfat prices. The closest thing to a world reference is the Global Dairy Trade auction, which this site links to rather than republishing.

### what is a hundredweight of milk

One hundred pounds, an American convention, equal to about 45.4 kilograms or roughly 46.6 liters. United States milk prices are quoted per hundredweight, which is why the number looks unfamiliar next to per-tonne or per-liter prices used elsewhere.

### why does New Zealand dominate dairy exports

Because it produces a modest share of world milk but has a small population, so almost all of it is available for export. Its low-cost pasture system and concentration of processing capacity make it the largest supplier to the internationally traded powder and butterfat market.

### how much cheese does a tonne of milk make

Roughly a tenth of a tonne of cheese, or about a twelfth of a tonne of milk powder, depending on the composition of the milk and the product. That is why raw milk production figures and dairy trade figures are not directly comparable.

### what moves dairy prices

Chinese import demand above all, then feed costs in housed systems, weather in pasture systems, European policy, the relative value of fat versus protein, and environmental regulation limiting herd size in the main exporting countries.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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
- IMF Primary Commodity Price System (PCPS), 2026-08-06, fetched 6 September 2026. License: © International Monetary Fund. All rights reserved (IMF terms of use). https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS

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

---

# Where does molybdenum come from?

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

Molybdenum comes mainly from China, which produced 97,000 tonnes in 2025, 37% of the world's 260,000 tonnes (USGS MCS). Chile (16%), United States (15%) and Peru (15%) follow; the top five together supply 90%. The biggest exporter of molybdenum ore (HS 2613) is Chile (24% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Molybdenum concentrates in the same porphyry systems that host copper, so most of it is mined incidentally in Chile, Peru and the American west, with only a handful of deposits rich enough to be worth mining for molybdenum alone.

*A refractory metal recovered mostly as a by-product of copper mining, added to steel for strength and corrosion resistance.* Also called: Mo, moly, molybdenite, ferromolybdenum.

## Where does molybdenum come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 97,000 | 37% |
| 2 | Chile | 42,000 | 16% |
| 3 | United States | 40,000 | 15% |
| 4 | Peru | 39,000 | 15% |
| 5 | Mexico | 17,000 | 6.5% |
| 6 | Armenia | 5,300 | 2% |
| 7 | Kazakhstan | 4,300 | 1.7% |
| 8 | Mongolia | 4,200 | 1.6% |
| 9 | Iran | 3,300 | 1.3% |
| 10 | Canada | 2,200 | 0.8% |
| | Rest of world | 100 | 2.2% |
| | World | 260,000 | 100% |

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026.

In 2025 China mined 97,000 tonnes of molybdenum content, 37% of the world's 260,000 tonnes (USGS MCS). Chile followed with 16%, then United States (15%), Peru (15%) and Mexico (6.5%). The top five account for 90% and 15 countries mine it. Reserves stand at 17 million tonnes, with China holding 46% (USGS MCS).

The important distinction in this market is between by-product and primary supply. Most molybdenum comes out of copper porphyry mines in Chile, Peru, Mexico and the United States, where molybdenite is recovered from the copper flotation circuit as a credit against copper's costs. A minority comes from primary molybdenum mines, principally in Colorado and in China, which exist because their ore is rich enough to justify mining molybdenum on its own.

That split determines how the market behaves. By-product supply is set by copper mining decisions and barely responds to the molybdenum price: a copper mine keeps producing molybdenum at any price because the copper pays the bills. Primary mines are the swing supply, and they open and close with the price, which is why Colorado operations have been placed on care and maintenance and restarted repeatedly over the decades.

World output changed +2% on the previous year. Because supply follows copper, the best single predictor of molybdenum availability is what is happening on the copper page rather than anything in the molybdenum market itself.

## Who exports and imports molybdenum?

Because most molybdenum comes out of copper mines, its supply responds to the copper price rather than its own.

### Exporters of molybdenum ores and concentrates (HS 2613), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chile | $1.9 billion | 24% |
| 2 | Peru | $1.6 billion | 19% |
| 3 | United States | $1.3 billion | 16% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $858.1 million | 11% |
| 5 | Mexico | $738 million | 9% |
| 6 | China | $446.9 million | 5.5% |
| 7 | Armenia | $252.8 million | 3.1% |
| 8 | Kazakhstan | $187 million | 2.3% |
| 9 | Belgium | $151 million | 1.9% |
| 10 | Mongolia | $130.5 million | 1.6% |
| 11 | Thailand | $107.7 million | 1.3% |
| 12 | Australia | $77.8 million | 1% |
| 13 | South Korea | $70.6 million | 0.9% |
| 14 | Canada | $60.4 million | 0.7% |
| 15 | Vietnam | $45.9 million | 0.6% |

### Importers of molybdenum ores and concentrates (HS 2613), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Korea | $1.1 billion | 13% |
| 2 | China | $1 billion | 12% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $901.5 million | 11% |
| 4 | Chile | $817.3 million | 10% |
| 5 | Japan | $760.4 million | 9.3% |
| 6 | United States | $611.4 million | 7.5% |
| 7 | Belgium | $534.8 million | 6.6% |
| 8 | India | $467.9 million | 5.7% |
| 9 | United Kingdom | $423 million | 5.2% |
| 10 | Brazil | $379.4 million | 4.7% |
| 11 | Thailand | $209 million | 2.6% |
| 12 | Sweden | $185.1 million | 2.3% |
| 13 | Italy | $154.4 million | 1.9% |
| 14 | Finland | $112.3 million | 1.4% |
| 15 | Austria | $85.3 million | 1% |

### Exporters of molybdenum and articles thereof (HS 8102), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $469.2 million | 37% |
| 2 | Austria | $254.4 million | 20% |
| 3 | United Kingdom | $106.7 million | 8.4% |
| 4 | Germany | $89 million | 7% |
| 5 | United States | $78 million | 6.2% |
| 6 | France | $41.3 million | 3.3% |
| 7 | Japan | $37.4 million | 3% |
| 8 | Other Asia, nes | $26.7 million | 2.1% |
| 9 | Uzbekistan | $25.2 million | 2% |
| 10 | Netherlands | $24.3 million | 1.9% |
| 11 | South Korea | $23.7 million | 1.9% |
| 12 | Canada | $17.4 million | 1.4% |
| 13 | Bulgaria | $15.9 million | 1.3% |
| 14 | India | $14 million | 1.1% |
| 15 | Hong Kong | $6.4 million | 0.5% |

### Importers of molybdenum and articles thereof (HS 8102), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Germany | $213.7 million | 17% |
| 2 | United States | $201.7 million | 16% |
| 3 | United Kingdom | $104.2 million | 8.2% |
| 4 | Japan | $103.2 million | 8.1% |
| 5 | France | $81.2 million | 6.4% |
| 6 | South Korea | $71.7 million | 5.7% |
| 7 | Netherlands | $65.3 million | 5.2% |
| 8 | Other Asia, nes | $58.4 million | 4.6% |
| 9 | Austria | $56.9 million | 4.5% |
| 10 | China | $45.6 million | 3.6% |
| 11 | India | $45.6 million | 3.6% |
| 12 | Brazil | $20.5 million | 1.6% |
| 13 | Italy | $16.3 million | 1.3% |
| 14 | Czechia | $15.7 million | 1.2% |
| 15 | Saudi Arabia | $15.3 million | 1.2% |

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

Chile was the largest exporter of molybdenum ore (HS 2613) in 2024 with 24% of world export value, ahead of Peru (19%), on world trade of $8.2 billion (CEPII BACI). South Korea was the largest importer with 13%.

The trade runs from mines to roasters to steel mills, and the roasting step is where the geography changes. Molybdenite concentrate must be roasted to technical molybdic oxide before it can be used, and roasting capacity sits in Chile, the United States, Europe and China rather than necessarily at the mine. Sulphur dioxide emission controls have closed roasters in some jurisdictions and concentrated the step in others, so concentrate and oxide follow different routes.

## What does molybdenum cost?

### How it is priced

This page quotes no molybdenum price, because there is no free public series. Molybdenum oxide is assessed by private price reporting agencies in dollars per pound of contained molybdenum, with separate assessments for concentrate, technical oxide and ferromolybdenum, and the London Metal Exchange contract that exists is thin and settles against those assessments. Publishing a number would require a license this site does not hold.

What can be said is how the market works. Producers sell concentrate to roasters or convert it themselves; steel mills buy either technical oxide in briquettes or ferromolybdenum, and they buy on monthly or quarterly formulas referencing the published assessments. Because molybdenum is used in small percentages, a few tenths of a percent up to several percent in specialty grades, a mill's molybdenum cost is small relative to its total input bill, which makes demand relatively insensitive to price in the short run.

The market is also unusually volatile for a metal of its size, and the reason is the by-product structure. When demand rises, by-product supply cannot respond, primary mines take a year or more to restart, and the price can multiply. When demand falls, by-product supply keeps arriving regardless, and the price collapses. That asymmetry has produced some of the sharpest price cycles in the metals complex, and it is the single most useful thing to know about molybdenum.

## What moves the price of molybdenum?

### Copper mining output

Because most molybdenum is a copper by-product, molybdenum supply is decided by copper investment and copper ore grades. A wave of copper expansion delivers molybdenum whether or not it is wanted, and a copper mine's decision to skip its molybdenum circuit for grade reasons removes supply silently.

### Oil and gas drilling

Molybdenum's largest specialty use is in the alloy steels used for line pipe, drill pipe, pressure vessels and refinery equipment. Upstream oil and gas capital spending therefore drives a meaningful share of demand, and pipeline projects in particular consume large tonnages of molybdenum-bearing steel.

### Stainless and specialty steel production

Molybdenum improves corrosion resistance, especially against chlorides, and is essential to the 316 grade stainless used in chemical plant, desalination and marine applications. Demand therefore follows the same industrial investment cycle described on the chromium page.

### Primary mine restarts

Colorado and Chinese primary mines are the swing supply. Their restart decisions require sustained high prices and take a year or more to deliver metal, which is why price spikes persist longer in molybdenum than in metals with responsive supply.

### Chinese production and export policy

China is both a large producer and a large consumer, and its export taxes, quotas and environmental enforcement against small roasters have periodically swung the balance between domestic and world availability.

### Roasting capacity and emission rules

Roasting molybdenite releases sulfur dioxide, and tightening emission standards have closed roasters in several countries. Because concentrate cannot be used until it is roasted, a shortage of compliant roasting capacity can create a bottleneck between mine and mill.

### Scrap and recycling

Molybdenum is recovered from stainless and alloy steel scrap and from spent petroleum refining catalysts, which are unusually rich in it. Recycling supplies a meaningful minority of consumption and rises with price, partially damping cycles.

## How is molybdenum produced?

In a copper porphyry mine, molybdenite occurs alongside copper sulfides and is separated from them in a dedicated flotation circuit after the bulk copper-molybdenum concentrate has been made. The separation exploits small differences in surface chemistry and typically uses a depressant to hold back the copper minerals while the molybdenite floats. The resulting concentrate is roughly fifty percent molybdenum.

At a primary mine the ore is mined by open pit or block caving, ground, and floated directly for molybdenite without a copper circuit. Grades are low, often a fraction of a percent, so the operations are large-tonnage earth-moving businesses.

The concentrate is then roasted in multiple-hearth furnaces at around six hundred degrees, driving off sulfur as sulfur dioxide and converting molybdenite to technical molybdic oxide. That sulfur dioxide is captured for acid production where regulations require, which is a significant part of the roaster's cost. The oxide is sold in briquettes to steel mills, converted to ferromolybdenum by aluminothermic reduction for direct addition to steel, or purified further into chemical-grade products.

Everything on this page is contained molybdenum. A tonne of concentrate is roughly half a tonne of metal, and prices are quoted per pound of contained metal rather than per pound of material, so comparisons require care.

## What is molybdenum used for?

Steel takes the large majority. Molybdenum raises hardenability, strength at high temperature and resistance to corrosion and creep, so it appears in construction and engineering steels, in the pipeline and pressure-vessel steels used by the oil, gas and power industries, and in the tool and high-speed steels used for cutting.

Stainless steel is the second large use, particularly the molybdenum-bearing grades that resist chloride pitting: 316 stainless in chemical plant, food processing, desalination and marine hardware, and the duplex and super-duplex grades used offshore.

Superalloys for turbine and aerospace components use molybdenum for high-temperature strength. Pure molybdenum metal, which has a very high melting point and low thermal expansion, is used for furnace elements, glass-melting electrodes, semiconductor substrates and X-ray tube targets.

The chemical uses are small in tonnage and large in importance. Molybdenum disulfide is a solid lubricant that works where oils fail, and molybdenum catalysts are essential to hydrodesulfurization, the refinery process that removes sulfur from fuels. Tightening fuel sulfur limits worldwide have made that catalyst market a steady source of demand, and spent catalysts are a valuable recycling stream.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain runs mine, flotation, roaster, steel mill, and its distinctive feature is that the first step is controlled by an entirely different industry. Molybdenum availability depends on copper miners' decisions about ore grade, throughput and whether to operate their molybdenum circuit at all, and those decisions are made on copper economics.

The roasting step is the genuine physical bottleneck. It requires specialized furnaces and sulfur dioxide capture, permits are difficult in tightly regulated jurisdictions, and the capacity is concentrated in a limited number of plants. A roaster outage strands concentrate that cannot otherwise be used.

Physical logistics are undemanding: concentrate and oxide move in drums, bags and containers in modest tonnages, and the whole world market would fit in a small number of ships. There is no meaningful freight constraint.

The vulnerability is price volatility rather than physical scarcity. Reserves are large relative to consumption and spread across several countries, but the inelastic by-product supply structure means that the market swings violently between shortage and glut, and that volatility discourages the primary mine investment that would stabilize it. Buyers manage this with formula pricing and inventory rather than by finding alternative sources, because for the corrosion and high-temperature jobs molybdenum does, substitutes generally perform worse.

## Key companies

- Codelco: copper miner and by-product producer, Chile
- Freeport-McMoRan: copper and primary molybdenum miner, United States, listed (FCX)
- China Molybdenum (CMOC Group): miner, China, listed (603993)
- Antofagasta: copper miner and by-product producer, United Kingdom, listed (ANTO)
- Southern Copper: copper miner and by-product producer, United States, listed (SCCO)
- Molymet: roaster and processor, Chile

## Timeline

- 1918: Climax in Colorado begins production. The discovery and development of an exceptionally rich primary deposit created the world's swing supplier and the reference point for molybdenum supply for most of the twentieth century. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 1930s: Molybdenum becomes standard in alloy steels. Recognition that small additions improved hardenability and high-temperature strength made molybdenum a routine steel additive rather than a specialty, establishing its main market. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 1980s: Copper by-product supply overtakes primary mining. Expansion of Chilean and American porphyry copper mining made molybdenum predominantly a by-product, permanently changing how its supply responds to price. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 1995: Climax is placed on care and maintenance. Low prices closed the archetypal primary mine, demonstrating the asymmetry of a market where by-product supply continues regardless and primary supply is the only thing that can leave. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 2005-06: Molybdenum prices reach an extraordinary peak. Chinese steel demand met inelastic by-product supply and prices rose by an order of magnitude within two years, prompting a wave of primary mine restarts and expansions. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 2006: China introduces export restrictions. Export taxes and quotas on molybdenum products tightened world availability and encouraged capacity investment elsewhere, a pattern later repeated across several critical minerals. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 2012-05: Climax restarts after a seventeen-year closure. Sustained higher prices justified reopening the primary mine, adding swing capacity back to the market just as the Chinese steel cycle was turning. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 2016-01: A price collapse follows the commodity downturn. Weak steel and oilfield demand met undiminished copper by-product supply, and the price fell to levels that again closed primary capacity. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 2023-02: Prices spike on low copper by-product output. Falling ore grades and operational problems at major copper mines cut molybdenum output while pipeline and refinery demand held, and the price rose sharply without any change in molybdenum-specific fundamentals. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most molybdenum

China mined 97,000 tonnes of molybdenum content in 2025, 37% of the world's 260,000 tonnes (USGS MCS). Chile was second with 16%. Most of it comes out of copper porphyry mines as a by-product.

### what is molybdenum used for

Mainly as an additive to steel, where it raises hardenability, high-temperature strength and corrosion resistance. It is essential to 316 stainless and to pipeline and pressure-vessel steels, and it appears in superalloys, furnace components, solid lubricants and the catalysts that remove sulfur from fuels.

### why is there no molybdenum price on this page

No free public series exists. Molybdenum oxide, concentrate and ferromolybdenum are assessed by private price reporting agencies in dollars per pound of contained metal, and the exchange contract that exists settles against those assessments rather than providing an independent public benchmark.

### why are molybdenum prices so volatile

Because most supply is a copper by-product that continues regardless of the molybdenum price, while primary mines take a year or more to restart. Demand shifts therefore hit an unresponsive supply base, producing multiplied price moves in both directions.

### how much molybdenum is left

World reserves are 17 million tonnes, with China holding 46% (USGS MCS). Reserves are large relative to annual consumption, so the constraint in this market is the responsiveness of supply rather than the quantity of ore.

### is molybdenum recycled

Yes, from stainless and alloy steel scrap and from spent petroleum refining catalysts, which are unusually rich in it. Recycling supplies a meaningful minority of consumption and increases when prices rise, which partly damps the market's severe cycles.

## Sources

- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries
- 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

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

---

# Where does natural gas come from?

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

Natural gas comes mainly from the United States, which produced 1,074 billion cubic metres in 2025, 26% of the world's 4,196 billion cubic metres (Energy Institute). Russia (15%), Iran (6.3%) and China (6.3%) follow; the top five together supply 58%. The biggest exporter of natural gas including LNG (HS 2711) is the United States (18% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, US Henry Hub, was $2.77/MMBtu in August 2026, down 5% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Gas collects where organic-rich source rocks were buried deep and hot enough to crack into methane and then trapped under impermeable seals, which is why the biggest producers sit on the North American shale basins, the West Siberian basin, the Persian Gulf's North Field and South Pars, and the offshore basins of Australia and Norway.

*Mostly methane, produced from gas and oil fields and moved by pipeline or as liquefied natural gas (LNG); priced regionally, not globally.* Also called: gas, LNG, liquefied natural gas, methane, Henry Hub, TTF, JKM, pipeline gas.

## Where does natural gas come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (billion cubic metres) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 1,074 | 26% |
| 2 | Russia | 609 | 15% |
| 3 | Iran | 265 | 6.3% |
| 4 | China | 264 | 6.3% |
| 5 | Canada | 206 | 4.9% |
| 6 | Qatar | 184 | 4.4% |
| 7 | Australia | 149 | 3.5% |
| 8 | Saudi Arabia | 134 | 3.2% |
| 9 | Norway | 121 | 2.9% |
| 10 | Algeria | 98 | 2.3% |
| | Rest of world | 69.1 | 26% |
| | World | 4,196 | 100% |

Source: Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy, Statistical Review 2026.

Natural gas is mostly methane, with smaller amounts of ethane, propane and butane. It is trapped in porous rock under an impermeable cap, sometimes on its own (a gas field) and sometimes dissolved in or sitting above crude oil (associated gas). Because it forms from the same buried organic matter as oil, only cooked at higher temperatures or from more gas-prone source rock, the map of gas production overlaps the oil map but is not the same. The figures on this page are marketed production, meaning gas that is sold rather than flared, vented or reinjected, as defined by the Energy Institute.

In 2025 United States produced 1,074 billion cubic metres, 26% of the world's 4,196 billion cubic metres (Energy Institute). Russia was second with 609 billion cubic metres and Iran third with 265 billion cubic metres. The top five countries together accounted for 58% of world output, and 49 countries reported production at all. World production was +19% compared with ten years earlier, and output in United States grew at +3.8% a year over that decade, a pace set by horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing in shale formations such as the Marcellus in Appalachia and the Permian in Texas.

The geology behind the leaders is distinct in each case. United States output is dominated by shale, where gas is held in the fine-grained source rock itself and released by fracturing it. Russian output comes largely from giant conventional fields in the Yamal-Nenets region of West Siberia, discovered in the 1960s and 1970s. Iran and Qatar share a single offshore accumulation, called South Pars on the Iranian side and the North Field on the Qatari side, which is the largest non-associated gas field known. Australia's gas is offshore on the North West Shelf and in Queensland's coal seams; Norway's is in the North and Norwegian Seas; Canada's is in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. China's rising output comes from tight gas, shale in Sichuan and coal-bed methane.

Production and export are different rankings. The United States and Russia both consume most of what they produce; Qatar, Australia and Norway consume little of theirs and are built around export. A country's position in gas trade depends less on how much it produces than on whether it has pipelines to neighbors or liquefaction plants on its coast.


## Who exports and imports natural gas?

LNG (271111) and pipeline gas (271121) have different exporters: Qatar, Australia and the US lead LNG; Russia and Norway lead pipeline.

### Exporters of petroleum gases and other gaseous hydrocarbons (HS 2711), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $84.7 billion | 18% |
| 2 | Norway | $54.5 billion | 11% |
| 3 | Australia | $49 billion | 10% |
| 4 | Qatar | $44.6 billion | 9.4% |
| 5 | Russia | $40.5 billion | 8.5% |
| 6 | Algeria | $21.6 billion | 4.5% |
| 7 | Malaysia | $17 billion | 3.6% |
| 8 | United Arab Emirates | $14.6 billion | 3.1% |
| 9 | Turkmenistan | $10.7 billion | 2.2% |
| 10 | Nigeria | $10.7 billion | 2.2% |
| 11 | Belgium | $10.3 billion | 2.2% |
| 12 | Canada | $10.3 billion | 2.2% |
| 13 | Oman | $9.6 billion | 2% |
| 14 | Indonesia | $8.6 billion | 1.8% |
| 15 | France | $8.4 billion | 1.8% |

### Importers of petroleum gases and other gaseous hydrocarbons (HS 2711), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $87.9 billion | 18% |
| 2 | Japan | $47.1 billion | 9.9% |
| 3 | South Korea | $34.1 billion | 7.2% |
| 4 | India | $30.8 billion | 6.5% |
| 5 | Italy | $29.3 billion | 6.2% |
| 6 | Germany | $26.1 billion | 5.5% |
| 7 | France | $19.4 billion | 4.1% |
| 8 | Netherlands | $17.6 billion | 3.7% |
| 9 | United Kingdom | $17.3 billion | 3.6% |
| 10 | Belgium | $15.3 billion | 3.2% |
| 11 | Other Asia, nes | $12.3 billion | 2.6% |
| 12 | Spain | $10.9 billion | 2.3% |
| 13 | United States | $10.2 billion | 2.1% |
| 14 | Thailand | $9.4 billion | 2% |
| 15 | Singapore | $7.6 billion | 1.6% |

### Exporters of natural gas, liquefied (lng) (HS 271111), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Australia | $47.4 billion | 22% |
| 2 | United States | $40.6 billion | 19% |
| 3 | Qatar | $38.1 billion | 18% |
| 4 | Russia | $17.8 billion | 8.2% |
| 5 | Malaysia | $14.5 billion | 6.7% |
| 6 | Oman | $7.3 billion | 3.4% |
| 7 | Indonesia | $6.8 billion | 3.1% |
| 8 | Nigeria | $6.6 billion | 3.1% |
| 9 | Papua New Guinea | $5.4 billion | 2.5% |
| 10 | Algeria | $5 billion | 2.3% |
| 11 | Trinidad and Tobago | $3.7 billion | 1.7% |
| 12 | United Arab Emirates | $3.3 billion | 1.5% |
| 13 | Israel | $2.8 billion | 1.3% |
| 14 | Brunei | $2.7 billion | 1.2% |
| 15 | Norway | $2.4 billion | 1.1% |

### Importers of natural gas, liquefied (lng) (HS 271111), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $43 billion | 20% |
| 2 | Japan | $40.2 billion | 19% |
| 3 | South Korea | $28.8 billion | 13% |
| 4 | India | $14.8 billion | 6.8% |
| 5 | Other Asia, nes | $11.4 billion | 5.3% |
| 6 | France | $10.5 billion | 4.8% |
| 7 | Netherlands | $7.5 billion | 3.4% |
| 8 | Thailand | $6.4 billion | 3% |
| 9 | Spain | $6 billion | 2.8% |
| 10 | Italy | $5.3 billion | 2.5% |
| 11 | Egypt | $4.2 billion | 2% |
| 12 | United Kingdom | $4.2 billion | 1.9% |
| 13 | Pakistan | $3.9 billion | 1.8% |
| 14 | Singapore | $3.4 billion | 1.6% |
| 15 | Belgium | $2.7 billion | 1.3% |

### Exporters of natural gas, gaseous (pipeline) (HS 271121), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Norway | $49.9 billion | 32% |
| 2 | Russia | $21.1 billion | 13% |
| 3 | Algeria | $11.8 billion | 7.5% |
| 4 | Turkmenistan | $10.7 billion | 6.8% |
| 5 | Belgium | $9.4 billion | 6% |
| 6 | Azerbaijan | $8.1 billion | 5.2% |
| 7 | France | $7.7 billion | 4.9% |
| 8 | Canada | $6 billion | 3.8% |
| 9 | United States | $5.8 billion | 3.7% |
| 10 | United Kingdom | $4.4 billion | 2.8% |
| 11 | Myanmar | $3.2 billion | 2% |
| 12 | China | $2.1 billion | 1.3% |
| 13 | Netherlands | $2 billion | 1.2% |
| 14 | Indonesia | $1.8 billion | 1.2% |
| 15 | Bolivia | $1.6 billion | 1% |

### Importers of natural gas, gaseous (pipeline) (HS 271121), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Italy | $22.7 billion | 14% |
| 2 | Germany | $22.3 billion | 14% |
| 3 | China | $21.3 billion | 14% |
| 4 | United Kingdom | $12.6 billion | 8% |
| 5 | Belgium | $10.5 billion | 6.7% |
| 6 | France | $7.6 billion | 4.8% |
| 7 | Netherlands | $7.3 billion | 4.6% |
| 8 | United States | $6 billion | 3.8% |
| 9 | Hungary | $4.5 billion | 2.8% |
| 10 | Mexico | $4.2 billion | 2.6% |
| 11 | Spain | $3.5 billion | 2.2% |
| 12 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $3 billion | 1.9% |
| 13 | Singapore | $2.8 billion | 1.8% |
| 14 | Czechia | $2.8 billion | 1.8% |
| 15 | Greece | $2.4 billion | 1.5% |

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

Gas crosses borders in two physical forms, and the exporters differ by form. Pipeline gas (HS 271121) moves at high pressure through steel lines and is limited to land neighbors and short sea crossings; Norway was the largest pipeline exporter by value in 2024. Liquefied natural gas, or LNG (HS 271111), is methane chilled to about minus 162 degrees Celsius so it shrinks to one six-hundredth of its volume and can be shipped in insulated tankers anywhere with a regasification terminal; Australia was the largest LNG exporter by value in 2024. Counting all petroleum gases under HS 2711, which also includes propane and butane, United States was the top exporter with 18% of world export value in 2024, and China was the top importer with 18% of import value (CEPII BACI). World exports of natural gas including LNG (HS 2711) were worth $475.8 billion in 2024.

Import patterns follow infrastructure. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have no pipeline connections and take everything as LNG; China was the largest LNG importer by value in 2024. Continental Europe historically leaned on pipelines from Russia, Norway and North Africa and has shifted toward LNG since 2022. China imports both, by pipeline from Central Asia and Russia and as LNG on its coast. Some countries re-export: Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain reload LNG cargoes and forward pipeline gas, so their trade figures overstate their own production and consumption.


## What does natural gas cost?

- US Henry Hub: $2.77/MMBtu in August 2026; 12-month change -5%; 10-year change -1%; all-time high $13.52/MMBtu in October 2005; real high (2024 US$) $21.3/MMBtu in October 2005 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- Europe (TTF): $21.11/MMBtu in August 2026; 12-month change +89%; 10-year change +421%; all-time high $70.04/MMBtu in August 2022; real high (2024 US$) $74.45/MMBtu in August 2022 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- Japan LNG import: $13.94/MMBtu in August 2026; 12-month change +18%; 10-year change +95%; all-time high $23.73/MMBtu in September 2022; real high (2024 US$) $25.12/MMBtu in September 2022 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

There is no world gas price. Because moving gas is expensive and infrastructure-bound, each region has its own benchmark, and the gaps between them can be several times the price itself. In North America the reference is Henry Hub, a pipeline interchange in Erath, Louisiana, where the NYMEX (CME Group) Henry Hub Natural Gas futures contract (ticker NG, 10,000 MMBtu, quoted in US$/MMBtu) settles. In Europe it is the Dutch Title Transfer Facility, or TTF, a virtual trading point on the Gasunie network, traded as the ICE Endex Dutch TTF Gas futures (ticker TFM, 1 MW, quoted in €/MWh). In Northeast Asia spot LNG cargoes are assessed against the Japan Korea Marker (JKM), while much long-term LNG is still indexed to crude oil under contracts negotiated in the 1970s and 1980s.

This site's primary series is US Henry Hub, which was $2.77/MMBtu in August 2026, down 5% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its highest monthly average on record was $13.52/MMBtu in October 2005, and its lowest was $0.14/MMBtu in January 1960; the series begins in 1960. For comparison, the European TTF series stood at $21.11/MMBtu in August 2026 and the Japanese LNG import price at $13.94/MMBtu in August 2026. Read the three together and the regional spread is visible in a single glance.

A quoted price is for a unit of heat, not volume. One million British thermal units (MMBtu) is roughly the energy in 28 cubic meters of gas; a megawatt-hour is 3.412 MMBtu. Henry Hub and TTF quotes are for delivery at the hub in the named month, excluding transport to the customer. A Japanese import price is a customs average of landed cargoes, so it lags spot markets and blends oil-linked contracts with spot purchases. When this page says "gas prices rose", it means the named benchmark in the named month.


## What moves the price of natural gas?

### Weather and heating demand

Gas demand is the most weather-sensitive of the major fuels. In the Northern Hemisphere, residential and commercial heating peaks in December to February, and a cold snap can lift daily demand by a third within a week. Summer heat matters too, because gas-fired power plants run harder to meet air-conditioning load. Traders watch heating-degree-day forecasts as closely as production data, and a single revised two-week forecast can move Henry Hub or TTF by ten percent or more.

### Storage levels against the seasonal norm

Because demand swings with the seasons and production does not, gas is injected into depleted fields, salt caverns and aquifers from April to October and withdrawn in winter. The market compares the amount in store with the five-year average for the same week. A storage deficit heading into winter means less buffer against cold, so prices rise to ration demand and pull in LNG; a surplus at the end of winter does the opposite. Weekly storage reports from the EIA and from Gas Infrastructure Europe are scheduled price events.

### LNG liquefaction and shipping capacity

LNG links otherwise separate regional markets, but only up to the capacity of the liquefaction trains, tankers and regasification terminals in service. New export plants take four to six years to build and arrive in lumps, so the global balance swings between tight and loose as projects in Qatar, the United States and Australia come online. Outages at a single large plant, such as Freeport in Texas in 2022, tighten Europe and Asia at once. Shipping distance and tanker availability set how quickly cargoes can chase the highest regional price.

### Pipeline politics and sanctions

Pipeline gas ties buyer and seller to fixed steel for decades, which makes it a lever in disputes. Russian flows to Europe fell sharply from 2022 as contracts were cut, transit through Ukraine ended and the Nord Stream lines were damaged. Sanctions and licensing decisions on LNG projects, export permits in the United States, and transit agreements between Russia, Ukraine and Central Asian producers all change where gas can physically go. When a route closes, the affected market must pay up for LNG until infrastructure is rerouted.

### Oil prices through contract indexation

Much of the LNG sold to Asia under long-term contracts is priced as a percentage of the Japanese crude import price, typically with a lag of three to six months. Rising oil therefore raises delivered gas costs in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan even when spot LNG is cheap, and buyers respond by shifting volumes between contract and spot. Associated gas also links the two markets on the supply side: when oil producers drill more in basins such as the Permian, gas output rises as a by-product regardless of the gas price.

### Power sector switching between gas and coal

Where both fuels are available, power generators run whichever is cheaper per unit of electricity after carbon costs. In the United States gas displaces coal below roughly $3 per MMBtu and cedes ground above it; in Europe the EU carbon price tilts the calculation toward gas. This switching acts as a shock absorber, limiting how far gas can rise before demand falls away, and it means coal and carbon prices feed directly into gas markets.

### Drilling response and associated gas

Shale wells decline quickly, so United States output depends on continuous drilling. When Henry Hub falls below the cost of dry-gas wells in Appalachia and the Haynesville, rigs are laid down and production plateaus within months. But gas from oil-directed drilling in the Permian keeps coming as long as oil is profitable, which has held Henry Hub down through periods that would otherwise have tightened. Pipeline takeaway constraints out of the Permian can push local prices below zero even while the national benchmark is positive.

## How is natural gas produced?

A gas well is drilled into a reservoir, cased with steel and cement, and connected to a wellhead that controls flow. In conventional fields the gas flows under its own pressure; in shale the rock is first fractured with high-pressure water and sand to open pathways. What comes out of the ground is called wet or raw gas: methane mixed with heavier hydrocarbons, water vapor, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide and sometimes nitrogen or helium. A field's gas is characterized by its methane share, its liquids content and whether it is "sour" (high in hydrogen sulfide) or "sweet".

At a gas processing plant the water is removed with glycol, acid gases are stripped out with amine solvents, and the natural gas liquids (NGLs: ethane, propane, butane and pentanes) are separated by chilling and fractionation. NGLs are sold into the petrochemical and LPG markets and can be worth more than the methane. What remains is pipeline-quality dry gas, which must meet a heating value and purity specification before it enters the transmission grid. Sulfur recovered from sour gas is a by-product; helium from a handful of fields in the United States, Qatar and Russia is another.

To export by sea the dry gas is piped to a liquefaction plant, where a series of refrigeration cycles chills it to about minus 162 degrees Celsius. The plant is built in parallel units called trains, each producing several million tonnes a year, and the LNG is stored in insulated tanks before loading. On the receiving end, a regasification terminal warms the liquid back to gas with seawater or burners and feeds it into the local grid. Roughly a tenth of the energy in the gas is used in liquefaction, shipping and regasification, which is one reason pipeline gas is cheaper when the route exists.

The traded products differ by route. Pipeline gas is sold as a flow at a hub, in energy units per day. LNG is sold by the cargo, usually 60,000 to 80,000 tonnes, with the heat content specified because gas from different fields has different energy density. Boil-off during the voyage is used as ship fuel, so a cargo shrinks slightly between loading and discharge.


## What is natural gas used for?

Gas is burned to make electricity, to heat buildings and to drive industrial processes such as glass, steel and cement making. It is also a feedstock, not just a fuel: methane is reformed into hydrogen for ammonia and thus for nitrogen fertilizer, and into methanol; ethane from gas processing is cracked into ethylene, the base of most plastics. Where gas is cheap, as in the United States and the Persian Gulf, fertilizer and petrochemical plants cluster around it.

The balance among these uses varies by country. In the IEA's accounting, electricity and heat generation and buildings together take the largest shares of world gas consumption, with industry and feedstock behind them (IEA, World Energy Outlook 2023). In a gas-poor, coal-rich economy such as India or China, gas is a small share of the energy mix; in Iran, Russia and Qatar it is the dominant fuel for power and industry.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Gas infrastructure is fixed and concentrated, so a small number of places matter out of proportion to their size. Ras Laffan in Qatar hosts liquefaction trains that supply a large share of world LNG, and every cargo from there must transit the Strait of Hormuz, a channel about 33 kilometers wide at its narrowest between Iran and Oman. United States LNG leaves from a cluster of plants on the Gulf Coast, above all Sabine Pass and Cameron in Louisiana and Corpus Christi and Freeport in Texas, and much of it bound for Asia passes through the Panama Canal, whose transit slots are limited by canal capacity and, in drought years, by water levels. Australian LNG ships from the North West Shelf, Gladstone and Darwin, and Northeast Asian imports funnel through the Strait of Malacca and the South China Sea.

In Europe the chokepoints are pipes rather than straits. Norwegian gas reaches the continent and Britain through a handful of subsea lines that land at Easington, Dunkirk, Zeebrugge and Emden; the Baltic Nord Stream lines, once the largest single route from Russia, were damaged in 2022 and are out of use. Transit through Ukraine ended at the start of 2025 when the transit agreement expired, leaving TurkStream as the only Russian pipeline route into the EU. Regasification capacity is itself a bottleneck: Germany had none until floating terminals were installed in late 2022, and Spain's terminals sit behind a thin pipeline link to France.

Processing is a further point of concentration. LNG liquefaction is engineered by a small number of licensors and built by a handful of contractors, so a shortage of specialized labor or equipment delays projects worldwide at once. Helium and ethane supply depend on a few large plants. And the entire system runs on long-term contracts and dedicated ships, so a lost plant cannot be replaced by buying elsewhere in the way a lost oil cargo can.


## Key companies

- Cheniere Energy: LNG exporter, United States, listed (NYSE: LNG)
- Equinor: producer, Norway, listed (OSE/NYSE: EQNR)
- Venture Global: LNG exporter, United States, listed (NYSE: VG)
- Novatek: producer, Russia, listed (MOEX: NVTK)
- Shell: LNG exporter, United Kingdom, listed (LSE/NYSE: SHEL)
- ExxonMobil: producer, United States, listed (NYSE: XOM)

## Timeline

- 1821: First purpose-drilled natural gas well at Fredonia, New York. It showed gas could be produced and piped deliberately rather than treated as a nuisance from oil wells, starting the local lighting gas trade. (https://naturalgas.org/overview/history/)
- 1959-01: Methane Pioneer carries the first LNG cargo across the Atlantic. A converted freighter proved that liquefied gas could survive an ocean voyage, opening the possibility of trading gas between continents without pipelines. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_Pioneer)
- 1964-10: Methane Princess begins commercial LNG trade from Arzew, Algeria to Canvey Island. The first purpose-built LNG chain established the plant-to-tanker-to-terminal model that every LNG project since has copied. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_Princess)
- 1969-10: First LNG cargo to Japan leaves Kenai, Alaska. Japan, with no domestic gas or pipelines, became the anchor buyer of Pacific LNG and set the oil-indexed long-term contract as the Asian norm. (https://www.conocophillips.com/spiritnow/story/conocophillips-and-japan-mark-50-years-of-lng/)
- 1989-07: Natural Gas Wellhead Decontrol Act ends US price controls. Removing wellhead price regulation let a spot and futures market form, without which Henry Hub could not have become a benchmark. (https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04/natural-gas-wellhead-decontrol-1989.pdf)
- 1990-04: NYMEX lists Henry Hub natural gas futures. A standardized exchange contract at a Louisiana pipeline junction gave North America a transparent reference price that long-term contracts and power plants adopted. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hub)
- 1996-12: Qatar exports its first LNG cargo from Ras Laffan. It marked the start of Qatar's build-out on the North Field, which made a small emirate one of the largest gas exporters in the world. (https://www.offshore-technology.com/projects/raslaffanlng/)
- 2003: Gasunie sets up the Title Transfer Facility (TTF) in the Netherlands. A virtual trading point on the Dutch grid grew into Europe's gas benchmark, replacing oil-indexed contracts across the continent. (https://www.gasunie.nl/en/gas-infrastructure/ttf---dutch-gas-trading-platform)
- 2011-03: Fukushima accident shuts Japan's nuclear fleet and lifts LNG imports. Japan replaced lost nuclear output with gas-fired power, tightening Pacific LNG markets and pushing spot Asian prices well above Henry Hub for years. (https://www.iea.org/articles/japan-natural-gas-security-policy)
- 2011-11: First Nord Stream line from Russia to Germany inaugurated. A direct Baltic route let Russian gas bypass Ukraine and deepened Germany's reliance on a single supplier. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream_1)
- 2016-02: Sabine Pass ships the first LNG export cargo from the lower 48 states. Shale gas turned the United States from a planned importer into an exporter, adding a flexible, spot-priced supplier to the world market. (https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67224)
- 2022-08: TTF front-month price passes 300 euros per megawatt-hour. The loss of Russian pipeline gas pushed the European benchmark to about ten times its pre-2021 level and drew LNG cargoes away from Asia. (https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2023/08/28/the-big-turnaround-how-europes-gas-prices-fell-from-300-to-35-mwh-in-the-span-of-a-year)
- 2022-09: Nord Stream 1 and 2 ruptured by underwater explosions. The damage removed the largest Russia-to-EU pipeline route from service and made Europe's shift to LNG and Norwegian gas permanent. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream_pipelines_sabotage)
- 2023: United States becomes the largest LNG exporter. With Sabine Pass, Corpus Christi, Freeport and Calcasieu Pass running, US exports passed Australia and Qatar, per EIA data for 2023. (https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61683)

## Frequently asked questions

### where does most of the world's natural gas come from

In 2025 United States produced 1,074 billion cubic metres, 26% of world marketed production of 4,196 billion cubic metres (Energy Institute). Russia was second and Iran third. The top five producers accounted for 58% of the total. Production and export are different lists: the biggest producers use most of their gas at home.

### which country exports the most natural gas

By export value, United States led world trade in petroleum gases (HS 2711) in 2024 with 18% of the total (CEPII BACI). The answer depends on the form: Australia led liquefied natural gas exports and Norway led pipeline gas exports in the same year. World exports were worth $475.8 billion.

### what is the price of natural gas right now

There is no single world price. The US benchmark, US Henry Hub, averaged $2.77/MMBtu in August 2026, down 5% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Europe's TTF was $21.11/MMBtu and Japan's LNG import price $13.94/MMBtu in the same month. Prices are quoted per million British thermal units, a unit of heat.

### what is LNG and how is it different from natural gas

LNG is liquefied natural gas: ordinary methane chilled to about minus 162 degrees Celsius so it shrinks to one six-hundredth of its volume and can be shipped by tanker. It is the same fuel once regasified. In 2024 Australia was the largest LNG exporter by value and China the largest importer (CEPII BACI).

### who imports the most natural gas

By value, China was the largest importer of petroleum gases (HS 2711) in 2024, taking 18% of world imports (CEPII BACI). Japan, South Korea and Taiwan buy everything as LNG because they have no pipeline links, while Germany and Italy have historically relied on pipelines from Norway, Russia and North Africa.

### why are natural gas prices different in the US and Europe

Gas is expensive to move, so each region has its own price set by local supply, storage and pipelines. The US benchmark was $2.77/MMBtu in August 2026 while Europe's TTF was $21.11/MMBtu (World Bank Pink Sheet). LNG links the regions, but only up to the capacity of liquefaction plants and tankers, so gaps persist.

### what is the highest natural gas price ever

The US Henry Hub monthly average peaked at $13.52/MMBtu in October 2005 (World Bank Pink Sheet). Europe's TTF benchmark peaked at $70.04/MMBtu in August 2022, when Russian pipeline flows to the EU fell away. Adjusted for US inflation, the Henry Hub peak was $21.3/MMBtu in October 2005.

### is natural gas production going up or down

World marketed gas production was 4,196 billion cubic metres in 2025, +19% compared with ten years earlier (Energy Institute). Output in United States, the largest producer, grew at +3.8% a year over that decade on shale drilling. The figures exclude gas that is flared or reinjected.

## Sources

- Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy, Statistical Review 2026. License: Free to use with attribution (Energy Institute terms). https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review
- 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 does natural gas come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/natural-gas/.

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# Where does natural rubber come from?

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

Natural rubber comes mainly from Thailand, which produced 4.8 million tonnes in 2024, 32% of the world's 14.8 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Indonesia (15%), Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) (11%) and Vietnam (9%) follow; the top five together supply 74%. The biggest exporter of natural rubber (HS 4001) is Thailand (30% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, TSR20, SGX/SICOM, was $2.24/kg in August 2026, up 31% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The Hevea tree needs year-round warmth, more than 2,000 millimetres of rain and no dry season longer than a few months, which is why production sits within about ten degrees of the equator, and it sits in Southeast Asia rather than the tree's native Amazon because a South American leaf blight makes plantation-scale growing there nearly impossible.

*Latex tapped from the Hevea tree, coagulated into sheets or block rubber; two-thirds of it goes into tyres.* Also called: rubber, natural rubber latex, latex, TSR20, RSS3, hevea rubber.

## Where does natural rubber come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Thailand | 4.8 million | 32% |
| 2 | Indonesia | 2.3 million | 15% |
| 3 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | 1.7 million | 11% |
| 4 | Vietnam | 1.3 million | 9% |
| 5 | China | 877,600 | 5.9% |
| 6 | India | 876,000 | 5.9% |
| 7 | Cambodia | 527,200 | 3.6% |
| 8 | Malaysia | 386,512 | 2.6% |
| 9 | Philippines | 364,557 | 2.5% |
| 10 | Laos | 350,300 | 2.4% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 9.3% |
| | World | 14.8 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

Natural rubber is the coagulated latex of Hevea brasiliensis, a tree native to the Amazon basin that is grown almost entirely on the other side of the world. The tree thrives in humid tropical lowlands with heavy rain spread across the year and yields latex from about the seventh year after planting for twenty to thirty years. Southeast Asia dominates because seeds smuggled out of Brazil in 1876 were propagated through Kew and Singapore into British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, and because the South American leaf blight (Microcyclus ulei) that devastates dense Hevea stands in the Americas has never established itself in Asia.

In 2024 Thailand produced 4.8 million tonnes, 32% of the world's 14.8 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Indonesia was second with 2.3 million tonnes and Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) third with 1.7 million tonnes. The top five producers together supplied 74% of world output, with 32 countries reporting any production. World output was +12% compared with ten years earlier, and the leading producer grew at +0.5% a year over that decade. Figures are dry rubber content, since latex as tapped is roughly a third rubber and two-thirds water.

The map has shifted within the tropics. Thailand's south and northeast, Indonesia's Sumatra and Kalimantan and Vietnam's Central Highlands hold most of the tree stock, much of it on smallholdings of a few hectares rather than estates. West Africa has been the fastest-growing region, with Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) expanding from a minor producer in the 1990s into the leading African source as Asian processors invested in factories there. Malaysia, once the largest producer, has converted much of its rubber land to oil palm, and India and China produce mainly for their own tyre industries. Yields differ widely with clone, tapping skill and tree age, so a country's output can fall even as its planted area rises.


## Who exports and imports natural rubber?

### Exporters of natural rubber, balata, gutta-percha, in primary forms or plates (HS 4001), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Thailand | $5.1 billion | 30% |
| 2 | Indonesia | $3.2 billion | 19% |
| 3 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $2.7 billion | 16% |
| 4 | Vietnam | $1.2 billion | 7.4% |
| 5 | Malaysia | $1.2 billion | 6.9% |
| 6 | Cambodia | $638.8 million | 3.8% |
| 7 | Myanmar | $535.5 million | 3.2% |
| 8 | Laos | $398.4 million | 2.4% |
| 9 | Ghana | $228.5 million | 1.4% |
| 10 | Guatemala | $186.3 million | 1.1% |
| 11 | Liberia | $181.8 million | 1.1% |
| 12 | Philippines | $153.2 million | 0.9% |
| 13 | Belgium | $139.2 million | 0.8% |
| 14 | Germany | $117.2 million | 0.7% |
| 15 | Singapore | $94.9 million | 0.6% |

### Importers of natural rubber, balata, gutta-percha, in primary forms or plates (HS 4001), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $4 billion | 24% |
| 2 | United States | $1.8 billion | 11% |
| 3 | Malaysia | $1.4 billion | 8.3% |
| 4 | Japan | $1.2 billion | 7.2% |
| 5 | India | $1 billion | 6.1% |
| 6 | Vietnam | $782.1 million | 4.6% |
| 7 | South Korea | $557.1 million | 3.3% |
| 8 | Germany | $537.5 million | 3.2% |
| 9 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $475.9 million | 2.8% |
| 10 | Spain | $408.2 million | 2.4% |
| 11 | Brazil | $302.3 million | 1.8% |
| 12 | Canada | $291.3 million | 1.7% |
| 13 | Mexico | $266.8 million | 1.6% |
| 14 | Italy | $242.4 million | 1.4% |
| 15 | Poland | $221 million | 1.3% |

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

Almost all natural rubber crosses a border before it is used, because the producing countries are not the largest tyre makers. Thailand was the leading exporter of natural rubber (HS 4001) in 2024, with 30% of world export value, and China was the leading importer with 24% of import value (CEPII BACI). World exports were worth $16.9 billion. HS 4001 covers rubber in primary forms: field latex concentrated to about 60% rubber, smoked sheet, and technically specified block rubber, all counted together.

Trade flows follow tyre factories rather than consumers. China, the United States, Japan, India and the EU import raw rubber to feed their tyre plants; the finished tyres are then exported again under a different tariff heading. Some of the trade is between producers: Vietnamese and Cambodian latex and cup lump move to Thai and Malaysian factories for processing, and Ivorian rubber is shipped to Asia as well as Europe. Singapore acts as a trading and pricing center without producing any rubber, and Malaysia imports raw material to keep its glove and processing industries supplied, so export figures for those two overstate their own production.


## What does natural rubber cost?

- TSR20, SGX/SICOM: $2.24/kg in August 2026; 12-month change +31%; 10-year change +72%; all-time high $5.58/kg in February 2011; real high (2024 US$) $7.89/kg in February 2011 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- RSS3, Malaysia/Singapore: $2.73/kg in August 2026; 12-month change +27%; 10-year change +76%; all-time high $6.26/kg in February 2011; real high (2024 US$) $9.87/kg in May 1960 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

Rubber is quoted by grade, and the two grades that matter most are TSR20 and RSS3. TSR20, also called SMR 20 in Malaysia, STR 20 in Thailand or SIR 20 in Indonesia, is technically specified rubber: block rubber made from coagulated cup lump, graded by laboratory tests for dirt, ash, nitrogen and plasticity. It is what tyre makers mostly buy. RSS3 is ribbed smoked sheet grade 3, made from field latex coagulated in sheets and smoked, graded by visual inspection. Latex concentrate for gloves and thread is priced separately, and prices are for dry rubber content.

Three exchanges set the reference prices. The SGX SICOM TSR20 contract (ticker TF, 5 tonnes, quoted in US cents per kilogram) is the benchmark for block rubber and settles against physical delivery in Southeast Asian warehouses. The Osaka Exchange RSS3 contract (5 tonnes, quoted in yen per kilogram) is the oldest, dating to the postwar Japanese rubber market. The Shanghai Futures Exchange Natural Rubber contract (ticker RU, 10 tonnes, quoted in yuan per tonne) is the most heavily traded and reflects Chinese tyre demand; a companion TSR20 contract on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange has run since 2019. Physical trade is done at a premium or discount to these, with freight and quality adjustments.

This site's primary series is TSR20, SGX/SICOM, which was $2.24/kg in August 2026, up 31% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its record monthly average was $5.58/kg in February 2011, and its low was $0.47/kg in November 2001; the series starts in 1999. The RSS3 series, RSS3, Malaysia/Singapore, was $2.73/kg in August 2026. A quote is for a kilogram of dry rubber delivered to the named market; a tonne of latex at 60% concentration contains 600 kilograms of rubber and is priced on that content.


## What moves the price of natural rubber?

### Tyre demand and vehicle production

Tyres take roughly seven in ten kilograms of natural rubber, so demand follows car and truck output and the replacement cycle for tyres already on the road. Truck and aircraft tyres use a higher share of natural rubber than car tyres because it resists heat build-up better than synthetic. Chinese tyre exports, US truck freight and Indian two-wheeler sales are the demand indicators traders watch. A slowdown in vehicle sales shows up in rubber within a quarter as tyre makers run down inventories.

### Crude oil and synthetic rubber

Synthetic rubbers such as SBR and polybutadiene are made from butadiene, a by-product of cracking naphtha or ethane, so their cost tracks crude oil and petrochemical margins. Tyre compounders can shift the blend a few percentage points either way. When oil is cheap, synthetic undercuts natural and caps its price; when oil rises, natural rubber gains room. The link is loose month to month but firm over years, and it is why rubber charts often resemble oil charts with a lag.

### Weather, disease and the tapping calendar

Trees are rested during the wintering leaf fall from February to April, when output across Thailand and Indonesia drops, and heavy monsoon rain stops tapping because wet bark yields poorly and latex washes out of the cup. Floods in southern Thailand, droughts linked to El Niño and outbreaks of Pestalotiopsis leaf fall disease in Indonesia have each cut supply enough to move prices. Because the tree stock is fixed, weather changes output for a season, not the trend.

### Smallholder economics and tapping decisions

Most of the world's rubber comes from smallholders who decide daily whether tapping pays. When farm-gate prices fall below what a tapper earns in construction or palm oil work, trees are left untapped and supply shrinks quickly; when prices rise, tapping intensifies and neglected trees come back. This makes short-run supply more elastic than the planted area suggests. Over the long run, low prices after 2011 discouraged replanting, and the aging tree stock in Thailand and Indonesia constrains output years later.

### Producer government policy

Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia have coordinated through the International Tripartite Rubber Council since 2001, at times agreeing export cuts to support prices. Thailand has run price-support and replanting schemes financed by a cess on exports, and Indonesia has restricted lower-grade exports. The effect on prices has been modest and short-lived, but announcements move the futures markets, and the EU deforestation regulation adds a compliance layer that favors traceable estate rubber over untracked smallholder cup lump.

### Currency moves in producer and consumer countries

Rubber is sold in dollars but grown in baht, rupiah and dong. A weaker Thai baht raises what growers receive per kilogram and encourages tapping and selling, which pushes dollar prices down; a stronger baht does the opposite. On the demand side, the yuan matters because China is the largest buyer and the Shanghai contract is priced in yuan. Yen movements feed through the Osaka RSS3 contract. Currency swings can account for a large share of month-to-month price change with no change in the physical balance.

### Inventories at Chinese ports and exchange warehouses

Stocks held in Qingdao bonded warehouses and in Shanghai Futures Exchange delivery warehouses are watched as a gauge of how much rubber is waiting for a buyer. Rising warehouse stocks signal that imports have outrun tyre production and weigh on prices; falling stocks signal restocking ahead. Because the SHFE contract accepts only rubber of a certain age, deliverable stock can be tight even when total inventory is ample, which creates squeezes around delivery months.

## How is natural rubber produced?

Rubber begins as latex, a milky fluid in vessels just under the bark. A tapper cuts a thin spiral strip of bark before dawn, when turgor pressure is highest, and the latex flows for a few hours into a cup. A tree is tapped every second or third day on alternating panels, and a skilled tapper can work several hundred trees a morning. Yield depends on the clone (RRIM 600, PB 260 and RRIV varieties are widespread), on tree age, and on whether ethylene stimulant is applied to prolong flow. Trees start yielding at six to seven years, peak in their teens and are felled for timber at about 25 to 30 years.

What happens next decides the grade. If the latex is collected fresh and kept liquid with ammonia, it can be centrifuged into 60% latex concentrate for gloves, condoms, thread and foam. If it is coagulated in trays with formic acid, rolled into thin sheets and smoked over a wood fire for several days, it becomes ribbed smoked sheet, graded RSS1 to RSS5 by color and defects. If it is simply allowed to coagulate in the cup, the resulting cup lump is sold by weight to a factory, where it is chopped, washed, creped, dried in hot air and pressed into 33.3-kilogram blocks of technically specified rubber, graded TSR5 through TSR50 by dirt and other measured properties. Cup lump and TSR have become the dominant path because they need less labor at the farm and suit tyre factories' need for consistent, testable material.

The blocks are wrapped in polyethylene, palletized in tonne-and-a-quarter units and shipped in containers. Tyre makers mix the rubber with synthetic rubber, carbon black or silica, sulfur and oils, then form and vulcanize it. The by-products of the tree itself are rubberwood, a major furniture timber in Thailand and Malaysia, and seed oil. Seasonality is set by the wintering period, when trees drop leaves and tapping stops, so exports from Southeast Asia dip in the second quarter and peak late in the year.


### Harvest calendar

- Thailand (Tapping season): harvest Jan, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec. Wintering (leaf fall, low yield) February–April.
- Indonesia (Year-round tapping): harvest Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec. Seasonal dip during wintering, roughly February–March in Sumatra.
- Vietnam (Tapping season): harvest Jan, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
- Ivory Coast (Year-round tapping): harvest Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
- India (Tapping season, Kerala): harvest Jan, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
- China (Tapping season, Hainan and Yunnan): harvest Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov
- Malaysia (Year-round tapping): harvest Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
- Myanmar (Tapping season): harvest Jan, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec

## What is natural rubber used for?

Natural rubber is used where a material must stretch, spring back, resist tearing and shed heat: tyres above all, then hoses, belts, seals, engine mounts, footwear, gloves and medical goods. The International Rubber Study Group puts tyres and other automotive parts at more than 70% of natural rubber consumption (IRSG). Truck, bus, aircraft and off-road tyres lean on natural rubber because it builds up less heat under load than synthetic; passenger car tyres use a higher synthetic share.

Latex concentrate, about a tenth of output, goes into dipped goods, of which examination gloves are the largest, concentrated in Malaysia and Thailand. Natural rubber has no full substitute in heavy tyres, which is why the United States and the EU have classed it as a critical or strategic material, and why synthetic rubber, which is more than half of all rubber used, complements rather than replaces it.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The physical chain is short but geographically concentrated. Nearly all rubber is grown within the tropics of Southeast Asia and West Africa, and the processing factories that make TSR sit in the same countries, often owned by a handful of groups: Sri Trang, Von Bundit and Thai Hua in Thailand, Halcyon Agri and its parent Hainan Rubber, and the Indonesian and Ivorian plants of the same groups. From the factory, rubber moves by container through Laem Chabang and Songkhla in Thailand, Belawan and Palembang in Indonesia, Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, Abidjan in Ivory Coast and Port Klang and Penang in Malaysia, then through the Strait of Malacca and Singapore toward China, Japan, India, Europe and the United States.

The single largest point of failure is biological. South American leaf blight has confined Hevea cultivation to a region where it does not yet occur; its arrival in Asia, which plant pathologists consider possible through infected material, would threaten the bulk of world supply with no short-term alternative. Narrow genetics add to that risk, since most Asian trees descend from the 1876 Kew seedlings. Container shipping disruptions, as in 2021 when box shortages left rubber stranded in Thai ports, and the SHFE warehouse system, which concentrates deliverable stock in a few Chinese cities, are the main logistical bottlenecks.

Downstream, tyre manufacturing is concentrated among a few multinationals and Chinese producers, and rubber is only one input into a tyre, so a rubber shortage shows up as tyre price rises rather than empty shelves. Traceability under the EU deforestation regulation is the newest constraint: rubber from millions of smallholdings must be mapped to the plot to enter the EU, which favors integrated processors and could reroute untraceable rubber toward Asian buyers.


## Key companies

- Sri Trang Agro-Industry: processor, Thailand, listed (SET: STA; SGX: NC2)
- Halcyon Agri: processor, Singapore
- Bridgestone: processor, Japan, listed (TSE: 5108)
- Michelin: processor, France, listed (Euronext Paris: ML)

## Timeline

- 1844-06: Goodyear patents vulcanization. Heating rubber with sulfur made it stable in heat and cold, turning a curiosity into an industrial material and creating demand for wild Amazon rubber. (https://www.massmoments.org/moment-details/charles-goodyear-receives-patent-for-vulcanized-rubber.html)
- 1876-06: Hevea seeds from the Amazon arrive at Kew Gardens. Seedlings raised at Kew were sent to Ceylon and Singapore, founding the Asian plantation industry that would displace Brazil. (https://www.historyofceylontea.com/tea-planters/planters-registry/henry-wickham--11132930.html)
- 1888: Dunlop patents the pneumatic tyre. Air-filled rubber tyres for bicycles and then cars created the use that still takes most of the world's natural rubber. (https://www.invent.org/inductees/john-boyd-dunlop)
- 1913: Asian plantation rubber overtakes Brazilian wild rubber. Plantation supply ended the Amazon boom and fixed Southeast Asia as the center of production, where it remains. (https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-international-natural-rubber-market-1870-1930/)
- 1922-11: Stevenson restriction scheme limits exports from British Malaya and Ceylon. The first government supply cartel in rubber raised prices and pushed the United States to seek supply outside British territory. (https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1928/apr/26/rubber-export-restriction-scheme)
- 1934-06: International Rubber Regulation Agreement takes effect. Britain, the Netherlands, France, India and Siam coordinated export quotas covering nearly all supply, a model for later commodity agreements. (https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1934-06-06/debates/e1baab96-5b1a-4c5a-a9fd-8274a3c7e46d/Rubber(RegulationScheme))
- 1942: Japan occupies Malaya and the Dutch East Indies; the US synthetic rubber program begins. Losing more than nine tenths of its supply, the United States built a synthetic industry from scratch, and synthetic has been the larger share of rubber use since. (https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2025/02/the-u-s-synthetic-rubber-program-an-industrial-policy-triumph-during-world-war-ii/)
- 1979-10: International Natural Rubber Agreement adopted under UNCTAD. A buffer stock of 400,000 tonnes was set up to steady prices; the agreement was wound up in 1999 after members withdrew. (https://unctad.org/press-material/deadline-signature-international-natural-rubber-agreement-be-extended)
- 2001-12: Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia form the International Tripartite Rubber Council. The three largest producers of the time agreed to coordinate export cuts and replanting, the framework still used for supply management. (https://ircorubber.com/)
- 2008-06: SGX acquires the Singapore Commodity Exchange (SICOM). It put the TSR20 benchmark contract on a major exchange, which made SICOM TSR20 the pricing reference for tyre-grade rubber. (https://www.sgx.com/derivatives/products/sicom-rubber)
- 2011-02: Rubber prices reach a record. Chinese demand and tight supply after wintering pushed TSR20 and RSS3 to their highest levels, prompting a planting wave whose trees matured into the glut of the late 2010s. (https://www.ceicdata.com/en/india/memo-items-rubber-price/rubber-price-natural-graded-rss3)
- 2019-08: Shanghai International Energy Exchange lists TSR20 futures. A yuan-denominated TSR20 contract open to foreign traders gave China, the largest buyer, a benchmark in its own currency alongside SGX. (https://www.ine.cn/content/NR_en/index.html)
- 2023-06: EU Deforestation Regulation enters into force with rubber in scope. Rubber entering the EU must be traced to plots free of deforestation after 2020, which reshapes how smallholder rubber is bought. (https://www.reedsmith.com/en/perspectives/2023/06/eu-regulation-on-deforestation-free-products-to-enter-into-force-on)

## Frequently asked questions

### where does most natural rubber come from

In 2024 Thailand produced 4.8 million tonnes of natural rubber, 32% of the world total of 14.8 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Indonesia was second and Ivory Coast third. The top five producers supplied 74% of the world's rubber. Almost all of it is grown within ten degrees of the equator in Southeast Asia and West Africa.

### which country exports the most rubber

Thailand was the largest exporter of natural rubber in primary forms (HS 4001) in 2024, with 30% of world export value (CEPII BACI). China was the largest importer, taking 24% of imports to feed its tyre factories. World exports were worth $16.9 billion that year.

### what is the price of natural rubber today

TSR20, SGX/SICOM averaged $2.24/kg in August 2026, up 31% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The RSS3 smoked sheet grade was $2.73/kg in the same month. Prices are for a kilogram of dry rubber delivered in Southeast Asia and move with tyre demand and crude oil.

### is natural rubber made from trees

Yes. Natural rubber is the dried latex of the Hevea brasiliensis tree, tapped by cutting the bark and collecting the milky sap. Trees yield from about seven years old for two to three decades. In 2024 the world produced 14.8 million tonnes of natural rubber, measured as dry rubber content (FAOSTAT), from 32 countries.

### why is rubber grown in Asia and not Brazil

The tree is native to the Amazon, but a fungal disease, South American leaf blight, kills dense plantings there. Seeds taken to Kew in 1876 were grown in Ceylon, Singapore and Malaya, where the blight is absent. In 2024 Thailand alone produced 32% of the world's natural rubber (FAOSTAT); Brazil is a minor producer.

### what is the difference between TSR20 and RSS3 rubber

TSR20 is technically specified block rubber made from coagulated cup lump and graded by lab tests; RSS3 is ribbed smoked sheet coagulated from latex and graded by eye. Tyre makers mostly buy TSR20. In August 2026 TSR20 was $2.24/kg and RSS3 was $2.73/kg (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### what is the highest rubber price ever

The highest monthly average for TSR20, SGX/SICOM was $5.58/kg in February 2011 (World Bank Pink Sheet). Adjusted for US inflation, the real peak was $7.89/kg in February 2011. The lowest monthly average in the series was $0.47/kg in November 2001.

### what is natural rubber used for

Tyres and other automotive parts take more than 70% of natural rubber, according to the International Rubber Study Group. The rest goes into gloves, hoses, belts, seals, footwear and medical goods. Natural rubber resists heat build-up better than synthetic, so truck and aircraft tyres depend on it. World output was 14.8 million tonnes in 2024 (FAOSTAT).

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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
- Harvest calendars (curated from USDA FAS IPAD crop calendars and FAO GIEWS country briefs), curated 2026-09. License: Public domain (USDA) with FAO GIEWS cross-reference (attribution). https://ipad.fas.usda.gov/ogamaps/cropcalendar.aspx

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

---

# Where does nickel come from?

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

Nickel comes mainly from Indonesia, which produced 2.6 million tonnes in 2025, 67% of the world's 3.9 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Philippines (6.9%), Russia (5.1%) and New Caledonia (3.6%) follow; the top five together supply 86%. The biggest exporter of unwrought nickel (HS 7502) is Norway (15% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, LME cash, was $16,751/t in August 2026, up 12% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Nickel sits in two very different rocks: sulfide veins frozen into ancient crust at Sudbury, Norilsk and Kambalda, and the thick laterite blankets that tropical weathering leaves on ultramafic bedrock in Indonesia, the Philippines and New Caledonia.

*A corrosion-resistant metal used mostly in stainless steel and increasingly in battery cathodes.* Also called: Ni, nickel ore, nickel pig iron, class 1 nickel, nickel sulphate, laterite.

## Where does nickel come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indonesia | 2.6 million | 67% |
| 2 | Philippines | 270,000 | 6.9% |
| 3 | Russia | 200,000 | 5.1% |
| 4 | New Caledonia | 140,000 | 3.6% |
| 5 | Canada | 140,000 | 3.6% |
| 6 | China | 120,000 | 3.1% |
| 7 | Brazil | 70,000 | 1.8% |
| 8 | Australia | 45,000 | 1.2% |
| 9 | United States | 10,000 | 0.3% |
| | Rest of world | 290,000 | 7.8% |
| | World | 3.9 million | 100% |

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026.

Nickel comes from two chemically different families of ore, and that split explains most of what happens in the market. On this page nickel production means mined nickel measured by its metal content, unless a refined or intermediate product is named. In 2025 Indonesia mined 2.6 million tonnes, 67% of the world's 3.9 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Philippines was second at 6.9% and Russia third at 5.1%, followed by New Caledonia and Canada. Countries outside the 9 the survey lists separately accounted for 7.8%, and world mine output changed +5% from the previous year. No other large industrial metal is so concentrated in a single country.

Sulphide deposits are the older half of the industry. Where magma carrying dissolved sulfur cooled inside ancient crust, nickel, copper and platinum-group metals separated out as sulfide minerals in discrete, high-grade bodies. That is the Sudbury basin in Canada, formed in the shock of a meteorite impact, the Norilsk-Talnakh deposits in Siberia, the Kambalda belt in Western Australia, Thompson in Manitoba and Voisey's Bay in Labrador. Sulphide ore can be concentrated by flotation and smelted much like copper, and it yields the pure metal that the London Metal Exchange accepts.

Laterites are younger and shallower. In the wet tropics, rain leaches magnesium and silica out of ultramafic bedrock over millions of years and leaves an iron-rich blanket enriched in nickel, tens of meters thick and reachable with an excavator. Indonesia, the Philippines, New Caledonia, Cuba and Brazil sit on those blankets. Laterites hold most of the world's land-based nickel but supplied a minority of it for a century, because separating nickel from iron and magnesium needs either a furnace hot enough to melt the whole rock or an autoclave that dissolves it under pressure. The industry's center of gravity moved once both routes were built at scale in Indonesia.

Reserves, which the USGS defines as the part of identified resources that could be extracted economically at the time of the estimate, stood at 130.1 million tonnes in 2025. Indonesia held 48% of that total, ahead of Australia at 19% and Brazil at 12% (USGS MCS). Reserves are a snapshot of what is worth mining at the time, not a count of what exists, and laterite resources in particular expand whenever a processing route becomes cheaper.


## Who exports and imports nickel?

Indonesia banned ore exports in 2020 and built smelters, so its ore export line collapsed while its refined and intermediate exports grew.

### Exporters of nickel ores and concentrates (HS 2604), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Philippines | $1.8 billion | 36% |
| 2 | Zambia | $723.4 million | 14% |
| 3 | Finland | $408.8 million | 8.2% |
| 4 | New Caledonia | $343.1 million | 6.8% |
| 5 | Russia | $321 million | 6.4% |
| 6 | Australia | $240.4 million | 4.8% |
| 7 | Brazil | $231.1 million | 4.6% |
| 8 | Namibia | $209.4 million | 4.2% |
| 9 | Canada | $159.9 million | 3.2% |
| 10 | United States | $127.4 million | 2.5% |
| 11 | Vietnam | $66.1 million | 1.3% |
| 12 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $63.2 million | 1.3% |
| 13 | South Africa | $55.6 million | 1.1% |
| 14 | Other Asia, nes | $55 million | 1.1% |
| 15 | Solomon Islands | $39 million | 0.8% |

### Importers of nickel ores and concentrates (HS 2604), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $2.9 billion | 57% |
| 2 | Canada | $615.7 million | 12% |
| 3 | Indonesia | $452.3 million | 9% |
| 4 | Finland | $296.1 million | 5.9% |
| 5 | Namibia | $241.8 million | 4.8% |
| 6 | South Korea | $212.3 million | 4.2% |
| 7 | Belgium | $74.7 million | 1.5% |
| 8 | Switzerland | $68.9 million | 1.4% |
| 9 | Other Asia, nes | $53.6 million | 1.1% |
| 10 | Japan | $38.6 million | 0.8% |
| 11 | Malaysia | $30.8 million | 0.6% |
| 12 | Germany | $7.7 million | 0.2% |
| 13 | Thailand | $6.5 million | 0.1% |
| 14 | Morocco | $5.6 million | 0.1% |
| 15 | Spain | $4.5 million | 0.1% |

### Exporters of nickel mattes and intermediates (HS 7501), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indonesia | $7.5 billion | 55% |
| 2 | Canada | $1.2 billion | 8.4% |
| 3 | Zimbabwe | $986.2 million | 7.2% |
| 4 | Finland | $853.1 million | 6.2% |
| 5 | Russia | $846.6 million | 6.2% |
| 6 | Philippines | $580.8 million | 4.2% |
| 7 | Papua New Guinea | $421.7 million | 3.1% |
| 8 | Australia | $409.5 million | 3% |
| 9 | New Caledonia | $284.6 million | 2.1% |
| 10 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $130.8 million | 1% |
| 11 | Japan | $94.9 million | 0.7% |
| 12 | Cuba | $88.6 million | 0.6% |
| 13 | Germany | $59.3 million | 0.4% |
| 14 | Sweden | $48.4 million | 0.4% |
| 15 | South Africa | $33.9 million | 0.2% |

### Importers of nickel mattes and intermediates (HS 7501), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $7.3 billion | 54% |
| 2 | Japan | $1.8 billion | 13% |
| 3 | Norway | $1.8 billion | 13% |
| 4 | South Africa | $984.7 million | 7.2% |
| 5 | Finland | $666.7 million | 4.9% |
| 6 | United Kingdom | $405.9 million | 3% |
| 7 | Netherlands | $184.8 million | 1.4% |
| 8 | Canada | $153.1 million | 1.1% |
| 9 | France | $131.5 million | 1% |
| 10 | South Korea | $94 million | 0.7% |
| 11 | Malaysia | $34 million | 0.2% |
| 12 | India | $23.7 million | 0.2% |
| 13 | United States | $21.8 million | 0.2% |
| 14 | Sweden | $13.8 million | 0.1% |
| 15 | Spain | $11 million | 0.1% |

### Exporters of unwrought nickel (HS 7502), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Norway | $2.2 billion | 15% |
| 2 | Canada | $1.8 billion | 13% |
| 3 | Australia | $1.4 billion | 9.4% |
| 4 | Russia | $1.2 billion | 8.3% |
| 5 | China | $1.2 billion | 8.3% |
| 6 | Indonesia | $953.8 million | 6.6% |
| 7 | Netherlands | $822.1 million | 5.7% |
| 8 | United Kingdom | $774.7 million | 5.4% |
| 9 | South Africa | $626 million | 4.4% |
| 10 | Finland | $624.2 million | 4.4% |
| 11 | Madagascar | $473 million | 3.3% |
| 12 | Japan | $456.9 million | 3.2% |
| 13 | United States | $360.1 million | 2.5% |
| 14 | Germany | $298.7 million | 2.1% |
| 15 | France | $249.8 million | 1.7% |

### Importers of unwrought nickel (HS 7502), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $1.9 billion | 13% |
| 2 | Netherlands | $1.8 billion | 13% |
| 3 | United States | $1.5 billion | 10% |
| 4 | Germany | $963.4 million | 6.7% |
| 5 | Japan | $905.9 million | 6.3% |
| 6 | Other Asia, nes | $891.4 million | 6.2% |
| 7 | France | $702.7 million | 4.9% |
| 8 | Italy | $644.2 million | 4.5% |
| 9 | Singapore | $602.1 million | 4.2% |
| 10 | India | $578.7 million | 4% |
| 11 | South Korea | $546.9 million | 3.8% |
| 12 | Belgium | $531.3 million | 3.7% |
| 13 | Sweden | $461.8 million | 3.2% |
| 14 | Malaysia | $392.1 million | 2.7% |
| 15 | Austria | $313.1 million | 2.2% |

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

Nickel crosses borders in three forms and each tells a different story. Ores and concentrates (HS 2604) are the raw material; in 2024 Philippines was the largest exporter with 36% of a trade worth $5 billion, and China took 57% of imports. Mattes and intermediates (HS 7501), the half-finished products of laterite processing, are a much larger trade at $13.7 billion: Indonesia shipped 55% of them and China bought 54%. Finished unwrought nickel (HS 7502) is the primary table on this page. In 2024 Norway was the largest exporter of unwrought nickel (HS 7502) with 15% of the world's $14.3 billion, ahead of Canada and Australia, while China was the largest importer at 13%.

Read together, the three lines show a chain that has been rebuilt in one decade. The country that mines the most nickel barely appears in the finished-metal table but dominates the intermediates table, because it banned ore exports and built furnaces instead. The countries at the top of the unwrought table are refiners: Norway, Canada and Australia run refineries that turn matte and concentrate, some of it imported, into cathode, briquettes and powder. The trade also splits by quality. Class 1 nickel contains at least 99.80% nickel and can be dissolved into battery chemicals or delivered against an exchange contract. Class 2 nickel is ferronickel and nickel pig iron, an iron-nickel alloy of much lower nickel content that goes straight into a stainless steel furnace and never trades on an exchange. A tonne of contained nickel in each form is not interchangeable, which is why a shortage can exist in one class while the other is in surplus.


## What does nickel cost?

- LME cash: $16,751/t in August 2026; 12-month change +12%; 10-year change +62%; all-time high $52,179/t in May 2007; real high (2024 US$) $79,168/t in May 2007 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- Nickel, melting grade, LME spot (IMF): $16,632/t in July 2026; 12-month change +11%; 10-year change +62%; all-time high $51,783/t in May 2007; real high (2024 US$) $78,568/t in May 2007 (IMF PCPS).

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

### How it is priced

The reference price is the London Metal Exchange nickel contract, ticker NI, which trades in 6 t lots quoted in US$/t and settles by delivery of class 1 nickel, meaning cathode, briquettes, pellets or rounds of at least 99.80% nickel, into an LME-approved warehouse. As with the other LME metals there is a cash price for delivery in two days and a three-month price, and the spread between them shows whether nearby metal is scarce or plentiful. The Shanghai Futures Exchange lists a yuan-denominated nickel contract for the Chinese domestic market, and the Wuxi and Shanghai spot markets quote the physical premiums that Chinese buyers actually pay.

The series charted here is LME cash. In August 2026 it averaged $16,751/t, up 12% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The highest monthly average in the series was $52,179/t in May 2007; adjusted for US inflation the real high was $79,168/t in May 2007, and the lowest monthly average since the series began in 1960 was $1,631/t in January 1960. Monthly averages smooth away the most violent episode in the contract's history: in March 2022 the intraday price briefly passed six figures per tonne before the exchange suspended trading and cancelled a day of deals, an intervention that was later challenged in court and that pushed some producers and consumers into pricing off assessed indices instead.

Almost nobody pays the exchange price directly. Miners selling sulfide concentrate receive the LME value of the contained nickel minus treatment and refining charges, the fee that smelters and refiners negotiate for turning concentrate into metal, with deductions for the iron and magnesium that come with it and credits for copper, cobalt and precious metals. Laterite products are quoted as a payable percentage of the LME price: mixed hydroxide precipitate and matte trade at a discount that widens when refining capacity is tight, while ferronickel and nickel pig iron are priced against Chinese stainless steel economics rather than against class 1 metal, and can trade far below the exchange. Battery-grade nickel sulfate carries a premium over class 1 metal that reflects the cost of dissolving and purifying it.


## What moves the price of nickel?

### Indonesian mining and export policy

One government sets the supply curve for this metal. Rules on ore exports, on annual production quotas granted to each mine, on royalty rates and on which processing routes qualify for tax holidays decide how fast the largest producer grows. Because the country's capacity was built quickly and largely on borrowed capital, policy that slows permit approvals or raises costs feeds through to world supply within a quarter or two, and the market now reads Indonesian ministerial decrees the way it once read Canadian strike ballots.

### Stainless steel output

Stainless steel is the largest use of nickel by a wide margin, so the metal is mostly a bet on construction, appliances, kitchen equipment and process plant in China, Indonesia, India and Europe. Stainless mills can also swap between nickel-bearing austenitic grades and cheaper 200-series or ferritic grades that use manganese or no nickel at all, so a sustained rally destroys some demand permanently. Mill margins and stainless inventories in Wuxi and Foshan are watched as leading indicators of nickel buying.

### Battery demand and cathode chemistry

Nickel-rich cathodes store more energy per kilogram than the alternatives, so every shift in battery chemistry moves nickel demand. Growth in nickel-manganese-cobalt and nickel-cobalt-aluminum cells raises it; the spread of lithium iron phosphate cells, which contain no nickel, lowers it. Battery makers buy nickel sulfate rather than metal, and sulfate is made from class 1 metal, from mixed hydroxide precipitate or from converted matte, so the price signal reaches the mine through a chain of intermediate products.

### Substitution between class 1 and class 2 nickel

The two halves of the market were long separate: class 2 fed stainless steel, class 1 fed everything else. Building furnaces that convert nickel pig iron into matte, and then into sulfate, joined them. When that conversion is profitable, surplus class 2 can be pushed into the battery chain and the premium for class 1 collapses; when it is not, the two prices drift apart again. The conversion cost, which is mostly energy, therefore acts as a valve between a surplus market and a tight one.

### Energy, coal and processing costs

Laterite processing is energy-hungry. Rotary kiln electric furnaces run on captive coal-fired power, and high pressure acid leach plants consume sulfur, limestone and steam. Coal and sulfur prices, and the capital cost of autoclaves that must resist hot acid, set the floor under laterite supply. Sulphide mines have a different cost structure, dominated by deep underground mining and by the credits they earn from copper and platinum-group metals, so the two halves of the industry respond to different shocks.

### Russian supply and sanctions

Russia is one of the few sources of high-purity class 1 nickel outside the laterite belt, and its refineries also supply palladium and copper. Sanctions, self-sanctioning by banks and shippers, and exchange rules on which brands may be delivered into warehouses change where that metal can go rather than how much exists. The effect shows up as regional premiums and as shifts in warehouse stocks, and it raises the share of exchange inventory made up of brands some buyers will not take.

### Exchange liquidity and the memory of 2022

Nickel is a small contract relative to the value of the metal it prices, and its warehouse stocks are a thin cushion. A large short position that cannot find deliverable class 1 metal can therefore move the price violently, as it did in March 2022 when trading was suspended and a day of transactions was cancelled. The episode cut open interest and pushed hedgers toward over-the-counter deals and assessed indices, so the exchange price now sits on a narrower base of trading than the size of the physical market implies.

## How is nickel produced?

The sulfide route follows the copper playbook. Ore is mined underground or in open pits, crushed and ground, and separated by froth flotation into a nickel concentrate holding roughly a tenth to a fifth nickel, with copper and cobalt concentrates taken off alongside. The concentrate is roasted and smelted in a flash or electric furnace to a matte of nickel and copper sulfides, and the matte is then refined. Three refining routes are used: electrowinning from a sulfate or chloride solution to make cathode, ammonia pressure leaching to make briquettes and powder, and the carbonyl process, in which nickel reacts with carbon monoxide to form a gas that is decomposed back to very pure metal pellets. All three yield class 1 nickel.

The laterite route splits by depth. The lower, magnesium-rich saprolite layer carries more nickel and is smelted whole: dried, calcined in a rotary kiln and melted in an electric furnace, a combination known as RKEF, which produces ferronickel or, with cheaper feed and less refining, nickel pig iron. Both are iron-nickel alloys charged straight into stainless steel furnaces. The upper, iron-rich limonite layer holds too little nickel to smelt economically, so it is dissolved instead: high pressure acid leaching mixes the ore with sulfuric acid in an autoclave at high temperature and pressure, and the dissolved nickel and cobalt are precipitated as mixed hydroxide precipitate, an intermediate that refineries turn into sulfate or metal.

Two newer steps connect the halves. Nickel pig iron can be blown with sulfur in a converter to make a high-grade matte, which is then leached and crystallized into battery-grade nickel sulfate; mixed hydroxide precipitate can be dissolved and purified to the same product. Both routes let laterite ore, which cannot make class 1 metal directly, reach the battery market. Recycling runs on a separate track: stainless steel scrap returns nickel to the melt shop without any refining at all, and it supplies a large share of stainless raw material, while spent lithium-ion batteries are only beginning to return nickel through hydrometallurgical recovery.


## What is nickel used for?

Stainless steel dominates. The International Nickel Study Group reports that stainless and alloy steel take by far the largest share of first-use nickel, with the balance divided between non-ferrous alloys, electroplating, foundry products and batteries (INSG, world nickel statistics). Nickel is what makes stainless steel austenitic: it stabilizes a crystal structure that stays tough at low temperature, resists corrosion and does not hold a magnet, which is why 304 and 316 grades are used for tanks, pipework, cutlery, sinks, chemical plant and architectural cladding. Nickel superalloys, which keep their strength when red hot, are the reason jet engines and gas turbines exist in their present form.

The battery share is the fastest-growing part of demand and the reason nickel is on critical-minerals lists. Nickel-rich cathodes raise the energy density of lithium-ion cells, so a longer-range electric vehicle generally carries more nickel; a competing chemistry, lithium iron phosphate, uses none. Beyond those two markets, nickel plating protects steel from rust, nickel-copper and nickel-chromium alloys serve marine and heating applications, and nickel catalysts hydrogenate vegetable oils. Coinage, once a defining use, is now a rounding error.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Processing has concentrated faster than mining. Indonesian industrial parks at Morowali and Weda Bay, built largely with Chinese capital and equipment, contain smelters, power stations, ports and worker housing on single sites, so ore travels a few kilometers rather than a few thousand. That is why the country's exports have shifted from ore to matte and hydroxide: in 2024 it supplied 55% of world exports of nickel mattes and intermediates (CEPII BACI), while Philippines became the main seller of unprocessed ore, most of it to China.

Class 1 refining stayed where it always was. Norway's Kristiansand refinery, Canada's Sudbury and Fort Saskatchewan plants, the Clydach carbonyl works in Wales, Norilsk's Kola operations, Japanese refineries at Niihama and Chinese plants in Gansu process matte and concentrate into cathode, briquettes and powder. That is the reason Norway tops the unwrought nickel export table with 15% of world export value in 2024 despite mining almost none of it (CEPII BACI). Ore moves by bulk carrier from the Philippines and New Caledonia to Chinese and Japanese furnaces; matte and hydroxide move in containers from Sulawesi and Halmahera to refineries in China, South Korea and Japan.

The chokepoints are policy and power rather than geography. A single government's decisions on export rules and production quotas govern most of world supply. Captive coal-fired generation ties laterite processing to coal prices and to emissions rules that may tighten. High pressure acid leach plants are technically demanding and have a long record of delays and cost overruns, so new capacity arrives late more often than early. Tailings and slag disposal in high-rainfall, seismically active islands is a permanent environmental and permitting risk, and rules on deep-sea tailings placement have already forced design changes. On the exchange side, deliverable class 1 stocks are small enough that a single large position can dictate the price for weeks.


## Key companies

- MMC Norilsk Nickel: miner, Russia, listed (GMKN)
- Vale: miner, Brazil, listed (VALE)
- Glencore: trader, Switzerland, listed (GLEN)
- Tsingshan Holding Group: smelter, China
- PT Vale Indonesia: miner, Indonesia, listed (INCO)
- Sumitomo Metal Mining: refiner, Japan, listed (5713)
- Eramet: miner, France, listed (ERA)

## Timeline

- 1864-01: Nickel identified in New Caledonia. The ore later named garnierite was recognized in 1864 and made the island the first great laterite nickel province, with a processing works at Nouméa by 1879. (https://www.senat.fr/rap/r05-007/r05-0073.html)
- 1883-08: Sudbury nickel-copper ores exposed. A railway blast in August 1883 uncovered the Sudbury basin, which supplied the bulk of the world's nickel for the following century. (https://uwaterloo.ca/earth-sciences-museum/educational-resources/mining/mining-history-sudbury-area)
- 1902-01: International Nickel Company formed. The merger of Canadian Copper and the Orford Copper Company created the vertically integrated producer that set the nickel price for seventy years. (https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/economics-business-and-labor/businesses-and-occupations/inco-limited)
- 2006-10: Vale takes control of Inco. A Brazilian iron ore company acquired about three quarters of Inco's shares in October 2006, moving Sudbury, Thompson and Voisey's Bay into foreign ownership. (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000049996/000090956706001693/o33483exv99w1.htm)
- 2014-01: Indonesia bans raw ore exports for the first time. The January 2014 ban pulled laterite ore out of seaborne trade and began the smelter build-out that reshaped world supply. (https://www.iea.org/policies/16084-prohibition-of-the-export-of-nickel-ore)
- 2017-02: Philippine mine audit brings suspension and closure orders. An environment department audit produced orders against most of the country's nickel mines, tightening the ore supply feeding Chinese nickel pig iron plants. (https://www.philippinenickel.org/news-and-updates/statement-on-denr-secretarys-suspension-and-closure-of-mines/)
- 2019-09: Indonesia announces a total ore export ban. The announcement of 2 September 2019 brought the full ban forward to 1 January 2020, two years early, and locked ore inside the country. (https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2019/9/2/worlds-biggest-nickel-ore-maker-bans-exports-from-january-2020)
- 2020-05: Diesel spill at Norilsk. A collapsed fuel tank released about 21,000 t of diesel into Arctic rivers on 29 May 2020 and brought a record environmental penalty against the largest producer of high-grade nickel. (https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/news/norilsk-nickel-fined-us-21bn-for-arctic-oil-spill/)
- 2021-03: Nickel pig iron is converted into matte. An Indonesian producer announced in March 2021 that it would turn class 2 nickel into matte for battery chemicals, and the LME price fell sharply as the class 1 scarcity premium collapsed. (https://www.fastmarkets.com/insights/focus-questions-arise-after-tsingshan-announces-new-nickel-matte-technology/)
- 2021-05: Indonesia's first high pressure acid leach plant starts up. The autoclave on Obi Island produced its first mixed hydroxide precipitate in May 2021, opening a route from cheap limonite ore to battery-grade nickel. (https://im-mining.com/2021/04/30/indonesia-nickel-industry-boost-hamlahera-persada-lygends-obi-hpal-plant-heading-towards-full-production-may/)
- 2022-03: LME suspends nickel and cancels a day of trades. The three-month price reached $101,365/t on 8 March 2022; the exchange suspended trading at 08:15 and voided roughly $12 billion of transactions. (https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/final-notices/london-metal-exchange-2025.pdf)
- 2022-03: Nickel trading resumes under daily price limits. The market reopened on 16 March 2022 with the exchange's first daily price limits and position accountability levels cut by half. (https://www.lme.com/-/media/Files/News/Notices/2022/03/TRADING-22-064-NICKEL-MARKET-UPDATE-RESUMPTION-OF-TRADING.pdf)
- 2023-01: Independent review of the nickel collapse published. The exchange's response to the external review set out permanent price limits, over-the-counter position reporting and stronger surveillance across its contracts. (https://www.lme.com/-/media/Files/Trading/New-initiatives/Nickel-independent-review/GENERAL-UPDATES-23-007-LME-Group-Response-to-Oliver-Wyman-Independent-Review.pdf)
- 2023-11: High Court upholds the cancellation of nickel trades. A judgment of 29 November 2023 dismissed the challenge to the March 2022 cancellations and settled the question of an exchange's power to void trades. (https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewhc/admin/2023/2969)
- 2024-07: BHP suspends its Western Australian nickel business. The company mothballed its mines, concentrator and refinery from October 2024 and named oversupply as the reason, the clearest sign that Indonesian output had reset the cost curve. (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/811809/000119312524177504/d112858d6k.htm)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most nickel

Indonesia mines more nickel than every other country combined. In 2025 it produced 2.6 million tonnes of nickel content in ore, 67% of the world's 3.9 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Philippines was second at 6.9% and Russia third. Mined nickel is counted as metal content, not as the weight of ore or ferronickel.

### where does nickel come from

Nickel comes from two kinds of deposit. Sulphide ore bodies in ancient crust at Sudbury in Canada, Norilsk in Russia and Kambalda in Australia, and laterite blankets weathered out of tropical bedrock in Indonesia, the Philippines and New Caledonia. In 2025 laterite countries supplied most of the world's 3.9 million tonnes of mined nickel (USGS MCS), a reversal of the pattern that held for a century.

### what is nickel used for

Most nickel goes into stainless steel, where it stabilizes the austenitic structure that resists corrosion and stays tough when cold; the International Nickel Study Group puts stainless and alloy steel far ahead of every other first use. The rest goes to superalloys for jet engines and turbines, electroplating, non-ferrous alloys and lithium-ion battery cathodes, which are the fastest-growing part of demand.

### what is the price of nickel today

This site shows monthly averages, not live quotes. The LME cash price averaged $16,751/t in August 2026, up 12% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The highest monthly average in the series was $52,179/t in May 2007. Live prices come from the London Metal Exchange and the Shanghai Futures Exchange during their trading hours.

### what is the difference between class 1 and class 2 nickel

Class 1 nickel contains at least 99.80% nickel and comes as cathode, briquettes, pellets or powder; it can be delivered against the LME contract and dissolved into battery chemicals. Class 2 is ferronickel and nickel pig iron, an iron-nickel alloy with far less nickel that goes straight into stainless steel furnaces. Both are counted as nickel in production statistics, but they are not interchangeable.

### what happened to nickel on the LME in March 2022

The intraday price passed six figures per tonne on 8 March 2022 as a large short position could not find deliverable metal. The London Metal Exchange suspended nickel trading and cancelled that morning's transactions, then reopened with daily price limits. A UK court later ruled on a challenge to the cancellations. Open interest fell and some traders moved to assessed indices instead.

### which country has the most nickel reserves

Indonesia holds the largest nickel reserves, 48% of the world's 130.1 million tonnes in 2025, ahead of Australia at 19% and Brazil at 12% (USGS MCS). Reserves are the part of identified deposits that could be mined at a profit at the time of the estimate, so the number moves with prices and with processing technology.

### which country exports the most nickel

It depends on the form. For finished unwrought nickel (HS 7502), Norway led in 2024 with 15% of world export value (CEPII BACI), because it refines imported matte. For mattes and intermediates (HS 7501) the leader was Indonesia at 55%, and for ores and concentrates (HS 2604) it was Philippines.

## Sources

- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries
- 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
- IMF Primary Commodity Price System (PCPS), 2026-08-06, fetched 6 September 2026. License: © International Monetary Fund. All rights reserved (IMF terms of use). https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS

Text last reviewed 2026-09-06. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where does nickel come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/nickel/.

---

# Where do oats come from?

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

Oats come mainly from Canada, which produced 3.4 million tonnes in 2024, 15% of the world's 22.4 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Russia (13%), Poland (7.2%) and Australia (5.9%) follow; the top five together supply 47%. The biggest exporter of oats (HS 1004) is Canada (41% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Oats, first-position futures, United States, was $3.44/bu in July 2026, down 1% from a year earlier (IMF PCPS). Oats tolerate cool, wet, acid ground that wheat dislikes, so they persist on the northern and western margins of the grain belt in Canada, the Nordic countries, Poland and the north of Britain, where they are often the only cereal that reliably ripens.

*A cool-climate cereal eaten as flakes and porridge and fed to horses and livestock.* Also called: oat, oat grain, milling oats, feed oats.

## Where do oats come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Canada | 3.4 million | 15% |
| 2 | Russia | 3 million | 13% |
| 3 | Poland | 1.6 million | 7.2% |
| 4 | Australia | 1.3 million | 5.9% |
| 5 | Finland | 1.2 million | 5.4% |
| 6 | Spain | 1.2 million | 5.2% |
| 7 | Brazil | 1.1 million | 4.9% |
| 8 | United Kingdom | 986,000 | 4.4% |
| 9 | United States | 984,010 | 4.4% |
| 10 | Germany | 696,800 | 3.1% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 31% |
| | World | 22.4 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 Canada produced 3.4 million tonnes of oats, 15% of the world's 22.4 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Russia followed with 13%, then Poland (7.2%), Australia (5.9%) and Finland (5.4%). The top five account for 47% and 76 countries reported a crop, with 31% from outside the top ten.

Oats are a small crop by the standards of this site. World output is a fraction of wheat or corn, and it has been declining for a century in absolute terms, because the horse that oats mainly fed was replaced by the tractor. What has kept the crop alive is human food demand, which has grown as oats acquired a health reputation, and more recently oat drink, which has become a genuinely significant new demand stream.

The geography is a story of climatic margins. Oats need moisture and tolerate cool summers and acid soils, so they do well in Canada's prairie fringe, in Finland, Sweden and Poland, in Russia, and in the wetter parts of Britain and Ireland. They are grown in Australia and Argentina too, often as much for grazing and hay as for grain. Where the climate suits wheat or corn better, oats are grown as a break crop in a rotation rather than for their own returns.

World output changed -2% over the ten years to 2024 and +21% on the previous year.

## Who exports and imports oats?

### Exporters of oats (HS 1004), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Canada | $452.9 million | 41% |
| 2 | Finland | $135.6 million | 12% |
| 3 | Australia | $119.2 million | 11% |
| 4 | Russia | $54.4 million | 4.9% |
| 5 | Sweden | $48.4 million | 4.4% |
| 6 | Poland | $41.8 million | 3.8% |
| 7 | Estonia | $28.9 million | 2.6% |
| 8 | France | $21.9 million | 2% |
| 9 | Latvia | $21.7 million | 2% |
| 10 | United Kingdom | $19.4 million | 1.7% |
| 11 | Lithuania | $18.3 million | 1.6% |
| 12 | Ireland | $17.5 million | 1.6% |
| 13 | Czechia | $16.1 million | 1.4% |
| 14 | United States | $14.4 million | 1.3% |
| 15 | Germany | $12.8 million | 1.1% |

### Importers of oats (HS 1004), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $336.7 million | 30% |
| 2 | Germany | $157.9 million | 14% |
| 3 | China | $148.8 million | 13% |
| 4 | Mexico | $59.1 million | 5.3% |
| 5 | Belgium | $53.3 million | 4.8% |
| 6 | Spain | $52.1 million | 4.7% |
| 7 | Netherlands | $35.1 million | 3.1% |
| 8 | Japan | $23.1 million | 2.1% |
| 9 | Denmark | $18.9 million | 1.7% |
| 10 | Switzerland | $17.9 million | 1.6% |
| 11 | Italy | $17.1 million | 1.5% |
| 12 | United Arab Emirates | $15.5 million | 1.4% |
| 13 | Norway | $14 million | 1.3% |
| 14 | Peru | $13.4 million | 1.2% |
| 15 | Latvia | $13.1 million | 1.2% |

### Exporters of rolled or flaked grains of oats (HS 110412), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Canada | $207.2 million | 23% |
| 2 | Germany | $120.1 million | 13% |
| 3 | Chile | $87.8 million | 9.9% |
| 4 | United Kingdom | $69.5 million | 7.8% |
| 5 | Australia | $64.5 million | 7.2% |
| 6 | Latvia | $48.1 million | 5.4% |
| 7 | United States | $32.7 million | 3.7% |
| 8 | Finland | $29.9 million | 3.4% |
| 9 | Ireland | $20.9 million | 2.4% |
| 10 | Lithuania | $18.6 million | 2.1% |
| 11 | Spain | $17.1 million | 1.9% |
| 12 | Malaysia | $16.8 million | 1.9% |
| 13 | Guatemala | $16 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | Czechia | $15.6 million | 1.8% |
| 15 | Belgium | $15.2 million | 1.7% |

### Importers of rolled or flaked grains of oats (HS 110412), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $216.7 million | 24% |
| 2 | France | $38.6 million | 4.3% |
| 3 | Germany | $32.1 million | 3.6% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $30 million | 3.4% |
| 5 | Japan | $28 million | 3.2% |
| 6 | Spain | $24.7 million | 2.8% |
| 7 | Saudi Arabia | $22.7 million | 2.5% |
| 8 | Poland | $22.4 million | 2.5% |
| 9 | Italy | $19.6 million | 2.2% |
| 10 | Colombia | $17.8 million | 2% |
| 11 | Austria | $14.5 million | 1.6% |
| 12 | United Kingdom | $13.3 million | 1.5% |
| 13 | Malaysia | $13.1 million | 1.5% |
| 14 | Philippines | $13 million | 1.5% |
| 15 | Czechia | $12.2 million | 1.4% |

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

Canada was the largest exporter of oats (HS 1004) in 2024 with 41% of world export value, ahead of Finland (12%), on world trade of $1.1 billion (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 30%.

Only a modest share of the crop is traded internationally, because oats are bulky relative to their value and most producing countries consume what they grow. The trade that exists is dominated by one relationship: Canadian milling oats moving south into United States mills, which is a road and rail trade rather than a seaborne one. Nordic and Baltic oats supply the European milling and oat drink industry, and Australia exports both grain and hay into Asia and the Middle East.

The critical distinction in the trade is between milling and feed grades. Millers want plump, bright, low-moisture grain with a high groat percentage and no frost damage or staining. Grain that fails those tests is sold as feed at a substantially lower price, and in a wet harvest a large share of a crop can be downgraded overnight.

## What do oats cost?

- Oats, first-position futures, United States: $3.44/bu in July 2026; 12-month change -1%; 10-year change +61%; all-time high $7.42/bu in November 2021; real high (2024 US$) $8.34/bu in November 2021 (IMF PCPS).

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

### How they are priced

The series shown is Oats, first-position futures, United States, which was $3.44/bu in July 2026, down 1% from a year earlier (IMF PCPS). Read the unit carefully: this is dollars per **bushel**, not per tonne. A bushel of oats weighs thirty-two pounds, the lightest of the grain bushels, so a tonne is about 68.9 bushels. Multiplying the quoted price by roughly 68.9 gives an approximate dollar-per-tonne figure, and failing to do that conversion makes oats look absurdly cheap next to the per-tonne grains on this site. The nominal high was $7.42/bu in November 2021.

The quotation is the front-month futures price on the Chicago Board of Trade contract, which covers 5,000 bushels. That contract is thin: oats trade a fraction of the volume of corn or wheat, so the price can move sharply on modest orders and the futures market is a less reliable guide to physical value than it is for the major grains.

Physical oats are priced by grade at the elevator, with premiums for milling quality and discounts for test weight, moisture, foreign material and staining. Because the milling market is concentrated among a small number of processors, and because the crop is small, contracted acreage arranged before planting supplies a large share of milling demand, and the spot market handles the remainder.

## What moves the price of oats?

### Acreage competition

Oats compete for land with wheat, canola and barley, and they usually lose. Farmers plant them when relative prices favor them or when a rotation needs a break crop, so oat acreage is the residual after other decisions, which makes supply unusually responsive to the prices of other crops rather than to its own.

### Harvest weather and grade

A wet harvest stains and sprouts the grain and pushes it out of milling grade into feed, which can shift a large share of a crop between two very different price levels without changing total production at all. Milling premiums therefore widen sharply in a poor harvest.

### Oat drink demand

Plant-based milk alternatives have created a genuinely new industrial demand for milling-quality oats, concentrated in northern Europe and North America. This has raised the floor under milling demand and prompted contracted acreage arrangements that did not previously exist.

### Canadian production and logistics

One country supplies most of the traded milling crop, and it moves by rail to United States mills. Rail capacity, which competes with canola, wheat and potash for the same cars, can constrain deliveries and widen basis even when the crop is adequate.

### Feed substitution

Feed oats compete directly with barley and corn in livestock rations, so when corn is cheap the feed oat price is capped. That link puts a floor under the whole market in a good harvest, because downgraded milling oats must clear into feed.

### Human health positioning

Beta-glucan soluble fiber and the health claims permitted around it have supported food demand for decades. Regulatory approval of those claims in different markets has been a durable if slow-moving driver of consumption.

## How are oats produced?

Oats are sown in spring in most producing regions and harvested in late summer, though winter oats are grown in milder climates. They are relatively undemanding of fertility and are commonly used as a break crop to interrupt disease cycles in wheat and barley rotations, which is part of their agronomic value beyond the grain they produce.

The harvested grain consists of a groat, the edible kernel, inside a fibrous hull that is a much larger share of the grain than in wheat. The first milling step is therefore dehulling, done by throwing the grain against a ring at high speed so the hull splits. Groat yield, typically around two-thirds by weight, is the key quality measure and the reason plump grain commands a premium.

Groats are then kiln-dried and heat-treated, which is essential rather than cosmetic: oats contain a lipase enzyme that would otherwise turn the oil in the groat rancid within weeks. The heat treatment deactivates it and gives oatmeal its characteristic nutty flavour. Stabilised groats are then cut into steel-cut oats, rolled into flakes of varying thickness, or ground into flour.

Oat drink is made by mixing oat flour or flakes with water and treating the slurry with enzymes that break the starch into shorter sugars, producing natural sweetness and a texture that does not separate. The mixture is then separated, fortified and packaged. The process is why oat drink can be made from ordinary milling oats but requires substantial processing capital.

## What are oats used for?

Human food is the highest-value market and the one that has kept the crop viable: porridge and oatmeal, breakfast cereals and granola, oat flour in baking, and increasingly oat drink. The soluble fiber beta-glucan is the basis of the cholesterol-related health claims permitted in several jurisdictions, and it is the reason oats occupy a place in food marketing that their tonnage would not otherwise justify.

Animal feed takes the larger share of world production by volume. Oats remain a traditional feed for horses, where the fibrous hull suits their digestion, and are fed to cattle and sheep. Because oats have a lower energy density than corn or barley, they are a moderate rather than a maximum-energy feed, which suits some classes of livestock better than others.

Beyond grain, oats are grown for forage, cut green for hay and silage or grazed directly, and are used as a cover crop that suppresses weeds and holds soil over winter. Oat hulls, the by-product of milling, are burned for energy at mills, used as bedding and roughage, or processed into furfural, a chemical feedstock, and into oat hull fiber for food use.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is short and regional. Oats move from farm to country elevator to mill, mostly within a few hundred kilometers or across one border, and the seaborne trade is small. That makes the market unusually exposed to regional conditions: a bad harvest in the Canadian prairies or the Nordic countries is not easily offset by supply from elsewhere, because there is no deep world market to draw on.

Milling capacity is concentrated among a small number of companies in North America and Europe, and oat drink production has added a second layer of concentrated processing capacity. Because milling oats must be contracted and delivered to a specific quality, the relationship between a mill and its supplying farmers is closer than in the major grains, and contracted acreage covers much of the requirement.

Rail is the practical chokepoint for the largest trade flow. Canadian oats compete for railcars with canola, wheat and potash, and in a year when the rail system is stretched, oats, being the lowest-value cargo, tend to lose. Basis levels at United States mills reflect railcar availability as much as they reflect the crop.

The structural feature to understand is smallness. The whole world oat market is a fraction of the size of wheat or corn, so an event that would be minor in those markets, a single poor harvest, a new oat drink plant, a rail disruption, moves oat prices substantially. That is also why the futures contract is thin and why physical premiums often diverge from it.

## Key companies

- Richardson International: grain handler and oat miller, Canada
- Grain Millers: oat miller, United States
- Quaker Oats (PepsiCo): oat processor, United States, listed (PEP)
- Lantmännen: grain cooperative and oat processor, Sweden
- Oatly: oat drink producer, Sweden, listed (OTLY)
- Fazer Mills: oat miller, Finland

## Timeline

- 1900s: The tractor begins replacing the horse. Mechanisation removed the largest single market for oats, and world acreage has declined for a century as a result, a rare case of a major crop shrinking because its customer disappeared. (https://www.igc.int)
- 1877: Rolled oats are commercialised. Steam-rolling groats into flakes that cooked quickly turned oats into a convenient breakfast food and created the human food market that now sustains the crop. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 1997-01: The United States permits an oat health claim. Regulatory approval of a claim linking oat beta-glucan to reduced cholesterol gave the crop a durable food-marketing advantage and supported milling demand for decades. (https://www.fda.gov/food/food-labeling-nutrition)
- 2012: Oat drink production scales up in Sweden. Enzymatic processing that produced a stable, naturally sweet drink from ordinary milling oats created an industrial demand stream that has since spread across Europe and North America. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 2021-08: Prairie drought cuts the Canadian crop sharply. Extreme heat and drought across the Canadian prairies reduced the oat harvest severely, and prices reached their highest level in the series as milling supply became scarce. (https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS)
- 2022-03: War disrupts Black Sea grain and lifts all cereals. Although oats are a minor Black Sea crop, the general grain price rise pulled oats up with them and raised the opportunity cost of planting oats instead of wheat. (https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS)
- 2023-06: Oat drink capacity expansion meets slower demand growth. Plants built during the plant-based boom came online as category growth slowed, easing the contracted milling demand that had supported prices. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 2024-09: Acreage recovers as prices normalise. Canadian and Nordic plantings rebuilt after the drought years, restoring milling supply and returning the market to its long-run pattern of ample feed grain and tight milling grades. (https://www.igc.int)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most oats

Canada produced 3.4 million tonnes in 2024, 15% of the world's 22.4 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Russia was second with 13%. Oats are a small crop, a fraction of the size of wheat or corn, and world acreage has declined for a century.

### why is the oat price quoted per bushel

Because the reference is the Chicago futures contract, which is quoted in dollars per bushel. A bushel of oats weighs thirty-two pounds, the lightest of the grain bushels, so a tonne is about 68.9 bushels. Multiply the quoted price by roughly 68.9 to compare with the per-tonne grains on this site.

### why did oat acreage decline

Because oats mainly fed horses, and tractors replaced horses. World acreage has fallen for a century as a result. Human food demand, and more recently oat drink, have kept the crop commercially viable but at a fraction of its former scale.

### what is the difference between milling and feed oats

Millers want plump, bright, dry grain with a high groat percentage and no frost damage or staining. Grain failing those tests is sold as feed at a substantially lower price. A wet harvest can push much of a crop from one category to the other without changing total production.

### what are oats used for

Human food takes the highest-value share: porridge, breakfast cereals, oat flour and oat drink. Animal feed takes more by volume, especially for horses. Oats are also grown for hay, silage and as a cover crop, and oat hulls are burned for energy or processed into furfural and food fiber.

### why must oats be heat-treated

Because the groat contains a lipase enzyme that turns its oil rancid within weeks. Kilning deactivates the enzyme and also produces the characteristic nutty flavour of oatmeal, which is why oats are always stabilized before being rolled or cut.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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
- IMF Primary Commodity Price System (PCPS), 2026-08-06, fetched 6 September 2026. License: © International Monetary Fund. All rights reserved (IMF terms of use). https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS

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

---

# Where does olive oil come from?

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

Olive oil comes mainly from Spain, which produced 854,001 tonnes in 2023, 33% of the world's 2.6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Italy (14%), Turkey (Türkiye) (9%) and Greece (8.7%) follow; the top five together supply 72%. The biggest exporter of olive oil (HS 1509) is Spain (42% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The olive wants mild wet winters, long hot dry summers and no hard frost, a climate found around one sea, so after several thousand years of cultivation the crop is still concentrated in Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey and North Africa.

*Oil pressed from olives without solvents, graded by acidity and defect rather than by refining.* Also called: olives, extra virgin olive oil, EVOO, virgin olive oil.

## Where does olive oil come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2023 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Spain | 854,001 | 33% |
| 2 | Italy | 359,540 | 14% |
| 3 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 234,515 | 9% |
| 4 | Greece | 228,850 | 8.7% |
| 5 | Tunisia | 210,000 | 8% |
| 6 | Portugal | 175,529 | 6.7% |
| 7 | Morocco | 120,200 | 4.6% |
| 8 | Syria | 89,257 | 3.4% |
| 9 | Algeria | 81,300 | 3.1% |
| 10 | Egypt | 40,000 | 1.5% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 8.7% |
| | World | 2.6 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2023.

In 2023 Spain produced 854,001 tonnes, 33% of the world's 2.6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Italy followed with 14%, then Turkey (Türkiye) (9%), Greece (8.7%) and Tunisia (8%). The top five account for 72%, 36 countries reported output and 8.7% came from outside the top ten. World production changed -25% over the ten years to 2023 and -3% on the previous year.

Within Spain, Andalusia and above all the province of Jaén account for much of national and therefore world output, in groves that run for tens of kilometers unbroken. Italian production is scattered from Puglia and Calabria to Tuscany and Sicily, Greek output concentrates in the Peloponnese and Crete, and Tunisia, Morocco, Turkey (Türkiye) and Portugal make up most of the rest.

Two features make annual figures jump. Olive trees alternate bearing, cropping heavily one year and lightly the next, and the crop turns on spring rain and summer heat. World production changed -29% over the five years to 2023, a swing driven mostly by drought in the western Mediterranean rather than by any change in planting.


## Who exports and imports olive oil?

### Exporters of olive oil and its fractions (HS 1509), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Spain | $6.9 billion | 42% |
| 2 | Italy | $3.1 billion | 19% |
| 3 | Tunisia | $1.6 billion | 10% |
| 4 | Portugal | $1.6 billion | 9.7% |
| 5 | Greece | $1 billion | 6.2% |
| 6 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $708.7 million | 4.4% |
| 7 | Syria | $309.5 million | 1.9% |
| 8 | Argentina | $229.6 million | 1.4% |
| 9 | Chile | $127.6 million | 0.8% |
| 10 | France | $97.4 million | 0.6% |
| 11 | Morocco | $84.9 million | 0.5% |
| 12 | Egypt | $74.7 million | 0.5% |
| 13 | United States | $63.9 million | 0.4% |
| 14 | Lebanon | $59.8 million | 0.4% |
| 15 | Germany | $45.9 million | 0.3% |

### Importers of olive oil and its fractions (HS 1509), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Italy | $3.2 billion | 20% |
| 2 | United States | $3.1 billion | 19% |
| 3 | Spain | $1.5 billion | 9.5% |
| 4 | France | $903.5 million | 5.6% |
| 5 | Germany | $764.5 million | 4.7% |
| 6 | Brazil | $759.9 million | 4.7% |
| 7 | Portugal | $631.2 million | 3.9% |
| 8 | United Kingdom | $547.9 million | 3.4% |
| 9 | Japan | $413.4 million | 2.5% |
| 10 | Canada | $403.3 million | 2.5% |
| 11 | Australia | $278.7 million | 1.7% |
| 12 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $247.4 million | 1.5% |
| 13 | Mexico | $219.8 million | 1.4% |
| 14 | South Korea | $202.1 million | 1.2% |
| 15 | Netherlands | $195.1 million | 1.2% |

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

Spain was the largest exporter of olive oil (HS 1509) in 2024 with 42% of world export value, ahead of Italy (19%), on world trade of $16.2 billion (CEPII BACI). Italy was the largest importer with 20%.

Olive oil is unusual in that the same countries appear high on both lists. Italy is at once the second largest exporter and the largest importer, because it buys Spanish, Greek and Tunisian oil in bulk, blends and bottles it, and sells it on. Spain itself takes 9.5% of world imports for the same reason.

Tunisia is the largest exporter outside the European Union and sells mostly in bulk, so its share of trade by value understates its share by volume. The United States, with 19% of imports, is the largest market that grows almost none of what it uses.


## What does olive oil cost?

### How it is priced

There is no futures market and no free public benchmark price for olive oil, so this site quotes none. What exists instead is official monitoring: the International Olive Council publishes producer prices from the main origins, and the European Commission publishes representative prices from Spanish, Italian, Greek and Portuguese markets. These are reported prices for bulk oil at named places, not a traded benchmark.

Price is set by grade, and grade is set by chemistry and taste rather than by refining. Free acidity, peroxide value and a trained panel tasting place an oil in a category: extra virgin at the top, with no sensory defect and low acidity, then virgin, then lampante, too defective to sell as it stands. Bottled retail prices follow bulk by months.


## What moves the price of olive oil?

### Alternate bearing

An olive tree crops heavily one year and lightly the next, and whole regions swing together because they share a climate. Pruning and irrigation moderate the cycle, but a large crop and a small one usually arrive in successive campaigns.

### Drought and heat at flowering

The crop is decided in spring, when rain and moderate temperatures are needed for flowering and fruit set. Heat during flowering aborts the flowers outright, and a dry winter leaves rainfed groves without the soil moisture to carry fruit through summer.

### Tree disease and quarantine

Xylella fastidiosa, first found in European olives in Puglia in 2013, kills mature trees and has forced clearance and replanting under quarantine rules. Because a productive olive tree takes years to establish, disease losses reduce capacity for a decade rather than a season.

### Grade and authenticity enforcement

The premium for extra virgin over refined and pomace grades is large, which creates a standing incentive to mislabel. Conformity checks, panel tastings and customs testing therefore price the market as much as supply does, since an oil downgraded on test loses much of its worth.

### Carryover stocks

Oil keeps for a year or more in nitrogen-blanketed tanks, so stock carried from the previous campaign is part of supply. A small harvest after a large one is absorbed by inventory; two small harvests in a row exhaust it, which is when prices move violently.

## How is olive oil produced?

Olives are harvested from October to February, picked green for peppery, bitter oils and riper for milder ones. Traditional groves are beaten or shaken by hand, while intensive hedgerow plantings are taken in one pass by a straddle harvester. Fruit bruises and ferments quickly, so the hours between picking and milling do much to set the grade.

Milling is mechanical throughout. Fruit is washed, crushed to a paste, the paste malaxed, stirred slowly so oil droplets coalesce, and the oil separated in a centrifuge. Nothing is added and no solvent used, which is why virgin olive oil is closer to a fruit juice than a seed oil. The temperature held during malaxation is what cold extraction means.

The oil is settled or filtered, classified by laboratory analysis and by a tasting panel, then stored under nitrogen away from light and heat. Lampante grade goes to a refinery, where neutralizing and deodorizing strip out the defects; refined oil is blended back with a little virgin oil and sold as plain olive oil.


## What is olive oil used for?

Almost all olive oil is eaten, as a cooking and dressing oil and as an ingredient in canned fish, sauces, spreads and baked goods. Premium grades are bought for flavour rather than function, while refined and pomace grades go into food service and manufacturing where the taste of extra virgin would be lost.

By-products are substantial, because the fruit is mostly not oil. Pomace, the wet residue of skin, pulp and stone, is dried and solvent-extracted for pomace oil and then burned as biomass. Olive mill wastewater is a real disposal problem, high in polyphenols and damaging to soil life if spread untreated, and it is increasingly processed for those same polyphenols.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Mills sit within an hour or two of the groves because the fruit cannot wait. Bulk oil then moves by road tanker and flexitank to bottling plants concentrated in Italy and Spain. Blending and bottling is where much of the value, and nearly all the branding, sits.

The trade is not physically fragile: oil ships at ambient temperature in tankers, flexitanks and drums, and keeps for a year. The exposure is to quality and provenance. Blending oil from several countries into one bottle is legal and routine when labelled correctly, and mislabelling is the sector's persistent enforcement problem.

The structural risk is a Mediterranean-wide weather event. Production sits on one climate zone that is warming and drying, so a drought reaching Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Tunisia at once removes most of world supply, and a replacement tree takes years to bear.


## Timeline

- 1959: The International Olive Council is established. An intergovernmental body under United Nations auspices took on defining grades and analytical methods, making olive oil quality a matter of international standard rather than local custom. (https://www.internationaloliveoil.org/)
- 1986: Spain and Portugal join the European Community. With Greece, which joined in 1981, accession brought most of world production inside one market and support regime, and European grade and labelling rules became the effective world standard. (https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/farming/crop-productions-and-plant-based-products/olive-oil_en)
- 1991-07: European rules define olive oil grades and test methods. Regulation 2568/91 set the chemical limits and the panel tasting that separate extra virgin from virgin and lampante, and it remains the reference for grading and for fraud cases. (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eur/1991/2568)
- 2013-10: Xylella fastidiosa is found in olive trees in Puglia. The first European outbreak of the bacterium killed large numbers of old trees in southern Italy and brought quarantine, clearance and replanting rules across the Mediterranean. (https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/xylella-fastidiosa)
- 2022: Drought and heat cut the western Mediterranean harvest. Consecutive poor Spanish crops removed a large share of world supply and drove producer prices to record levels, the sharpest price event in the sector's modern history. (https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/farming/crop-productions-and-plant-based-products/olive-oil_en)
- 2024: Rainfall returns and Spanish production recovers. A wet winter before flowering restored the harvest and pulled producer prices back from their peak, showing how directly one origin's rainfall sets the world market. (https://www.internationaloliveoil.org/)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most olive oil

Spain produced 854,001 tonnes in 2023, 33% of the world's 2.6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Italy was second with 14%. Within Spain, Andalusia and particularly the province of Jaén account for much of the national crop.

### why did olive oil get so expensive

Because drought and heat in the western Mediterranean from 2022 cut consecutive Spanish harvests while stocks ran down. World production changed -29% over the five years to 2023 (FAOSTAT). With one origin supplying a third of world output, a bad run there cannot be sourced elsewhere.

### what is the difference between extra virgin and virgin olive oil

Both are pressed mechanically without refining; the difference is defects. Extra virgin must show no sensory defect on a trained panel tasting and must have low free acidity, at or under 0.8 percent under European rules. Virgin oil may carry slight defects and higher acidity and sells for less.

### why does italy import olive oil

Because it bottles more than it grows. Italy was the largest importer of olive oil (HS 1509) in 2024 with 20% of world imports and the second largest exporter with 19% of exports (CEPII BACI), buying bulk Spanish, Greek and Tunisian oil to blend, bottle and sell on.

### what is lampante olive oil

Virgin oil too defective to sell as food: high free acidity, sensory faults, usually from bruised, overripe or fermented fruit. It goes to a refinery, where neutralizing and deodorizing strip the defects, and the refined oil is blended with a little virgin oil and sold as plain olive oil.

### why is olive oil production falling

Drought is the immediate reason and biennial bearing exaggerates it. World production changed -25% over the ten years to 2023 and -3% on the previous year (FAOSTAT). Trees also take years to replace, so disease losses such as Xylella cut capacity for a decade.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2023. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where does orange juice come from?

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

Orange juice comes mainly from Brazil, which produced 15.7 million tonnes in 2024, 23% of the world's 67.1 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). China (11%), Mexico (7.2%) and Egypt (6.3%) follow; the top five together supply 54%. The biggest exporter of orange juice (HS 200919 and 200911) is Brazil (48% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Orange juice, frozen concentrate, first-position futures, was $1.5/lb in July 2026, down 47% from a year earlier (IMF PCPS). Juice oranges are grown where a subtropical climate gives high sugar and acid without frost, and where the groves are close enough to an extraction plant that fruit can be crushed within a day, which is why the industry sits in two places: São Paulo state and central Florida.

*Juice squeezed from oranges and shipped frozen as concentrate or chilled as not-from-concentrate; a different market from fresh fruit.* Also called: FCOJ, frozen concentrated orange juice, not-from-concentrate, NFC, OJ.

## Where does orange juice come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | 15.7 million | 23% |
| 2 | China | 7.6 million | 11% |
| 3 | Mexico | 4.8 million | 7.2% |
| 4 | Egypt | 4.2 million | 6.3% |
| 5 | India | 3.9 million | 5.7% |
| 6 | Spain | 2.9 million | 4.3% |
| 7 | Indonesia | 2.6 million | 3.8% |
| 8 | United States | 2.5 million | 3.7% |
| 9 | Iran | 2.2 million | 3.3% |
| 10 | Vietnam | 1.9 million | 2.9% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 28% |
| | World | 67.1 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

The figures on this page are oranges, not juice. Juice output by country is compiled by industry bodies under license and is not carried here, so the upstream fruit crop is used as the measure, and readers should keep the distinction in mind: a large orange producer that grows for the fresh market is not necessarily a juice producer at all.

In 2024 Brazil produced 15.7 million tonnes of oranges, 23% of the world's 67.1 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). China followed with 11%, then Mexico (7.2%), Egypt (6.3%) and India (5.7%). The top five account for 54% and 135 countries reported a crop.

Two industries hide inside that table. Brazil's citrus belt in São Paulo and Minas Gerais is an industrial juice landscape: large blocks of Valencia and Pera oranges planted for yield and soluble solids, harvested into bulk trailers and delivered to extraction plants that run around the clock in season. Florida was the other, supplying the United States market from groves feeding processors in the centre of the state. Spain, Egypt, South Africa, Morocco and Turkey grow mainly for the crate, where size, skin finish, seedlessness and shelf life determine price, and their fruit rarely goes to juice except as culls.

The single most important development in this market is not economic but biological. Huanglongbing, or citrus greening, a bacterial disease spread by a psyllid insect, has devastated Florida's groves and is present in Brazil. There is no cure. Trees decline over several years, producing small, bitter, dropping fruit before dying, and the disease has cut Florida output by a very large proportion from its peak. Any account of orange juice supply that does not start with greening is missing the point.

## Who exports and imports orange juice?

Brazil crushes most of the world's juice oranges and ships concentrate in dedicated tankers to Belgium and the United States, where it is reconstituted.

### Exporters of fruit and vegetable juices (HS 2009), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | $3.5 billion | 17% |
| 2 | Spain | $1.4 billion | 6.9% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $1.4 billion | 6.7% |
| 4 | China | $981.4 million | 4.8% |
| 5 | Germany | $952.6 million | 4.7% |
| 6 | Thailand | $925.3 million | 4.5% |
| 7 | Poland | $880.9 million | 4.3% |
| 8 | Mexico | $842.4 million | 4.1% |
| 9 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $775 million | 3.8% |
| 10 | United States | $763.4 million | 3.8% |
| 11 | Italy | $736.8 million | 3.6% |
| 12 | Austria | $511.6 million | 2.5% |
| 13 | South Africa | $451 million | 2.2% |
| 14 | Israel | $421.2 million | 2.1% |
| 15 | Vietnam | $412.5 million | 2% |

### Importers of fruit and vegetable juices (HS 2009), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $4.2 billion | 21% |
| 2 | Netherlands | $2.1 billion | 10% |
| 3 | Germany | $1.4 billion | 6.7% |
| 4 | France | $1 billion | 5% |
| 5 | United Kingdom | $920.7 million | 4.5% |
| 6 | Belgium | $869.2 million | 4.3% |
| 7 | China | $862.4 million | 4.2% |
| 8 | Japan | $814.6 million | 4% |
| 9 | Canada | $621.4 million | 3.1% |
| 10 | Austria | $444.4 million | 2.2% |
| 11 | Poland | $436 million | 2.1% |
| 12 | Spain | $402.6 million | 2% |
| 13 | Italy | $355.7 million | 1.7% |
| 14 | Saudi Arabia | $315 million | 1.5% |
| 15 | Ireland | $304.9 million | 1.5% |

### Exporters of orange juice, frozen (HS 200911), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | $1.2 billion | 43% |
| 2 | Mexico | $533.4 million | 19% |
| 3 | Spain | $176.3 million | 6.4% |
| 4 | Israel | $120.5 million | 4.4% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $109 million | 4% |
| 6 | Italy | $104.2 million | 3.8% |
| 7 | Egypt | $89 million | 3.2% |
| 8 | United States | $76.5 million | 2.8% |
| 9 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $44.5 million | 1.6% |
| 10 | Austria | $38.7 million | 1.4% |
| 11 | South Africa | $36.8 million | 1.3% |
| 12 | China | $27.8 million | 1% |
| 13 | Argentina | $24.3 million | 0.9% |
| 14 | Cyprus | $21.4 million | 0.8% |
| 15 | Greece | $19.7 million | 0.7% |

### Importers of orange juice, frozen (HS 200911), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $614.8 million | 22% |
| 2 | Netherlands | $402 million | 15% |
| 3 | Belgium | $295.2 million | 11% |
| 4 | Japan | $258.1 million | 9.4% |
| 5 | China | $186 million | 6.7% |
| 6 | Germany | $80.4 million | 2.9% |
| 7 | Israel | $68.4 million | 2.5% |
| 8 | Canada | $59.2 million | 2.1% |
| 9 | Dominican Republic | $54.6 million | 2% |
| 10 | Spain | $49.3 million | 1.8% |
| 11 | South Korea | $46.7 million | 1.7% |
| 12 | Italy | $38.7 million | 1.4% |
| 13 | Ireland | $38.5 million | 1.4% |
| 14 | Poland | $38.3 million | 1.4% |
| 15 | Australia | $37.3 million | 1.4% |

### Exporters of orange juice, not frozen, other (HS 200919), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | $890.4 million | 48% |
| 2 | Netherlands | $248.4 million | 13% |
| 3 | Italy | $72.8 million | 3.9% |
| 4 | South Africa | $72.8 million | 3.9% |
| 5 | Spain | $63.7 million | 3.4% |
| 6 | Belgium | $63.4 million | 3.4% |
| 7 | Costa Rica | $46.9 million | 2.5% |
| 8 | Egypt | $42.9 million | 2.3% |
| 9 | United States | $39.4 million | 2.1% |
| 10 | Israel | $35.2 million | 1.9% |
| 11 | Austria | $33.2 million | 1.8% |
| 12 | Germany | $25.4 million | 1.4% |
| 13 | Greece | $24.4 million | 1.3% |
| 14 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $22 million | 1.2% |
| 15 | Argentina | $21.1 million | 1.1% |

### Importers of orange juice, not frozen, other (HS 200919), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Netherlands | $515.6 million | 28% |
| 2 | United States | $278.6 million | 15% |
| 3 | Germany | $159.3 million | 8.6% |
| 4 | Ireland | $113.7 million | 6.1% |
| 5 | Poland | $74.5 million | 4% |
| 6 | Denmark | $54.7 million | 3% |
| 7 | Austria | $53.6 million | 2.9% |
| 8 | Spain | $49.7 million | 2.7% |
| 9 | Canada | $41.6 million | 2.2% |
| 10 | Italy | $38.2 million | 2.1% |
| 11 | United Kingdom | $34.3 million | 1.8% |
| 12 | France | $28.1 million | 1.5% |
| 13 | Belgium | $26.4 million | 1.4% |
| 14 | Finland | $23.1 million | 1.2% |
| 15 | Russia | $19.4 million | 1% |

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

Brazil was the largest exporter of orange juice (HS 200919 and 200911) in 2024 with 48% of world export value, ahead of Netherlands (13%), on world trade of $1.9 billion (CEPII BACI). Netherlands was the largest importer with 28%.

Juice trade has a distinctive physical form. Frozen concentrated orange juice is shipped in bulk in refrigerated tanker vessels purpose-built for the trade, running from Santos to Rotterdam, Ghent and United States ports, where it is stored in tank farms and later reconstituted and packaged close to the consumer. Not-from-concentrate juice, which commands a premium, is shipped chilled in insulated tanks and is more expensive to move because the water travels with it.

Belgium and the Netherlands appear high in export tables because they receive Brazilian bulk juice, blend and repackage it, and re-export within Europe. That is a processing and logistics position rather than an agricultural one, the same pattern seen with cocoa and coffee elsewhere on this site.

## What does orange juice cost?

- Orange juice, frozen concentrate, first-position futures: $1.5/lb in July 2026; 12-month change -47%; 10-year change -18%; all-time high $5.1/lb in December 2024; real high (2024 US$) $5.04/lb in December 2024 (IMF PCPS).

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

### How it is priced

The series shown is Orange juice, frozen concentrate, first-position futures, which was $1.5/lb in July 2026, down 47% from a year earlier (IMF PCPS). The nominal high was $5.1/lb in December 2024, and the real high $5.04/lb in December 2024.

That is the front-month ICE frozen concentrated orange juice contract, which covers 15,000 pounds of orange solids and is quoted in cents per pound of solids. Note what is being priced: not juice by volume but the dissolved solids in it, because concentrate is traded on a standardized soluble solids basis so that shipments of different strengths are comparable. The contract has a long history as a weather market, since Florida's crop was for decades vulnerable to a single freezing night.

The contract's relevance has changed as the industry has. When Florida dominated United States supply, the futures market was a genuine hedging venue and its price reflected the North American balance. As Florida's output collapsed under greening and Brazil came to supply most of the world, physical business shifted toward long-term contracts between Brazilian processors and European and North American bottlers, priced off private assessments and negotiated formulas. The futures contract remains the visible reference and remains volatile, but a smaller share of physical juice settles against it than once did.

The fresh orange market prices separately again, by variety, size, grade and packing, and the two markets can move in opposite directions: a small crop of large, attractive fruit is good for the fresh trade and bad for juice.

## What moves the price of orange juice?

### Citrus greening

Huanglongbing has no cure and no resistant commercial variety. It has cut Florida production by a very large proportion and is established in Brazil, where growers manage it with intensive psyllid control and replanting rather than eradication. It is a permanent structural reduction in supply capacity rather than a cyclical event.

### Brazilian weather and the São Paulo crop

With Florida diminished, one growing region supplies most of the world's juice. Drought during flowering, heat during fruit set or an unusually dry season reduces both fruit numbers and juice content, and there is no second origin large enough to compensate.

### Florida freezes and hurricanes

Historically a single hard freeze could destroy a season and reprice the market, and the futures contract was built around that risk. Hurricanes remain a threat to the remaining Florida groves, causing fruit drop and tree damage that compounds greening losses.

### Consumer demand and sugar concerns

Orange juice consumption in mature markets has declined for years as consumers reduced sugar intake and breakfast habits changed. That structural demand erosion has partly offset the supply shortfall, which is why prices did not rise even further than they did.

### Inventory levels

Concentrate stores well in tank farms for many months, so carryover stocks buffer a single bad season. When those stocks are depleted, as they have been after successive short crops, the market loses its shock absorber and prices become far more volatile.

### The Brazilian real

Brazilian processors sell juice in dollars and pay grove and plant costs in reais, so a weaker currency raises their margin at an unchanged world price and encourages them to sell. Much of the apparent competitiveness of Brazilian juice in any year is an exchange-rate effect.

## How is orange juice produced?

Juice oranges are harvested when soluble solids and acid reach the target ratio, picked into bins and delivered to an extraction plant within a day or so, because fruit deteriorates quickly once off the tree. At the plant the fruit is washed, graded and fed into extractors that press the juice while keeping the peel oil, which is bitter, out of it. Peel oil is recovered separately and sold to flavour and fragrance companies, and the remaining peel is dried into citrus pulp pellets for cattle feed.

Raw juice is finished by removing excess pulp, then either pasteurized and chilled as not-from-concentrate, or evaporated. Evaporation removes most of the water to produce a concentrate at around sixty-five degrees Brix, roughly six times the strength of drinkable juice, which is then frozen. Concentrating is what makes the juice storable and shippable in bulk, and it is the reason the world market developed around concentrate rather than juice.

Volatile aroma compounds are stripped during evaporation and captured separately as essence, then added back later, because concentrate without them tastes flat. Reconstitution at the destination adds water back to the concentrate, blends in essence and pulp, and packages the result.

Not-from-concentrate is pasteurized and stored in large tanks, sometimes deaerated to extend storage life, and blended across the season to maintain a consistent flavour profile. It commands a premium because consumers value the description, though the industrial process behind it is considerably more involved than the label suggests.

## What is orange juice used for?

Drinking is essentially the whole market: chilled not-from-concentrate at the premium end, reconstituted juice from concentrate at the volume end, and juice as an ingredient in blended beverages, smoothies and food manufacture. Orange juice remains the largest single fruit juice category worldwide despite years of declining consumption in mature markets.

The co-products matter more than most people realise and are part of why the industry is viable. Cold-pressed orange oil from the peel is a major flavour and fragrance ingredient and also a solvent and cleaning agent. Citrus pulp pellets, the dried peel and pith left after extraction, are shipped in bulk as cattle feed, mainly into Europe. Essence recovered during evaporation is sold back into beverage manufacture. Pectin extracted from peel is used as a gelling agent, and limonene from the oil is used industrially.

A processing plant therefore sells four or five products from the same fruit, and the economics of the marginal orange depend on all of them, which is why co-product prices affect what a processor can pay a grower.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is short, capital-intensive and geographically concentrated. Fruit must reach an extraction plant within about a day, so groves and plants are locked together in a small number of regions. The plants are large and seasonal, running flat out during the harvest and idle afterwards, and their capital cost is a barrier to any new region entering the industry.

Bulk transport is the distinctive link. Purpose-built refrigerated tanker vessels carry concentrate from Santos to European and North American tank farms, and those vessels, terminals and tank farms are owned largely by the same processors, giving a small number of companies control of the route from grove to bottler. That vertical integration is why the physical market is less transparent than the futures price suggests.

Tank farm inventory is the system's shock absorber, and it has been drawn down repeatedly by successive short crops. Without it, a poor Brazilian season passes straight into the price.

The structural risk is biological and it is not resolved. Greening has no cure, resistant varieties are years from commercial deployment, and the disease is present in the region that now supplies most of the world. Growers manage it with insecticide programmes, tree removal and continuous replanting, all of which raise costs, and the industry's long-term answer, whether transgenic or conventionally bred resistance, is still in development. This is the rare commodity where the central question is plant pathology rather than economics.

## Key companies

- Louis Dreyfus Company: juice processor and trader, Netherlands
- Cutrale: juice processor, Brazil
- Citrosuco: juice processor, Brazil
- Coca-Cola (Minute Maid, Simply): bottler and brand owner, United States, listed (KO)
- PepsiCo (Tropicana legacy brands): bottler and brand owner, United States, listed (PEP)
- Refresco: contract bottler, Netherlands

## Timeline

- 1945: Frozen concentrate is patented. Evaporating juice and capturing the volatile essence separately made orange juice storable and shippable, creating the world market and the Florida industry that supplied it. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/citrus-fruit/en)
- 1962-12: A severe Florida freeze reshapes the industry. Catastrophic tree losses prompted replanting further south and encouraged Brazilian investment in juice capacity, beginning the shift of the industry to South America. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/citrus-fruit/en)
- 1966-10: Frozen concentrated orange juice futures begin trading. A contract on the New York exchange gave the industry a hedging venue and made orange juice the archetypal weather market for the next three decades. (https://www.ice.com/products/30/FCOJ-A-Futures)
- 1983-12: Back-to-back freezes destroy Florida groves. Two consecutive severe winters killed a large share of Florida's trees, sent prices to records and consolidated Brazil's position as the world's largest juice supplier. (https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS)
- 1990s: Not-from-concentrate takes the premium market. Chilled juice stored in bulk tanks and sold as never-concentrated commanded a premium and changed processing investment, though its production is more involved than the label implies. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/citrus-fruit/en)
- 2005-08: Citrus greening is confirmed in Florida. The arrival of huanglongbing, for which there is no cure, began a decline in Florida production that has removed most of the state's capacity. (https://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant-pests-diseases/citrus/citrus-greening)
- 2004-2005: Consecutive hurricanes damage Florida groves. Storm damage compounded disease losses, accelerating grove abandonment and further concentrating world supply in Brazil. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/citrus-fruit/en)
- 2022-06: Inventories fall as Brazilian crops disappoint. Successive short São Paulo crops drew down tank farm stocks, removing the buffer that had absorbed weather shocks and setting up extreme price volatility. (https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS)
- 2024-01: Juice prices reach record levels. Depleted inventories, greening losses in both producing regions and a poor Brazilian crop drove the futures contract to its nominal high. (https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most oranges for juice

Brazil produced 15.7 million tonnes of oranges in 2024, 23% of the world's 67.1 million tonnes (FAOSTAT), and its São Paulo citrus belt is grown specifically for juice. Note these figures are oranges, not juice, because juice output by country is compiled under license and not carried here.

### why is orange juice so expensive

Citrus greening has cut Florida output by a very large proportion and is present in Brazil, while successive short Brazilian crops drew down the tank farm inventories that used to buffer bad seasons. The futures contract reached $5.1/lb in December 2024 (IMF PCPS).

### what is citrus greening

Huanglongbing, a bacterial disease spread by the Asian citrus psyllid. Infected trees decline over several years, producing small, bitter, dropping fruit before dying. There is no cure and no resistant commercial variety, so growers manage it with insect control and continuous replanting.

### why is orange juice priced in cents per pound of solids

Because concentrate is traded on a standardized soluble solids basis, so shipments of different strengths can be compared. The ICE contract covers 15,000 pounds of orange solids. Pricing by volume would be meaningless when the product ships at six times drinking strength.

### what is the difference between concentrate and not-from-concentrate

Concentrate has most of its water evaporated off, is frozen, shipped in bulk and reconstituted at the destination. Not-from-concentrate is pasteurized and stored chilled in large tanks with the water still in it, which costs more to ship and store, and it commands a premium.

### what happens to the orange peel

It becomes several products. Cold-pressed peel oil is a major flavour, fragrance and solvent ingredient; the dried peel and pith become citrus pulp pellets shipped in bulk as cattle feed; pectin is extracted as a gelling agent. A processor sells four or five products from the same fruit.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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
- IMF Primary Commodity Price System (PCPS), 2026-08-06, fetched 6 September 2026. License: © International Monetary Fund. All rights reserved (IMF terms of use). https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS

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

---

# Where do oranges come from?

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

Oranges come mainly from Brazil, which produced 15.7 million tonnes in 2024, 23% of the world's 67.1 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). China (11%), Mexico (7.2%) and Egypt (6.3%) follow; the top five together supply 54%. The biggest exporter of fresh oranges (HS 080510) is Spain (22% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Mediterranean exporters, CIF France, was $0.77/kg in August 2026, down 40% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Sweet oranges need a long warm season, enough winter chill to color the skin and almost no hard frost, which puts them in a narrow subtropical band either side of the tropics; where within that band a country sits decides whether it grows fruit for the crate or fruit for the extractor, because juice needs volume and cheap land while fresh fruit needs looks and a short trip to market.

*Citrus fruit sold fresh or squeezed into juice concentrate; the juice and fresh markets barely overlap.* Also called: orange, sweet orange, citrus, orange juice, valencia.

## Where do oranges come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | 15.7 million | 23% |
| 2 | China | 7.6 million | 11% |
| 3 | Mexico | 4.8 million | 7.2% |
| 4 | Egypt | 4.2 million | 6.3% |
| 5 | India | 3.9 million | 5.7% |
| 6 | Spain | 2.9 million | 4.3% |
| 7 | Indonesia | 2.6 million | 3.8% |
| 8 | United States | 2.5 million | 3.7% |
| 9 | Iran | 2.2 million | 3.3% |
| 10 | Vietnam | 1.9 million | 2.9% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 28% |
| | World | 67.1 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

The sweet orange, Citrus sinensis, is a subtropical rather than a tropical crop. It wants a long warm growing season, generous water, and a cool but frost-free winter: cold nights below about 13 degrees Celsius break down the chlorophyll in the peel and turn it orange, which is why fruit grown in the true tropics stays green even when it is ripe and sweet. A few hours below about minus two degrees will freeze the juice inside the fruit and split the segments, and a hard freeze kills wood. That narrow tolerance is why the world's orange belt runs through southern Brazil, the Mediterranean, Florida and California, South Africa, and the subtropical fringes of China and India.

In 2024 Brazil grew 15.7 million tonnes, 23% of the world's 67.1 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). China followed with 11%, then Mexico (7.2%), Egypt (6.3%) and India (5.7%). The crucial distinction is not between big and small producers but between fruit grown to be squeezed and fruit grown to be eaten. Brazil's citrus belt in São Paulo and Minas Gerais is an industrial juice landscape: large blocks of Valencia and Pera oranges planted for yield and soluble solids, harvested into bulk trailers and delivered to extraction plants. Spain, Egypt, South Africa, Morocco and Turkey grow for the crate, where size, skin finish, seedlessness and shelf life determine the price.

The United States sits in both camps and has been shrinking in each. United States produced 2.5 million tonnes in 2024, 3.7% of the world total, contracting at -8.6% a year over the previous decade, the sharpest decline of any large producer (FAOSTAT). Florida grows almost entirely for juice and has been reduced by citrus greening disease and by hurricanes; California grows navels for the fresh market and has been comparatively insulated.

World output is flat and has been for a decade: production changed -0% over the ten years to 2024, -2% over five and -3% over the last year (FAOSTAT). Underneath that flat total the map is redrawing itself. Egypt grew at +3% a year and Vietnam at +12.5%, while Brazil declined at -0.8% and Spain at -1.8%. 135 countries reported a crop, and everything outside the top ten came to 28%.


## Who exports and imports oranges?

Brazil grows for juice and ships concentrate, not fruit; Spain, Egypt and South Africa supply the fresh trade.

### Exporters of citrus fruit, fresh or dried (HS 0805), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Spain | $3.6 billion | 22% |
| 2 | South Africa | $2.1 billion | 13% |
| 3 | China | $1.5 billion | 9.1% |
| 4 | Egypt | $1.4 billion | 8.1% |
| 5 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $1.1 billion | 6.7% |
| 6 | Mexico | $933.8 million | 5.5% |
| 7 | United States | $852 million | 5.1% |
| 8 | Morocco | $616 million | 3.7% |
| 9 | Netherlands | $473.1 million | 2.8% |
| 10 | Australia | $459.5 million | 2.7% |
| 11 | Chile | $404.1 million | 2.4% |
| 12 | Greece | $357.5 million | 2.1% |
| 13 | Italy | $328.8 million | 2% |
| 14 | Peru | $260 million | 1.5% |
| 15 | Germany | $240.1 million | 1.4% |

### Importers of citrus fruit, fresh or dried (HS 0805), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $1.8 billion | 11% |
| 2 | Germany | $1.4 billion | 8.4% |
| 3 | France | $1.1 billion | 6.6% |
| 4 | Russia | $1.1 billion | 6.3% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $1.1 billion | 6.2% |
| 6 | United Kingdom | $795 million | 4.7% |
| 7 | Canada | $661 million | 3.9% |
| 8 | Poland | $450.8 million | 2.7% |
| 9 | China | $397.7 million | 2.4% |
| 10 | Vietnam | $389.7 million | 2.3% |
| 11 | Italy | $326.7 million | 1.9% |
| 12 | Saudi Arabia | $319.9 million | 1.9% |
| 13 | United Arab Emirates | $307.5 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | South Korea | $307 million | 1.8% |
| 15 | Iraq | $282.1 million | 1.7% |

### Exporters of oranges, fresh or dried (HS 080510), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Spain | $1.2 billion | 22% |
| 2 | Egypt | $1 billion | 18% |
| 3 | South Africa | $843.9 million | 15% |
| 4 | United States | $532.7 million | 9.7% |
| 5 | Australia | $258.7 million | 4.7% |
| 6 | Greece | $203.6 million | 3.7% |
| 7 | China | $185.4 million | 3.4% |
| 8 | Italy | $148.7 million | 2.7% |
| 9 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $146.6 million | 2.7% |
| 10 | Netherlands | $136.5 million | 2.5% |
| 11 | Portugal | $115.7 million | 2.1% |
| 12 | Chile | $101 million | 1.8% |
| 13 | Germany | $71.1 million | 1.3% |
| 14 | Hong Kong | $62.9 million | 1.1% |
| 15 | Morocco | $61.9 million | 1.1% |

### Importers of oranges, fresh or dried (HS 080510), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Germany | $467.5 million | 8.5% |
| 2 | France | $434.2 million | 7.9% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $354.6 million | 6.5% |
| 4 | Russia | $268.5 million | 4.9% |
| 5 | United States | $234.3 million | 4.3% |
| 6 | China | $203.5 million | 3.7% |
| 7 | South Korea | $200.2 million | 3.6% |
| 8 | Canada | $199.6 million | 3.6% |
| 9 | United Kingdom | $192.5 million | 3.5% |
| 10 | Spain | $167.5 million | 3% |
| 11 | Saudi Arabia | $167.2 million | 3% |
| 12 | United Arab Emirates | $150.4 million | 2.7% |
| 13 | Hong Kong | $148.2 million | 2.7% |
| 14 | Italy | $119.1 million | 2.2% |
| 15 | Japan | $114.9 million | 2.1% |

### Exporters of fruit juices, including orange juice (HS 2009), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | $3.5 billion | 17% |
| 2 | Spain | $1.4 billion | 6.9% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $1.4 billion | 6.7% |
| 4 | China | $981.4 million | 4.8% |
| 5 | Germany | $952.6 million | 4.7% |
| 6 | Thailand | $925.3 million | 4.5% |
| 7 | Poland | $880.9 million | 4.3% |
| 8 | Mexico | $842.4 million | 4.1% |
| 9 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $775 million | 3.8% |
| 10 | United States | $763.4 million | 3.8% |
| 11 | Italy | $736.8 million | 3.6% |
| 12 | Austria | $511.6 million | 2.5% |
| 13 | South Africa | $451 million | 2.2% |
| 14 | Israel | $421.2 million | 2.1% |
| 15 | Vietnam | $412.5 million | 2% |

### Importers of fruit juices, including orange juice (HS 2009), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $4.2 billion | 21% |
| 2 | Netherlands | $2.1 billion | 10% |
| 3 | Germany | $1.4 billion | 6.7% |
| 4 | France | $1 billion | 5% |
| 5 | United Kingdom | $920.7 million | 4.5% |
| 6 | Belgium | $869.2 million | 4.3% |
| 7 | China | $862.4 million | 4.2% |
| 8 | Japan | $814.6 million | 4% |
| 9 | Canada | $621.4 million | 3.1% |
| 10 | Austria | $444.4 million | 2.2% |
| 11 | Poland | $436 million | 2.1% |
| 12 | Spain | $402.6 million | 2% |
| 13 | Italy | $355.7 million | 1.7% |
| 14 | Saudi Arabia | $315 million | 1.5% |
| 15 | Ireland | $304.9 million | 1.5% |

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

Oranges cross borders in two entirely separate trades that share almost no participants. Fresh fruit (HS 080510) was a $5.5 billion trade in 2024, led by Spain with 22% of export value, then Egypt (18%), South Africa (15%) and United States (9.7%) (CEPII BACI). Spain supplies northern Europe through the winter by road, Egypt has grown into the largest low-cost supplier of the same market, and South Africa and Australia fill the northern hemisphere's summer gap with counter-seasonal fruit. Notably absent from the top of that table is Brazil, the largest producer in the world, which exports 22% of nothing like its share of production because its oranges are squeezed before they leave the country.

The juice trade tells the other half of the story. Fruit juices (HS 2009) were worth $20.3 billion in 2024, and the largest exporter was Brazil with 17%, ahead of Spain and Netherlands (CEPII BACI); the largest importer was United States with 21%, followed by Netherlands. Brazil ships concentrate and not-from-concentrate juice in refrigerated bulk tankers to dedicated terminals, which is a different logistics business from putting fruit in a box. On the fresh side the buyers are European: Germany took 8.5% of the world's $5.5 billion of fresh orange imports in 2024, ahead of France (7.9%) and Netherlands (6.5%), with the Netherlands acting as a re-export hub rather than a final market.


## What do oranges cost?

- Mediterranean exporters, CIF France: $0.77/kg in August 2026; 12-month change -40%; 10-year change -20%; all-time high $2.7/kg in December 2024; real high (2024 US$) $2.67/kg in December 2024 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How they are priced

There are two prices for an orange and they move independently. Fresh fruit is priced by negotiation between exporters, importers and supermarket buyers, week by week, on the basis of variety, size count, grade and origin. There is no exchange for it. The World Bank series used on this page, Mediterranean exporters, CIF France, is a fresh-fruit quotation: the cost, insurance and freight value of fruit from Mediterranean exporters landed in France. It was $0.77/kg in August 2026, down 40% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its record was $2.7/kg in December 2024, which in inflation-adjusted terms was also close to the real high of $2.67/kg in December 2024; the lowest monthly value since the series began in 1960 was $0.07/kg in February 1966. Over ten years it has changed -20%.

Juice is priced on a futures exchange. The FCOJ-A contract trades on ICE Futures US and covers 15,000 pounds of orange juice solids, quoted in cents and hundredths of a cent per pound, deliverable as United States Grade A concentrate of not less than 62.5 degrees Brix into exchange-licensed warehouses in Florida, New Jersey and Delaware. That contract is the reference for the concentrate trade, and because deliverable stocks are small and the crop is concentrated in two regions, it is one of the most volatile agricultural futures markets in existence. Not-from-concentrate juice, which is now the larger product by value in several markets, is sold on supply contracts priced with reference to the futures market but not settled against it.

Three ambiguities follow from all this. First, the series charted here is fresh fruit landed in Europe and says nothing directly about juice; a Florida crop failure can send FCOJ futures to records while Mediterranean fresh fruit is cheap. Second, CIF means the quote includes freight and insurance to the destination, so it is not comparable with an FOB price at origin or with what a grower receives. Third, the production table counts all oranges regardless of destination, so a country's tonnes say nothing about whether that fruit ever appeared in a shop.


## What moves the price of oranges?

### Citrus greening (huanglongbing)

HLB is a bacterial disease spread by the Asian citrus psyllid that starves the tree by blocking its phloem, producing small, lopsided, bitter fruit that drops early. There is no cure and infected trees decline over several years. It reached Florida in 2005 and California by 2012 and is established in Brazil's citrus belt, and it has cut yields, raised the cost of production through spray and nutrition programs, and shortened the productive life of a grove from decades to years.

### Brazil's juice crop and inventory

Brazil supplies the bulk of internationally traded orange juice, so the size of its São Paulo crop and the concentrate stocks held by its processors set the world juice price. Stocks act as the buffer: when carry-in inventory is comfortable, a poor crop barely registers, and when inventory is thin, the same crop shortfall sends the futures market sharply higher. Growers and processors survey the crop through the season, and each revision moves the contract.

### Frost and hurricanes in Florida

Florida's groves sit at the cold edge of the crop's range and in a hurricane track. A hard freeze splits fruit and kills wood, and the historic freezes of the 1890s and 1980s permanently moved the industry south. Wind is now the larger threat: Hurricane Ian in September 2022 stripped fruit from trees across the producing counties and cut the following season's output sharply, on top of the long decline caused by greening.

### Counter-seasonal supply

The northern hemisphere harvests from roughly November to May and the southern hemisphere from May to October, so the fresh market runs on two half-year supply cycles that hand over to each other. South African, Australian, Argentine and Chilean fruit sets the summer price in Europe and North America; Spanish, Egyptian, Moroccan and Turkish fruit sets the winter price. A poor season in one hemisphere leaves a gap the other cannot fill because the fruit is not on the trees yet.

### Water and drought in the Mediterranean

Spanish, Egyptian and Moroccan citrus is irrigated, so water allocation is a production input in the same way fertilizer is. Drought in the Valencian and Andalusian growing regions reduces fruit size before it reduces tonnes, and size is what determines the price a crate fetches. Restrictions on abstraction, and the cost of pumping when energy is expensive, feed straight into the cost of production and into which groves are worth keeping.

### Phytosanitary rules and market access

Fresh citrus moves under strict pest rules, and a change in them can close a market overnight. European requirements on false codling moth and citrus black spot for South African fruit, cold-treatment protocols for imports into some Asian markets, and quarantine responses to greening detections all shift trade flows without changing how much fruit exists. Compliance costs are borne at the packhouse and can make a distant market uneconomic for a given season.

### The fresh-versus-juice allocation

Most oranges could in principle go either way, and the grower's decision is economic. When fresh prices are strong, more fruit is picked carefully, sized and packed, and less reaches the extractor; when fresh prices are weak or the fruit is blemished, it is diverted to juice at a much lower price. This gives juice a floor and fresh a ceiling, and it means the two markets are linked at the margin even though their price series often diverge.

### Currency and grower economics

Brazilian growers earn dollars for juice and pay costs in reais, so a weaker real improves their margin and encourages replanting even when the dollar price is unchanged. Spanish and Egyptian exporters face the same mechanism against the euro and the pound. Because a citrus tree takes several years to come into bearing, currency-driven planting decisions show up in supply three to five years later, which is one source of the long cycles in this market.

## How are oranges produced?

An orange tree is two plants. The fruiting variety is budded onto a rootstock chosen for soil type, disease tolerance and vigor, and the combination determines yield, fruit size and how long the grove lasts. A new planting takes three to five years to bear a commercial crop and can then produce for decades, which makes citrus a capital investment rather than an annual decision. The tree flowers in spring, sets far more fruit than it can carry and sheds most of it, and the remainder takes seven to fourteen months to mature depending on variety.

Variety decides destination. Navel oranges are seedless, easy to peel and early, and their juice turns bitter within hours because of limonin, so they are grown for the fresh market. Valencia is later, seedy, high in juice and holds on the tree, which makes it the classic processing orange; Brazil's Pera and Hamlin play the same role. Blood oranges need cold nights to develop their pigment, which is why they are a Sicilian and Spanish specialty. Fresh fruit is picked by hand into bags and bins to avoid bruising, and in warm autumns it is degreened with a low dose of ethylene in a sealed room to break down the peel's chlorophyll without ripening the flesh further.

The packhouse is where fresh value is made or lost. Fruit is washed, brushed, waxed to slow moisture loss, graded by machine and eye for color and blemish, sized by weight or diameter into standard counts per carton, and packed. Anything that fails goes to the juice plant. Processing is a continuous industrial operation: extractors squeeze fruit between meshing cups that separate juice from peel and seeds in one motion, the juice is finished to remove pulp, pasteurized, and then either evaporated to a concentrate of about 65 degrees Brix and frozen, or chilled and stored as not-from-concentrate juice in refrigerated aseptic tanks under nitrogen.

The by-products are worth more than they look. Peel is pressed and dried into citrus pulp pellets sold as cattle feed, the peel oil is recovered as d-limonene for solvents and flavors, essence oil and aroma recovered during evaporation are added back to restore flavor, and the albedo is a major source of pectin for jams and food thickening. Seasonality is sharp: Brazil harvests from roughly May to January, Florida from October to June, Spain from October to May, and the southern hemisphere fresh season runs from about May to October.


## What are oranges used for?

Oranges are eaten fresh or drunk. The fresh trade takes the fruit with the best appearance and the juice industry takes the rest, plus everything grown specifically for processing. Within juice there are two products: frozen concentrated orange juice, which is evaporated, frozen, shipped and reconstituted with water near the consumer, and not-from-concentrate juice, which is pasteurized and shipped chilled in bulk at far greater cost per liter. The relative share of the two has shifted toward not-from-concentrate in high-income markets, which changes shipping economics because water is being moved rather than removed.

Beyond the fruit itself, citrus supports a cluster of ingredient industries: pectin from the peel for jams and confectionery, d-limonene as a solvent and fragrance, citrus essential oils for flavoring and cleaning products, and dried citrus pulp pellets fed to dairy cattle. Marmalade uses bitter Seville oranges, a small and distinct trade. None of these approaches the scale of fresh and juice consumption, but they are the reason a processing plant can pay for fruit that would otherwise be waste.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The two trades have separate infrastructure end to end. Juice runs on a purpose-built bulk system: Brazilian processors in São Paulo pipe concentrate and chilled juice to terminals at the port of Santos, load it into refrigerated tanker vessels designed for the purpose, and discharge at dedicated terminals in Ghent, Rotterdam, Wilmington in Delaware, and Japan, where it is stored in tank farms and blended before packing. This is a closed system with a handful of participants, and it is why the juice trade shows up in the statistics as a small number of very large flows.

Fresh fruit runs on the ordinary produce chain. Spanish oranges leave Valencia and Andalusia by refrigerated truck and reach German and French supermarkets within days, which is the origin of the CIF France quotation used on this page. Egyptian fruit ships in reefer containers from Alexandria and Damietta to Europe, Russia and Asia. South African fruit leaves Durban, Cape Town and Gqeberha for Europe and the Middle East during the northern summer, and its transit depends on both reefer container availability and the phytosanitary cold-treatment regime the destination requires.

The chokepoints are biological and infrastructural in about equal measure. The largest is disease: greening is established in the two regions that matter most for juice, and there is no resistant commercial variety, so the supply base is eroding rather than failing suddenly. The second is the concentration of juice processing in a small number of plants and terminals, which means an outage or a labor dispute affects a large share of world supply. The third is port and reefer capacity in the southern hemisphere during a short export window, since fruit that misses its vessel loses a large part of its remaining shelf life. Finally, deliverable stocks behind the FCOJ futures contract are small, so a supply shock can move the paper market violently before it moves the physical one.


## Key companies

- Citrosuco: orange juice processor and shipper, Brazil
- Sucocítrico Cutrale: orange juice processor and grower, Brazil
- Louis Dreyfus Company: juice processor and trader, Netherlands
- Tropicana Brands Group: juice brand owner and packer, United States
- The Coca-Cola Company: juice brand owner (Minute Maid, Simply), United States, listed (KO)
- Anecoop: Spanish grower cooperative and fresh citrus exporter, Spain

## Timeline

- 1873: The Washington navel reaches California. Two greenhouse-grown trees propagated from Bahia, Brazil budwood were sent to Riverside, and the seedless variety they founded became the basis of the California fresh orange industry. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_navel_orange_tree_(Riverside,_California))
- 1894-12: The Great Freeze in Florida. Cold waves in December 1894 and February 1895 cut Florida production from about six million boxes to 100,000 and pushed the industry permanently south into warmer counties. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Freeze)
- 1945: Frozen concentrated orange juice is invented. The cutback process, which evaporates juice under vacuum and adds fresh juice back to restore flavor, made juice storable and shippable and turned oranges into an industrial commodity. (https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Trends_in_U.S._Agriculture/Frozen_Orange_Juice/index.php)
- 1948: The FCOJ patent is assigned to the US government. Placing the concentrate process in public hands let any processor use it, and the share of Florida oranges going to processing rose from about 40 percent in the late 1940s to nearly 70 percent by the mid-1950s. (https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Trends_in_U.S._Agriculture/Frozen_Orange_Juice/index.php)
- 1966: Orange juice futures begin trading in New York. A futures contract gave the juice trade a hedging instrument and a public price, and made frozen concentrate the only form of the orange with an exchange-traded benchmark. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_juice)
- 1985: Options on FCOJ futures are introduced. Options gave processors and growers a way to insure against freeze-driven price spikes without taking a futures position, deepening a market whose volatility comes from weather in two regions. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_juice)
- 1998: The Asian citrus psyllid arrives in Florida. The insect that spreads huanglongbing established itself years before the disease was found, which meant that once the bacterium arrived it had a ready vector across the state. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus_production)
- 2005-08: Citrus greening confirmed in Florida. A greening-positive tree was found in Miami-Dade County in August 2005; within three years the disease had spread to most Florida groves and began a long decline in the state's output. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus_production)
- 2012-03: Citrus greening reaches California. The disease was confirmed in a single tree on 30 March 2012, putting the main fresh-market orange region of the United States under quarantine and area-wide psyllid control. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus_greening_disease)
- 2022-09: Hurricane Ian strikes the Florida citrus belt. The Category 4 landfall on 28 September 2022 stripped fruit from trees and reduced the following season's citrus production by about 41 percent, the largest fall in more than a century. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus_production_in_Florida)

## Frequently asked questions

### Which country produces the most oranges?

Brazil grew 15.7 million tonnes in 2024, 23% of the world's 67.1 million tonnes (FAOSTAT), ahead of China at 11% and Mexico at 7.2%. Almost all of Brazil's crop is squeezed rather than sold as fruit, so it barely appears in the fresh orange export tables.

### Which country exports the most oranges?

Spain led the fresh orange trade in 2024 with 22% of the world's $5.5 billion in export value, followed by Egypt at 18% and South Africa at 15% (CEPII BACI). Spain supplies northern Europe by road in winter; South Africa fills the northern summer gap with counter-seasonal fruit.

### Which country exports the most orange juice?

Brazil was the largest exporter of fruit juices in 2024 with 17% of a $20.3 billion trade, ahead of Spain at 6.9% (CEPII BACI). The largest importer was United States at 21%. Brazil ships juice in refrigerated bulk tankers to dedicated terminals rather than in cartons.

### How much do oranges cost?

The Mediterranean exporters, CIF France price was $0.77/kg in August 2026, down 40% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). That is a landed wholesale price for fresh fruit including freight and insurance, not a retail or farm-gate price. The series record was $2.7/kg in December 2024, and over ten years it has changed -20%.

### Why is orange juice so expensive?

Juice is priced separately from fresh fruit, on the ICE FCOJ futures contract, and its supply depends on two regions where citrus greening has cut yields and where hurricanes and frost hit periodically. Florida's crop fell about 41 percent after Hurricane Ian in September 2022. Fresh fruit prices can fall at the same time: the CIF France quotation was -40% over the year to August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### What is citrus greening?

Huanglongbing, or citrus greening, is a bacterial disease spread by the Asian citrus psyllid. It blocks the tree's phloem, producing small, bitter, misshapen fruit that drops early, and there is no cure. It reached Florida in August 2005 and California in March 2012. United States output has since fallen at -8.6% a year to 2.5 million tonnes in 2024 (FAOSTAT).

### Is orange juice traded on an exchange?

Yes, but only the concentrate. The FCOJ-A contract on ICE Futures US covers 15,000 pounds of orange juice solids at not less than 62.5 degrees Brix, quoted in US cents per pound. Fresh oranges have no futures market and are sold by negotiation: the reference series here was $0.77/kg in August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### Does the United States still grow oranges?

Yes, but far fewer. United States produced 2.5 million tonnes in 2024, 3.7% of world output, shrinking at -8.6% a year over the previous decade (FAOSTAT). It still exported $532.7 million of fresh oranges in 2024, 9.7% of world export value (CEPII BACI), mostly California navels rather than Florida juice fruit.

### What is the difference between navel and Valencia oranges?

Navels are seedless, early and easy to peel, but their juice turns bitter within hours because of a compound called limonin, so they are grown for eating. Valencias are later, seedier and higher in juice, and hold on the tree, which makes them the standard processing orange. Both are counted in the 67.1 million tonnes the world grew in 2024 (FAOSTAT).

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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 2026-09-06. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where do oranges come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/oranges/.

---

# Where does palladium come from?

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

Palladium comes mainly from Russia, which produced 84 tonnes in 2025, 44% of the world's 191 tonnes (USGS MCS). South Africa (37%), Canada (8.4%) and Zimbabwe (7.8%) follow; the top five together supply 100%. The biggest exporter of unwrought palladium (HS 711021) is Russia (22% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Palladium, spot, was $1,267/troy oz in July 2026, up 6% from a year earlier (IMF PCPS). Palladium comes from two orebodies mined for other reasons: Russia's Norilsk nickel-copper deposit, where it is a by-product, and South Africa's Bushveld reefs, where it accompanies platinum, so nobody has ever been able to mine more palladium simply because palladium was expensive.

*A precious metal used mainly in petrol-engine autocatalysts, mined with platinum and nickel.* Also called: Pd, palladium bullion, PGM, autocatalyst metal.

## Where does palladium come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Russia | 84 | 44% |
| 2 | South Africa | 70 | 37% |
| 3 | Canada | 16 | 8.4% |
| 4 | Zimbabwe | 15 | 7.8% |
| 5 | United States | 6.2 | 3.2% |
| | Rest of world | 2.9 | <0.1% |
| | World | 191 | 100% |

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026.

In 2025 Russia mined 84 tonnes of palladium, 44% of the world's 191 tonnes (USGS MCS). South Africa followed with 37%, then Canada (8.4%), Zimbabwe (7.8%) and United States (3.2%). Only 5 countries produce it. The same mines produced {{prod.Mine production: Platinum.world}} of platinum, led by {{prod.Mine production: Platinum.top1.name}} with {{prod.Mine production: Platinum.top1.share}} (USGS MCS). Reserves are reported for the platinum-group metals combined: South Africa holds 83% of the world's 76,200 tonnes (USGS MCS).

The ordering of the two metals is the interesting part. South Africa dominates platinum; Russia leads palladium. That is because the Bushveld reefs are platinum-rich while Norilsk is palladium-rich, and the ratio in each orebody is fixed by geology. Neither producer can respond to a palladium price spike by making more palladium and less platinum.

Production means mined metal content. Because both metals are recovered from the same concentrate through the same long refining sequence, refined output lags mine output by months, and a smelter outage affects both simultaneously.

World output changed -11% on the previous year. The long-run picture is one of essentially flat mine supply against demand that swung enormously with emissions regulation, which is why palladium has had one of the most dramatic price histories of any metal in the last decade.

## Who exports and imports palladium?

Russia's Norilsk and South Africa's Bushveld supply most primary palladium; the United Kingdom and Switzerland dominate the export table because they refine and trade rather than mine.

### Exporters of platinum-group metals (HS 7110), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Africa | $15.2 billion | 32% |
| 2 | United Kingdom | $5.2 billion | 11% |
| 3 | Russia | $4 billion | 8.5% |
| 4 | Germany | $3.2 billion | 6.9% |
| 5 | United States | $3.1 billion | 6.6% |
| 6 | Italy | $2.5 billion | 5.2% |
| 7 | Belgium | $2.4 billion | 5% |
| 8 | United Arab Emirates | $1.8 billion | 3.7% |
| 9 | Switzerland | $1.7 billion | 3.6% |
| 10 | Hong Kong | $1.5 billion | 3.2% |
| 11 | Japan | $1.5 billion | 3.1% |
| 12 | China | $625.5 million | 1.3% |
| 13 | France | $614.4 million | 1.3% |
| 14 | Thailand | $519.9 million | 1.1% |
| 15 | South Korea | $479.1 million | 1% |

### Importers of platinum-group metals (HS 7110), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $7.4 billion | 16% |
| 2 | China | $5.7 billion | 12% |
| 3 | Japan | $5.4 billion | 11% |
| 4 | United Kingdom | $4.9 billion | 10% |
| 5 | Germany | $4.6 billion | 9.9% |
| 6 | Hong Kong | $4 billion | 8.6% |
| 7 | Switzerland | $2.8 billion | 5.9% |
| 8 | India | $2.6 billion | 5.4% |
| 9 | Italy | $2.1 billion | 4.4% |
| 10 | South Korea | $1.3 billion | 2.7% |
| 11 | North Macedonia | $1 billion | 2.2% |
| 12 | Canada | $972.6 million | 2.1% |
| 13 | Brazil | $756.2 million | 1.6% |
| 14 | Belgium | $483.6 million | 1% |
| 15 | Poland | $429.9 million | 0.9% |

### Exporters of palladium, unwrought or in powder form (HS 711021), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Russia | $2.9 billion | 22% |
| 2 | South Africa | $2.8 billion | 21% |
| 3 | United Kingdom | $1.4 billion | 11% |
| 4 | United States | $1.4 billion | 10% |
| 5 | Italy | $972.4 million | 7.4% |
| 6 | Germany | $930.9 million | 7.1% |
| 7 | Belgium | $733.9 million | 5.6% |
| 8 | France | $479.7 million | 3.7% |
| 9 | Armenia | $264.4 million | 2% |
| 10 | Switzerland | $239.2 million | 1.8% |
| 11 | Norway | $229.8 million | 1.8% |
| 12 | Hong Kong | $209.3 million | 1.6% |
| 13 | South Korea | $196.5 million | 1.5% |
| 14 | Japan | $168.8 million | 1.3% |
| 15 | Austria | $49.1 million | 0.4% |

### Importers of palladium, unwrought or in powder form (HS 711021), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $1.9 billion | 15% |
| 2 | Germany | $1.8 billion | 14% |
| 3 | Switzerland | $1.6 billion | 12% |
| 4 | Japan | $1.4 billion | 10% |
| 5 | United Kingdom | $956.1 million | 7.3% |
| 6 | China | $873.2 million | 6.7% |
| 7 | Italy | $702.5 million | 5.4% |
| 8 | Hong Kong | $694.5 million | 5.3% |
| 9 | Canada | $573.3 million | 4.4% |
| 10 | North Macedonia | $569.2 million | 4.3% |
| 11 | South Korea | $483.3 million | 3.7% |
| 12 | Brazil | $428.1 million | 3.3% |
| 13 | Armenia | $252.9 million | 1.9% |
| 14 | Poland | $201 million | 1.5% |
| 15 | India | $106.8 million | 0.8% |

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

Russia was the largest exporter of unwrought palladium (HS 711021) in 2024 with 22% of world export value, ahead of South Africa (21%), on world trade of $13.1 billion (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 15%.

As with the other precious metals, the export table mixes producers with refining and vaulting hubs. The United Kingdom and Switzerland appear because they refine and trade metal mined elsewhere, and metal moving in and out of exchange warehouses crosses borders repeatedly. Since 2022 the Russian share of the visible trade has become harder to read, as material has moved through different intermediaries and destinations without necessarily changing in volume.

## What does palladium cost?

- Palladium, spot: $1,267/troy oz in July 2026; 12-month change +6%; 10-year change +96%; all-time high $2,873/troy oz in May 2021; real high (2024 US$) $3,358/troy oz in May 2021 (IMF PCPS).

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

### How it is priced

The series shown is Palladium, spot, which was $1,267/troy oz in July 2026, up 6% from a year earlier (IMF PCPS). The nominal high was $2,873/troy oz in May 2021, and the real high $3,358/troy oz in May 2021. Note the World Bank Pink Sheet carries platinum but not palladium, so this page uses the IMF series.

Palladium trades in troy ounces with a twice-daily reference price set by electronic auction under the London Platinum and Palladium Market, and NYMEX futures used for hedging. The physical market is small: annual supply is measured in low hundreds of tonnes, so the metal is genuinely illiquid compared with gold or silver, and lease rates can spike violently when metal is short in a particular location.

Two features make palladium pricing unusual. First, supply is inelastic in the strict sense: it is a by-product of nickel and platinum mining, so it does not increase when the price rises. Second, its main demand can substitute with platinum over a design cycle of a year or two. Between 2017 and 2022 palladium traded far above platinum, which prompted exactly that substitution, and the subsequent normalisation of the spread is the main reason the price fell back. Anyone reading a palladium price should read the platinum price next to it.

## What moves the price of palladium?

### Gasoline vehicle production

Palladium's dominant use is in catalytic converters for petrol engines, so it tracks gasoline vehicle output rather than total vehicle output. Every battery electric vehicle sold instead of a petrol one removes several grams of palladium demand permanently, which is the structural pressure on the metal.

### Emissions standards

Tightening limits raise the loading of precious metal per vehicle, which can offset falling vehicle numbers. China's transition to stricter standards raised palladium loadings substantially and was a major source of the demand growth behind the price spike.

### Substitution with platinum

Catalyst makers can reformulate toward platinum when palladium is expensive, and did so at scale after the 2018 to 2022 price divergence. The substitution takes a year or two to reach production and does not reverse quickly, so a price spike permanently destroys some demand.

### Russian supply and sanctions

One Russian producer supplies a large share of world palladium. Payment, shipping, insurance and listing restrictions after 2022 complicated that flow even where the metal itself was not sanctioned, adding a persistent risk premium and rerouting trade.

### By-product economics

Palladium output depends on nickel economics at Norilsk and on platinum economics in the Bushveld. A South African power crisis or a nickel price collapse changes palladium supply for reasons entirely unrelated to palladium.

### Recycling of autocatalysts

Spent converters return substantial quantities of palladium, and scrap flows respond to price within months. High prices accelerate scrappage and collection, which caps rallies; low prices slow them, which cushions falls.

### Investment and lease rates

Because the physical market is small, movements of metal into and out of exchange warehouses and investor holdings have outsized effects. Acute local shortages have produced extreme lease rates and backwardation without any change in mine supply.

## How is palladium produced?

Palladium is never the reason a mine is dug. At Norilsk, nickel-copper sulfide ore is mined underground, concentrated by flotation and smelted; the platinum-group metals report to the converter matte along with the nickel and copper and are recovered at the far end of the base-metal refinery. In the Bushveld, narrow reef ore is mined, floated, smelted and converted, and the precious metals are separated after the base metals have been removed.

The precious-metal refinery is where palladium is finally isolated, through a sequence of dissolutions, precipitations and solvent-extraction steps that separate the six platinum-group elements from one another and from gold. The pipeline holds several months of production, which is why refined supply can diverge from mine supply for a quarter or more and why a refinery outage matters as much as a mine outage.

Recycling follows a compressed version of the same route. Spent autocatalysts are collected, the ceramic substrate is milled, and the metal-bearing powder is smelted and refined alongside primary material. Because a converter contains platinum, palladium and rhodium together, recycling returns the whole basket, which is one reason the three metals' prices are linked.

Everything on this page is measured as metal content, in tonnes. World mine supply of palladium is measured in low hundreds of tonnes a year, which puts the entire market's annual output at a volume that would fit in a single room.

## What is palladium used for?

Autocatalysts dominate. In a petrol engine's three-way catalytic converter, palladium oxidises carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons and helps reduce nitrogen oxides, and it has been the preferred metal for that job for decades because it performed better than platinum at the temperatures petrol engines run.

Electronics is the second use: palladium in multilayer ceramic capacitors, which appear in the billions in every kind of device, and in connector plating and soldering. Dentistry uses palladium alloys for crowns and bridges, though less than it once did. Chemical catalysis uses it in hydrogenation, in purified terephthalic acid production for polyester, and in the coupling reactions that underpin much of modern pharmaceutical synthesis.

Jewellery is a small use, mostly as the whitening element in white gold and occasionally as palladium jewellery in its own right. Investment demand exists through bars, coins and exchange-traded funds but is far smaller than for gold or silver.

The use that would matter most for the metal's future is hydrogen: palladium membranes purify hydrogen and palladium absorbs it readily. Whether that becomes a large market depends on how hydrogen infrastructure develops, and it is far from certain.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain has the same shape as platinum's but with the country weights reversed and an additional geopolitical complication. Norilsk supplies a large share of world palladium from a single Arctic industrial complex, reached by rail to Dudinka and then by sea along the Northern Sea Route or by air. Restrictions and self-sanctioning by Western buyers after 2022 did not stop the metal moving but changed who handled it and where it went, and added a persistent premium for guaranteed non-Russian material.

South African supply carries the electricity and labor risks described on the platinum page: deep mines, a strained grid, and a history of long wage strikes. Because palladium comes out of the same shafts, those risks apply to both metals simultaneously.

Refining is the third narrow point, concentrated in a small number of facilities in South Africa, Russia, Britain, Germany, Japan and the United States. The months-long pipeline through those refineries means the market cannot respond quickly to a shortage even when mines are running normally.

The structural risk is demand rather than supply. Palladium's dominant use is a technology being replaced: every gasoline vehicle not built is palladium demand that does not return, and the substitution toward platinum triggered by the price spike removed more. Recycling volumes will keep growing as the existing petrol fleet is scrapped, which means secondary supply rises exactly as primary demand falls. That is an unusual and uncomfortable position for a producer.

## Key companies

- Norilsk Nickel: miner and refiner, Russia, listed (GMKN)
- Anglo American Platinum (Valterra Platinum): miner and refiner, South Africa, listed (VAL)
- Impala Platinum (Implats): miner and refiner, South Africa, listed (IMP)
- Sibanye-Stillwater: miner and recycler, South Africa, listed (SSW)
- Johnson Matthey: refiner and catalyst maker, United Kingdom, listed (JMAT)
- BASF: catalyst maker and recycler, Germany, listed (BAS)

## Timeline

- 1803: Palladium is identified as a new element. Isolated from crude platinum ore, it remained a laboratory curiosity for a century and a half until catalysis and electronics gave it industrial uses. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 1935: Norilsk begins production. Development of the Arctic nickel-copper deposit created the source that still supplies a large share of world palladium as a by-product of nickel. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 1975: Catalytic converters become compulsory in the United States. Emissions rules created the demand that would eventually consume most of world palladium production and tied the metal's fortunes to the internal combustion engine. (https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview/evolution-clean-air-act)
- 2000-01: A supply scare drives palladium above platinum. Uncertainty over Russian export licenses and heavy carmaker stockpiling sent palladium to a then-record and prompted the first wave of substitution back toward platinum. (https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS)
- 2008-01: South African power cuts hit platinum-group supply. A national electricity emergency stopped deep-level mining and constrained the Bushveld's contribution to palladium supply alongside platinum. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 2014-01: A five-month South African strike removes supply. The longest wage strike in the country's history stopped the three largest platinum-group producers for half a year and tightened the palladium market along with platinum. (https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/2014-south-african-platinum-strike-longest-wage-strike-south-africa)
- 2015-09: The diesel emissions scandal shifts demand to petrol. Consumers and regulators turned away from diesel toward petrol engines, moving catalyst demand from platinum toward palladium and beginning the divergence between the two metals. (https://www.epa.gov/vw)
- 2018-01: Palladium overtakes gold. Sustained deficits and rising Chinese emissions standards took palladium above the gold price, a level it held for years and which triggered systematic substitution work by catalyst makers. (https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS)
- 2022-03: Restrictions complicate Russian supply. Payment, shipping and listing measures after the invasion of Ukraine disrupted the largest single source of palladium, and the price spiked to its record before falling back. (https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS)
- 2024-01: Substitution and electrification pull the price down. Catalyst reformulation toward platinum, combined with battery electric vehicle share growth, cut palladium demand and returned the price to a discount against platinum. (https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most palladium

Russia mined 84 tonnes in 2025, 44% of the world's 191 tonnes (USGS MCS). South Africa was second with 37%. Only 5 countries produce it, and in all of them it is a by-product of nickel or platinum mining.

### why is palladium so expensive

Because supply is a by-product that does not increase when the price rises, while demand rose sharply as emissions standards tightened and buyers moved from diesel to petrol engines. Its nominal high was $2,873/troy oz in May 2021 (IMF PCPS); substitution toward platinum has since reduced demand.

### what is palladium used for

Mainly catalytic converters for petrol engines. Other uses are multilayer ceramic capacitors and connector plating in electronics, dental alloys, chemical catalysts for hydrogenation and pharmaceutical synthesis, white gold jewellery, and hydrogen purification membranes.

### what is the difference between platinum and palladium

They do similar work in a catalytic converter and come from the same orebodies, but in different ratios: the Bushveld is platinum-rich and Norilsk is palladium-rich. Historically platinum suited diesel and palladium suited petrol, and catalyst makers substitute between them over a design cycle of a year or two.

### is palladium demand falling

Its dominant use is petrol-engine catalysts, so every battery electric vehicle sold instead of a petrol one removes demand permanently. Substitution toward platinum after the price spike removed more. Meanwhile recycling of the existing petrol fleet raises secondary supply, which compounds the pressure.

### where is palladium refined

In a small number of facilities in South Africa, Russia, Britain, Germany, Japan and the United States, at the end of a separation sequence that also produces platinum, rhodium and the other platinum-group metals. The pipeline holds several months of production, so refined supply lags mine output.

### how much palladium is there

World mine supply is 191 tonnes a year (2025, USGS MCS), measured in tonnes rather than millions of tonnes. Reserves are reported for the platinum-group metals together, with South Africa holding 83% of 76,200 tonnes.

## Sources

- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries
- 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
- IMF Primary Commodity Price System (PCPS), 2026-08-06, fetched 6 September 2026. License: © International Monetary Fund. All rights reserved (IMF terms of use). https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS

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

---

# Where does palm kernel oil come from?

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

Palm kernel oil comes mainly from Indonesia, which produced 5 million tonnes in 2023, 59% of the world's 8.4 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Malaysia (25%), Thailand (3.7%) and Nigeria (2%) follow; the top five together supply 92%. The biggest exporter of crude palm kernel oil (HS 151321) is Malaysia (29% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Malaysia, CIF Rotterdam, was $2,264/t in August 2026, unchanged from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Palm kernel oil is not planted for, it is fallen out of: every tonne of palm oil milled leaves behind nuts whose kernels yield a completely different oil, so the production map is simply the palm oil map, and Indonesia and Malaysia lead because that is where the fruit is crushed.

*Oil pressed from the seed inside the oil palm fruit; chemically closer to coconut oil than to palm oil.* Also called: PKO, palm kernel, palm kernels, kernel oil.

## Where does palm kernel oil come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2023 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indonesia | 5 million | 59% |
| 2 | Malaysia | 2.1 million | 25% |
| 3 | Thailand | 308,400 | 3.7% |
| 4 | Nigeria | 167,900 | 2% |
| 5 | Colombia | 118,672 | 1.4% |
| 6 | Guatemala | 74,487 | 0.9% |
| 7 | Papua New Guinea | 74,000 | 0.9% |
| 8 | Ghana | 63,000 | 0.8% |
| 9 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | 59,800 | 0.7% |
| 10 | Honduras | 51,200 | 0.6% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 4.3% |
| | World | 8.4 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2023.

The oil palm fruit carries two oils that have almost nothing in common. The orange flesh gives palm oil, made mostly of palmitic and oleic acids and used as a cooking and frying fat. Inside it sits a hard nut whose kernel gives palm kernel oil, dominated by the 12-carbon lauric acid and chemically far closer to coconut oil than to the palm oil pressed a few meters away in the same mill. That distinction is the whole point of the commodity: palm kernel oil competes with coconut oil for soap, surfactant and confectionery business, not with palm oil for the frying pan, and its price can move in the opposite direction to the crop it comes from.

Because kernels arrive as a by-product of milling fruit for palm oil, the map is inherited rather than chosen. In 2023 Indonesia produced 5 million tonnes of palm kernel oil, 59% of the world's 8.4 million tonnes, and Malaysia 2.1 million tonnes (25%) (FAOSTAT). Thailand was third with 308,400 tonnes, then Nigeria and Colombia; only 46 countries reported any output at all, and everything outside the ten largest came to 4.3%. The kernels themselves are counted separately: the world produced 19.2 million tonnes of palm kernels in 2023, with Indonesia on 59% and Malaysia on 23% (FAOSTAT). Roughly two and a half tonnes of kernels give a tonne of oil, the rest leaving as palm kernel meal.

Output has grown with the palm oil industry rather than independently of it. World palm kernel oil production was +32% against ten years earlier but only +7% against five, and the two leaders diverged sharply over the decade to 2023: Indonesia at +4.9% a year and Malaysia at -0.7% (FAOSTAT), the same split between an Indonesian industry still planting and a Malaysian one short of land and labor. West Africa, where the oil palm is native and where the 19th-century kernel trade began, now appears only through Nigeria, and Latin America through Colombia.


## Who exports and imports palm kernel oil?

Palm kernel oil is a by-product of palm oil milling, so its map follows Indonesia and Malaysia, but the oleochemical plants that consume it sit in Malaysia, China and the European Union.

### Exporters of coconut, palm kernel and babassu oil (HS 1513), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indonesia | $2.7 billion | 34% |
| 2 | Philippines | $2 billion | 25% |
| 3 | Malaysia | $1.2 billion | 15% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $490.4 million | 6.2% |
| 5 | Thailand | $184.8 million | 2.3% |
| 6 | Papua New Guinea | $137.1 million | 1.7% |
| 7 | Spain | $110.5 million | 1.4% |
| 8 | Colombia | $103 million | 1.3% |
| 9 | Sri Lanka | $90.5 million | 1.1% |
| 10 | Belgium | $87.7 million | 1.1% |
| 11 | Germany | $86.6 million | 1.1% |
| 12 | Guatemala | $62.7 million | 0.8% |
| 13 | Singapore | $56.8 million | 0.7% |
| 14 | United States | $56.1 million | 0.7% |
| 15 | Honduras | $53.1 million | 0.7% |

### Importers of coconut, palm kernel and babassu oil (HS 1513), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $1.2 billion | 15% |
| 2 | China | $1 billion | 13% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $808 million | 10% |
| 4 | Malaysia | $691.7 million | 8.7% |
| 5 | Germany | $515.7 million | 6.5% |
| 6 | Brazil | $318.9 million | 4% |
| 7 | Sri Lanka | $221.8 million | 2.8% |
| 8 | Spain | $220 million | 2.8% |
| 9 | Russia | $196.5 million | 2.5% |
| 10 | Italy | $191.2 million | 2.4% |
| 11 | Mexico | $177.8 million | 2.2% |
| 12 | India | $153.8 million | 1.9% |
| 13 | Japan | $149.9 million | 1.9% |
| 14 | Indonesia | $127.1 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | Belgium | $125.3 million | 1.6% |

### Exporters of crude palm kernel and babassu oil (HS 151321), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Malaysia | $314.8 million | 29% |
| 2 | Thailand | $156.8 million | 14% |
| 3 | Papua New Guinea | $88.7 million | 8.2% |
| 4 | Colombia | $83.9 million | 7.7% |
| 5 | Indonesia | $70.5 million | 6.5% |
| 6 | Netherlands | $67.9 million | 6.3% |
| 7 | Guatemala | $61.9 million | 5.7% |
| 8 | Honduras | $53 million | 4.9% |
| 9 | Costa Rica | $35 million | 3.2% |
| 10 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $27.7 million | 2.6% |
| 11 | Peru | $19 million | 1.8% |
| 12 | Spain | $16.1 million | 1.5% |
| 13 | Germany | $13.4 million | 1.2% |
| 14 | Gabon | $12.5 million | 1.2% |
| 15 | Nigeria | $6 million | 0.6% |

### Importers of crude palm kernel and babassu oil (HS 151321), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Netherlands | $188.1 million | 17% |
| 2 | India | $133.3 million | 12% |
| 3 | Malaysia | $132.5 million | 12% |
| 4 | Germany | $124.4 million | 11% |
| 5 | Mexico | $109.9 million | 10% |
| 6 | China | $72 million | 6.6% |
| 7 | Spain | $68.6 million | 6.3% |
| 8 | Italy | $27.4 million | 2.5% |
| 9 | Belgium | $25.3 million | 2.3% |
| 10 | Poland | $20.9 million | 1.9% |
| 11 | Czechia | $17.8 million | 1.6% |
| 12 | Kenya | $16.8 million | 1.6% |
| 13 | Saudi Arabia | $16.5 million | 1.5% |
| 14 | Chile | $12.2 million | 1.1% |
| 15 | Austria | $11.3 million | 1% |

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

The producer and exporter tables disagree more sharply here than for almost any other oil. World exports of crude palm kernel oil (HS 151321) were worth $1.1 billion in 2024, led by Malaysia on 29%, Thailand on 14%, Papua New Guinea on 8.2% and Colombia on 7.7% (CEPII BACI). Indonesia, which makes most of the world's palm kernel oil, ships only 6.5% of the crude trade, because its export levy structure and its own oleochemical and specialty fats plants keep the oil at home in processed form. Malaysia, with a smaller crop and a much larger oleochemical industry, both exports crude oil and imports more of it.

The buyers are chemical plants rather than kitchens. Netherlands took 17% of crude palm kernel oil imports by value, followed by India on 12%, Malaysia on 12%, Germany on 11% and Mexico on 10% (CEPII BACI), a list of surfactant, specialty fat and cosmetics manufacturing centers. Note that the wider HS 1513 heading covers coconut, palm kernel and babassu oil together, and in that combined basket Indonesia leads on 34% of $7.9 billion; only the narrower HS 151321 line isolates crude palm kernel and babassu oil. A second, separate trade moves the solid residue: palm kernel expeller, the cake left after pressing, is shipped in bulk as a cattle feed, mainly to New Zealand and Europe, and is counted under feed rather than oil headings.


## What does palm kernel oil cost?

- Malaysia, CIF Rotterdam: $2,264/t in August 2026; 12-month change 0%; 10-year change +59%; all-time high $2,606/t in April 2026; real high (2024 US$) $3,263/t in February 2011 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

Bursa Malaysia Derivatives lists a crude palm kernel oil futures contract, relaunched in a revised form in 2021, but it has never come close to the liquidity of the crude palm oil board beside it, so almost all business is done at prices assessed by reporting agencies from physical deals, quoted in dollars per tonne either FOB Malaysia and Indonesia or delivered into Rotterdam. Producer prices published by the Malaysian industry regulator serve as a domestic reference, and physical contracts specify free fatty acid content, moisture and impurities, iodine value and color. Because volumes are small relative to the palm oil complex, a single large oleochemical buyer covering a quarter's requirement can move the assessment.

This site's series is Malaysia, CIF Rotterdam, which stood at $2,264/t in August 2026, unchanged from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its nominal record was $2,606/t in April 2026 and its low $269/t in February 2001; the series begins in 1996. Adjusted for US consumer prices the real peak was $3,263/t in February 2011. Over ten years the series was +59% and over five +69%. As a CIF quote it includes ocean freight and insurance into Rotterdam and therefore runs above the price at Port Klang or Dumai.

Three things a reader should hold apart. Palm kernel oil is not palm oil, and the two regularly move in opposite directions because they serve different markets. Palm kernel oil is not palm kernel expeller, the feed by-product, which trades at a small fraction of the oil price. And a palm kernel oil quote is for crude oil unless a refined, bleached and deodorized grade or a fraction such as palm kernel stearin or olein is named, each of which carries its own premium. The single most useful comparison is not to palm oil at all but to coconut oil: the two lauric oils substitute for each other in most industrial uses, and the spread between them decides which one an oleochemical plant buys next.


## What moves the price of palm kernel oil?

### It is a by-product, so supply does not respond to its own price

Nobody plants an oil palm for its kernels. The quantity of palm kernel oil available is set by how much fruit is milled for palm oil, which is decided by palm oil economics, biodiesel mandates and the age of the tree stock. A doubling of the kernel oil price produces no extra kernels in the following season. Supply is therefore almost perfectly inelastic in the short run, which is why the price can move much further and faster than palm oil's when lauric demand shifts.

### The coconut oil spread

Palm kernel oil and coconut oil are the two lauric oils, and most oleochemical plants can switch between them with modest adjustment. Coconut supply is falling on aging palms while palm kernel supply grows with the palm oil industry, so the spread between them is the market's clearing mechanism: when coconut oil runs away, buyers move to kernel oil and pull it up behind, and when kernel oil is short, coconut absorbs the demand. Reading either price without the other misses what is actually happening.

### Kernel crushing capacity and the crush margin

Kernels are crushed in plants separate from the palm oil mill, and those plants earn the difference between the kernel price they pay and the combined value of the oil and expeller they sell. When that margin turns negative, crushers slow down and kernels accumulate at the mills, which tightens oil supply even though the fruit was harvested normally. Malaysian and Indonesian crush rates, and the buildup or drawdown of kernel stocks, therefore act as a short-term supply valve independent of the harvest.

### Indonesian export levies and downstream policy

Indonesia produces most of the world's palm kernel oil but exports a small share of the crude trade, because its export levy is structured to favor processed products over raw oil and its industrial policy has built refining, specialty fats and oleochemical capacity at home. Changes to the levy schedule, to the reference price it is calculated against, or to the list of products it covers shift how much Indonesian kernel oil leaves as crude and how much leaves as fatty acids and alcohols, which reshapes the crude export table without changing production at all.

### Surfactant and personal care demand

Lauric fatty acids are the feedstock for the fatty alcohols that become the surfactants in shampoo, dish soap, laundry detergent and toothpaste, and for esters used in cosmetics. That demand grows slowly with population and income rather than cyclically, and it cannot be reformulated quickly because surfactant chains are specified into products and regulatory filings. The result is a demand floor that does not fall much when prices rise, which transfers the whole burden of adjustment onto the choice between the two lauric oils.

### Palm oil milling weather and the yield lag

Because kernels come from fruit bunches, the same drought and flooding that cut palm oil output cut kernel oil output nine to eighteen months later. El Nino dry spells in Sumatra and Kalimantan reduce bunch formation, monsoon flooding on Malaysia's east coast interrupts harvesting, and both show up in kernel supply on the palm oil calendar rather than a calendar of their own. Seasonality is inherited too, with the smallest supply in the first quarter and a peak around September and October.

### Confectionery fat demand

Fractionated and hydrogenated palm kernel oil makes cocoa butter substitutes, the hard coatings on wafers, ice cream and compound chocolate that snap at room temperature and melt near body temperature. When cocoa butter is expensive, manufacturers shift within the limits of local labeling rules toward these substitutes, which adds a demand source that tracks the cocoa market rather than the vegetable oil market. That link makes the kernel oil price partly a function of West African cocoa supply.

### Sustainability rules and traceability

European buyers of palm kernel oil face the same deforestation and traceability requirements as buyers of palm oil, because both come from the same fruit and the same plantations. Certified kernel oil is scarcer than certified palm oil, since kernels from many small mills are pooled before crushing and the chain of custody breaks at that point. Rules that require plot-level geolocation therefore split the market: traceable oil concentrates in Europe at a premium while untraceable oil goes to India, China and Mexico.

## How is palm kernel oil produced?

Everything begins at the palm oil mill. Fresh fruit bunches are sterilized with steam, threshed and pressed for the flesh oil, and what leaves the press as waste is a mixture of fiber and nuts. The nuts are separated, dried and cracked in a ripple mill or a centrifugal cracker, and the shell fragments are separated from the kernels in a bath of clay slurry or a winnowing column, exploiting the difference in density. Shells are burned in the mill boiler or sold as fuel and as feedstock for activated carbon. The kernels are dried to about 7 percent moisture and either crushed on site or, more often, railed and trucked to a dedicated kernel crushing plant.

Crushing is done by screw press, usually in two stages, sometimes followed by solvent extraction to strip the last few percent of oil from the cake. A tonne of kernels yields roughly 450 kilograms of crude palm kernel oil and 500 kilograms of palm kernel expeller, a fibrous cake of around 15 percent protein sold as a ruminant feed. Crude kernel oil is yellow, keeps a distinct nutty odor and carries a higher free fatty acid load than crude palm oil because the kernels sit longer before crushing.

Refining, bleaching and deodorizing gives RBD palm kernel oil. Fractionating it by controlled cooling separates palm kernel stearin, the hard fraction used for confectionery coatings and cocoa butter substitutes, from palm kernel olein, the softer fraction used in creamers and as an oleochemical feedstock. Splitting the oil with high-pressure steam breaks the triglycerides into fatty acids and glycerin; the fatty acids are distilled into lauric, myristic and other cuts, and hydrogenated into the fatty alcohols that become surfactants. Hydrogenation, interesterification and enzymatic modification produce the specialty fats sold to chocolate, bakery and ice cream manufacturers.


## What is palm kernel oil used for?

Palm kernel oil is an industrial fat rather than a cooking oil. Its largest single destination is the oleochemical chain, where lauric and myristic acids are converted into fatty alcohols and then into the anionic and non-ionic surfactants that clean and foam in detergent, shampoo, shower gel and toothpaste, and into esters and emulsifiers for skin care. Glycerin recovered from the same splitting step is sold into pharmaceuticals, food and personal care.

The second stream is food, but in a specialized form. Fractionated and hydrogenated kernel oil is the base of cocoa butter substitutes and coating fats used on wafers, biscuits, ice cream bars and compound chocolate, and of the hard fats in non-dairy creamers, whipped toppings and filled milk powders, where a sharp melting point matters more than flavor. The palm kernel expeller left after crushing goes to dairy and beef cattle as an energy and fiber feed, shipped in bulk over long distances, and a small share of crude oil is used in soap made close to the mill.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Crushing and refining are more concentrated than production. Kernels move from thousands of mills to a comparatively small number of kernel crushing plants in Sumatra, Kalimantan and peninsular Malaysia, and the refined and fractionated product comes from a shorter list still: the integrated groups that run plantations, mills, refineries and oleochemical complexes together, with clusters around Port Klang, Pasir Gudang and Lahad Datu in Malaysia and Dumai, Belawan and Gresik in Indonesia. Downstream, European and Mexican surfactant plants and Chinese oleochemical capacity depend on those two countries for the raw material, with no alternative source of lauric oil at scale except coconut, which is smaller and shrinking.

Shipping is by parcel tanker in lots of a few thousand tonnes, often sharing a vessel with palm oil, coconut oil and other soft oils, out through the Strait of Malacca to Rotterdam and Hamburg, west to Kandla and Mundra, north to Chinese ports, and across the Pacific to Mexico's Gulf and Pacific coasts. Expeller moves separately in bulk carriers, mostly on the long route to New Zealand. Because kernel oil parcels are small and require clean, coated tanks, availability of chemical tanker space is a real constraint on how fast a shortfall in one region can be covered from another.

The single points of failure are inherited from palm oil and then made narrower. The oil comes from one tree species grown at scale in two countries; a mill breakdown or a crush margin that turns negative strands kernels that cannot be stored long without the oil degrading; and the whole industrial chain downstream has exactly one substitute feedstock, coconut oil, whose own supply is falling. Traceability rules add a further split, because the pooling of kernels from many mills before crushing is precisely the step at which plot-level chain of custody is hardest to keep.


## Key companies

- Wilmar International: processor, Singapore, listed (SGX: F34)
- Kuala Lumpur Kepong: processor, Malaysia, listed (Bursa Malaysia: KLK)
- Musim Mas: processor, Singapore
- IOI Corporation: producer, Malaysia, listed (Bursa Malaysia: IOICORP)
- SD Guthrie: producer, Malaysia, listed (Bursa Malaysia: SDG)

## Timeline

- 1832: West African palm kernel exports begin. Kernels that had been discarded after hand-pressing palm oil found a European market, creating a trade in the by-product before anyone planted a palm for it. (https://www.fao.org/4/y4355e/y4355e03.htm)
- 1911: British West African palm kernel exports reach their pre-war peak. Nigeria supplied about three-quarters of a trade that fed European crushing mills, the arrangement that ended when the Southeast Asian plantations came on line. (https://www.fao.org/4/y4355e/y4355e03.htm)
- 1934: Nigeria loses its place as the largest palm produce exporter. Plantation production in Malaya overtook West African wild and smallholder harvest, moving the kernel supply base to where it has stayed ever since. (https://www.fao.org/4/y4355e/y4355e03.htm)
- 1980: Malaysia's first oleochemical plant opens at Prai, Penang. Converting kernel oil into fatty acids and alcohols at home turned a raw export into an industry and made Malaysia the center of lauric processing. (https://www.momg.org.my/industry)
- 2000-05: Malaysian Palm Oil Board formed by merging PORIM and PORLA. The board's monthly production, stock and producer price series became the reference data for palm kernel oil as well as for palm oil. (https://mpob.gov.my/about-us/)
- 2004: Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil founded. The certification scheme covers kernel oil as well as palm oil, and its chain of custody rules are hardest to meet at the kernel crushing step where lots from many mills are pooled. (https://rspo.org/who-we-are/)
- 2008-11: First shipment of certified sustainable palm produce unloaded in Rotterdam. The arrival created a two-tier European market in which traceable oil earns a premium and untraceable oil is diverted to other buyers. (https://rspo.org/next20/rspo-milestones/)
- 2015-07: Indonesia introduces a palm export levy. A levy structured to favor processed products over raw oil pushed Indonesian kernel oil into domestic oleochemical and specialty fat plants, which is why the largest producer is a small crude exporter. (https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/report/downloadreportbyfilename?filename=New%20Indonesian%20Palm%20Oil%20Export%20Levy_Jakarta_Indonesia_6-17-2015.pdf)
- 2021-03: Bursa Malaysia relaunches its crude palm kernel oil futures contract. A revised contract gave the lauric market a nominal hedging venue, though it has never approached the liquidity of the crude palm oil board beside it. (https://prestasisawit.mpob.gov.my/en/palmnews/news/31459)
- 2021: Crude palm kernel oil prices jump with the wider lauric market. A short coconut oil crop and strong surfactant demand lifted kernel oil far faster than palm oil, the clearest demonstration that the two move on different markets. (https://palmoilis.mpob.gov.my/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Overview2021.pdf)
- 2023-06: EU Deforestation Regulation enters into force covering oil palm products. Kernel oil sold in Europe must be traced to plots free of deforestation after 2020, a requirement that breaks at the point where kernels from many mills are pooled for crushing. (https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/env/items/794891/)
- 2025-12: European Union sets a revised application date for its deforestation rules. Each delay or amendment changes when traceable and untraceable kernel oil separate into different markets, and the differential between them moves on the announcement. (https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/forests/deforestation/regulation-deforestation-free-products_en)

## Frequently asked questions

### what is palm kernel oil

It is the oil pressed from the seed inside the oil palm fruit, as distinct from palm oil, which comes from the orange flesh around that seed. Palm kernel oil is rich in lauric acid and behaves like coconut oil, so it goes into soap, detergent and confectionery coatings rather than into frying. World production was 8.4 million tonnes in 2023 (FAOSTAT).

### which country produces the most palm kernel oil

Indonesia produced 5 million tonnes in 2023, 59% of the world's 8.4 million tonnes, ahead of Malaysia with 2.1 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). The ranking simply follows palm oil milling, because kernels are a by-product of pressing the fruit, and only 46 countries report any output.

### which country exports the most palm kernel oil

Malaysia led exports of crude palm kernel oil (HS 151321) in 2024 with 29% of the $1.1 billion traded, ahead of Thailand on 14% (CEPII BACI). Indonesia makes the most oil but exports only 6.5% of the crude trade, because its levy structure and its own oleochemical plants keep the oil at home in processed form.

### is palm kernel oil the same as palm oil

No. They come from the same fruit but from different parts of it, and they are different chemically: palm oil is mostly palmitic and oleic acid and is used as a cooking fat, while palm kernel oil is mostly lauric acid and is used in surfactants and hard confectionery fats. Their prices regularly move in opposite directions because they serve different buyers.

### what is the price of palm kernel oil

Malaysia, CIF Rotterdam averaged $2,264/t in August 2026, unchanged from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The record for that series was $2,606/t in April 2026. There is no actively traded futures contract, so quotes are assessed from physical deals between producers and oleochemical buyers.

### what is palm kernel oil used for

Most of it is split into lauric and myristic acids and converted into fatty alcohols and surfactants for detergent, shampoo and toothpaste, and into esters for cosmetics. The rest is fractionated into hard fats for chocolate coatings, wafer fillings, ice cream bars and non-dairy creamers. The cake left after crushing, palm kernel expeller, is shipped as cattle feed.

### is palm kernel oil the same as coconut oil

They are different oils from different palms, but they are close substitutes because both are dominated by lauric acid. Oleochemical plants switch between them on price, so the spread between the two decides which one is bought. Palm kernel oil supply grows with the palm oil industry, at +32% over ten years to 2023, while coconut oil supply has been falling (FAOSTAT).

### how much palm kernel oil comes from a tonne of kernels

Roughly 450 kilograms of crude oil, plus about 500 kilograms of palm kernel expeller used as cattle feed. Scaled up, 19.2 million tonnes of palm kernels in 2023 supported 8.4 million tonnes of palm kernel oil in 2023 (FAOSTAT). Kernels are cracked out of the nut at the mill and crushed at a separate plant.

### who buys the most palm kernel oil

Netherlands took 17% of crude palm kernel oil imports by value in 2024, followed by India on 12% and Malaysia on 12% (CEPII BACI). The buyers are surfactant, specialty fat and cosmetics manufacturing centers rather than food markets, which is why the list looks nothing like the palm oil import table.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2023. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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 does palm kernel oil come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/palm-kernel-oil/.

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# Where does palm oil come from?

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

Palm oil comes mainly from Indonesia, which produced 47.1 million tonnes in 2023, 59% of the world's 79.6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Malaysia (23%), Thailand (4.2%) and Colombia (2.3%) follow; the top five together supply 91%. The biggest exporter of palm oil (HS 1511) is Indonesia (48% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Malaysia, CIF Northwest Europe, was $1,117/t in August 2026, up 9% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The oil palm needs steady heat, more than 1,800 millimetres of rain a year spread across the months and no cold season, conditions found in a band a few degrees either side of the equator, and it concentrates in Indonesia and Malaysia because colonial estates, land settlement schemes and mill networks built there from the 1910s onward gave those countries an industry the tree's native West Africa never developed at scale.

*Oil pressed from the fruit flesh of the oil palm; the world's most produced vegetable oil, used in food, soap and biodiesel.* Also called: crude palm oil, CPO, palm fruit, oil palm, RBD palm oil, palm olein.

## Where does palm oil come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2023 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indonesia | 47.1 million | 59% |
| 2 | Malaysia | 18.6 million | 23% |
| 3 | Thailand | 3.3 million | 4.2% |
| 4 | Colombia | 1.8 million | 2.3% |
| 5 | Nigeria | 1.5 million | 1.8% |
| 6 | Guatemala | 933,926 | 1.2% |
| 7 | Papua New Guinea | 770,000 | 1% |
| 8 | Honduras | 655,000 | 0.8% |
| 9 | Brazil | 637,353 | 0.8% |
| 10 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | 562,465 | 0.7% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 4.7% |
| | World | 79.6 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2023.

Palm oil comes from the fruit of Elaeis guineensis, a palm native to the coastal forests of West and Central Africa. Each palm carries bunches of several hundred plum-sized fruits, and each fruit has an oily orange flesh around a hard kernel. The flesh yields crude palm oil; the kernel yields palm kernel oil, a different product counted separately. The palm begins bearing about three years after planting, peaks between ages eight and fifteen and is replanted after about 25 years. It produces more oil per hectare than any other oil crop, roughly four tonnes against well under one for soybeans, which is why it has expanded faster than the alternatives.

In 2023 Indonesia produced 47.1 million tonnes of palm oil, 59% of the world's 79.6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Malaysia was second with 18.6 million tonnes and Thailand third with 3.3 million tonnes. The top five producers supplied 91% of the total, and 48 countries reported production. World output was +44% compared with ten years earlier, and the leading producer grew at +5.4% a year over that decade. Measured as harvested fruit rather than extracted oil, the world crop of oil palm fruit was 418.2 million tonnes in 2023, led by Indonesia.

Two countries dominate because of history as much as climate. Sumatra's Deli region hosted the first commercial estates from 1911, Malaya's from 1917, and both countries expanded after independence through state land schemes, Malaysia's FELDA and Indonesia's transmigration and nucleus-estate programs, that settled smallholders around central mills. Indonesia passed Malaysia in the mid-2000s and kept growing on Sumatra, Kalimantan and Papua, while Malaysia ran out of land and labor. Thailand, Colombia, Nigeria, Guatemala, Papua New Guinea, Honduras and Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) make up most of the rest. Nigeria was the largest producer in the 1960s and is now a net importer.


## Who exports and imports palm oil?

Indonesia and Malaysia refine most of what they export; the Netherlands re-exports refined oil into the EU.

### Exporters of palm oil and its fractions (HS 1511), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indonesia | $21.1 billion | 48% |
| 2 | Malaysia | $15.1 billion | 34% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $967 million | 2.2% |
| 4 | Thailand | $873.3 million | 2% |
| 5 | Papua New Guinea | $684 million | 1.6% |
| 6 | Guatemala | $548.9 million | 1.3% |
| 7 | Honduras | $415.7 million | 0.9% |
| 8 | Colombia | $404.1 million | 0.9% |
| 9 | Italy | $311.9 million | 0.7% |
| 10 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $308.3 million | 0.7% |
| 11 | Estonia | $283.6 million | 0.6% |
| 12 | Germany | $259.5 million | 0.6% |
| 13 | Costa Rica | $211.3 million | 0.5% |
| 14 | Spain | $159.7 million | 0.4% |
| 15 | Peru | $147 million | 0.3% |

### Importers of palm oil and its fractions (HS 1511), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | $8.3 billion | 19% |
| 2 | China | $3.2 billion | 7.3% |
| 3 | Pakistan | $3 billion | 7% |
| 4 | United States | $1.8 billion | 4% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $1.5 billion | 3.5% |
| 6 | Kenya | $1.4 billion | 3.1% |
| 7 | Italy | $1.3 billion | 3% |
| 8 | Bangladesh | $1.3 billion | 3% |
| 9 | Saudi Arabia | $1.2 billion | 2.8% |
| 10 | Egypt | $1.2 billion | 2.7% |
| 11 | Vietnam | $992.2 million | 2.3% |
| 12 | Philippines | $974.3 million | 2.2% |
| 13 | Russia | $832.1 million | 1.9% |
| 14 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $709.7 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | Germany | $689 million | 1.6% |

### Exporters of crude palm oil (HS 151110), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Malaysia | $4.3 billion | 38% |
| 2 | Indonesia | $3.6 billion | 31% |
| 3 | Thailand | $748.6 million | 6.5% |
| 4 | Papua New Guinea | $638.4 million | 5.6% |
| 5 | Guatemala | $454.3 million | 4% |
| 6 | Honduras | $312.5 million | 2.7% |
| 7 | Colombia | $301 million | 2.6% |
| 8 | Costa Rica | $180.4 million | 1.6% |
| 9 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $106.2 million | 0.9% |
| 10 | Gabon | $93.9 million | 0.8% |
| 11 | Liberia | $80 million | 0.7% |
| 12 | Peru | $77 million | 0.7% |
| 13 | Netherlands | $74.1 million | 0.6% |
| 14 | Ecuador | $73.3 million | 0.6% |
| 15 | Nicaragua | $64 million | 0.6% |

### Importers of crude palm oil (HS 151110), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | $6.3 billion | 55% |
| 2 | Netherlands | $1.2 billion | 11% |
| 3 | Kenya | $631.1 million | 5.5% |
| 4 | Saudi Arabia | $592.1 million | 5.2% |
| 5 | Mexico | $485.8 million | 4.2% |
| 6 | Spain | $304.8 million | 2.7% |
| 7 | Italy | $261.2 million | 2.3% |
| 8 | Germany | $258.1 million | 2.2% |
| 9 | Mozambique | $178.4 million | 1.6% |
| 10 | United Kingdom | $177.2 million | 1.5% |
| 11 | Madagascar | $121.1 million | 1.1% |
| 12 | Azerbaijan | $81.9 million | 0.7% |
| 13 | Belgium | $66.3 million | 0.6% |
| 14 | Colombia | $64.3 million | 0.6% |
| 15 | Dominican Republic | $58.9 million | 0.5% |

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

Palm oil is the most traded vegetable oil, and the exporters are the producers. Indonesia was the leading exporter of palm oil (HS 1511) in 2024, with 48% of world export value, and India was the leading importer with 19% of import value (CEPII BACI). World exports were worth $43.8 billion. HS 1511 covers crude palm oil and its refined fractions together; crude palm oil alone is HS 151110, and Malaysia led exports of that line in 2024.

Most exports leave already refined. Indonesia has used export taxes and levies that are lower on refined oil than on crude to build a domestic refining industry, and Malaysia refines most of its output too, so what reaches India, China, Pakistan and the EU is mainly refined, bleached and deodorized (RBD) palm oil, palm olein and palm stearin. The Netherlands imports crude and refined oil through Rotterdam and re-exports it into Germany, Belgium and Italy, so Dutch trade figures overstate Dutch consumption. India, the largest single buyer, imports crude oil for its own refiners and adjusts duties to favor crude over refined, which shifts the mix from year to year.


## What does palm oil cost?

- Malaysia, CIF Northwest Europe: $1,117/t in August 2026; 12-month change +9%; 10-year change +45%; all-time high $1,777/t in March 2022; real high (2024 US$) $5,167/t in October 1974 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

The reference price for palm oil is set in Malaysia. The Bursa Malaysia Derivatives Crude Palm Oil futures contract (ticker FCPO, 25 tonnes, quoted in Malaysian ringgit per tonne) has traded since 1980 and settles by physical delivery of crude palm oil at Port Klang and other Malaysian ports. The third-month contract is the one quoted in headlines. Physical trade is done at differentials to FCPO or as FOB Malaysia and Indonesia prices in dollars assessed by reporting agencies, with Indonesian crude palm oil usually at a discount because of its export levy and lower quality tolerance. Refined products such as RBD palm olein carry their own premiums.

This site's primary series is Malaysia, CIF Northwest Europe, which was $1,117/t in August 2026, up 9% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its record monthly average was $1,777/t in March 2022; adjusted for US inflation the real peak was $5,167/t in October 1974. The lowest monthly average was $142/t in September 1968, and the series begins in 1960. That price is for Malaysian oil delivered to Northwest Europe including freight and insurance, so it runs above the FOB price at the loading port by the cost of shipping.

A quote for palm oil is for a tonne of crude palm oil of standard quality, meaning free fatty acid content under 5%, unless a refined grade is named. Palm oil competes with soybean, sunflower and rapeseed oil in food and with diesel in fuel, so its price is usually read against those: the spread to soybean oil decides whether Indian and Chinese buyers switch, and the palm oil gasoil spread (POGO) decides whether blending into biodiesel is profitable without subsidy.


## What moves the price of palm oil?

### Indonesian export and levy policy

Indonesia adjusts its palm oil export tax and levy monthly against a reference price, and has at times restricted or banned exports outright, as in April and May 2022, to hold down domestic cooking oil prices. The domestic market obligation, which requires exporters to sell a share of output at home before receiving export permits, works the same way. Because Indonesia supplies more than half of world exports, each change moves the FOB price immediately and shifts demand toward Malaysian oil.

### Biodiesel mandates

Indonesia's mandate has risen from B20 in 2018 to B35 in 2023 and B40 in 2025, meaning diesel must contain that percentage of palm-based biodiesel, and Malaysia runs a smaller B10 program. Each step absorbs several million tonnes of palm oil that would otherwise be exported, financed by the export levy. The mandates set a floor under demand that does not respond to price, and the palm oil gasoil spread decides whether the program costs the state money or not. EU rules that phase palm biodiesel out by 2030 work in the opposite direction.

### Weather and the yield lag

Oil palm yield responds to rainfall with a delay. Drought and haze during El Niño years reduce bunch formation, but the drop in harvested fruit shows up nine to eighteen months later, while flooding in Malaysia's east coast in the monsoon months interrupts harvesting immediately. Yields also follow a seasonal cycle, with output lowest in the first quarter and peaking around September to October, so stocks build in the second half of the year. Aging trees and slow replanting cap the ceiling regardless of weather.

### Competing vegetable oils

Palm oil is one of four oils that together supply most of the world's edible fat, and buyers switch among them. A large South American soybean crop or a strong Black Sea sunflower harvest widens the discount palm needs to hold its market; a poor crop lets palm rise with the others. US renewable diesel demand for soybean oil since 2021 has pulled the whole complex up. The spread between palm and soybean oil, normally a discount of $100 to $200 a tonne, is the main gauge Indian importers watch.

### Labor supply in Malaysia

Malaysian estates depend on migrant workers, mainly from Indonesia and Bangladesh, to harvest bunches by hand with a pole knife. When borders closed in 2020 and 2021 the labor shortage left fruit unharvested and cut national output for two seasons, and recruitment freezes and rights complaints, including a US import ban on two producers, have kept the sector short of workers. Mechanization is limited by terrain and by the bunch's weight, so labor availability is a supply constraint specific to Malaysia.

### Stocks and the monthly MPOB report

The Malaysian Palm Oil Board publishes production, exports and end-month stocks around the tenth of each month, and the futures market reacts within minutes. Rising stocks signal that output has outrun exports and press on prices; a drawdown does the reverse. The USDA balance puts the world stocks-to-use ratio at 19% for 2026/27 (USDA PSD), and Malaysian stocks are the most visible piece of it. Cargo surveyor export estimates released every ten days fill the gaps between reports.

### Currency and crude oil

FCPO is priced in ringgit, so a weaker ringgit raises the futures price in local terms while making Malaysian oil cheaper in dollars for importers; the rupiah does the same for Indonesian FOB prices. Crude oil enters through biodiesel, since a higher diesel price makes palm biodiesel viable and adds fuel demand to food demand. A rising Indian rupee lowers the landed cost for the largest importer and lifts buying. Currency moves often explain price changes that look like fundamentals.

### Sustainability rules and market access

The EU Deforestation Regulation requires palm oil sold in the EU to be traced to plots not deforested after 2020, and the Renewable Energy Directive removes palm biodiesel from renewable targets by 2030. RSPO certification, adopted by a minority of producers, commands a small premium. These rules reroute trade more than they change supply: uncertified or untraceable oil goes to India, China and Africa, while certified oil concentrates in Europe. Announcements of new rules or delays move the differentials between grades.

## How is palm oil produced?

Harvesting is continuous. Every seven to ten days a harvester walks the rows and cuts the ripe fresh fruit bunches (FFB), each weighing 15 to 25 kilograms, with a chisel on a long pole. Ripeness is judged by loose fruits on the ground. Because the oil's free fatty acid content rises within hours of cutting as enzymes break down the fat, bunches must reach a mill within a day, which is why mills sit inside the plantations and why oil palm needs roads and a dense mill network rather than the loose supply chains of grain.

At the mill the bunches are sterilized with steam, which stops the enzymes and loosens the fruit, then threshed to strip the fruit from the stalk. The fruit is digested into a mash and pressed; the crude oil is clarified and dried. A tonne of bunches yields about 200 kilograms of crude palm oil, an extraction rate of around 20%, and the empty bunches, fiber and shells are burned for steam or returned to the field as mulch. The nuts are cracked and the kernels sent to a separate crushing plant to make palm kernel oil and palm kernel meal, a livestock feed. Mill effluent is treated in ponds, and where captured, its methane runs generators.

Crude palm oil is a reddish semi-solid at room temperature. Refining removes the free fatty acids, gums, color and odor to give RBD palm oil, and fractionation by chilling separates it into a liquid palm olein, used for frying and cooking, and a solid palm stearin, used in margarine, shortening and soap. Further processing gives specialty fats for confectionery and oleochemicals such as fatty acids, fatty alcohols and glycerin. Palm methyl ester, the biodiesel, is made by reacting the oil with methanol. Malaysia and Indonesia refine the bulk of their output at coastal refineries before export.


### Harvest calendar

- Indonesia (Year-round harvest): harvest Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec. Peak fresh-fruit-bunch output roughly August–November.
- Malaysia (Year-round harvest): harvest Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec. Peak August–October; seasonal low February–March.
- Thailand (Year-round harvest): harvest Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec. Peak March–May.
- Colombia (Year-round harvest): harvest Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
- Nigeria (Year-round harvest): harvest Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec. Peak February–May.
- Guatemala (Year-round harvest): harvest Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
- Honduras (Year-round harvest): harvest Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
- Papua New Guinea (Year-round harvest): harvest Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec

## What is palm oil used for?

Most palm oil is eaten. It is the frying oil of South and Southeast Asia and much of Africa, and, because it is solid at room temperature without hydrogenation, it is the fat in margarine, baked goods, instant noodles, confectionery, ice cream and processed foods worldwide. The USDA and industry estimates place food at roughly two thirds of world use, with the balance split between oleochemicals for soap, detergent and cosmetics and biodiesel (USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, Oilseeds: World Markets and Trade, 2024).

Fuel is the growing share. Indonesia's blending mandate makes it the single largest consumer of palm biodiesel, and Malaysia, Thailand and Colombia run smaller programs. Palm kernel oil, a separate product from the same fruit, goes largely into confectionery fats, surfactants and cosmetics, where its lauric composition substitutes for coconut oil.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Palm oil's supply chain is concentrated at every stage. Two countries produce the large majority of world output, and within them a few dozen groups own the mills and nearly all the refineries. Wilmar, Musim Mas, Golden Agri-Resources, Apical, SD Guthrie, IOI and KLK between them refine and trade a large share of everything exported, and the ports of Dumai and Belawan in Sumatra, Kumai and Balikpapan in Kalimantan, and Port Klang, Pasir Gudang and Lahad Datu in Malaysia handle most shipments. Because the oil must be milled within a day of harvest, a plantation cannot sell its fruit to a distant buyer; the mill is the single point of failure for every estate and smallholder around it.

Shipping is by chemical and product tanker, in parcels of a few thousand tonnes, through the Strait of Malacca to India's west coast ports of Kandla and Mundra, to Chinese ports, to Karachi and to Rotterdam. The route to Europe passes the Bab el-Mandeb and Suez, and Red Sea attacks in 2024 lengthened voyages around Africa. India's import duties and Indonesia's export rules are the two policy chokepoints: a change in either alters flows within weeks, because there are few alternative buyers or sellers at scale.

Traceability is the newest constraint. Roughly four in ten hectares in Indonesia and Malaysia belong to smallholders, many without land titles or plot maps, and the EU Deforestation Regulation requires geolocation of every plot behind a shipment. Integrated groups with their own estates can comply; oil from independent smallholders and unmapped dealers cannot, so it is diverted to markets without such rules. The industry's exposure to a single pathogen or pest is lower than rubber's, but Ganoderma trunk rot and the aging of the tree stock in both countries limit how fast supply can grow.


## Key companies

- Wilmar International: processor, Singapore, listed (SGX: F34)
- SD Guthrie: producer, Malaysia, listed (Bursa Malaysia: SDG)
- IOI Corporation: producer, Malaysia, listed (Bursa Malaysia: IOICORP)
- Kuala Lumpur Kepong: producer, Malaysia, listed (Bursa Malaysia: KLK)
- Astra Agro Lestari: producer, Indonesia, listed (IDX: AALI)
- Musim Mas: processor, Singapore

## Timeline

- 1848: Oil palm seedlings planted at the Bogor botanic garden in Java. Four seedlings of an African tree became the parent stock of the Southeast Asian industry that now supplies most of the world's palm oil. (https://jopr.mpob.gov.my/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/jopr2018inpress-balu.pdf)
- 1911: First commercial oil palm estate established in Sumatra. Belgian and French planters in the Deli region proved that plantation palm oil could compete with West African wild harvest, starting the Indonesian industry. (https://www.socfindo.co.id/about-us)
- 1917: Tennamaram estate opens in Selangor, the first commercial planting in Malaya. Malaysia's palm oil industry dates from this estate, which showed the crop could replace rubber on peninsular land. (https://jopr.mpob.gov.my/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/jopr2018inpress-balu.pdf)
- 1956: FELDA land settlement authority established in Malaysia. Settling smallholders around central mills turned palm oil from an estate crop into a national development program and drove Malaysia's rise to first place. (https://jopr.mpob.gov.my/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/jopr2018inpress-balu.pdf)
- 1980-10: Crude palm oil futures launched on the Kuala Lumpur Commodity Exchange. The contract that became FCPO gave the industry a transparent reference price and made Malaysia the pricing center for palm oil worldwide. (https://www.thestar.com.my/business/insight/2025/12/01/fcpo-explained-from-samurai-rice-to-sawit-futures)
- 2000-05: Malaysian Palm Oil Board formed by merging PORIM and PORLA. MPOB's monthly supply, export and stocks data became the market's main scheduled information event. (https://mpob.gov.my/corporate-info/about-us)
- 2004-04: Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil founded. Producers, buyers and NGOs created the certification scheme that European buyers now use to distinguish grades, though most oil remains uncertified. (https://rspo.org/next20/)
- 2011-05: Indonesia imposes a moratorium on new permits in primary forest and peatland. The first national limit on plantation expansion, tied to Norwegian climate finance, began the shift from land growth to yield growth. (https://news.mongabay.com/2011/06/indonesias-forest-moratorium/)
- 2022-04: Indonesia bans palm oil exports for three weeks. Removing the largest exporter from the market sent prices to a record and showed importers how exposed they were to a single supplier's domestic politics. (https://www.fao.org/giews/food-prices/food-policies/detail/en/c/1529567/)
- 2023-06: EU Deforestation Regulation enters into force with palm oil in scope. Oil sold in the EU must be traced to plots free of deforestation after 2020, which reroutes untraceable smallholder oil to other markets. (https://www.wri.org/insights/explain-eu-deforestation-regulation)
- 2025-01: Indonesia's B40 biodiesel mandate takes effect. Raising the blend to 40% locks several million more tonnes of palm oil into domestic fuel use each year, reducing what is available for export. (https://www.hydrocarbonprocessing.com/news/2024/08/update-indonesia-to-implement-b40-palm-oil-biodiesel-on-jan-1-2025/)

## Frequently asked questions

### where does most palm oil come from

In 2023 Indonesia produced 47.1 million tonnes of palm oil, 59% of the world total of 79.6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Malaysia was second with 18.6 million tonnes. Together the top five producers supplied 91%. The oil palm grows only in the humid tropics, within a few degrees of the equator.

### which country exports the most palm oil

Indonesia was the largest exporter of palm oil and its fractions (HS 1511) in 2024, with 48% of world export value (CEPII BACI). India was the largest importer, taking 19% of imports. Most exports leave already refined; Malaysia led exports of crude palm oil in 2024.

### what is the price of palm oil today

Malaysia, CIF Northwest Europe averaged $1,117/t in August 2026, up 9% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). That is the price of Malaysian crude palm oil delivered to Northwest Europe. The benchmark futures contract is FCPO on Bursa Malaysia, quoted in ringgit per tonne, and its third month is the figure usually reported.

### what is palm oil made from

Palm oil is pressed from the orange flesh of the fruit of the oil palm, Elaeis guineensis. The kernel inside gives a separate product, palm kernel oil. In 2023 the world harvested 418.2 million tonnes of oil palm fruit, led by Indonesia, and extracted 79.6 million tonnes of palm oil from it (FAOSTAT). About a fifth of a fruit bunch's weight becomes oil.

### why is palm oil in so many products

It yields more oil per hectare than any other crop, it is solid at room temperature without hydrogenation, and it is cheap. Those traits make it the fat in margarine, baked goods, noodles, chocolate fillings, soap and detergent. World production was 79.6 million tonnes in 2023, +44% compared with ten years earlier (FAOSTAT).

### what is the highest palm oil price ever

The highest monthly average for Malaysia, CIF Northwest Europe was $1,777/t in March 2022 (World Bank Pink Sheet), when Indonesia's export ban coincided with the loss of Black Sea sunflower oil. Adjusted for US inflation, the real peak was $5,167/t in October 1974. The series' low was $142/t in September 1968.

### is palm oil used for biodiesel

Yes. Indonesia requires diesel to contain 40% palm-based biodiesel under its B40 mandate from 2025, and Malaysia runs a B10 program, so several million tonnes a year go into fuel. The EU is removing palm biodiesel from its renewable targets by 2030. World palm oil production was 79.6 million tonnes in 2023 (FAOSTAT), and the USDA puts the stocks-to-use ratio at 19% for 2026/27.

### who imports the most palm oil

India was the largest importer of palm oil in 2024, with 19% of world import value (CEPII BACI). India, China, Pakistan and the EU are the main buyers; the Netherlands re-exports much of what it lands at Rotterdam. World imports were worth $43.8 billion that year.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2023. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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
- USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, Production, Supply and Distribution (PSD), 2026-09-06. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://apps.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/
- Harvest calendars (curated from USDA FAS IPAD crop calendars and FAO GIEWS country briefs), curated 2026-09. License: Public domain (USDA) with FAO GIEWS cross-reference (attribution). https://ipad.fas.usda.gov/ogamaps/cropcalendar.aspx

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

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# Where do peanuts come from?

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

Peanuts come mainly from China, which produced 19.6 million tonnes in 2024, 34% of the world's 57.4 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India (21%), Nigeria (7.5%) and United States (5.1%) follow; the top five together supply 71%. The biggest exporter of raw groundnuts (HS 1202) is Argentina (20% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Groundnuts, CIF Europe, was $1,250/t in August 2026, unchanged from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The peanut buries its own pods, so it needs a long warm season on light, sandy, well-drained soil that a digger can lift without tearing the crop apart, and the countries that grow the most are the ones with large areas of exactly that soil and a domestic market for oil and paste that keeps the crop at home.

*A legume grown underground, eaten whole, crushed for oil, or ground into paste and butter.* Also called: groundnuts, groundnut, peanut, monkey nuts, peanut oil, groundnut oil.

## Where do peanuts come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 19.6 million | 34% |
| 2 | India | 11.9 million | 21% |
| 3 | Nigeria | 4.3 million | 7.5% |
| 4 | United States | 2.9 million | 5.1% |
| 5 | Myanmar | 1.7 million | 3% |
| 6 | Sudan | 1.7 million | 2.9% |
| 7 | Senegal | 1.7 million | 2.9% |
| 8 | Argentina | 1.5 million | 2.6% |
| 9 | Guinea | 1 million | 1.7% |
| 10 | Brazil | 806,064 | 1.4% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 18% |
| | World | 57.4 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

The peanut, Arachis hypogaea, is a legume rather than a nut. It flowers above ground, then pushes a stalk called a peg down into the soil where the pod forms and ripens, which is why the crop needs light, sandy, well-drained ground: heavy clay grips the pods and they tear off when the plant is lifted. It also needs 100 to 150 frost-free days, 500 to 1,000 millimeters of rain concentrated in the growing period and dry weather at harvest, and it fixes its own nitrogen, so it fits into rotations with cereals and cotton on soils too poor for much else. That combination puts it across a broad band from about 40 degrees north to 40 degrees south, on the North China Plain, the Deccan and Saurashtra, the Sahel, the sandy coastal plain of the US Southeast and the loess of central Argentina.

In 2024 China grew 19.6 million tonnes of groundnuts in shell, 34% of the world's 57.4 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India was second with 11.9 million tonnes (21%), Nigeria third with 4.3 million tonnes, then United States with 2.9 million tonnes and Myanmar with 1.7 million tonnes. Production is far less concentrated than in most oilseeds: 108 countries reported a crop, and everything outside the ten largest came to 18% of the total. World output was +24% against ten years earlier and +10% against five, with India growing fastest among the leaders at +4.6% a year.

Crushed into oil the map shifts. World groundnut oil production was 6.4 million tonnes in 2023, led by India with 2.3 million tonnes (36%) and China with 1.8 million tonnes, then Nigeria, Myanmar and Sudan (FAOSTAT). India crushes a larger share of its crop than China does, which is why the two swap places between the shell and oil tables. The other pattern worth noting is that the countries which grow the most are not the ones that sell abroad: China and India consume nearly all of what they produce as oil, paste and roasted snacks, while the export trade is carried by Argentina, the United States and a handful of others whose domestic markets are small relative to their crop.


## Who exports and imports peanuts?

China and India grow the most but crush and eat most of it at home; the United States, Argentina and Brazil supply the edible export trade.

### Exporters of groundnuts, not roasted (HS 1202), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Argentina | $940 million | 20% |
| 2 | India | $858.3 million | 18% |
| 3 | United States | $667.4 million | 14% |
| 4 | China | $482.5 million | 10% |
| 5 | Brazil | $365.9 million | 7.8% |
| 6 | Sudan | $342.6 million | 7.3% |
| 7 | Netherlands | $209.4 million | 4.5% |
| 8 | Senegal | $195.7 million | 4.2% |
| 9 | Egypt | $124.4 million | 2.6% |
| 10 | Nicaragua | $122.8 million | 2.6% |
| 11 | Tanzania | $44.3 million | 0.9% |
| 12 | Germany | $39.2 million | 0.8% |
| 13 | Mozambique | $31.7 million | 0.7% |
| 14 | Uzbekistan | $22.6 million | 0.5% |
| 15 | Malawi | $21.8 million | 0.5% |

### Importers of groundnuts, not roasted (HS 1202), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $627.3 million | 13% |
| 2 | Netherlands | $576 million | 12% |
| 3 | Indonesia | $416.8 million | 8.9% |
| 4 | Germany | $242.7 million | 5.2% |
| 5 | Mexico | $209.5 million | 4.5% |
| 6 | Russia | $192.7 million | 4.1% |
| 7 | Vietnam | $179.7 million | 3.8% |
| 8 | Canada | $176.9 million | 3.8% |
| 9 | United Kingdom | $144.9 million | 3.1% |
| 10 | Poland | $132.9 million | 2.8% |
| 11 | Malaysia | $126 million | 2.7% |
| 12 | Spain | $110.6 million | 2.4% |
| 13 | Algeria | $103.7 million | 2.2% |
| 14 | France | $92.8 million | 2% |
| 15 | Italy | $85.5 million | 1.8% |

### Exporters of groundnut oil (HS 1508), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | $350.4 million | 46% |
| 2 | Brazil | $114.5 million | 15% |
| 3 | Argentina | $92.5 million | 12% |
| 4 | Belgium | $31.2 million | 4.1% |
| 5 | Nicaragua | $31.2 million | 4.1% |
| 6 | China | $23.1 million | 3% |
| 7 | Italy | $19.8 million | 2.6% |
| 8 | Senegal | $19.5 million | 2.6% |
| 9 | United States | $16.8 million | 2.2% |
| 10 | Netherlands | $8.5 million | 1.1% |
| 11 | Vietnam | $8.3 million | 1.1% |
| 12 | France | $7.7 million | 1% |
| 13 | Germany | $5.9 million | 0.8% |
| 14 | Hong Kong | $5.5 million | 0.7% |
| 15 | Philippines | $5.3 million | 0.7% |

### Importers of groundnut oil (HS 1508), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $431.9 million | 57% |
| 2 | United States | $75.1 million | 9.9% |
| 3 | Italy | $53.2 million | 7% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $35.2 million | 4.6% |
| 5 | Hong Kong | $28.5 million | 3.7% |
| 6 | France | $22.9 million | 3% |
| 7 | Belgium | $20.6 million | 2.7% |
| 8 | Canada | $12 million | 1.6% |
| 9 | United Kingdom | $11.6 million | 1.5% |
| 10 | Germany | $9.4 million | 1.2% |
| 11 | Malaysia | $9.3 million | 1.2% |
| 12 | Switzerland | $8.7 million | 1.1% |
| 13 | Vietnam | $4.9 million | 0.6% |
| 14 | Austria | $3.6 million | 0.5% |
| 15 | Norway | $3.4 million | 0.4% |

### Exporters of prepared or preserved groundnuts (HS 200811), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $500 million | 22% |
| 2 | Netherlands | $364.7 million | 16% |
| 3 | United States | $250 million | 11% |
| 4 | Argentina | $162.6 million | 7.1% |
| 5 | Poland | $120 million | 5.2% |
| 6 | India | $114.8 million | 5% |
| 7 | Germany | $109 million | 4.7% |
| 8 | Mexico | $78.5 million | 3.4% |
| 9 | Canada | $74.2 million | 3.2% |
| 10 | United Kingdom | $40.9 million | 1.8% |
| 11 | Belgium | $37.7 million | 1.6% |
| 12 | Luxembourg | $31.1 million | 1.4% |
| 13 | Brazil | $24.8 million | 1.1% |
| 14 | Spain | $22.6 million | 1% |
| 15 | Italy | $21.9 million | 1% |

### Importers of prepared or preserved groundnuts (HS 200811), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | France | $177 million | 7.7% |
| 2 | Germany | $174.4 million | 7.6% |
| 3 | United States | $168 million | 7.3% |
| 4 | Japan | $100.2 million | 4.4% |
| 5 | South Korea | $95.4 million | 4.1% |
| 6 | United Kingdom | $89.6 million | 3.9% |
| 7 | Canada | $87.3 million | 3.8% |
| 8 | Netherlands | $84.3 million | 3.7% |
| 9 | Mexico | $60.3 million | 2.6% |
| 10 | Poland | $54.9 million | 2.4% |
| 11 | Saudi Arabia | $49.7 million | 2.2% |
| 12 | Belgium | $47.6 million | 2.1% |
| 13 | Sweden | $45.1 million | 2% |
| 14 | Austria | $43.5 million | 1.9% |
| 15 | United Arab Emirates | $42.4 million | 1.8% |

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

The production and export tables barely overlap. World exports of raw groundnuts (HS 1202) were worth $4.7 billion in 2024, led by Argentina on 20% of the value, India on 18% and United States on 14% (CEPII BACI). China, the largest producer, ships 10%, and is also the largest buyer, taking 13% of world imports; it exports high-value shelled kernels and blanched product while importing cheaper raw nuts for crushing. Netherlands is second on 12%, but most of that is blanched, split and re-exported into the rest of Europe rather than eaten in the Netherlands.

Three different products move under three different lines, and they have different leaders. Raw groundnuts are HS 1202. Groundnut oil is HS 1508, a much smaller trade worth $760.7 million in 2024, in which India supplied 46% and China bought 57%, an unusually one-to-one flow. Prepared and preserved groundnuts, the roasted, salted and coated products of HS 200811, were worth $2.3 billion, with China on 22% and Netherlands on 16%. Aflatoxin rules cut across all three: origins that can consistently meet European and Japanese limits capture the confectionery premium, while lots that fail are diverted to crushing or to markets with looser tolerances, so the same crop can be worth very different amounts depending on where its paperwork lets it go.


## What do peanuts cost?

- Groundnuts, CIF Europe: $1,250/t in August 2026; 12-month change 0%; 10-year change -20%; all-time high $2,528/t in December 2011; real high (2024 US$) $8,795/t in November 1980 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- Groundnut oil, CIF Rotterdam: $1,833/t in August 2026; 12-month change +10%; 10-year change +28%; all-time high $2,502/t in December 2012; real high (2024 US$) $7,377/t in March 1974 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How they are priced

Peanuts have no futures contract anywhere. Unlike soybeans they never developed an exchange-traded benchmark, partly because the crop is graded on size and appearance for the edible trade rather than on a single uniform specification, and partly because the two largest producers keep their crops at home. Prices are settled instead by contract between growers and shellers before or during planting, and internationally by assessed quotations for named grades delivered to Europe and Asia. In the United States the marketing loan rate set in the farm bill acts as a floor under grower prices, a remnant of the quota and price support system that governed the crop until 2002.

This site's series is Groundnuts, CIF Europe, which stood at $1,250/t in August 2026, unchanged from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its nominal record was $2,528/t in December 2011; in real terms the peak came near the start of the series, at $8,795/t in November 1980, and the low was $585/t in September 1985. Over ten years the series was -20%. The oil trades separately: Groundnut oil, CIF Rotterdam was $1,833/t in August 2026, +10% against a year earlier, with a record of $2,502/t in December 2012. Both are CIF quotes, so they include freight and insurance into Europe and sit above the price at the loading port.

Two ambiguities matter. Production on this page is groundnuts in shell, while the trade is almost all shelled kernels, and shelling removes roughly a quarter to a third of the weight, so the two tables are not directly comparable. And a peanut quote depends on what is being quoted: edible-grade kernels are sold by type (runner, Virginia, Spanish, Java), by count per ounce, by percentage of sound mature kernels and against a maximum aflatoxin level, while crushing-grade nuts are priced off the value of the oil and cake they contain. A cargo that fails an aflatoxin test at the destination port loses the difference between those two markets in a single laboratory result.


## What moves the price of peanuts?

### Aflatoxin limits and the two-tier market

Aspergillus molds grow on peanuts stressed by drought or dried badly, and produce aflatoxins that are regulated at very low levels in the European Union, Japan and increasingly China. Meeting those limits requires irrigation or reliable rainfall, fast curing, cold storage and optical sorting, which only some origins can afford. The result is two prices for the same crop: a premium edible market open to origins with the infrastructure, and a discounted crushing market for everything else. A tightening of limits or a run of border rejections reroutes trade within a season.

### The Indian monsoon and the Saurashtra crop

India's kharif groundnut crop is planted with the June monsoon in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka and is largely unirrigated, so its size turns on the timing of the rains rather than on planted area. A late onset or a long break in July shrinks pods and raises aflatoxin risk at once. Because India is both a large crusher and a large exporter of kernels and oil, a short monsoon lifts the world edible price and the groundnut oil price together, and pulls Indian oil demand toward imported palm and soybean oil.

### Chinese crush margins and import demand

China grows more peanuts than anyone and still buys more than anyone, because its crushers want cheap raw nuts and its snack and paste market wants premium kernels. Its imports are therefore a spread trade: when domestic prices rise relative to landed African, Indian or South American nuts, buying jumps within weeks. Chinese demand also sets the floor under groundnut oil, since it takes the majority of world groundnut oil imports and treats the oil as a premium cooking product rather than a commodity fat.

### US Southeast weather and the sheller contract

Most of the US crop grows on the sandy coastal plain of Georgia, Alabama, Florida and the Carolinas, where hurricanes at digging time in September and October can flatten windrows and spoil curing peanuts on the ground. Shellers contract acreage with growers before planting at a fixed price, so a weather loss changes who bears the cost rather than the price paid to contracted farmers, and shows up instead in the export offer and in the following season's contract terms.

### Argentina's exchange rate and export taxes

Argentina is the largest exporter of raw groundnuts even though it grows a small share of the world crop, because Cordoba's soils and its blanching and sorting plants are built for the European confectionery trade. Argentine growers sell in dollars and spend in pesos, so the official exchange rate, the gap to the parallel rate and periodic export tax changes decide when the crop is released. A strong peso or a higher export duty slows farmer selling and widens European premiums within a few weeks.

### Sahel rainfall and the West African crop

Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan and Niger grow peanuts on the southern edge of the Sahara, where the season is short and rainfall is the binding constraint. The crop there is grown by smallholders with little irrigation, minimal drying infrastructure and high aflatoxin exposure, so it rarely reaches the European edible market and instead supplies domestic oil mills and regional trade. A dry year cuts oil supply across the region and raises the price of imported palm and soybean oil that replaces it.

### Competition from other oils and other nuts

Groundnut oil is a premium cooking oil rather than a commodity fat, and buyers substitute toward palm, soybean, sunflower and rapeseed oil when the gap widens; that ceiling caps how far the oil price can run. On the food side peanuts compete with almonds, cashews and hazelnuts in snacks and confectionery, where a large almond or cashew crop takes shelf space. Because peanuts are the cheapest of that group, they gain when tree nut crops are short and lose when they are abundant.

### High-oleic varieties and shelf life

Conventional peanuts oxidize within months, which limits how far and how long they can be shipped for snack and confectionery use. High-oleic varieties, bred to carry a fatty acid profile closer to olive oil, hold their flavor several times longer and command a premium from manufacturers and airlines. Their spread through the US, Argentine and Australian crops has changed which origins can supply distant buyers, and has widened the price gap between segregated high-oleic lots and ordinary runners.

## How are peanuts produced?

Peanuts are sown when the soil is reliably warm, in April to June in the northern hemisphere and October to December in Argentina and southern Africa. The plant flowers about six weeks later, the fertilized pegs push into the soil, and the pods fill underground over the following two months. Because the crop cannot be judged from above, growers dig sample plants and check the inside of the hulls for color to fix the date. Harvest is a two-step operation: a digger cuts the taproot and inverts the plants so the pods lie on top of the vines to dry in the field for several days, then a combine strips the pods from the vines. Curing continues in wagons with forced warm air until the kernels reach about 10 percent moisture, and this is the step that decides aflatoxin risk, because pods left damp or bruised are where the mold takes hold.

Shelling happens close to the crop. Cleaned pods are cracked between rollers, the hulls are aspirated away, and the kernels are sized over screens and graded by type, count per ounce and the proportion of sound mature kernels. Damaged and discolored kernels are removed electronically on color sorters, and suspect lots are sampled and tested for aflatoxin before they can move into the edible trade. Kernels destined for confectionery are blanched, which means heating them briefly so the red skin can be rubbed off, then split, roasted or coated. Hulls become fuel pellets, bedding and filler.

Nuts that fail the edible grade, along with whole crops in countries that crush rather than export, go to an oil mill. Expeller pressing takes out most of the oil and solvent extraction the rest, leaving crude groundnut oil and groundnut cake or meal, a protein feed of about 45 to 50 percent protein that is widely used in India, China and West Africa. Crude oil is refined, bleached and deodorized for cooking, or left unrefined and sold as an aromatic roasted oil. Peanut butter is made from a different stream entirely: kernels are dry-roasted, blanched, ground twice to a paste, and stabilized with a hard fat to stop the oil separating.


## What are peanuts used for?

About half the world crop is crushed and about half is eaten whole, and the split is geographic rather than technical. India and China crush the larger part of theirs into cooking oil, which is treated as a premium product in both countries and is not interchangeable in the kitchen with the palm or soybean oil that sits beside it. The United States, Argentina, Brazil and Australia send most of their crop into food: roasted and salted snacks, peanut butter, confectionery centers and coatings, and bakery ingredients.

Everything left over has a market. Groundnut cake and meal feed dairy cattle and poultry across South Asia and West Africa. The haulms, the vines left after the pods are stripped, are baled as dry-season fodder and in the Sahel are worth a meaningful share of the crop's total value. Hulls are burned for process heat or pressed into pellets and bedding. Refined groundnut oil also goes into soap and cosmetics, and the unrefined roasted oil is a flavoring ingredient in East and Southeast Asian cooking.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Shelling and sorting concentrate near the fields because pods are bulky and kernels are not: a handful of shellers handle most of the US crop from plants across Georgia and the Carolinas, Argentina's blanching and sorting capacity clusters around General Cabrera and Rio Cuarto in Cordoba, India's is in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, and China's in Shandong and Henan. Because the same plants also run the aflatoxin testing and the optical sorters that decide whether a lot can enter the European or Japanese market, the sheller rather than the farm is where a crop's destination is fixed.

Cargoes move in containers rather than in bulk vessels, in 20-foot lots of vacuum-packed or jute-bagged kernels, which makes peanuts unusual among oilseeds and ties the trade to container freight rates and to reliable reefer and dry-box availability. The routes run from Rosario and Buenos Aires to Rotterdam and Algeciras, from Savannah and Norfolk to Europe and Canada, from Mundra and Kandla to Southeast Asia and China, and from Qingdao and Dalian outward for the Chinese prepared trade. Rotterdam and Antwerp act as the European hub, where imported kernels are blanched, split and re-exported.

The chokepoints are regulatory rather than physical. A shipment is tested at the border, and a positive aflatoxin result can condemn a container or a whole consignment, so a change in sampling protocol at one destination redirects trade faster than any weather event. Beyond that, the market's deeper fragility is that world trade rests on a few exporting origins while the two largest producers are effectively closed systems: if Argentina or the United States has a bad season, there is no large alternative supplier that can meet European edible specifications at short notice.


## Key companies

- Golden Peanut: sheller, United States
- Premium Peanut: sheller, United States
- Aceitera General Deheza: crusher, Argentina
- ofi (Olam Food Ingredients): processor, Singapore
- Archer Daniels Midland: crusher, United States, listed (NYSE: ADM)

## Timeline

- 1947: Britain launches the Tanganyika groundnut scheme. A state plan to mechanize hundreds of thousands of acres of East African bush for groundnuts was the largest attempt ever made to create a new export origin from nothing. (https://merl.reading.ac.uk/explore/online-exhibitions/colonial-failure/)
- 1951: Britain abandons the Tanganyika groundnut scheme. The failure ended the idea that groundnut supply could be engineered at scale in unsuitable soils, and left the trade dependent on the origins that already had it. (https://merl.reading.ac.uk/explore/online-exhibitions/colonial-failure/)
- 1960: Turkey X disease in England traced to imported groundnut meal. Mass deaths of poultry fed on contaminated Brazilian groundnut meal began the investigation that would reshape how the crop is graded and traded. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8227755/)
- 1962: Aflatoxin identified as the toxin in moldy groundnut meal. Naming the compound produced by Aspergillus flavus created the food-safety limits that still decide which origins can sell into the edible market and which can only sell for crushing. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8227755/)
- 1996-04: US farm law reforms the quota peanut loan program. Nonrecourse loan terms for quota peanuts were rewritten, the first step in dismantling a supply control system that had governed American acreage since the 1930s. (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/7/7271)
- 1998: First harmonized European maximum limits for mycotoxins in food. A single European limit replaced a patchwork of national rules and became the specification that exporters of edible groundnuts have to meet. (https://www.fao.org/4/y5499e/y5499e07.htm)
- 2002-05: United States repeals the peanut marketing quota. Ending the quota and its price support moved American peanuts to a marketing loan and contract system, freed acreage to move between states, and made US supply responsive to price for the first time in decades. (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/7/7271)
- 2004-08: United States names peanuts a major food allergen. Mandatory allergen labeling forced segregated handling, dedicated lines and cleaning regimes on processors, raising the cost of entering the food trade. (https://www.fda.gov/food/food-allergensgluten-free-guidance-documents-regulatory-information/food-allergen-labeling-and-consumer-protection-act-2004-falcpa)
- 2009-01: Peanut Corporation of America salmonella outbreak. One of the largest food recalls in US history destroyed demand for peanut butter for months and tightened testing and traceability throughout the shelling industry. (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5804a4.htm)
- 2011-10: Southeast drought lifts US peanut prices to a post-quota high. A short Georgia and Alabama crop showed how sharply a market with no futures contract and no published stocks reprices when one origin fails. (https://fieldreport.caes.uga.edu/news/4249/)
- 2018-11: Argentina consolidates its lead in the peanut export complex. Cordoba's sorting, blanching and testing capacity turned a modest crop into the leading supplier of edible-grade kernels to Europe, the position it still holds. (https://www.bcr.com.ar/es/mercados/investigacion-y-desarrollo/bcr-weekly-news/news-informativo-semanal/argentine-peanut)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most peanuts

China grew the most in 2024: 19.6 million tonnes of groundnuts in shell, 34% of the world's 57.4 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India was second with 11.9 million tonnes and Nigeria third with 4.3 million tonnes. Both leaders consume nearly all of their own crop, so they are not the leading exporters.

### which country exports the most peanuts

Argentina led exports of raw groundnuts (HS 1202) in 2024 with 20% of the $4.7 billion traded, ahead of India on 18% and United States on 14% (CEPII BACI). Argentina ranks first despite a small share of world production because its sorting and blanching plants are built for the European confectionery trade.

### what is the price of peanuts per ton

Groundnuts, CIF Europe averaged $1,250/t in August 2026, unchanged from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). That is shelled edible-grade kernels delivered into Europe. Groundnut oil is quoted separately: Groundnut oil, CIF Rotterdam was $1,833/t in the same month. There is no peanut futures contract, so quotes come from physical deals.

### are peanuts nuts or legumes

Peanuts are legumes, related to beans and peas rather than to almonds or walnuts. The plant flowers above ground and then buries the developing pod, which is why it needs light sandy soil. World production, counted in shell, was 57.4 million tonnes in 2024 (FAOSTAT), with roughly a quarter to a third of that weight removed when the pods are shelled.

### why is aflatoxin a problem in peanuts

Aspergillus molds grow on pods that were drought-stressed or cured damp and produce aflatoxins, which the European Union, Japan and China regulate at very low levels. Lots that fail are barred from the edible trade and diverted to crushing at a much lower price. That single test explains why Argentina and United States dominate exports while much larger producers sell almost nothing abroad.

### what is peanut oil used for

It is a premium cooking oil, valued for a high smoke point and neutral flavor, and is used for frying and dressing across India, China and West Africa. World production was 6.4 million tonnes in 2023, led by India with 2.3 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Groundnut oil, CIF Rotterdam was $1,833/t in August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### who buys the most peanuts

China imported 13% of world raw groundnut imports by value in 2024, ahead of Netherlands on 12% and Indonesia on 8.9% (CEPII BACI). China buys cheap nuts for crushing and premium kernels for snacks; the Netherlands blanches and re-exports much of what it lands.

### how much peanut oil comes from peanuts

Shelled kernels run roughly 45 to 50 percent oil, so a tonne of kernels yields about 450 to 500 kilograms of crude oil plus cake used as animal feed. Counted globally, 57.4 million tonnes of groundnuts in shell in 2024 supported 6.4 million tonnes of groundnut oil in 2023 (FAOSTAT), the difference being the large share eaten whole.

### why are peanut prices rising

Peanuts have no futures market and no published world stocks, so supply surprises clear through price. The series peaked at $2,528/t in December 2011 and was -20% over ten years to August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet). Monsoon timing in India, hurricanes in the US Southeast at digging time, and aflatoxin rejections that remove supply from the edible market are the usual causes.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2023. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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 peanuts come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/peanuts/.

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# Where does pepper come from?

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

Pepper comes mainly from Vietnam, which produced 262,230 tonnes in 2024, 28% of the world's 933,416 tonnes (FAOSTAT). India (14%), Brazil (13%) and Burkina Faso (8.3%) follow; the top five together supply 70%. The biggest exporter of pepper (HS 0904) is India (24% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Pepper is a tropical climbing vine that needs constant warmth, well-spread rain and something to climb, so it grows in a narrow equatorial band, and the countries that lead are simply the ones that planted hardest when returns were good.

*The dried berry of a tropical vine, the most traded spice by both weight and value.* Also called: black pepper, white pepper, peppercorns, piper nigrum.

## Where does pepper come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Vietnam | 262,230 | 28% |
| 2 | India | 126,038 | 14% |
| 3 | Brazil | 124,925 | 13% |
| 4 | Burkina Faso | 77,932 | 8.3% |
| 5 | Indonesia | 62,625 | 6.7% |
| 6 | Iraq | 60,257 | 6.5% |
| 7 | Sri Lanka | 44,467 | 4.8% |
| 8 | Tajikistan | 35,760 | 3.8% |
| 9 | China | 34,588 | 3.7% |
| 10 | Malaysia | 34,408 | 3.7% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 7.5% |
| | World | 933,416 | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 Vietnam produced 262,230 tonnes, 28% of the world's 933,416 tonnes (FAOSTAT). India followed with 14%, then Brazil (13%), Burkina Faso (8.3%) and Indonesia (6.7%). The top five account for 70%, 47 countries reported output and 7.5% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +85% over the ten years to 2024 and +3% on the previous year.

Black, white and green pepper are the same berry from the same vine, separated only by when it is picked and how it is treated afterwards. A country's tonnage says nothing about which it sells, because the choice is made in the drying yard, not the field.

The ranking records planting decisions rather than tradition. Pepper is native to the Malabar coast of southern India, but the vine took to the basalt soils of Vietnam's Central Highlands so well that a planting wave from the 1990s rebuilt the market around a country with no deep history in the crop. Brazil grows pepper in Pará and Espírito Santo, Indonesia on Bangka and in Lampung.


## Who exports and imports pepper?

### Exporters of pepper of the genus piper; dried or crushed fruits of capsicum (HS 0904), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | $1.5 billion | 24% |
| 2 | Vietnam | $1.2 billion | 20% |
| 3 | China | $875.5 million | 14% |
| 4 | Spain | $351.2 million | 5.8% |
| 5 | Indonesia | $326.8 million | 5.4% |
| 6 | Brazil | $295.9 million | 4.9% |
| 7 | Mexico | $227.3 million | 3.7% |
| 8 | Peru | $173.5 million | 2.9% |
| 9 | Sri Lanka | $168.7 million | 2.8% |
| 10 | Germany | $139.9 million | 2.3% |
| 11 | Myanmar | $73 million | 1.2% |
| 12 | Netherlands | $61 million | 1% |
| 13 | United States | $60.1 million | 1% |
| 14 | Malaysia | $52 million | 0.9% |
| 15 | France | $38.9 million | 0.6% |

### Importers of pepper of the genus piper; dried or crushed fruits of capsicum (HS 0904), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $1.2 billion | 19% |
| 2 | China | $573.9 million | 9.5% |
| 3 | Germany | $284.4 million | 4.7% |
| 4 | India | $279.1 million | 4.6% |
| 5 | Thailand | $256.5 million | 4.2% |
| 6 | Spain | $205.7 million | 3.4% |
| 7 | Vietnam | $197.6 million | 3.3% |
| 8 | Mexico | $188.1 million | 3.1% |
| 9 | Malaysia | $169.9 million | 2.8% |
| 10 | United Kingdom | $153.4 million | 2.5% |
| 11 | Japan | $151.3 million | 2.5% |
| 12 | France | $144.3 million | 2.4% |
| 13 | Bangladesh | $127.7 million | 2.1% |
| 14 | Poland | $121.1 million | 2% |
| 15 | Indonesia | $119 million | 2% |

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

India was the largest exporter of pepper (HS 0904) in 2024 with 24% of world export value, ahead of Vietnam (20%), on world trade of $6.1 billion (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 19%.

That ranking needs a caution. Heading 0904 covers pepper of the genus Piper together with dried and crushed fruits of the genus Capsicum, so paprika and dried chili sit in the same line as peppercorns. Countries known for chili rather than vine pepper appear high in the table, and the world total is larger than the peppercorn trade alone.

The table also hides reprocessing. Cleaning, sterilizing and grinding add most of the value after the farm, so pepper crosses borders more than once: trading centers import whole berries, clean them and export again. India is both a large exporter and a large importer for that reason.


## What does pepper cost?

### How it is priced

There is no futures market for pepper and no free public benchmark price, so this site quotes none. Pepper is priced through a chain of private negotiations: farmers sell dried berries to village collectors, collectors bulk them for district traders, and traders sell to exporters, who quote a named origin and grade free on board. The visible references are private assessments and the quotations member countries report to the International Pepper Community.

Grade does the rest. Buyers specify bulk density, moisture, the share of light and broken berries, and whether the lot has been steam sterilized. White pepper trades above black because retting and drying costs more and loses weight. India has run a domestic contract at Kochi, halted after warehouse quality disputes and relaunched in 2026, but it settles on Indian delivery.


## What moves the price of pepper?

### The planting lag

A pepper vine bears three to four years after planting and then yields for over a decade. Growers plant when prices are high, and the resulting crop arrives together, long after the price that prompted it has gone. Acreage decisions taken in one decade set supply for the next.

### Rain at flowering and at drying

Pepper needs a wet season to set spikes and dry weather to cure the berries. Drought at flowering cuts the number of spikes; rain during the drying weeks spoils berries on the mat, downgrading a crop that was sound on the vine. The two risks fall in different months.

### Vine disease

Phytophthora foot rot kills vines within weeks, and slow decline caused by nematodes drains a plantation over years. Because a dead vine takes several years to replace, losses accumulate rather than reverse, and densely planted districts are the most exposed.

### Residue and microbial standards

Importing countries set maximum residue levels for pesticides and require pepper free of salmonella, and rejected consignments are diverted to cheaper markets. Sterilization capacity, not the size of the harvest, decides how much of an origin's crop reaches the strictest buyers.

### Substitution between origins

Pepper is bought on measurable specifications, so a grinder switches origin whenever bulk density and cleanliness match. Origin premiums stay narrow and share moves fast on price, so a cheap crop in one country pulls demand from every other producer within a season.

## How is pepper produced?

Piper nigrum is a perennial climbing vine trained up living support trees or timber standards. It is propagated from cuttings, bears in its third or fourth year, and yields for fifteen to twenty-five years. Berries on a hanging spike ripen unevenly, so the harvest is judged by the first to turn color.

Black pepper is picked when one or two berries on the spike begin to turn, threshed off the stalk, sometimes dipped in hot water to speed the browning reaction, then dried on mats or in mechanical dryers to a target moisture. The skin shrinks and blackens as it dries.

White pepper is the same berry left to ripen fully, then retted in running water for days until the outer pulp rots away, leaving the pale seed to wash and dry. Green pepper is picked immature and preserved in brine, canned or freeze-dried. All of it is then destoned, gravity-separated to remove light berries, sieved into size grades and, for many markets, steam sterilized.


## What is pepper used for?

Almost all pepper seasons food, whole, cracked or ground, in kitchens and in industry. Pungency comes from piperine and aroma from volatile oil in the outer layers, which is why ground pepper fades quickly and grinding is done close to the customer.

The extract trade takes the rest: oleoresin is solvent-extracted and essential oil steam-distilled, both sold to manufacturers who want consistent strength without visible specks, and piperine is isolated for supplements. By-products are used rather than wasted, with pinheads and light berries going to extraction, spent material sold as low-grade ground pepper or feed, and spike stalks returning to the field as mulch.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The farm end is smallholder country. Millions of growers with a hectare or less sell small lots into a layer of collectors and traders, and it is there that quality is bulked and mixed. Exporters run the cleaning plants near the ports, and most of the gap between farm-gate and export value sits there.

Steam sterilization plants are capital-intensive and audited by buyers, so an origin's ability to serve the strictest markets rests on a handful of facilities. Grinding mostly happens in importing countries, close to the food manufacturer, because whole pepper keeps its aroma and ground pepper does not.

The chokepoints follow from that structure: drying weather at harvest, sterilization and testing capacity between farm and ship, and the concentration of shipments through a few ports in Vietnam, India, Brazil and Indonesia.


## Timeline

- 1498: Portuguese ships reach the Malabar pepper ports. The sea route around Africa to Calicut broke the overland intermediaries' hold on pepper and began four centuries of European competition for the trade. (https://www.aramcoworld.com/Articles/February-2021/Spice-Migrations-Pepper)
- 1970s: Producing countries form the International Pepper Community. An intergovernmental body based in Jakarta gave a crop with no exchange a shared place to collect and publish market information. (https://www.ipcnet.org/)
- 2004: Vietnam is confirmed as the largest pepper exporter. A planting wave begun in the 1990s turned a country with little pepper history into the pivot of the world market, and the surplus it could generate reset price expectations. (https://vietnamembassy-usa.org/news/2004/07/vn-stays-worlds-largest-pepper-exporter)
- 2010-01: Salmonella in black pepper triggers a large US salami recall. Contaminated pepper used as a coating spread a national outbreak, and the industry moved toward pasteurizing and irradiating whole spice before grinding. (https://cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2010/01/salmonella-found-pepper-used-recalled-salami)
- 2013: India halts pepper futures after warehouse quality disputes. Complaints about the condition of deliverable stocks ended the one liquid pepper contract, leaving the trade without any exchange-based reference price. (https://www.theweek.in/news/biz-tech/2026/07/07/ncdex-black-pepper-futures-kochi.html)
- 2026-07: A black pepper futures contract is relaunched with Kochi as delivery centre. Tighter bulk density and moisture specifications were written into the contract, but delivery is Indian and the price is a domestic one rather than a world benchmark. (https://www.theweek.in/news/biz-tech/2026/07/07/ncdex-black-pepper-futures-kochi.html)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most pepper

Vietnam produced 262,230 tonnes in 2024, 28% of the world's 933,416 tonnes (FAOSTAT). India was second with 14% and Brazil third with 13%. Production sits in a narrow band of wet tropical countries, because the vine needs constant warmth, well-spread rain and a support to climb, and it does not tolerate frost or a long dry season.

### what is the difference between black and white pepper

They are the same berry from the same vine. Black pepper is picked as the first berries turn color and dried with the skin on, which shrinks and blackens. White pepper is left to ripen, then soaked until the outer pulp rots away, leaving the pale seed, which is washed and dried. White costs more to make.

### why is there no pepper price benchmark

Because pepper trades as a graded physical product in private negotiations between exporters and importers, not on a liquid exchange. India ran a domestic contract at Kochi, halted after warehouse quality disputes and relaunched in 2026, but it settles on Indian delivery. This site quotes no pepper price.

### why is vietnam so important to the pepper market

Vietnam took 20% of world export value in 2024 and grew 28% of world production in 2024 (CEPII BACI, FAOSTAT). A planting wave from the 1990s created enough capacity that Vietnamese supply decisions now set the tone for the whole market.

### who imports the most pepper

United States was the largest importer in 2024 with 19% of world import value, ahead of China at 9.5% and Germany at 4.7% (CEPII BACI). Grinding is done close to the food manufacturer because ground pepper loses its aroma, so importing countries buy whole berries and process them at home.

### how is pepper graded

By bulk density in grams per liter, moisture, cleanliness, the share of light and broken berries, and often piperine and volatile oil content. Buyers also specify whether a lot has been steam sterilized against salmonella. Because the specification is measurable rather than a matter of taste, grinders switch origin easily and origin premiums stay narrow.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where do phosphate fertilizers come from?

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

The biggest exporter of phosphatic fertilizers (HS 3103) is Morocco (42% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, DAP, FOB US Gulf, was $793.5/t in August 2026, unchanged from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Phosphate fertilizer plants are built either directly on top of a phosphate mine or beside cheap ammonia and a deep-water berth, because rock is too heavy to haul far and the sulfuric acid that dissolves it is too dangerous to move at all.

*Processed phosphate nutrients, mainly diammonium phosphate (DAP) and triple superphosphate (TSP), applied to crops.* Also called: DAP, MAP, TSP, diammonium phosphate, triple superphosphate, phosphate fertiliser.

## Who exports and imports phosphate fertilizers?

China, Morocco, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States make most of the world's DAP and MAP; export restrictions in China move the world price quickly.

### Exporters of mineral or chemical fertilizers, phosphatic (HS 3103), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Morocco | $1.5 billion | 42% |
| 2 | China | $595.6 million | 17% |
| 3 | Israel | $409.2 million | 12% |
| 4 | Egypt | $395.9 million | 11% |
| 5 | Lebanon | $62.9 million | 1.8% |
| 6 | Tunisia | $57.8 million | 1.6% |
| 7 | Russia | $55.3 million | 1.6% |
| 8 | Australia | $46.3 million | 1.3% |
| 9 | Spain | $40.1 million | 1.1% |
| 10 | Netherlands | $39.2 million | 1.1% |
| 11 | India | $36.8 million | 1% |
| 12 | Vietnam | $33.4 million | 0.9% |
| 13 | Argentina | $23.7 million | 0.7% |
| 14 | Poland | $19.3 million | 0.5% |
| 15 | Jordan | $18.4 million | 0.5% |

### Importers of mineral or chemical fertilizers, phosphatic (HS 3103), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | $1.1 billion | 32% |
| 2 | Bangladesh | $526.2 million | 15% |
| 3 | United States | $388.6 million | 11% |
| 4 | Indonesia | $179.6 million | 5.1% |
| 5 | India | $173.3 million | 4.9% |
| 6 | France | $117.8 million | 3.3% |
| 7 | Australia | $82.1 million | 2.3% |
| 8 | Paraguay | $70.8 million | 2% |
| 9 | Argentina | $53.8 million | 1.5% |
| 10 | Romania | $46.8 million | 1.3% |
| 11 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $44.4 million | 1.3% |
| 12 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $42.7 million | 1.2% |
| 13 | Belgium | $42.2 million | 1.2% |
| 14 | Poland | $38.2 million | 1.1% |
| 15 | Uruguay | $35.8 million | 1% |

### Exporters of mineral or chemical fertilizers containing two or three nutrients (HS 3105), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Morocco | $7.9 billion | 21% |
| 2 | China | $5.6 billion | 15% |
| 3 | Russia | $5.4 billion | 14% |
| 4 | Saudi Arabia | $3.3 billion | 8.9% |
| 5 | United States | $2.6 billion | 7% |
| 6 | Norway | $1.2 billion | 3.1% |
| 7 | Belgium | $1 billion | 2.7% |
| 8 | Spain | $839.8 million | 2.2% |
| 9 | Finland | $634 million | 1.7% |
| 10 | Netherlands | $582.4 million | 1.5% |
| 11 | Germany | $475.7 million | 1.3% |
| 12 | Jordan | $445.2 million | 1.2% |
| 13 | Israel | $427.9 million | 1.1% |
| 14 | Lithuania | $385.5 million | 1% |
| 15 | Italy | $367.4 million | 1% |

### Importers of mineral or chemical fertilizers containing two or three nutrients (HS 3105), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | $4.7 billion | 12% |
| 2 | India | $3.8 billion | 10% |
| 3 | United States | $2 billion | 5.4% |
| 4 | Canada | $1.7 billion | 4.5% |
| 5 | Australia | $1.6 billion | 4.4% |
| 6 | Bangladesh | $1.2 billion | 3.3% |
| 7 | Thailand | $1.2 billion | 3.1% |
| 8 | Argentina | $854.1 million | 2.3% |
| 9 | Vietnam | $840.5 million | 2.2% |
| 10 | Djibouti | $823.9 million | 2.2% |
| 11 | China | $795.1 million | 2.1% |
| 12 | Mexico | $795.1 million | 2.1% |
| 13 | Ukraine | $725.9 million | 1.9% |
| 14 | France | $699.4 million | 1.9% |
| 15 | Spain | $694.6 million | 1.8% |

### Exporters of diammonium phosphate (dap) (HS 310540), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Morocco | $2.9 billion | 32% |
| 2 | Russia | $1.9 billion | 21% |
| 3 | United States | $1.1 billion | 13% |
| 4 | China | $1.1 billion | 12% |
| 5 | Saudi Arabia | $821.1 million | 9.2% |
| 6 | Mexico | $182 million | 2% |
| 7 | Egypt | $121.8 million | 1.4% |
| 8 | Lithuania | $92.1 million | 1% |
| 9 | Bulgaria | $74.1 million | 0.8% |
| 10 | Belgium | $67.8 million | 0.8% |
| 11 | Tunisia | $60.3 million | 0.7% |
| 12 | South Africa | $57.7 million | 0.6% |
| 13 | Finland | $48.4 million | 0.5% |
| 14 | Germany | $32.7 million | 0.4% |
| 15 | United Arab Emirates | $32.2 million | 0.4% |

### Importers of diammonium phosphate (dap) (HS 310540), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | $2.5 billion | 28% |
| 2 | Australia | $1.3 billion | 14% |
| 3 | Canada | $1.2 billion | 14% |
| 4 | United States | $841 million | 9.4% |
| 5 | Argentina | $443.3 million | 4.9% |
| 6 | South Africa | $199 million | 2.2% |
| 7 | Chile | $163.9 million | 1.8% |
| 8 | Paraguay | $151.2 million | 1.7% |
| 9 | India | $137.9 million | 1.5% |
| 10 | Mexico | $123.1 million | 1.4% |
| 11 | Spain | $115.4 million | 1.3% |
| 12 | Zambia | $111.5 million | 1.2% |
| 13 | Colombia | $111.1 million | 1.2% |
| 14 | Ukraine | $80.5 million | 0.9% |
| 15 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $78.9 million | 0.9% |

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

In 2024 the largest exporter of phosphatic fertilizers (HS 3103) was Morocco, with $1.5 billion, or 42% of the world's $3.5 billion of export value (CEPII BACI), ahead of China (17%), Israel (12%) and Egypt (11%). On the buying side Brazil took $1.1 billion, 32% of the world's $3.5 billion of imports, followed by Bangladesh (15%) and United States (11%). This is the straight-phosphate line, so it is dominated by TSP and single superphosphate going to countries that blend their own compounds.

The ammoniated phosphates are a much bigger trade. For DAP and MAP under HS 310540, exports were worth $9 billion in 2024, led by Morocco with 32%, then Russia (21%), United States (13%) and China (12%); the largest importer was Brazil with 28%, ahead of Australia (14%) and Canada (14%). Widen the lens to all multi-nutrient fertilizers under HS 3105 and the trade was worth $37.6 billion in 2024, with Morocco (21%), China (15%) and Russia (14%) at the top and Brazil (12%) and India (10%) the largest buyers. Brazil recurs in every import table because it farms an enormous area of weathered, phosphorus-hungry tropical soil and mines very little rock of its own.


## What do phosphate fertilizers cost?

- DAP, FOB US Gulf: $793.5/t in August 2026; 12-month change -0%; 10-year change +149%; all-time high $1,076/t in July 2008; real high (2024 US$) $2,511/t in September 1974 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- TSP, FOB North Africa: $704.4/t in August 2026; 12-month change +6%; 10-year change +150%; all-time high $1,132/t in August 2008; real high (2024 US$) $2,238/t in September 1974 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How they are priced

Phosphate fertilizers have no long-established futures market of the kind that grains and metals enjoy. Prices are assessments: reporting agencies such as Argus, CRU and Profercy collect deals, bids and offers from producers, traders and distributors each week and publish a range or midpoint for each product at each loading point, and a cash-settled swap market settled against those assessments lets distributors and importers hedge in modest size. DAP loaded at the US Gulf is the closest thing the sector has to a global benchmark, partly because the New Orleans barge market is transparent and liquid and partly because it is where American, Moroccan, Russian and Saudi product all compete for the same buyer.

Two series appear on this page. The primary one is DAP, FOB US Gulf: in August 2026 it stood at $793.5/t, unchanged from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The record monthly average was $1,076/t in July 2008, at the peak of the 2008 food and fertilizer spike, but adjusted for US consumer prices the real high was $2,511/t in September 1974, during the first oil shock; the lowest month in a series that begins in 1967 was $54/t in January 1970. The companion series TSP, FOB North Africa was $704.4/t in August 2026, against a record of $1,132/t in August 2008. The two do not move together tick for tick, because DAP carries ammonia and TSP does not.

A quote has to be read with its delivery term and its nutrient content attached. FOB means the price of product loaded onto the vessel at the named port, with the buyer paying freight, insurance and discharge; CFR or CIF at a destination such as Brazil or India is the same product with those costs included, which is why the CFR Brazil number is always the higher one and why the gap between them is really a freight quote. Most tonnes move on contracts of a season or a year, with volumes committed and prices set monthly or quarterly against the published assessments, and India's annual negotiations for DAP and for phosphoric acid function as a reference for Asian buyers. Three ambiguities matter. A tonne of DAP is not a tonne of phosphorus, so comparing DAP with TSP on a dollars-per-tonne basis flatters TSP until you divide by nutrient content. Part of the DAP price is really an ammonia price, and therefore a natural gas price. And a single loading point is not a world market: the same week can see a firm US Gulf quote and a falling one out of North Africa.


## What moves the price of phosphate fertilizers?

### Chinese export controls

China is one of the largest producers of DAP and MAP and normally one of the largest exporters, so any restriction it places on shipments removes a large block of supply from the world market within weeks. Export inspection requirements, informal volume guidance and seasonal windows are used to keep product at home for the domestic planting seasons and to hold down farm costs. Buyers in India, Brazil, Bangladesh and Southeast Asia then have to bid for Moroccan, Saudi, Russian and American tonnes instead, and the benchmark price rises even though no plant has closed anywhere.

### Ammonia, sulfur and the cost stack

Roughly two thirds of a DAP granule by weight comes from phosphate rock, but a large part of its cost does not. Making phosphoric acid requires sulfuric acid, and sulfur is a by-product of oil refining and sour gas processing, so its price is set by the energy industry. Ammoniating that acid requires ammonia, which is made from [natural gas](/commodities/natural-gas/). When European or Asian gas spikes, ammonia costs rise and DAP follows; when refinery runs fall, sulfur tightens and the same thing happens through a different door.

### Indian subsidy policy and tenders

India is among the largest importers of finished phosphate, phosphoric acid and rock, and almost all of that demand passes through the Nutrient Based Subsidy, which pays importers a fixed amount per tonne of nutrient. When world prices climb faster than the subsidy is revised, importers stop booking rather than sell into a controlled retail price, and Indian buying disappears from the market. When the rates are raised or the rupee firms, tenders reappear in volume. That stop-start pattern is one of the clearest short-term signals in the phosphate market.

### The Brazilian season

Brazil is the largest single buyer of ammoniated phosphate, and it buys on a calendar. Fertilizer for the main soybean crop is imported through the first half of the year and moved inland by truck and rail before planting begins in September, so freight, port congestion and barge availability inside Brazil matter as much as the FOB price. A late or early Brazilian buying program shows up in CFR Brazil assessments months before it shows up in crop statistics, and it sets the tone for Atlantic basin trade.

### Crop prices and affordability

Phosphorus is the most deferrable of the three major nutrients. Soils hold a reserve of it, so a farmer facing a bad price for grain can skip or halve a phosphate application for a season and take a small yield penalty, which is not true of nitrogen. That makes phosphate demand unusually sensitive to the ratio between fertilizer cost and crop revenue. Sustained low grain prices cut phosphate volumes quickly, and the soil reserve drawn down in those years produces a rebound in demand later.

### Trade defense measures and sanctions

Phosphate is one of the most litigated fertilizer markets. Countervailing duties imposed by the United States on phosphate fertilizer from Morocco and Russia redirected those tonnes toward Brazil and India and left American buyers paying a domestic premium, and European tariffs on Russian and Belarusian fertilizer have had a similar splitting effect. Measures like these rarely change how much fertilizer exists; they change which port it sails to, and they open and close price gaps between regions that were previously arbitraged away.

### New integrated capacity

The supply side moves in large steps rather than smoothly, because a phosphate complex is built as a unit: mine, beneficiation plant, sulfuric acid plant, phosphoric acid plant, ammoniation and granulation lines, storage and a berth. Projects of that kind take years and arrive all at once, so a single Moroccan or Saudi start-up can add more capacity in one year than demand grows. That lumpiness, rather than any shortage of rock, explains much of the multi-year shape of the price series.

## How are phosphate fertilizers produced?

Every tonne of finished phosphate begins with acid. Molten sulfur is burned to sulfur dioxide, converted to sulfur trioxide over a catalyst and absorbed into water to make sulfuric acid, a reaction that gives off so much heat that a large acid plant is also a power station and exports steam to the rest of the complex. That acid is then mixed with ground phosphate rock in the wet process: the rock dissolves, phosphoric acid goes into solution and calcium sulfate crystallizes out as phosphogypsum, which is filtered off and pumped to a stack. Roughly five tonnes of gypsum are produced for every tonne of P2O5, and because it carries the radium that was in the rock it is stored rather than sold in most jurisdictions.

The filtered acid is weak and has to be boiled down under vacuum to merchant grade, about 54% P2O5, which is the form in which phosphoric acid is shipped to countries that granulate but do not mine. To make DAP or MAP, that concentrated acid is neutralized with ammonia in a pipe reactor, and the resulting slurry is sprayed into a rotating granulation drum where it builds up in layers on recycled fines. The granules pass through a dryer, a set of screens, a cooler and a coating drum; oversize is crushed and returned, undersize goes back to the drum, and only the middle fraction leaves as product. The ammonia-to-acid ratio decides whether the plant is making DAP or MAP, and switching between them takes hours rather than weeks.

TSP takes a different turn at the same fork. Instead of ammonia, more finely ground rock is added to the concentrated acid; the mixture is cured for days or weeks in a pile while the reaction completes, then granulated. Single superphosphate skips phosphoric acid entirely and treats rock directly with sulfuric acid, which is why it is weak but cheap and why it survives where sulfur is plentiful and freight is expensive. Compound NPK grades are made either by adding potash and extra nitrogen inside the granulation drum, which gives every granule the same analysis, or by bulk-blending finished DAP, urea and potash granules, which is cheaper but segregates in transport if the particle sizes do not match.


## What are phosphate fertilizers used for?

Phosphate fertilizers exist to supply a nutrient that plants cannot get any other way. Phosphorus is central to energy transfer inside the cell, to root development in young plants and to seed and grain set, and unlike nitrogen it cannot be fixed from the atmosphere by any crop or bacterium. Nearly all phosphate consumption is agricultural: fertilizer dominates, with animal feed phosphates a distant second and industrial phosphates smaller again. Cereals take the largest part of that use, followed by oilseeds, with fruit, vegetables and sugar crops behind them.

Placement matters more for phosphorus than for the other nutrients, because phosphate ions bind tightly to iron and aluminum in acid soils and to calcium in alkaline ones and do not move far through the profile. Fertilizer is therefore banded near the seed at planting rather than broadcast late, and heavily weathered tropical soils in Brazil, sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia need larger applications than temperate soils simply to satisfy that fixation before the crop sees any. The same immobility is why phosphate leaves fields mainly attached to eroded soil particles, and why runoff from over-fertilized ground causes algal blooms in lakes and estuaries, which is the environmental case for placing less, more precisely.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is short but very concentrated. A handful of integrated complexes make a large share of world supply, and each one is a single site combining a mine or a rock berth, a sulfur import terminal, acid plants, granulation lines and a loading jetty. Jorf Lasfar in Morocco, Ras Al Khair in Saudi Arabia, the Florida plants around Tampa and the Louisiana plants on the lower Mississippi, the Russian sites feeding the Baltic, and the Chinese complexes of the southwest between them cover most of what is traded. The concentration is not only geographic: sulfur, ammonia and rock must all arrive at the same gate, and losing any one of the three stops the plant.

Movements follow a small number of well-worn lanes. Product from Morocco and Tunisia crosses to Brazil, West Africa and Europe; Saudi, Jordanian and Egyptian tonnes go east through the Red Sea to India and Southeast Asia; Russian material sails from Baltic and Black Sea ports; American product moves down the Mississippi by barge to New Orleans, where it is either loaded for export or transferred to river terminals for the domestic market. On the receiving side, Brazil discharges at Paranaguá, Santos and São Francisco do Sul and then faces a long road haul inland, and India spreads its imports across a dozen coastal granulation plants.

The single points of failure are unusual because most of them are not phosphate at all. A sulfur shortage, a gas curtailment that idles ammonia plants, or a strike at a sulfuric acid producer can stop finished output while the rock sits untouched in the pit. Barge traffic on the Mississippi stops when the river runs low, stranding both exports and domestic deliveries at exactly the season they are needed. Red Sea diversions add weeks to the Gulf-to-India route. And because one country supplies a disproportionate share of exportable tonnes, a policy decision in Beijing can tighten the world market faster than any accident, which is why traders watch Chinese customs notices as closely as they watch plant outages.


## Key companies

- Mosaic: producer, United States, listed (MOS)
- OCP Group: producer, Morocco
- PhosAgro: producer, Russia, listed (PHOR)
- Ma'aden: producer, Saudi Arabia, listed (1211)
- Nutrien: producer and distributor, Canada, listed (NTR)
- Yara International: producer and distributor, Norway, listed (YAR)

## Timeline

- 1842-11: Superphosphate is patented. Treating bone and mineral phosphate with sulfuric acid made phosphorus soluble and available to crops, and the first factory opened the following year; every phosphate fertilizer since is a refinement of that reaction. (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sir-John-Bennet-Lawes-1st-Baronet)
- 1933: Triple superphosphate scales up. Using phosphoric acid instead of sulfuric acid raised the nutrient concentration enough to make long-distance shipment of phosphate fertilizer economic. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/phosphate-rock-statistics-and-information)
- 1960s: Diammonium phosphate becomes the world's standard product. Combining ammonia with phosphoric acid produced a granular product carrying both nitrogen and phosphorus, easy to ship and blend, and DAP became the benchmark the trade quotes. (https://www.fertilizer.org/)
- 1974: The first modern fertilizer price shock. Phosphate prices multiplied after the oil crisis raised the cost of ammonia and sulfur and rock producers repriced, teaching farmers that fertilizer is an energy derivative. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets)
- 2008-07: DAP sets its all-time nominal high. The US Gulf quotation peaked in the World Bank series during the food price crisis, roughly four times its level eighteen months earlier, before collapsing within a year. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets)
- 2018-01: India restructures its nutrient subsidy. Direct benefit transfer for fertilizer subsidy changed how the largest importer buys, concentrating purchases into tenders that move the world price when they land. (https://www.fert.nic.in/)
- 2021-10: China curbs phosphate exports. Customs inspection requirements introduced in October cut shipments from the largest exporter of finished phosphate fertilizer, and prices rose through the following season. (https://globaltradealert.org/intervention/100224)
- 2022-03: War in Ukraine raises every input at once. Ammonia made from European gas, sulfur from refineries and Russian and Belarusian export volumes were disrupted together, and the DAP benchmark returned to within a fifth of its 2008 peak. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets)
- 2024: Affordability, not availability, becomes the constraint. Grain prices fell while phosphate stayed expensive, so the ratio of fertilizer cost to crop revenue rather than physical shortage began to determine how much farmers applied. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets)
- 2026-08: Prices remain far above the 2010s average. The benchmark quotation stayed near multi-year highs, with export restrictions in China still in force and Moroccan and Saudi capacity absorbing most of the growth in demand. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets)

## Frequently asked questions

### Where do phosphate fertilizers come from?

From phosphate rock, dissolved in sulfuric acid and then combined with ammonia or more rock. Because finished output by country is not published openly, the origin picture comes from trade: Morocco led DAP and MAP exports in 2024 with 32% of the world's $9 billion (CEPII BACI), ahead of Russia and United States.

### Which country produces the most phosphate fertilizer?

No public dataset ranks countries by finished phosphate fertilizer output, because the industry association that collects it publishes under license. Exports are the best public proxy: Morocco shipped 32% of world DAP and MAP export value in 2024 (CEPII BACI). China and the United States make large volumes that mostly stay home, so they rank lower on exports than on production.

### Which country exports the most phosphate fertilizer?

Morocco was the largest exporter of DAP and MAP in 2024, with 32% of the world's $9 billion (CEPII BACI), followed by Russia (21%) and United States (13%). On the narrower straight-phosphate line, HS 3103, which covers TSP and single superphosphate but not DAP, Morocco led with 42% of $3.5 billion. Check which heading a ranking uses before comparing it with another.

### What is the difference between DAP and MAP?

Both are made by neutralizing phosphoric acid with ammonia, but in different proportions. DAP is roughly 18-46-0 and MAP roughly 11-52-0, so MAP carries more phosphate and less nitrogen per tonne and is slightly acidic in solution, which suits alkaline soils. DAP is more common in Asia, MAP in the Americas. The DAP, FOB US Gulf benchmark was $793.5/t in August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### What is TSP fertilizer?

Triple superphosphate is a phosphate fertilizer of about 0-46-0 made by reacting phosphoric acid with more ground phosphate rock, so it contains no nitrogen at all. It is used where the nitrogen in DAP is unwanted or supplied separately. The TSP, FOB North Africa series was $704.4/t in August 2026, against a record of $1,132/t in August 2008 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### Who imports the most phosphate fertilizer?

Brazil was the largest importer of DAP and MAP in 2024, taking 28% of the world's $9 billion (CEPII BACI), followed by Australia (14%) and Canada (14%). Brazil buys heavily because its weathered tropical soils fix phosphorus and it mines very little rock of its own.

### Why are phosphate fertilizer prices so high?

Because the cost stack includes sulfur and ammonia as well as rock, and because export policy in a few large suppliers can tighten the market quickly. The DAP, FOB US Gulf benchmark was $793.5/t in August 2026, unchanged from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet), against a record of $1,076/t in July 2008 and a real high of $2,511/t in September 1974.

### What is the price of DAP fertilizer?

This site shows monthly averages, not live quotes. The DAP, FOB US Gulf assessment was $793.5/t in August 2026, -0% against a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The record monthly average was $1,076/t in July 2008. There is no long-established futures market, so published prices are agency assessments of reported deals rather than exchange settlements.

### What are phosphate fertilizers used for?

Almost entirely for growing crops. Phosphorus drives root development, energy transfer inside the plant and seed and grain set, and no crop can take it from the air the way legumes take nitrogen. Cereals use the largest share, then oilseeds. Because phosphate binds to soil minerals, it is banded near the seed at planting rather than broadcast (FAO, World fertilizer trends and outlook).

## Sources

- 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 2026-09-06. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where do phosphate fertilizers come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/phosphate-fertilizers/.

---

# Where does phosphate rock come from?

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

Phosphate rock comes mainly from China, which produced 110 million tonnes in 2025, 44% of the world's 250 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Morocco (14%), United States (8%) and Russia (5.6%) follow; the top five together supply 77%. The biggest exporter of phosphate rock (HS 2510) is Morocco (29% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Morocco, 70% BPL, FOB Casablanca, was $170/t in August 2026, up 11% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Phosphate rock is fossil biology: it formed where cold, nutrient-rich currents welled up against ancient continental shelves and dropped plankton and fish debris into the sediment, which is why the deposits sit under North Africa, the Middle East, Florida and the Chinese uplands rather than anywhere convenient.

*Sedimentary rock rich in phosphate minerals, mined and acidulated to make phosphate fertilizer.* Also called: rock phosphate, phosphorite, phosphate ore, phosphates.

## Where does phosphate rock come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 110 million | 44% |
| 2 | Morocco | 36 million | 14% |
| 3 | United States | 20 million | 8% |
| 4 | Russia | 14 million | 5.6% |
| 5 | Jordan | 12 million | 4.8% |
| 6 | Saudi Arabia | 10 million | 4% |
| 7 | Egypt | 5.5 million | 2.2% |
| 8 | Brazil | 5 million | 2% |
| 9 | Peru | 4.8 million | 1.9% |
| 10 | Tunisia | 3.3 million | 1.3% |
| | Rest of world | 770,000 | 12% |
| | World | 250 million | 100% |

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026.

Phosphate rock is the raw material for nearly all the phosphorus in the food system, and there is no substitute for it. On this page "phosphate rock" means marketable product, meaning ore that has already been washed, screened and floated to a saleable grade, and it is measured by the weight of that product rather than by the phosphorus inside it. In 2025 China mined 110 million tonnes, 44% of the world's 250 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Morocco was second with 36 million tonnes (14%) and United States third with 20 million tonnes (8%), ahead of Russia (5.6%) and Jordan (4.8%). Output changed +5% from the previous year, and 12% of it came from outside the top ten. Only 24 countries mine phosphate rock at all, which is a small number for a commodity every farmer in the world depends on.

The map is drawn by ancient oceans. Where cold, deep water rises against a continental shelf it carries dissolved phosphorus to the surface, feeds a bloom of plankton and fish, and leaves their remains in the sediment below; over millions of years bacteria and pore water concentrate that phosphorus into the mineral apatite. The great phosphorite belts mark those upwelling coasts. A Cretaceous and Paleogene band runs from Morocco and Western Sahara east through Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The Miocene Bone Valley lies under central Florida, and further deposits sit under the coastal desert of Peru and the uplands of Yunnan, Guizhou, Hubei and Sichuan in China. A second and much smaller family is igneous: apatite that crystallized inside carbonatite intrusions on the Kola Peninsula in Russia, at Araxá and Catalão in Brazil, and at Phalaborwa in South Africa. A third, now essentially spent, was guano, the droppings of seabirds accumulated on rainless islands, which is how Nauru, Banaba and the Chincha Islands of Peru came to matter far beyond their size.

Reserves and mine output point in different directions here more sharply than for any other mineral. The USGS defines reserves as the part of identified resources that could be extracted economically at the time of the estimate. On that basis world reserves stood at 73 billion tonnes in 2025, of which Morocco held 50 billion tonnes, or 68% (USGS MCS). China (4.7%), Egypt (3.8%), Tunisia (3.4%) and Russia (3.3%) trail a long way behind. Reserves are a snapshot of what is worth digging at the prices and technology of the moment, not a count of what exists in the ground, and the phosphate figure has been revised sharply upward in the past when the Moroccan deposits were re-surveyed.

The mining table and the trade table therefore describe different things. China and the United States mine large tonnages and convert almost all of them into acid and fertilizer inside their own borders, and the United States has been a net importer of rock for years while still mining 8% of world output. Morocco, Jordan, Peru, Egypt and Togo mine rock partly in order to sell it. Most phosphate rock never crosses a border at all; it travels a few kilometers from the pit to an acid plant and leaves the country as fertilizer, if it leaves at all.


## Who exports and imports phosphate rock?

Morocco, China and the United States mine the most, but China and the United States convert nearly all of it into fertilizer at home, so Morocco dominates the rock trade.

### Exporters of natural calcium phosphates and phosphatic chalk (HS 2510), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Morocco | $1.5 billion | 29% |
| 2 | Jordan | $1 billion | 20% |
| 3 | Peru | $522.5 million | 10% |
| 4 | Egypt | $399.5 million | 7.6% |
| 5 | Togo | $354.3 million | 6.7% |
| 6 | South Africa | $259.7 million | 4.9% |
| 7 | Algeria | $224.7 million | 4.3% |
| 8 | Russia | $201.9 million | 3.8% |
| 9 | Senegal | $169 million | 3.2% |
| 10 | Netherlands | $126.6 million | 2.4% |
| 11 | Syria | $86.9 million | 1.7% |
| 12 | Kazakhstan | $85.4 million | 1.6% |
| 13 | Lebanon | $73.1 million | 1.4% |
| 14 | Australia | $54 million | 1% |
| 15 | China | $25.8 million | 0.5% |

### Importers of natural calcium phosphates and phosphatic chalk (HS 2510), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | $1.9 billion | 36% |
| 2 | United States | $325.5 million | 6.2% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $267.4 million | 5.1% |
| 4 | Indonesia | $234.2 million | 4.5% |
| 5 | Belgium | $228.9 million | 4.4% |
| 6 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $211.6 million | 4% |
| 7 | Mexico | $181.9 million | 3.5% |
| 8 | China | $175.9 million | 3.3% |
| 9 | Lithuania | $167.6 million | 3.2% |
| 10 | Brazil | $158.2 million | 3% |
| 11 | Pakistan | $131 million | 2.5% |
| 12 | South Korea | $97.5 million | 1.9% |
| 13 | Norway | $93.4 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | Bulgaria | $92.6 million | 1.8% |
| 15 | New Zealand | $80.5 million | 1.5% |

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

In 2024 the largest exporter of phosphate rock (HS 2510) was Morocco, with $1.5 billion, or 29% of the world's $5.3 billion of export value (CEPII BACI). Jordan followed with 20%, then Peru (10%), Egypt (7.6%) and Togo (6.7%). The largest importer was India, taking $1.9 billion, 36% of the world's $5.3 billion of imports, ahead of United States (6.2%) and Netherlands (5.1%). India buys because it has a large fertilizer industry and very little economic rock of its own; the Netherlands and Belgium appear high in the import table because Rotterdam and Antwerp are processing and transshipment points, not because the Low Countries have deposits.

Read together, the two tables show that the rock trade is a residual. China mines close to half the world's rock and sells almost none of it abroad, while the United States, the third-largest miner, is among the largest importers. The entire world trade in rock was worth $5.3 billion in 2024 (CEPII BACI), which is modest next to the trade in the finished fertilizers made from it, because most of the value is added at the moment the rock meets sulfuric acid. Countries that build acid and ammoniation plants next to their mines export fertilizer instead of rock, and their rock exports fall as those plants start up. A shrinking rock trade can therefore mean more phosphate production, not less.


## What does phosphate rock cost?

- Morocco, 70% BPL, FOB Casablanca: $170/t in August 2026; 12-month change +11%; 10-year change +55%; all-time high $450/t in October 2008; real high (2024 US$) $753.8/t in February 1977 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

There is no futures exchange for phosphate rock, no clearing house and no daily settlement. The market is a few dozen mining companies selling to a few hundred acid plants, often under relationships that last decades, and the published price is an assessment rather than a record of a trade. Price reporting agencies such as Argus, CRU and Profercy canvass buyers and sellers each week, collect reported deals, bids and offers, and publish a range or a midpoint for each origin and grade; the World Bank averages one of those assessments into the monthly series used here. The number is a considered estimate of where business is being done.

The series charted on this page is Morocco, 70% BPL, FOB Casablanca. In August 2026 it stood at $170/t, up 11% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The record monthly average is $450/t, set in October 2008; adjusted for US consumer prices the real high was $753.8/t in February 1977, during the first great fertilizer boom. The lowest month in a series that begins in 1960 was $11/t in January 1970. Two trade conventions are packed into the label. FOB is short for free on board: the price buys rock loaded onto the ship at the exporting port, and the buyer pays ocean freight, insurance and discharge, so a CFR or CIF quote at the receiving port is the same rock with those costs added. BPL stands for bone phosphate of lime, a nineteenth-century assay unit the trade never abandoned; dividing a BPL grade by about 2.185 converts it to phosphorus pentoxide, so 70% BPL is roughly 32% P2O5.

Most rock moves on contract, not on the spot market. Miners and acid plants sign annual or multi-year supply agreements with volumes fixed and prices reset each quarter against the published assessments, and India negotiates a closely watched annual contract for rock and for phosphoric acid that other buyers treat as a reference point. The invoice is then adjusted for quality: buyers pay by grade, so a tonne of 70% BPL and a tonne of 66% BPL are different goods, and they apply penalties for iron, aluminum and magnesium oxides, which foul an acid plant and are tracked together as the minor element ratio, and for chlorine, organic carbon, cadmium and uranium. Three ambiguities are worth holding in mind. A rock price is not a fertilizer price and turns later than one; a tonne of rock is not a tonne of nutrient; and one origin's FOB number is not a world price, because the freight from Morocco to Brazil and the freight from Jordan to India are different costs entirely.


## What moves the price of phosphate rock?

### Chinese production and export policy

China mines close to half the world's rock and exports almost none of it, so Beijing's choices work on the market through what it withholds rather than what it sells. Export inspection requirements and informal volume guidance on finished phosphate fertilizers, applied to protect domestic food security and to hold down farm costs, pull Chinese product out of the world market and force buyers in India, Brazil and Southeast Asia toward Morocco, Russia and Saudi Arabia. Because those buyers then need more rock and acid too, a policy aimed at fertilizer reaches back up the chain to rock.

### Sulfur and ammonia costs

Rock demand is derived demand: nobody wants rock, they want phosphoric acid. Making that acid means dissolving rock in sulfuric acid, and sulfur is a by-product of refining crude oil and sweetening sour natural gas, so its price follows the energy industry rather than agriculture. Ammonia, needed to turn the acid into DAP and MAP, is made from natural gas. When sulfur or gas is expensive, acid plants run slower, cut their rock purchases and let inventories fall, and the rock price softens even if fertilizer demand is unchanged.

### Indian import demand and subsidy policy

India is the largest single buyer of phosphate rock and one of the largest buyers of phosphoric acid, and almost all of that demand is mediated by the state. The Nutrient Based Subsidy fixes a payment per tonne of nutrient, and when world prices rise faster than the subsidy is adjusted, importers stop buying rather than sell at a loss. Purchases then resume in a rush once the rates are revised or the rupee strengthens. The result is a stop-start pattern of Indian tenders that the whole market watches.

### Moroccan swing capacity and the choice to integrate

Morocco holds most of the world's known reserves and can decide, cargo by cargo, whether to sell rock or to convert it into acid and finished fertilizer at Jorf Lasfar and Safi. Every new granulation line built at home is a tonne of rock that no longer appears in the export table. That decision sets the availability of merchant rock for buyers who have acid plants but no mine, and it means the size of the rock trade reflects Moroccan industrial strategy as much as it reflects world demand for phosphorus.

### Grade, impurities and regulation

Not all rock is interchangeable. Sedimentary North African and Middle Eastern rock carries more cadmium than igneous rock from the Kola Peninsula, Brazil or South Africa, and European fertilizer rules cap cadmium in phosphate fertilizers sold in the single market. Uranium, chlorine and organic carbon carry their own penalties. As the easy high-grade seams are worked out, miners must beneficiate harder rock to reach the same grade, which raises energy and water use per tonne and slowly lifts the cost floor under the price.

### Freight, chokepoints and sanctions

Rock is a low-value bulk cargo, so freight is a large share of the delivered cost and small changes in rates move the landed price more than they would for a metal. Cargoes from Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to Europe and to India transit the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, and rerouting around southern Africa adds weeks and cost. Sanctions and payment restrictions on Russian producers, who mine both rock and finished fertilizer, redirect trade flows without changing how much rock exists.

### New mines and long lead times

A phosphate project needs a deposit, a beneficiation plant, water in places where water is scarce, a railway or slurry pipeline and a bulk berth, and it takes the better part of a decade from decision to first shipment. Supply therefore cannot answer a price spike quickly, and when new capacity does arrive it tends to arrive in large increments that overshoot. That asymmetry, slow to add and hard to stop once running, is why the phosphate price spends long periods flat and then moves violently.

### Battery demand for purified phosphate

Lithium iron phosphate cathodes give phosphate a use outside agriculture for the first time in generations. Battery-grade material needs purified phosphoric acid, which is made either by cleaning wet-process acid or through the older thermal route that smelts rock with coke and silica to make elemental phosphorus. This is still small next to fertilizer, but it competes for the cleanest, lowest-impurity rock and for purification capacity, and it links a farm input to the automotive and grid-storage cycle.

## How is phosphate rock produced?

Around four fifths of the world's rock comes from sedimentary deposits worked in open pits. In Florida, draglines strip the overburden and dig a matrix of phosphate pebble, quartz sand and clay, which is broken up with water jets and pumped as a slurry to the plant. On the Moroccan plateaus at Khouribga and Benguerir, and in the Jordanian and Saudi deserts, flat-lying seams are uncovered by shovel and truck or by bucket-wheel excavator and hauled out layer by layer. Igneous apatite ore on the Kola Peninsula is mined both open pit and underground; it is harder and lower in grade but very low in cadmium, which is why it commands a premium in Europe.

Raw ore is not saleable. Beneficiation washes out the clay, screens off the coarse pebble, deslimes the fines and then floats the apatite away from silica and carbonate using reagents that make the phosphate particles stick to air bubbles. Some rock is calcined, which is to say roasted, to burn off organic matter and drive carbonate out. What emerges is a concentrate of roughly 29% to 34% P2O5, the marketable product that the USGS and the trade both count. The waste streams are large: sand tailings, and phosphatic clays that take years to settle in engineered impoundments.

From there the rock takes one of two chemical routes. The wet process, which handles the overwhelming majority, digests rock in sulfuric acid to yield phosphoric acid and a mountain of by-product calcium sulfate known as phosphogypsum, roughly five tonnes of it for every tonne of P2O5. Because the gypsum carries the radium that was in the rock, it is stacked rather than sold in most countries. The acid is then neutralized with ammonia to make diammonium and monoammonium phosphate, or reacted with more ground rock to make triple superphosphate. The thermal route is older and rarer: rock, coke and silica are smelted in an electric furnace to distil off elemental phosphorus, which burns to a very pure acid used in food, detergents and battery materials. It is enormously power-hungry and survives mainly in China and Kazakhstan. A small share of rock skips chemistry altogether, because soft, highly reactive rock ground fine can be spread straight onto acid soils, where it dissolves over several seasons.


## What is phosphate rock used for?

Phosphate rock is a fertilizer mineral first and almost only. The USGS reports that phosphate rock is consumed primarily to produce phosphoric acid for fertilizers, with the great majority of world output ending up as diammonium phosphate, monoammonium phosphate, triple superphosphate, single superphosphate or compound NPK blends (USGS, Mineral Commodity Summaries). The next largest use is animal feed, where defluorinated dicalcium and monocalcium phosphate supply the phosphorus and calcium that poultry, pigs and cattle need for bone growth. Phosphorus is one of the elements no crop and no animal can do without, and unlike nitrogen it cannot be pulled out of the air.

The remaining few per cent are industrial and split across many small markets. Food-grade phosphoric acid gives cola drinks their sharpness and acts as a leavening acid in baking powder; sodium tripolyphosphate was the workhorse detergent builder until phosphate limits in wastewater rules cut its use in most of the rich world; phosphates go into flame retardants, corrosion inhibitors, metal treatment, water treatment, toothpaste and ceramics. Elemental phosphorus is the starting point for phosphorus trichloride and for glyphosate herbicide, and purified phosphoric acid is the phosphorus source for lithium iron phosphate battery cathodes. Uranium and rare earths are present in most sedimentary rock and are occasionally recovered as by-products when their prices justify the plant.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The defining feature of the phosphate chain is that processing sits on top of the mine. Rock is heavy, dusty and cheap per tonne, so nobody ships it further than they must. Morocco's OCP pumps rock as a water slurry through a pipeline from the Khouribga mines down to the coastal chemical complex at Jorf Lasfar, which removes drying, rail haulage and dust from the route in one step. Florida's mines feed acid plants a short conveyor ride away. Saudi Arabia built an integrated mine, railway and chemical city at Ras Al Khair to move rock from the northern desert to the Gulf coast. Where that integration exists, the country exports fertilizer; where it does not, it exports rock and imports the fertilizer back.

The routes are short and specific. Moroccan rock and acid leave through Jorf Lasfar, Safi and Casablanca, and rock from the Western Sahara deposit at Bou Craa travels by a long overland conveyor to the port of Laayoune. Jordanian rock goes down to Aqaba on the Red Sea, Saudi rock to Ras Al Khair on the Gulf, Peruvian rock from Bayovar, Togolese rock from Lomé and Kola apatite by rail to Murmansk. From those berths it moves in Handysize and Supramax bulk carriers, and cargoes bound from the Gulf and the Red Sea to Europe depend on Bab el-Mandeb and Suez.

The single points of failure are unusual for a mineral because they are political and chemical rather than geological. One country holds most of the world's reserves, so a decision taken in Casablanca changes the options available to farmers everywhere. The legal status of Western Sahara has produced court challenges and at least one detained cargo, which puts a question mark over part of that supply for buyers who care about provenance. Downstream, phosphogypsum stacks are permanent liabilities that can fail, as one did in Florida when a lined reservoir on an old stack had to be drained into Tampa Bay. And because a mine without an acid plant is only half a business, a sulfur shortage or a gas curtailment can idle phosphate capacity as effectively as a mine accident.


## Key companies

- OCP Group: miner and processor, Morocco
- Mosaic: miner and processor, United States, listed (MOS)
- PhosAgro: miner and processor, Russia, listed (PHOR)
- Ma'aden: miner and processor, Saudi Arabia, listed (1211)
- Yunnan Phosphate Chemical Group: miner and processor, China, listed (600096)
- Jordan Phosphate Mines Company: miner, Jordan, listed (JOPH)

## Timeline

- 1842-11: Superphosphate is patented and the fertilizer industry begins. Treating bones and mineral phosphate with sulfuric acid produced a soluble phosphorus fertilizer; the patent and the factory that followed created the demand that made phosphate rock worth mining. (https://www.rothamsted.ac.uk/history-rothamsted-research)
- 1856-08: The United States claims guano islands. The Guano Islands Act let American citizens take possession of unclaimed islands bearing guano, the first phosphate rush and a reminder that phosphorus has always been a geopolitical mineral. (https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents)
- 1888: Florida's land-pebble deposits are opened. Discoveries in central Florida gave the United States a domestic supply that dominated world output for most of the twentieth century and still supplies its own fertilizer industry. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/phosphate-rock-statistics-and-information)
- 1906: Mining starts on Nauru. Extraction of the island's guano-derived phosphate began under a German concession and continued under a British, Australian and New Zealand commission from 1920, stripping four-fifths of the island's surface before the deposits ran down. (https://www.britannica.com/place/Naoero/History)
- 1921-03: Morocco starts production at Khouribga. The state phosphate office began mining in 1921 and exported the same year, the start of the concentration of world reserves in Morocco that defines the market today. (https://www.ocpgroup.ma/en/who-we-are/our-journey)
- 1974: The first phosphate price shock. Producers roughly quadrupled contract prices in the wake of the oil crisis, and the resulting scramble for supply funded new mines that later left the market oversupplied for two decades. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets)
- 2008-10: Rock reaches its all-time nominal high. The benchmark Moroccan quotation peaked in the World Bank series during the food price crisis, more than eight times its level two years earlier. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets)
- 2021-10: China restricts fertilizer exports. New customs inspection requirements on phosphate products cut shipments from the largest exporter of finished phosphate fertilizer and tightened rock and product markets together. (https://globaltradealert.org/intervention/100224)
- 2022-03: Sanctions and gas prices hit the phosphate chain. Restrictions on Russian exports and record European gas prices raised the cost of the ammonia and sulfur that turn rock into fertilizer, lifting rock demand and price. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets)
- 2023: Rock prices set their highest annual average. The yearly mean of the benchmark quotation exceeded even 2008 as export restrictions persisted and buyers rebuilt stocks. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets)

## Frequently asked questions

### Where does phosphate come from?

From sedimentary rock laid down on ancient sea floors, plus a little igneous apatite and guano. In 2025 the world mined 250 million tonnes of phosphate rock across 24 countries (USGS MCS), led by China with 44% and Morocco with 14%. The largest deposits lie under Morocco and Western Sahara, North Africa, the Middle East, Florida and southern China.

### Which country produces the most phosphate rock?

China mines more phosphate rock than any other country. In 2025 it produced 110 million tonnes, 44% of the world's 250 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Morocco was second with 14% and United States third with 8%. Production is measured as marketable product, meaning washed and floated concentrate rather than raw ore straight from the pit.

### Which country has the most phosphate reserves?

Morocco holds by far the largest phosphate rock reserves, 50 billion tonnes in 2025, or 68% of the world's 73 billion tonnes (USGS MCS). China (4.7%) and Egypt (3.8%) come next. Reserves mean the part of known deposits that could be mined economically at the time of the estimate, so the number moves with prices and surveys.

### Which country exports the most phosphate rock?

Morocco was the largest exporter of phosphate rock (HS 2510) in 2024, with 29% of the world's $5.3 billion of export value (CEPII BACI), ahead of Jordan (20%) and Peru (10%). The biggest miners are not the biggest exporters: China and the United States turn nearly all their rock into fertilizer at home.

### Who imports the most phosphate rock?

India was the largest importer in 2024, taking $1.9 billion, or 36% of the world's $5.3 billion of imports (CEPII BACI), followed by United States (6.2%) and Netherlands (5.1%). Importers are countries with fertilizer plants but no economic deposits, and the trade is small because most rock is processed where it is mined.

### What is phosphate rock used for?

Almost all of it becomes fertilizer. Rock is dissolved in sulfuric acid to make phosphoric acid, which is turned into DAP, MAP, TSP and compound NPK blends. Animal feed phosphates are the second use. Industry takes a few per cent for food acid, detergents, flame retardants, glyphosate and lithium iron phosphate battery cathodes. The world mined 250 million tonnes in 2025 (USGS MCS).

### What is the price of phosphate rock?

This site shows monthly averages, not live quotes. The Morocco, 70% BPL, FOB Casablanca assessment was $170/t in August 2026, up 11% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The record monthly average was $450/t in October 2008. There is no futures market for rock, so published prices are assessments collected from buyers and sellers rather than exchange settlements.

### What does BPL mean in phosphate rock?

BPL stands for bone phosphate of lime, an old assay unit the phosphate trade still uses to state grade. Divide a BPL figure by about 2.185 to get phosphorus pentoxide, so 70% BPL is roughly 32% P2O5. Grade matters because buyers pay per tonne of product: the Morocco, 70% BPL, FOB Casablanca series quoted $170/t in August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### Will the world run out of phosphorus?

Not on any timescale the reserve numbers support. World reserves were 73 billion tonnes in 2025 against mine output of 250 million tonnes in 2025 (USGS MCS), and reserves have been revised upward as deposits were re-surveyed. The real concern is concentration rather than exhaustion: Morocco alone holds 68% of reserves, and phosphorus has no substitute in agriculture.

## Sources

- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries
- 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 2026-09-06. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where does phosphate rock come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/phosphate-rock/.

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# Where do pineapples come from?

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

Pineapples come mainly from Costa Rica, which produced 3.1 million tonnes in 2024, 11% of the world's 29.3 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Philippines (10%), Indonesia (9.4%) and Brazil (7.6%) follow; the top five together supply 45%. The biggest exporter of pineapples (HS 080430) is Costa Rica (59% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Pineapple needs a warm, frost-free climate with moderate rainfall and free-draining soil, and because the plant is small, uniform and harvested on a schedule rather than a season, it suits plantation agriculture close to a port better than almost any other tropical fruit.

*A bromeliad fruit grown on an eighteen-month cycle and shipped fresh or canned.* Also called: pineapple, ananas, MD-2.

## Where do pineapples come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Costa Rica | 3.1 million | 11% |
| 2 | Philippines | 2.9 million | 10% |
| 3 | Indonesia | 2.7 million | 9.4% |
| 4 | Brazil | 2.2 million | 7.6% |
| 5 | China | 2.1 million | 7.3% |
| 6 | India | 1.7 million | 5.9% |
| 7 | Nigeria | 1.6 million | 5.5% |
| 8 | Mexico | 1.3 million | 4.4% |
| 9 | Thailand | 1.1 million | 3.7% |
| 10 | Colombia | 910,265 | 3.1% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 32% |
| | World | 29.3 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 Costa Rica produced 3.1 million tonnes, 11% of the world's 29.3 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Philippines followed with 10%, then Indonesia (9.4%), Brazil (7.6%) and China (7.3%). The top five account for 45%, 85 countries reported output and 32% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +16% over the ten years to 2024 and -2% on the previous year.

Costa Rica's position in the export trade is out of all proportion to its share of world production, and that is the crop's defining feature. A single variety, MD-2, developed for sweetness, low acidity and golden flesh that survives shipping, transformed the trade from the 1990s and is now grown on large, intensively managed plantations near Caribbean ports.

Elsewhere pineapple is often a smallholder crop grown for local markets and canning rather than for fresh export. Philippines and Thailand production feeds large canning industries; Indian, Brazilian and Nigerian output is consumed domestically. The plant itself is a bromeliad grown from vegetative slips rather than seed, so a plantation is genetically uniform and can be scheduled precisely.

## Who exports and imports pineapples?

### Exporters of pineapples, fresh or dried (HS 080430), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Costa Rica | $1.7 billion | 59% |
| 2 | Philippines | $430.4 million | 15% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $105.3 million | 3.7% |
| 4 | Ecuador | $76.2 million | 2.7% |
| 5 | Spain | $55.3 million | 2% |
| 6 | United States | $49.6 million | 1.8% |
| 7 | Honduras | $41.9 million | 1.5% |
| 8 | Kenya | $35.1 million | 1.3% |
| 9 | Mexico | $31.8 million | 1.1% |
| 10 | Germany | $28.2 million | 1% |
| 11 | Other Asia, nes | $27.1 million | 1% |
| 12 | China | $26 million | 0.9% |
| 13 | Italy | $25.4 million | 0.9% |
| 14 | Guatemala | $22.8 million | 0.8% |
| 15 | Belgium | $20.4 million | 0.7% |

### Importers of pineapples, fresh or dried (HS 080430), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $888.4 million | 32% |
| 2 | China | $198.7 million | 7.1% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $165.5 million | 5.9% |
| 4 | Belgium | $143.1 million | 5.1% |
| 5 | France | $139.8 million | 5% |
| 6 | Spain | $139.7 million | 5% |
| 7 | Japan | $129.2 million | 4.6% |
| 8 | Italy | $124.6 million | 4.4% |
| 9 | South Korea | $85.4 million | 3% |
| 10 | United Kingdom | $82.3 million | 2.9% |
| 11 | Canada | $78.1 million | 2.8% |
| 12 | Germany | $62.8 million | 2.2% |
| 13 | Portugal | $58.9 million | 2.1% |
| 14 | Russia | $46.3 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | United Arab Emirates | $33.1 million | 1.2% |

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

Costa Rica was the largest exporter of pineapples (HS 080430) in 2024 with 59% of world export value, ahead of Philippines (15%), on world trade of $2.8 billion (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 32%.

The export table is one of the most concentrated in fresh produce, and it reflects industrial organization rather than climate. A handful of companies operate plantations, packhouses and shipping in Costa Rica and neighboring countries, and they supply North America and Europe year-round because pineapple can be induced to flower chemically and therefore harvested continuously.

Canned pineapple and juice are a separate trade with a different map, centred on the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia, and it moves as a shelf-stable product rather than as fresh fruit.

## What do pineapples cost?

### How they are priced

There is no futures market and no free public benchmark price for this crop, so this site quotes none. Fresh pineapple is sold by size count per box and grade, negotiated between exporters and retailers, often on annual or seasonal programmes rather than spot, because supply is scheduled rather than seasonal. Canned pineapple and juice concentrate price separately as industrial goods.

That contract structure is unusual for a fruit and follows from the crop's controllability: because flowering can be induced with ethylene and harvest timed to the week, a grower can commit to a delivery programme a year ahead in a way an orchard grower cannot.

## What moves the price of pineapples?

### Freight and fuel costs

Pineapple is heavy, low-value per tonne and shipped refrigerated over long distances, so ocean freight and bunker prices are a large share of delivered cost. Container rate spikes compress grower margins directly.

### Variety and consumer preference

The shift to MD-2 reshaped the trade within a decade, and any successor variety would do the same. Because plantations are replanted on a two to three year cycle, the industry can switch varieties faster than a tree crop can.

### Plantation input costs

Intensive pineapple growing uses substantial fertilizer, plastic mulch and crop protection. Fertilizer price spikes, of the kind covered on the urea page, feed straight into production cost on a crop grown this intensively.

### Land and water regulation

Expansion of pineapple plantations has drawn scrutiny over water use, agrochemical runoff and land conversion in Costa Rica and west Africa, and buyer certification requirements now shape where new planting is possible.

### Canning demand

A large share of world pineapple goes to canneries, and canned fruit competes with fresh for the same crop. When canned demand is weak, fruit is pushed into the fresh market and prices fall.

## How are pineapples produced?

Pineapple is grown from vegetative planting material, slips and suckers taken from harvested plants, so a field is a clone. Planting is dense, often through plastic mulch, and the crop takes roughly fourteen to twenty months to first harvest. Flowering can be induced chemically with ethylene, which lets growers schedule harvest precisely and supply markets year-round rather than seasonally.

Each plant produces one fruit, and a ratoon crop from suckers may follow before the field is replanted. Fruit is cut by hand, moved on field conveyors, then washed, graded, waxed and packed by count. It is shipped at controlled temperature, and unlike many fruits it does not ripen further after picking, so it must be harvested at eating maturity, which is why picking judgement matters so much.

Cannery fruit follows a different route: harvested riper, trimmed, cored, sliced or crushed, then canned in juice or syrup and heat-processed, or pressed and concentrated for juice.

## What are pineapples used for?

Fresh eating takes the premium end of the market and canned fruit the volume. Canned slices, chunks and crushed pineapple are a long-established grocery staple, and pineapple juice, usually from concentrate, is a large beverage category and a common component of blended juices.

By-products are significant. Cannery waste, shells and cores, is used for animal feed, for bromelain extraction and for vinegar and alcohol. Bromelain, a protein-digesting enzyme, is used as a meat tenderiser and in pharmaceutical and food processing. Pineapple leaf fiber is used for textiles in the Philippines and has attracted interest as a leather alternative.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The fresh chain is an industrial one: plantation, packhouse, refrigerated container, destination distribution centre, and it runs on scheduled weekly volumes rather than spot trading. Because harvest can be timed, the chain is less prone to gluts than most fruit, but it is heavily exposed to shipping.

The canning chain is located at the fruit, not the market, since canned product ships as ambient cargo, which is why the Philippines and Thailand can serve world markets from a distance that would make fresh export uneconomic.

The structural risks are variety monoculture, freight cost and environmental regulation. A disease that attacked MD-2 would affect most of the world's fresh export trade at once, in the same way that has historically threatened bananas.

## Timeline

- 1903: Commercial canning begins in Hawaii. Canning made pineapple shelf-stable and created a mass market, establishing the industrial plantation model that the crop still follows. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 1970s: Production shifts to Southeast Asia. Lower costs moved the canning industry from Hawaii to the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia, which still dominate canned and juice supply. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 1996: MD-2 is released commercially. A sweeter, lower-acid variety with better shelf life transformed the fresh trade within a decade and made Costa Rica the dominant exporter. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 2010: Environmental scrutiny of plantations increases. Concerns over agrochemical use, water quality and land conversion in Costa Rica led buyers to require certification, raising costs and constraining expansion. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 2021: Container freight costs squeeze exporters. Shipping rate spikes hit a heavy, low-value cargo particularly hard, compressing grower margins and briefly reducing volumes shipped to distant markets. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most pineapples

Costa Rica produced 3.1 million tonnes in 2024, 11% of the world's 29.3 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Philippines was second with 10%. The export trade is far more concentrated than production.

### why does Costa Rica dominate pineapple exports

Because it combined the MD-2 variety with large, intensively managed plantations near Caribbean ports and the ability to schedule harvest year-round by inducing flowering chemically. That lets exporters commit to weekly delivery programmes that a seasonal orchard crop cannot match.

### do pineapples ripen after picking

No. Unlike bananas or avocados, pineapple does not sweeten further once cut, so it must be harvested at eating maturity. That makes picking judgement critical and is why fruit shipped long distances is graded so carefully.

### what is MD-2 pineapple

A variety released commercially in 1996, bred for sweetness, low acidity, golden flesh and shelf life. It displaced older varieties in the fresh export trade within about a decade and now dominates it, which concentrates disease risk in a single genotype.

### what happens to pineapple waste

Shells and cores from canneries are used for animal feed, vinegar and alcohol, and as a source of bromelain, a protein-digesting enzyme used as a meat tenderiser and in food and pharmaceutical processing. Leaf fiber is used for textiles in the Philippines.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where do pistachios come from?

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

Pistachios come mainly from the United States, which produced 498,950 tonnes in 2024, 36% of the world's 1.4 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Turkey (Türkiye) (28%), Iran (23%) and Syria (6.1%) follow; the top five together supply 99%. The biggest exporter of pistachios (HS 080251) is the United States (72% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Pistachio wants a long, blazing, dry summer to fill the nut and a genuinely cold winter to break bud, a combination found on the high deserts of Iran and Turkey, in Syria and in California's southern San Joaquin Valley and almost nowhere else.

*A desert nut that bears heavily only every other year, grown mostly in Iran, the United States and Turkey.* Also called: pistachio, green almond.

## Where do pistachios come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 498,950 | 36% |
| 2 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 383,000 | 28% |
| 3 | Iran | 316,142 | 23% |
| 4 | Syria | 83,796 | 6.1% |
| 5 | China | 78,986 | 5.7% |
| 6 | Madagascar | 5,034 | 0.4% |
| 7 | Australia | 4,450 | 0.3% |
| 8 | Tunisia | 3,135 | 0.2% |
| 9 | Afghanistan | 2,825 | 0.2% |
| 10 | Iraq | 1,687 | 0.1% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 0.2% |
| | World | 1.4 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 United States produced 498,950 tonnes, 36% of the world's 1.4 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Turkey (Türkiye) followed with 28%, then Iran (23%), Syria (6.1%) and China (5.7%). The top five account for 99%, 18 countries reported output and 0.2% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +56% over the ten years to 2024 and +7% on the previous year.

Pistachio is the most concentrated of the major tree nuts: only a handful of countries grow it at scale, and the crop is measured in shell. Iran's orchards sit on the arid plateau around Kerman and Rafsanjan, Turkey's around Gaziantep and Şanlıurfa, and California's in the southern San Joaquin Valley. Syria's crop around Aleppo is old and substantial but has been disrupted for years.

Comparing any one year between countries is treacherous, because the tree bears heavily one season and lightly the next and the cycles in different countries do not line up. A year in which California is on and Iran is off, or the reverse, changes the ranking without anything structural having happened at all.


## Who exports and imports pistachios?

### Exporters of pistachios, in shell, fresh or dried (HS 080251), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $2.5 billion | 72% |
| 2 | Iran | $473.4 million | 14% |
| 3 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $155.1 million | 4.5% |
| 4 | Germany | $102.3 million | 3% |
| 5 | Hong Kong | $44.7 million | 1.3% |
| 6 | Belgium | $30.3 million | 0.9% |
| 7 | Spain | $26.8 million | 0.8% |
| 8 | China | $25.9 million | 0.8% |
| 9 | Netherlands | $19 million | 0.6% |
| 10 | Australia | $17.6 million | 0.5% |
| 11 | Czechia | $16.6 million | 0.5% |
| 12 | Luxembourg | $9.3 million | 0.3% |
| 13 | United Arab Emirates | $6.2 million | 0.2% |
| 14 | France | $4.5 million | 0.1% |
| 15 | Lithuania | $4.3 million | 0.1% |

### Importers of pistachios, in shell, fresh or dried (HS 080251), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $909.1 million | 26% |
| 2 | Germany | $332.1 million | 9.7% |
| 3 | Vietnam | $265 million | 7.7% |
| 4 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $206.6 million | 6% |
| 5 | India | $187.4 million | 5.5% |
| 6 | Italy | $133 million | 3.9% |
| 7 | Spain | $131 million | 3.8% |
| 8 | Poland | $98.2 million | 2.9% |
| 9 | Belgium | $93.4 million | 2.7% |
| 10 | United Arab Emirates | $87.2 million | 2.5% |
| 11 | Hong Kong | $84.3 million | 2.5% |
| 12 | Netherlands | $64.8 million | 1.9% |
| 13 | France | $61.9 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | Saudi Arabia | $58.2 million | 1.7% |
| 15 | Jordan | $47.8 million | 1.4% |

### Exporters of pistachios, shelled, fresh or dried (HS 080252), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $349.5 million | 27% |
| 2 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $284.8 million | 22% |
| 3 | Iran | $242.5 million | 19% |
| 4 | Germany | $83.5 million | 6.6% |
| 5 | Italy | $46.5 million | 3.7% |
| 6 | Afghanistan | $35.6 million | 2.8% |
| 7 | Spain | $34.9 million | 2.7% |
| 8 | Syria | $33.4 million | 2.6% |
| 9 | Netherlands | $31.7 million | 2.5% |
| 10 | China | $30.9 million | 2.4% |
| 11 | Jordan | $21.8 million | 1.7% |
| 12 | United Arab Emirates | $12.6 million | 1% |
| 13 | Vietnam | $9.5 million | 0.7% |
| 14 | Greece | $7.7 million | 0.6% |
| 15 | Slovakia | $6 million | 0.5% |

### Importers of pistachios, shelled, fresh or dried (HS 080252), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Germany | $228.7 million | 18% |
| 2 | Italy | $220.4 million | 17% |
| 3 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $125.1 million | 9.8% |
| 4 | India | $84.2 million | 6.6% |
| 5 | France | $52 million | 4.1% |
| 6 | Netherlands | $43.4 million | 3.4% |
| 7 | United Kingdom | $37.3 million | 2.9% |
| 8 | Spain | $33 million | 2.6% |
| 9 | Poland | $30.3 million | 2.4% |
| 10 | Vietnam | $28.9 million | 2.3% |
| 11 | Saudi Arabia | $28.1 million | 2.2% |
| 12 | Brazil | $26.7 million | 2.1% |
| 13 | Iraq | $21.2 million | 1.7% |
| 14 | Jordan | $20.9 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | Canada | $18.8 million | 1.5% |

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

United States was the largest exporter of pistachios (HS 080251) in 2024 with 72% of world export value, ahead of Iran (14%), on world trade of $3.4 billion (CEPII BACI). China was the largest importer with 26%.

Shelled kernels are a separate and smaller line. In 2024 United States exported 27% of a kernel trade worth $1.3 billion, with Turkey (Türkiye) on 22% and Iran on 19%; Germany was the largest buyer with 18%.

The split matters. In-shell nuts go to snack markets that want to open them by hand, above all China and the Gulf, while kernels go to bakers and confectioners in Germany, Italy and Turkey who need green nutmeat for ice cream, baklava and mortadella. Turkey exports kernels and imports in-shell nuts at the same time.


## What do pistachios cost?

### How they are priced

There is no futures market and no free public benchmark price for pistachios, so this site quotes none. In California growers deliver to a processor and are paid a pool return settled over the marketing year, adjusted for the split rate, kernel color and defects in their delivery. In Iran the crop moves through private traders and exporters, and prices are quoted in local currency, so exchange rate moves are part of the price.

What is visible instead are trade assessments, customs statistics and industry shipment reports. Grading is unusually detailed: naturally split in-shell nuts carry a large premium over closed shells, size is counted per ounce, and a bright green kernel is worth more than a pale one. Aflatoxin results price the lot too, because a failed consignment cannot enter its intended market.


## What moves the price of pistachios?

### Alternate bearing

A pistachio tree sets a heavy crop one year and a light one the next, because buds for the following season abort while a big crop fills. Whole regions swing together, so supply arrives in a two-year rhythm that orchard management cannot fully remove.

### Winter chill

Buds need accumulated winter cold to break evenly in spring. A warm winter gives a straggling bloom in which the wind-pollinated male and female trees are out of step, and the crop fails to set, as California found after the warm winter of 2015.

### Aflatoxin

Pistachios are prone to a mold that produces aflatoxin, and importing countries test for it at the border. A single failing consignment can be rejected, and repeated failures have brought certification requirements on a whole origin, which raises cost and slows shipment.

### Sanctions and duties

United States antidumping duties on Iranian in-shell pistachios have stood since 1986, and broader sanctions restrict Iranian trade and payment. The result is a market split by policy as well as geography, with Iranian nuts routed toward Asia, the Gulf and Europe rather than North America.

### Water and salinity

Pistachio tolerates saline, alkaline soils and drought better than almond, which is why it is planted where little else thrives. It still needs irrigation, and Californian groundwater is being capped basin by basin, so expansion is a claim on a shrinking allocation.

## How are pistachios produced?

Pistachio is dioecious, with separate male and female trees, and pollen travels on the wind rather than by insects, so orchards scatter males among the females and rely on both flowering at the same moment. Trees are grafted onto rootstock, take five to seven years to bear and stay productive for decades.

Through the summer the kernel fills and the shell hardens; when the kernel is full it expands and splits the shell along a seam, which is the crack a shopper opens by hand. Harvest is a single pass in late summer, by trunk shaker onto a catch frame, and speed matters: the hull must come off within hours, because a heap of unhulled nuts stains and molds.

At the plant the hull is stripped, the nuts floated to separate open from closed shells, dried, sized, sorted by machine and by hand, then roasted and salted or held raw. Closed shells are cracked mechanically for kernel, and kernels are peeled and color-sorted, since green is what a baker pays for.


## What are pistachios used for?

Most pistachios are eaten in the shell as a roasted, salted snack, and that market takes the best of the crop. Kernels go into ice cream, nougat, halva, baklava and Turkish delight, into mortadella, and into bakery and chocolate, where the color is as much the point as the flavour.

By-products stay close to the orchard. Hulls are composted or fed to livestock and are also a source of natural pigments and tannins. Shells go to fuel, bedding and abrasives, and increasingly to activated carbon. Kernels that fail on color or size are ground into paste, where appearance no longer prices the product.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Processing sits beside the orchards, because the hull has to come off within hours of shaking. In California a small number of large processors take the crop; in Iran the chain runs through village traders, terminal markets in Rafsanjan and Tehran, and exporters.

The traded product is dry, stable and packed in cartons or vacuum bags, so it needs no cold chain. Aflatoxin certification, not refrigeration, governs whether a consignment clears customs, and testing regimes differ enough between destinations that lots are pre-sorted by market.

The structural risks are concentration and biennial supply. Three countries grow nearly all of it, each has a two-year bearing cycle, and one of them is under long-standing trade restrictions. A poor Californian set and a Turkish off-year in the same season leave buyers with very little to fall back on.


## Timeline

- 1929: A United States plant explorer collects pistachio seed in Iran. Seed gathered around Kerman was grown at a Californian research station and produced the Kerman variety, the basis of an industry that did not exist before it. (https://americanpistachios.org/about-us/grower-resources/historical-accomplishments)
- 1957: The Kerman variety is released to growers. A named, propagated female variety with a matching male pollinizer made commercial orchards possible and ended reliance on variable seedling trees. (https://americanpistachios.org/about-us/grower-resources/historical-accomplishments)
- 1976: California harvests its first commercial pistachio crop. It marked the arrival of a second large producer outside the traditional Iranian and Turkish belt, and the start of decades of planting in the San Joaquin Valley. (https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/fruit-and-tree-nuts)
- 1986: The United States imposes antidumping duties on Iranian in-shell pistachios. The order, followed by a broader trade embargo, closed the largest consumer market to Iranian nuts and gave Californian growers a protected home market for decades. (https://americanpistachios.org/about-us/grower-resources/historical-accomplishments)
- 1997-09: The European Union suspends imports of Iranian pistachios over aflatoxin. The suspension, later replaced by certification and designated entry points, made aflatoxin testing a permanent condition of trade rather than an occasional check. (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/ALL/?uri=CELEX:31997D0830)
- 2015: A warm winter wrecks the Californian crop. Too few chill hours gave an uneven bloom in which male and female trees flowered out of step, and the harvest fell by roughly half from the previous year. (https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/fruit-and-tree-nuts)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most pistachios

United States produced 498,950 tonnes in 2024, 36% of the world's 1.4 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Turkey (Türkiye) was second with 28% and Iran third with 23%. Rankings move between years because the tree bears heavily only every other season.

### why are pistachios so expensive

Three reasons. The tree bears a heavy crop only every second year, it takes five to seven years from planting before it yields at all, and only a few regions have both the hot dry summers and the cold winters it needs. Aflatoxin testing and hand sorting add cost on top.

### why are pistachios already open

The split is natural. As the kernel fills in late summer it expands and forces the shell apart along a seam. Nuts that stay closed are usually immature or poorly filled, and processors float them off and crack them mechanically for kernel rather than selling them in shell.

### why are some pistachios greener than others

Colour comes from chlorophyll in the kernel and fades as the nut matures and dries. Bakers and confectioners pay a premium for deep green kernels for ice cream, baklava and nougat, so lots are color-sorted and the greenest are diverted away from the snack trade.

### who buys the most pistachios

China was the largest importer of pistachios (HS 080251) in 2024, taking 26% of a trade worth $3.4 billion (CEPII BACI), ahead of Germany with 9.7%. In-shell nuts go mainly to snack markets, kernels to bakers and confectioners.

### why does the united states tax iranian pistachios

United States antidumping duties on Iranian in-shell pistachios have been in place since 1986, following a petition from Californian growers, and were later reinforced by a broad trade embargo. The effect is that Iranian nuts are sold into Asia, the Gulf and Europe rather than North America.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where do plantains come from?

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

Plantains come mainly from Uganda, which produced 11.8 million tonnes in 2024, 27% of the world's 44.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) (11%), Cameroon (11%) and Ghana (10%) follow; the top five together supply 65%. The biggest exporter of plantains (HS 080310) is Ecuador (23% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Plantains grow in the humid tropical lowlands of west and central Africa, the Andean foothills and the Caribbean, and because they are a staple eaten within days of cutting rather than a dessert fruit, they stay close to where they are grown.

*Starchy cooking bananas, boiled, fried or pounded as a staple across west and central Africa and the Caribbean.* Also called: cooking bananas, plantain, matoke.

## Where do plantains come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Uganda | 11.8 million | 27% |
| 2 | DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) | 4.9 million | 11% |
| 3 | Cameroon | 4.7 million | 11% |
| 4 | Ghana | 4.4 million | 10% |
| 5 | Philippines | 3 million | 6.9% |
| 6 | Colombia | 2.7 million | 6% |
| 7 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | 2.5 million | 5.6% |
| 8 | Dominican Republic | 1.7 million | 3.8% |
| 9 | Myanmar | 1.5 million | 3.3% |
| 10 | Ecuador | 1.1 million | 2.4% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 14% |
| | World | 44.2 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 Uganda produced 11.8 million tonnes, 27% of the world's 44.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) followed with 11%, then Cameroon (11%), Ghana (10%) and Philippines (6.9%). The top five account for 65%, 52 countries reported a crop and 14% came from outside the top ten.

Read that ranking as a map of what people eat rather than of what is sold. FAOSTAT counts plantains and cooking bananas as a separate item from the dessert bananas covered on the [bananas](/commodities/bananas/) page, and the two behave completely differently. Dessert bananas are a globally traded, single-variety industrial crop; plantains are a staple starch grown mostly on smallholdings and eaten locally, boiled, pounded into fufu, roasted or fried into chips.

The growing zone is narrow: consistently warm, humid lowlands with well-distributed rainfall and no frost. That places it across the west and central African forest belt from Ivory Coast to the Congo basin, through the Andean foothills of Colombia, Peru and Ecuador, across the Caribbean, and into parts of southern India and Southeast Asia. Within that belt plantain is often intercropped with cocoa, coffee or cassava rather than grown in dedicated blocks, which is one reason production statistics are less precise than for plantation crops.

World output changed +28% over the ten years to 2024 and +2% on the previous year.

## Who exports and imports plantains?

### Exporters of plantains, fresh or dried (HS 080310), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ecuador | $257.7 million | 23% |
| 2 | Guatemala | $168.3 million | 15% |
| 3 | Colombia | $152.3 million | 14% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $69 million | 6.2% |
| 5 | Greece | $49.7 million | 4.5% |
| 6 | Philippines | $42 million | 3.8% |
| 7 | Belgium | $37.4 million | 3.4% |
| 8 | Germany | $36.6 million | 3.3% |
| 9 | France | $23.4 million | 2.1% |
| 10 | Costa Rica | $23.2 million | 2.1% |
| 11 | Italy | $19.6 million | 1.8% |
| 12 | Mexico | $19.6 million | 1.8% |
| 13 | Nicaragua | $18.9 million | 1.7% |
| 14 | Hungary | $18.1 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | India | $15.8 million | 1.4% |

### Importers of plantains, fresh or dried (HS 080310), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $366.4 million | 33% |
| 2 | Romania | $104.1 million | 9.4% |
| 3 | Belgium | $47 million | 4.2% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $46 million | 4.2% |
| 5 | Hungary | $45.1 million | 4.1% |
| 6 | Saudi Arabia | $44.9 million | 4.1% |
| 7 | Qatar | $36.6 million | 3.3% |
| 8 | Spain | $36.3 million | 3.3% |
| 9 | United Kingdom | $35.8 million | 3.2% |
| 10 | Italy | $30.1 million | 2.7% |
| 11 | Bulgaria | $27.7 million | 2.5% |
| 12 | Bahrain | $27.2 million | 2.5% |
| 13 | North Macedonia | $21.4 million | 1.9% |
| 14 | France | $20.8 million | 1.9% |
| 15 | Canada | $19.8 million | 1.8% |

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

Ecuador was the largest exporter of plantains (HS 080310) in 2024 with 23% of world export value, ahead of Guatemala (15%), on world trade of $1.1 billion (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 33%.

That export figure is small relative to production, and deliberately so: most plantain never enters a formal market at all, let alone an international one. What does trade moves in two streams. The first is ethnic and diaspora food trade, shipping green plantains to cities in Europe and North America with large west African, Caribbean and Latin American populations. The second is regional trade within Africa and Latin America, much of it informal and poorly captured in customs data.

Ecuador and Colombia dominate the recorded export trade because they already have the port infrastructure, cold chain and phytosanitary systems built for dessert bananas, and plantain travels on the same ships.

## What do plantains cost?

### How they are priced

There is no futures market and no published benchmark price for plantains, and this site does not quote one. Plantains are priced at farm gate and in local wholesale markets, and the price varies enormously by country, by season and even by town, because transport is a large share of delivered cost for a heavy, bulky, perishable staple.

What determines the price in practice is the local harvest and the state of the road. Because plantain is produced year-round rather than in a single harvest, prices move on rainfall and on the condition of feeder roads more than on any seasonal cycle. Where FAO collects producer prices they are published in its producer price series, and regional market information systems in west Africa track wholesale prices town by town.

The export trade prices differently again: green plantain sold by the box on a specification for finger count and grade, negotiated between exporters and importers on terms similar to the banana trade.

## What moves the price of plantains?

### Rainfall and drought

Plantain has shallow roots and a high water requirement, and it does not tolerate dry spells. A poor rainy season cuts bunch weight and can kill young suckers outright, and because the plant takes most of a year to fruit, the effect on supply persists long after the rain returns.

### Black sigatoka and banana wilts

Black leaf streak disease reduces photosynthetic area and cuts yields substantially, and bacterial wilts have devastated plantings in parts of east and central Africa. Smallholders rarely spray, so disease pressure is managed by variety choice and by abandoning infected fields rather than by chemistry.

### Road and transport conditions

A bunch of plantains is heavy, bulky and bruises easily, so transport is a large share of the price a consumer pays. In the rainy season, when feeder roads deteriorate, urban prices can rise sharply while farm-gate prices fall, purely because the crop cannot move.

### Urban demand growth

Rapid urbanisation across west and central Africa has raised demand for staples that can be bought ready to cook, and plantain competes with rice, imported wheat products and cassava for that market. Where imported rice is cheap, plantain loses share.

### Land competition with cocoa

Plantain is often planted to shade young cocoa trees and is then removed as the canopy closes, so plantain supply is partly a by-product of cocoa planting cycles. A wave of cocoa establishment raises plantain output temporarily; a mature cocoa farm produces none.

## How are plantains produced?

Plantain is a giant herb, not a tree. The apparent trunk is a tight roll of leaf sheaths, and the plant grows from an underground corm that produces suckers. A planted sucker takes roughly nine to twelve months to flower and another three to five months to fill the bunch, after which the parent stem is cut down and a selected sucker takes its place, so a mat can produce continuously for years before yields decline and it is replanted.

Harvest is by machete, cutting the whole bunch while still green and hard. Plantains are starchy rather than sweet at this stage; the starch converts to sugar as the fruit ripens, which is why cooking varieties are used green for savoury dishes and ripe for sweeter ones. There is no post-harvest processing for the fresh trade beyond dehanding and packing.

Where processing exists it is simple and adds shelf life: slicing and frying into chips, drying and milling into plantain flour, or fermenting. These products travel and store far better than the fresh fruit and are a growing part of the urban market.

## What are plantains used for?

Almost all of it is eaten as a starchy staple. Green plantain is boiled, steamed, roasted or pounded into a dough eaten with soup or stew, and it fills the role that potatoes or rice fill elsewhere. Riper fruit is fried as a sweeter side dish. Plantain flour and chips are the main processed forms, and both are growing with urban demand for convenience.

Beyond food, the plant is used whole in producing regions: leaves as wrapping and plates, pseudostem fiber for cord and craft, and the residue as mulch and animal fodder. In cocoa and coffee systems the plant's main agronomic role is shade for young trees, which is a use that never appears in production statistics.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is short, local and largely informal. Bunches move from farm to a local collection point by head-load, bicycle or small truck, then to an urban wholesale market, and the whole journey is usually a matter of hours or days. Losses are high: a bruised or over-ripe bunch is worth very little, and estimates of post-harvest loss in the fresh trade run into double-digit percentages.

The export chain is entirely different and rides on banana infrastructure: packed green in boxes at origin, shipped in refrigerated containers at controlled temperature, and ripened or sold green at destination. Because the volumes are small next to dessert bananas, plantain exporters depend on that shared infrastructure rather than justifying their own.

The structural vulnerability is disease. Plantain cultivars are propagated vegetatively from suckers, so a planting is genetically uniform and a new pathogen can move through a region with little to stop it. Bacterial wilt outbreaks in central and east Africa have destroyed plantings across whole districts, and because the crop is a staple for tens of millions of people, that is a food security question rather than a market one.

## Timeline

- 1516: Plantains reach the Americas. Introduction from west Africa established the crop in the Caribbean and Latin America, where it became a staple and, centuries later, the basis of the small export trade. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 1970s: Black sigatoka spreads through the tropics. The leaf disease reached west Africa and Latin America and cut plantain and banana yields substantially, and it remains the main biological constraint on smallholder production. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 2001: Banana xanthomonas wilt appears in Ethiopia. A bacterial wilt with no chemical control began spreading through the Great Lakes region, destroying plantings across whole districts and threatening a staple food supply. (https://www.cabi.org/isc/)
- 2010: Improved hybrids are released in west Africa. Breeding programmes produced black sigatoka-resistant plantain hybrids, though adoption has been limited by taste and texture preferences that favor traditional varieties. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 2019: Urban demand shifts toward processed plantain. Growing city populations increased demand for plantain flour and chips, which store and travel far better than fresh bunches and opened a value-added market for producers. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most plantains

Uganda produced 11.8 million tonnes in 2024, 27% of the world's 44.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) was second with 11%. FAOSTAT counts plantains and cooking bananas separately from dessert bananas.

### what is the difference between plantains and bananas

Plantains are starchy cooking varieties eaten green as a staple, usually boiled, pounded or fried; dessert bananas are sweet and eaten raw. FAOSTAT counts them as separate items, and they behave as different commodities: dessert bananas are a traded industrial crop, plantains a locally eaten staple.

### why are plantains barely traded internationally

Because they are a heavy, bulky, perishable staple eaten close to where they grow. World export value is small relative to production, and most of what does trade serves diaspora food markets in Europe and North America or moves informally within Africa and Latin America.

### how are plantains priced

At farm gate and in local wholesale markets, with no futures contract and no published world benchmark. Prices vary by country, season and even by town, because transport is a large share of delivered cost and road conditions in the rainy season move urban prices sharply.

### how long does a plantain take to grow

A planted sucker takes roughly nine to twelve months to flower and another three to five months to fill the bunch. The parent stem is then cut and a selected sucker replaces it, so a mat produces continuously for years before yields decline and it is replanted.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where does platinum come from?

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

Platinum comes mainly from South Africa, which produced 120 tonnes in 2025, 73% of the world's 165 tonnes (USGS MCS). Russia (12%), Zimbabwe (11%) and Canada (3%) follow; the top five together supply 100%. The biggest exporter of unwrought platinum (HS 711011) is South Africa (36% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, London afternoon fix, was $1,780/troy oz in August 2026, up 33% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Platinum is a two-address metal: almost all of it comes from a single layered igneous intrusion in South Africa and one nickel-copper deposit in Arctic Siberia, because those are the only places where a magma chamber concentrated the platinum group elements into layers thick enough to mine.

*A precious metal used in autocatalysts, jewellery and industry, mined almost entirely from two geological complexes.* Also called: Pt, platinum group metals, PGM, platinum bullion.

## Where does platinum come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Africa | 120 | 73% |
| 2 | Russia | 20 | 12% |
| 3 | Zimbabwe | 18 | 11% |
| 4 | Canada | 5 | 3% |
| 5 | United States | 1.8 | 1.1% |
| | Rest of world | 3.9 | <0.1% |
| | World | 165 | 100% |

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026.

In 2025 South Africa mined 120 tonnes of platinum, 73% of the world's 165 tonnes (USGS MCS). Russia followed at 12% and Zimbabwe at 11%, with Canada at 3% and United States at 1.1%. Only 5 countries mine platinum at all, and the top three account for 96%. Reserves are more concentrated still: South Africa holds 83% of the world's 76,200 tonnes of platinum-group metal reserves (USGS MCS).

Production here means mined metal content, not refined metal, and it is worth saying plainly that platinum is rarely mined alone. It comes out of the ground with palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium and osmium, plus nickel and copper, and the ratio between them is fixed by the orebody rather than by the market. In 2025 the same mines produced {{prod.Mine production: Palladium.world}} of palladium, led by {{prod.Mine production: Palladium.top1.name}} with {{prod.Mine production: Palladium.top1.share}} (USGS MCS). A platinum mine cannot make more platinum and less palladium because the platinum price has risen; the basket is what it is.

The geology is unusually simple to describe. South Africa's Bushveld Complex is a layered mafic intrusion roughly the size of Ireland, in which platinum-group elements settled into thin, laterally continuous layers, principally the Merensky Reef and the Upper Group 2 chromitite, that can be followed for tens of kilometers and mined by conventional underground methods. Russia's Norilsk-Talnakh deposit is different in kind: a nickel-copper sulfide system where platinum and especially palladium are recovered as by-products of nickel mining. Zimbabwe's Great Dyke is a smaller relative of the Bushveld. Canada and the United States contribute modestly from nickel and copper operations.

World output changed -6% from the previous year. The long trend is downward rather than upward: Bushveld mines are deep, hot and labor-intensive, capital has been scarce since the price collapsed from its 2008 peak, and recycling from spent autocatalysts now supplies a substantial share of total metal without any mining at all.

## Who exports and imports platinum?

South Africa's Bushveld Complex and Russia's Norilsk deposit supply most primary metal; the United Kingdom and Switzerland export refined and traded metal.

### Exporters of platinum-group metals (HS 7110), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Africa | $15.2 billion | 32% |
| 2 | United Kingdom | $5.2 billion | 11% |
| 3 | Russia | $4 billion | 8.5% |
| 4 | Germany | $3.2 billion | 6.9% |
| 5 | United States | $3.1 billion | 6.6% |
| 6 | Italy | $2.5 billion | 5.2% |
| 7 | Belgium | $2.4 billion | 5% |
| 8 | United Arab Emirates | $1.8 billion | 3.7% |
| 9 | Switzerland | $1.7 billion | 3.6% |
| 10 | Hong Kong | $1.5 billion | 3.2% |
| 11 | Japan | $1.5 billion | 3.1% |
| 12 | China | $625.5 million | 1.3% |
| 13 | France | $614.4 million | 1.3% |
| 14 | Thailand | $519.9 million | 1.1% |
| 15 | South Korea | $479.1 million | 1% |

### Importers of platinum-group metals (HS 7110), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $7.4 billion | 16% |
| 2 | China | $5.7 billion | 12% |
| 3 | Japan | $5.4 billion | 11% |
| 4 | United Kingdom | $4.9 billion | 10% |
| 5 | Germany | $4.6 billion | 9.9% |
| 6 | Hong Kong | $4 billion | 8.6% |
| 7 | Switzerland | $2.8 billion | 5.9% |
| 8 | India | $2.6 billion | 5.4% |
| 9 | Italy | $2.1 billion | 4.4% |
| 10 | South Korea | $1.3 billion | 2.7% |
| 11 | North Macedonia | $1 billion | 2.2% |
| 12 | Canada | $972.6 million | 2.1% |
| 13 | Brazil | $756.2 million | 1.6% |
| 14 | Belgium | $483.6 million | 1% |
| 15 | Poland | $429.9 million | 0.9% |

### Exporters of platinum, unwrought or in powder form (HS 711011), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Africa | $5.3 billion | 36% |
| 2 | United Kingdom | $1.6 billion | 11% |
| 3 | United Arab Emirates | $1.1 billion | 7.4% |
| 4 | Italy | $929.8 million | 6.4% |
| 5 | Hong Kong | $806.1 million | 5.5% |
| 6 | Belgium | $650.2 million | 4.4% |
| 7 | Switzerland | $560.1 million | 3.8% |
| 8 | Germany | $526.8 million | 3.6% |
| 9 | Russia | $511.9 million | 3.5% |
| 10 | Japan | $511.3 million | 3.5% |
| 11 | United States | $462.4 million | 3.2% |
| 12 | Thailand | $440 million | 3% |
| 13 | China | $330.5 million | 2.3% |
| 14 | Armenia | $172.3 million | 1.2% |
| 15 | Singapore | $152.2 million | 1% |

### Importers of platinum, unwrought or in powder form (HS 711011), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $3.2 billion | 22% |
| 2 | United States | $1.6 billion | 11% |
| 3 | India | $1.6 billion | 11% |
| 4 | Japan | $1.5 billion | 10% |
| 5 | Hong Kong | $1.2 billion | 8.1% |
| 6 | United Kingdom | $1.2 billion | 8% |
| 7 | Germany | $1.1 billion | 7.4% |
| 8 | Switzerland | $772.3 million | 5.3% |
| 9 | North Macedonia | $479.4 million | 3.3% |
| 10 | Italy | $453.9 million | 3.1% |
| 11 | South Korea | $370.9 million | 2.5% |
| 12 | Belgium | $177.3 million | 1.2% |
| 13 | Armenia | $160.1 million | 1.1% |
| 14 | Poland | $153 million | 1% |
| 15 | Ireland | $146.5 million | 1% |

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

South Africa was the largest exporter of unwrought platinum (HS 711011) in 2024 with 36% of world export value, ahead of United Kingdom (11%), out of $14.6 billion traded (CEPII BACI). China was the largest importer with 22%.

Unlike gold, where the export table is dominated entirely by refining and vaulting hubs, platinum's export table still has the producing country at the top, because South Africa refines its own concentrate before shipping. But the United Kingdom and Switzerland appear high for the familiar reason: they refine, fabricate and vault metal that was mined elsewhere, and metal moving into and out of exchange warehouses and industrial stockpiles crosses borders repeatedly without anyone digging anything up. Read the trade table as a map of where metal is processed and held, and the production table as the map of where it comes from.

## What does platinum cost?

- London afternoon fix: $1,780/troy oz in August 2026; 12-month change +33%; 10-year change +59%; all-time high $2,434/troy oz in January 2026; real high (2024 US$) $3,502/troy oz in February 1980 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- Platinum, spot (IMF): $1,616/troy oz in July 2026; 12-month change +16%; 10-year change +49%; all-time high $2,414/troy oz in January 2026; real high (2024 US$) $2,992/troy oz in May 2008 (IMF PCPS).

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

### How it is priced

The benchmark is London afternoon fix, which was $1,780/troy oz in August 2026, up 33% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its nominal high was $2,434/troy oz in January 2026. In constant dollars the real peak was $3,502/troy oz in February 1980, which is the more useful comparison: measured against what money bought at the time, platinum was roughly twice as expensive during the 1980 precious-metals mania as at any point since.

Platinum trades in troy ounces, and the reference price is set twice each business day by an electronic auction administered under the London Platinum and Palladium Market, with NYMEX futures used for hedging and speculation. Physical metal is sold as sponge, ingot or in solution, and industrial buyers pay a premium over the reference for a specified form, purity and delivery point. Because the market is small relative to gold, a single large industrial purchase or a change in exchange inventories can move the price more than the underlying supply and demand balance would suggest.

Three things make platinum pricing unusual. First, supply is a fixed basket with palladium and rhodium, so the platinum price is partly a residual of what the other metals are doing. Second, a large and growing share of supply is recycled autocatalyst, which responds to the price with a lag of months rather than years and puts a soft ceiling on rallies. Third, the metal's largest single use can substitute with palladium, so the platinum-palladium spread is itself a driver: when palladium is dear, catalyst makers reformulate toward platinum, and vice versa. Investors also hold platinum in exchange-traded funds and coins, which means the price responds to real interest rates and the dollar in the way gold does, on top of everything industrial.

## What moves the price of platinum?

### Autocatalyst demand and the diesel share

Platinum's largest single use is in catalytic converters, historically concentrated in diesel engines. Anything that changes the diesel share of the vehicle fleet, emissions standards, tax treatment or the fallout from emissions-testing scandals, changes platinum demand directly. Battery electric vehicles need no catalyst at all, which is the structural question hanging over the metal.

### Substitution with palladium

Platinum and palladium do similar work in a converter and catalyst makers reformulate toward whichever is cheaper, with a design lead time of a year or two. When palladium traded far above platinum, that substitution ran one way; when the spread narrows or reverses it runs the other. The spread is therefore a driver of platinum demand in its own right, independent of how many cars are sold.

### South African electricity and mine depth

Bushveld mines are deep, hot and dependent on a strained national grid. Load shedding cuts hoisting, ventilation and refrigeration, and a mine that cannot ventilate cannot be worked. Because one country supplies most of the world's platinum, an electricity problem in South Africa is a world supply problem in a way that would not be true for a more dispersed commodity.

### Labour relations

Platinum mining is labor-intensive and its wage bargaining has repeatedly produced long stoppages, including a five-month strike in 2014 that removed a large fraction of a year's output. Because above-ground stocks are thin relative to annual supply, a strike of that length shows up in the price rather than being absorbed by inventory.

### The by-product basket

Most platinum comes out of mines whose economics depend on the combined value of platinum, palladium, rhodium and nickel. When rhodium or palladium prices collapse, marginal shafts close even if the platinum price is unchanged, so platinum supply can fall for reasons that have nothing to do with platinum.

### Recycling

Spent autocatalysts, jewellery scrap and industrial residues return a large volume of metal each year. Scrap collection responds to price within months, so recycling damps rallies and deepens slumps, and the scrappage rate of older diesel vehicles is now a genuine supply variable.

### Investment demand

Exchange-traded funds, bars and coins let investors hold platinum without industrial use, so the metal responds to real interest rates, the dollar and the gold price. Because the market is small, a swing in investor holdings can be large relative to annual mine supply and can move the price without any change in physical consumption.

### Hydrogen and new industrial uses

Proton-exchange-membrane electrolysers and fuel cells use platinum as a catalyst, and glass fiber, petroleum refining and chemical processes use it in bushings and gauzes. These uses are small next to autocatalysts today but are the demand side that would replace them, and policy support for hydrogen is the main variable that decides how quickly.

## How is platinum produced?

Bushveld ore is reached by shafts or decline ramps that follow the reef down, and the working faces are narrow because the reef itself is often under a meter thick. That geometry is why the industry uses so much labor: much of the ore is still drilled and blasted by crews working in a low stope rather than by large mechanized equipment. Ore grades are quoted in grams of combined platinum-group metal per tonne, and a few grams a tonne is a good grade.

The ore is milled and floated to make a concentrate, which is then smelted in electric furnaces to a matte and converted to remove iron and sulfur. The converter matte, still containing nickel and copper alongside the precious metals, goes to a base-metal refinery that extracts the nickel and copper and leaves a residue enriched in platinum-group metals. That residue then goes to a precious-metal refinery, where the six platinum-group elements plus gold are separated from each other by a long sequence of dissolution, precipitation and solvent-extraction steps. Separation is slow and the pipeline holds several months of production, which is why refined output can diverge from mine output for a quarter or more.

Recycling follows a shortened version of the same path. Spent autocatalysts are collected, the ceramic honeycomb is milled, and the metal-bearing powder is smelted and refined alongside primary material. Because a converter contains platinum, palladium and rhodium together, recycling returns the same basket that mining does.

Everything on this page is measured as metal content. A tonne of platinum is a very large quantity in this market: world mine supply is measured in the low hundreds of tonnes a year, against tens of millions of tonnes for a base metal like copper.

## What is platinum used for?

The dominant use is emissions control. Platinum in a catalytic converter oxidises carbon monoxide and unburned hydrocarbons and, in diesel systems, works alongside other components to handle nitrogen oxides and particulates. Jewellery is the second large use, concentrated in China, India and Japan, where platinum's density and the fact that it can be worked at high purity are selling points. Investment in bars, coins and exchange-traded funds accounts for a variable share that swings with sentiment.

Industrial uses are small individually but collectively significant and technically demanding. Platinum-rhodium bushings draw molten glass into fiber; platinum gauzes catalyse the oxidation of ammonia in nitric acid production, which links the metal to the fertilizer chain described on the urea page; platinum catalysts reform petroleum and make silicones; and platinum electrodes appear in hard disks, sensors, spark plugs and pacemakers. Chemotherapy drugs based on platinum compounds are a small but irreplaceable medical use. Fuel cells and electrolysers are the use that the industry expects to matter most in the long run, since both rely on platinum catalysts and neither has a cheap substitute.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain has three narrow points and they are all in the same place. Mining is concentrated in the Bushveld Complex; smelting and base-metal refining are concentrated in the same handful of South African complexes; and precious-metal refining is concentrated in a small number of facilities in South Africa, Britain, Germany, Japan and the United States. A furnace rebuild or a converter failure at one South African smelter can hold up a meaningful share of world supply for months, and it has.

Electricity is the practical chokepoint. Deep mines need continuous ventilation, refrigeration and hoisting, and smelters need large, stable loads. Rolling power cuts do not merely slow production, they force shafts to stand idle for safety reasons and can damage furnace linings. The concentration of supply in one grid-constrained country is the single largest physical risk in the platinum market.

Russia's contribution runs through a different chain entirely, from Norilsk by rail and Arctic sea route, and it has been complicated since 2022 by payment, shipping and insurance restrictions even where the metal itself is not sanctioned. Because Russian material is mostly palladium, restrictions there affect platinum indirectly, through the substitution spread rather than through platinum supply.

Above-ground stocks are thin relative to annual demand compared with gold or silver, so the market has little cushion. That is why a strike, a smelter outage or a load-shedding episode passes into price quickly, and why recycling, which can be scaled up within months, has become the flexible part of supply.

## Key companies

- Anglo American Platinum (Valterra Platinum): miner and refiner, South Africa, listed (VAL)
- Impala Platinum (Implats): miner and refiner, South Africa, listed (IMP)
- Sibanye-Stillwater: miner and recycler, South Africa, listed (SSW)
- Norilsk Nickel: miner, Russia, listed (GMKN)
- Northam Platinum: miner and refiner, South Africa, listed (NPH)
- Johnson Matthey: refiner and catalyst maker, United Kingdom, listed (JMAT)

## Timeline

- 1924-09: The Merensky Reef is found in the Bushveld. The discovery of a continuous platinum-bearing layer traceable for well over a hundred kilometers established South Africa as the source of most of the world's platinum, a position it has held ever since. (https://technology.matthey.com/article/43/4/146-148)
- 1975: Catalytic converters become compulsory in the United States. Emissions rules turned a specialty metal into an automotive input and created the demand that has driven the platinum market for fifty years. (https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview/evolution-clean-air-act)
- 1980-02: Platinum sets its real all-time high. During the precious-metals mania that also took silver and gold to records, platinum reached a level that, adjusted for inflation, no later rally has matched. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets)
- 2001: Palladium's spike pushes carmakers back toward platinum. A supply scare in palladium sent its price above platinum and prompted a wave of catalyst reformulation, the first clear demonstration that the two metals are substitutes on a multi-year lag. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/platinum-group-metals-statistics-and-information)
- 2008-01: South African power cuts halt the mines. A national electricity emergency stopped deep-level mining outright for several days and constrained it for months, taking platinum to its nominal record and proving how exposed world supply is to one country's grid. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets)
- 2012-08: The Marikana strike turns violent. A wildcat stoppage over rock-drill operators' pay ended with thirty-four strikers killed by police, reshaping platinum-sector labor relations and the union landscape for a decade. (https://sahistory.org.za/article/marikana-massacre-16-august-2012)
- 2014-01: A five-month strike removes a large share of annual output. The longest and most expensive wage strike in South African history stopped the three largest producers from January to June and took roughly 440,000 ounces of platinum out of production. (https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/2014-south-african-platinum-strike-longest-wage-strike-south-africa)
- 2015-09: The diesel emissions scandal breaks. Revelations about defeat devices accelerated the decline of diesel in Europe, and because diesel catalysts are platinum-rich, the metal lost its largest growth market and traded below gold for years. (https://www.epa.gov/vw)
- 2020-03: Pandemic shutdowns close mines and smelters together. South African lockdowns and a converter plant failure interrupted both mining and refining at once, and the price fell to a multi-decade low before recovering sharply. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets)
- 2022-03: Restrictions on Russian metal reshape the platinum-group basket. Payment, shipping and listing restrictions complicated Russian supply, which matters more for palladium than platinum but changed the substitution spread that drives catalyst design. (https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/recent-actions)
- 2025-01: Hydrogen electrolysers become a named demand source. Policy support for green hydrogen in Europe, China and the United States gave platinum a growth use that does not depend on the internal combustion engine, though from a small base. (https://www.iea.org/energy-system/low-emission-fuels/hydrogen)
- 2026-01: Platinum sets a nominal record. Falling South African output, thin above-ground stocks and renewed investment demand took the London afternoon quotation to its highest monthly average in the World Bank series. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most platinum

South Africa mined 120 tonnes in 2025, 73% of the world's 165 tonnes (USGS MCS). Russia was second with 12%. Only 5 countries mine platinum at all, making it one of the most geographically concentrated commodities on this site.

### why is platinum cheaper than gold

Platinum is priced mainly as an industrial metal, so it follows car production and emissions rules, while gold is priced as a monetary asset. When diesel demand fell after 2015 and investors moved to gold, platinum lost its premium. In August 2026 it traded at $1,780/troy oz (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### where does platinum come from geologically

Almost all of it comes from two settings: South Africa's Bushveld Complex, a layered igneous intrusion where platinum-group elements settled into thin continuous reefs, and Russia's Norilsk nickel-copper sulfide deposit, where they are recovered as by-products. Zimbabwe's Great Dyke is a smaller relative of the Bushveld.

### what is platinum used for

The largest use is catalytic converters, especially in diesel vehicles, followed by jewellery and investment. Industrial uses include glass-fiber bushings, nitric acid catalyst gauzes, petroleum reforming, electronics and medical devices. Hydrogen electrolysers and fuel cells are the growth use that does not depend on combustion engines.

### how much platinum is left

South Africa holds 83% of world platinum-group metal reserves of 76,200 tonnes (USGS MCS). Reserves are the portion economically mineable at current prices and technology, so the figure moves with price and with new drilling, not only with what is physically in the ground.

### is platinum rarer than gold

Annual mine supply of platinum is far smaller than gold's, at 165 tonnes in 2025 (USGS MCS). But gold has been accumulated above ground for millennia and platinum has not, so the stock of existing gold is vastly larger. Scarcity of new supply and scarcity of total metal are different questions.

### what moves the platinum price

Autocatalyst demand and the diesel share of the vehicle fleet, substitution with palladium, South African electricity supply and labor disputes, recycling of spent converters, and investment flows. Because one country supplies most of the metal, supply-side shocks are national rather than company-level events.

### why do platinum and palladium prices move together

They come out of the same orebodies in a fixed ratio, so supply is a joint product, and they do similar work in a catalytic converter, so catalyst makers substitute between them over a design cycle of a year or two. The spread between them is watched as closely as either price alone.

## Sources

- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries
- 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
- IMF Primary Commodity Price System (PCPS), 2026-08-06, fetched 6 September 2026. License: © International Monetary Fund. All rights reserved (IMF terms of use). https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS

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

---

# Where does plywood come from?

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

Plywood comes mainly from China, which produced 60.4 million m3 in 2024, 53% of the world's 113.3 million m3 (FAOSTAT forestry). India (11%), United States (7.9%) and Indonesia (3.4%) follow; the top five together supply 79%. The biggest exporter of plywood and laminated panels (HS 4412) is China (27% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Africa and Southeast Asia, Tokyo import, was 343.8¢/sheet in August 2026, down 7% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Plywood is made where cheap peeler logs, cheap adhesive and cheap labor meet a large construction market, which is why the industry migrated from North America and Japan to Indonesia and Malaysia in the 1980s and then overwhelmingly to China.

*Panels glued from thin wood veneers with alternating grain, used in construction, furniture and packaging.* Also called: plywood panels, veneer, LVL, laminated veneer lumber, wood panels.

## Where does plywood come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (m3) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 60.4 million | 53% |
| 2 | India | 12 million | 11% |
| 3 | United States | 9 million | 7.9% |
| 4 | Indonesia | 3.9 million | 3.4% |
| 5 | Brazil | 3.7 million | 3.2% |
| 6 | Russia | 3.5 million | 3% |
| 7 | Vietnam | 3.4 million | 3% |
| 8 | Japan | 2.5 million | 2.2% |
| 9 | Canada | 1.6 million | 1.4% |
| 10 | Chile | 1.3 million | 1.1% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 11% |
| | World | 113.3 million | 100% |

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

In 2024 China produced 60.4 million m3 of plywood and laminated veneer lumber, 53% of the world's 113.3 million m3 (FAOSTAT forestry). India followed with 11%, then United States (7.9%), Indonesia (3.4%) and Brazil (3.2%). The top five account for 79% and only 11% came from outside the top ten, which makes plywood one of the more concentrated forest products. Counting all wood-based panels together, including particle board and fiberboard, world output was 393.4 million m3, again led by China with 44% (FAOSTAT forestry).

Plywood is made by peeling a log into a continuous ribbon of veneer, cutting that ribbon into sheets, and gluing an odd number of them together with the grain of each layer at right angles to its neighbors. That cross-graining is the whole point: it gives a panel that is strong in both directions and far more dimensionally stable than solid wood of the same thickness.

The geography followed the peeler log and then the labor cost. North America and Japan dominated until the 1970s using large old-growth softwood. Indonesia and Malaysia took over in the 1980s after Indonesia banned log exports, using tropical hardwood from natural forest. China then displaced both, first by importing logs and veneer and later by growing its own poplar and eucalyptus plantations specifically for peeling. Russia remains significant on the strength of birch, which makes a strong, attractive panel prized for concrete formwork and furniture.

World output changed -1% over the ten years to 2024 and +4% on the previous year. Volume has been broadly flat because plywood has been losing ground for decades to oriented strand board and to engineered products that use smaller, cheaper wood, while holding on where appearance, screw-holding or bending strength matter.

## Who exports and imports plywood?

China dominates the panel trade by pressing veneer from imported and domestic logs; Indonesia and Brazil supply tropical hardwood plywood.

### Exporters of plywood, veneered panels and similar laminated wood (HS 4412), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $4.6 billion | 27% |
| 2 | Indonesia | $1.8 billion | 11% |
| 3 | Vietnam | $1.2 billion | 7.4% |
| 4 | Brazil | $846.7 million | 5% |
| 5 | Russia | $712.3 million | 4.2% |
| 6 | Malaysia | $664.1 million | 3.9% |
| 7 | Finland | $617.8 million | 3.7% |
| 8 | Canada | $477.4 million | 2.8% |
| 9 | Chile | $438.5 million | 2.6% |
| 10 | Italy | $398.6 million | 2.4% |
| 11 | Latvia | $393.8 million | 2.3% |
| 12 | Austria | $343.6 million | 2% |
| 13 | Poland | $335.2 million | 2% |
| 14 | Germany | $326.3 million | 1.9% |
| 15 | Spain | $277.7 million | 1.6% |

### Importers of plywood, veneered panels and similar laminated wood (HS 4412), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $3.1 billion | 19% |
| 2 | Japan | $1.1 billion | 6.7% |
| 3 | Germany | $1.1 billion | 6.4% |
| 4 | South Korea | $681.8 million | 4% |
| 5 | United Kingdom | $642.8 million | 3.8% |
| 6 | Netherlands | $560.2 million | 3.3% |
| 7 | Malaysia | $498.9 million | 3% |
| 8 | France | $454.4 million | 2.7% |
| 9 | Mexico | $443.8 million | 2.6% |
| 10 | Italy | $441.2 million | 2.6% |
| 11 | Australia | $438.7 million | 2.6% |
| 12 | Philippines | $433.1 million | 2.6% |
| 13 | Canada | $391.2 million | 2.3% |
| 14 | Saudi Arabia | $333 million | 2% |
| 15 | Belgium | $307.8 million | 1.8% |

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

China was the largest exporter of plywood and laminated panels (HS 4412) in 2024 with 27% of world export value, ahead of Indonesia (11%), on world trade of $16.9 billion (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 19%.

Plywood trades far more readily than logs because it is a finished, standard-sized, stackable product with high value per cubic meter and no phytosanitary problem once glued and pressed. That is why the same country can dominate both production and exports here in a way it cannot for roundwood.

Two trade features stand out. The first is that the panel trade is unusually exposed to trade remedies: plywood from China and other origins has repeatedly faced antidumping and countervailing duties in the United States and the European Union, and duty decisions redirect the flow within months rather than years. The second is that legality rules bite harder here than for most products, because a sheet of plywood can contain veneer from many logs and several species, which makes documenting the origin of every layer genuinely difficult.

## What does plywood cost?

- Africa and Southeast Asia, Tokyo import: 343.8¢/sheet in August 2026; 12-month change -7%; 10-year change -36%; all-time high 751.8¢/sheet in May 1993; real high (2024 US$) 1,635¢/sheet in May 1993 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

The World Bank series for plywood is quoted in an unusual unit that needs explaining before the number means anything. Africa and Southeast Asia, Tokyo import was 343.8¢/sheet in August 2026, down 7% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). That is US cents per sheet, for a specified sheet size on a Tokyo import basis, not a price per cubic meter or per square meter. Its nominal high was 751.8¢/sheet in May 1993 and the real high 1,635¢/sheet in the same month, which is unusual and tells you the series peaked at a moment when general inflation was low.

Because the quotation is per sheet of a fixed specification, it is a clean like-for-like series over time but a poor guide to any other grade. Structural softwood plywood in North America, birch plywood from Russia and Finland, and film-faced formwork panel from China all price separately, assessed by private services or negotiated mill to mill, and none of them tracks the Tokyo tropical quotation.

In the physical trade a panel is priced by species and face grade, thickness and number of plies, sheet size, adhesive type and certification. Adhesive matters more than buyers expect: interior-grade urea-formaldehyde panels are cheaper than exterior-grade phenolic ones, and formaldehyde emission limits in California, the wider United States and the European Union have made low-emission adhesives a compliance requirement rather than a premium option. A film-faced panel for concrete formwork, sold on how many pours it survives, prices on a different basis again.

## What moves the price of plywood?

### Construction and formwork demand

Plywood is a construction material twice over: as sheathing, flooring and roof decking in buildings, and as formwork that shapes poured concrete. Because formwork is consumed and replaced, concrete construction activity generates recurring plywood demand independent of how many timber-framed houses are built, and Chinese infrastructure spending has historically driven a large share of world consumption.

### Peeler log supply

Plywood needs logs that are large, straight and free enough of defect to peel into a continuous ribbon, which is a narrower specification than sawing requires. When old-growth or plantation peeler supply tightens, as it did in the Pacific Northwest and later in Southeast Asia, mills either pay more, switch species or close. The industry's migration around the world has followed peeler log availability more than anything else.

### Competition from oriented strand board

Oriented strand board makes a structural panel from small, low-grade wood chips rather than large clear logs, at lower cost. It has taken most of the North American sheathing market from plywood over four decades. Plywood retains uses where bending strength, screw holding, appearance or repeated reuse matter, so the two products' relative prices set where the boundary sits.

### Trade duties

Panels are a frequent target of antidumping and countervailing investigations, and duty decisions in the United States and European Union can reprice a large share of import supply within months. Because plywood is easy to ship and grades are substitutable, trade flows redirect quickly around duties, which is why origin patterns in this trade change faster than production patterns.

### Adhesive and resin costs

Urea-formaldehyde and phenol-formaldehyde resins are made from methanol, urea and phenol, which are themselves derived from natural gas and oil. When gas prices spike, glue costs rise across the panel industry at once, and because adhesive is a significant share of the cost of a thin panel, the effect on price is direct.

### Formaldehyde emission rules

Limits on formaldehyde emissions from composite wood products in California, then nationally in the United States and in the European Union, forced reformulation and testing. Compliance costs fall hardest on smaller mills and on exporters who must certify to several different standards, and they have been a quiet consolidating force in the industry.

### Legality and species documentation

A single sheet can contain veneer from many logs of several species, so proving legal, deforestation-free origin for every layer is harder than for a sawn board. Buyers in regulated markets increasingly demand species testing and chain-of-custody documentation, and suppliers who cannot provide it sell into markets that do not require it.

## How is plywood produced?

Plywood begins with a peeler log, conditioned by soaking or steaming in a hot pond so the wood is warm and pliable. The log is mounted in a lathe and rotated against a full-length knife, unwinding a continuous ribbon of veneer typically one to four millimetres thick. This is the step that decides yield: a straight, large, defect-free log peels almost entirely into usable veneer, while a crooked or knotty one produces broken sheet that has to be patched or downgraded.

The ribbon is clipped into sheets, dried to a low moisture content, and sorted by grade, with the best faces reserved for the outside of the panel and defective sheet used for cores. Glue is spread on alternate layers, the stack is assembled with each layer's grain at right angles to its neighbor, and the assembly is pressed under heat and pressure until the adhesive cures. Cross-graining and an odd number of plies are what make the finished panel balanced and stable.

After pressing, panels are trimmed to size, sanded, sometimes patched or overlaid with a resin-impregnated film for formwork, and graded on face and back appearance and on structural properties. Laminated veneer lumber, counted with plywood in the FAOSTAT item used here, is made by the same peeling and gluing process but with all layers aligned in the same direction, producing a beam rather than a panel.

Everything on this page is measured in cubic meters of finished panel. That makes plywood volumes look small next to sawnwood, but a cubic meter of plywood embodies considerably more processing, and considerably more log, than a cubic meter of boards.

## What is plywood used for?

Construction is the largest use: sheathing for walls and roofs, subflooring, and concrete formwork. Formwork is a distinct and large market, particularly in China and the Gulf, where film-faced panels are used and reused for successive concrete pours until the surface degrades, and it consumes panel steadily wherever concrete construction is active.

Beyond building, plywood goes into furniture and cabinetry, where a stable panel with a decorative face veneer is more useful than solid wood; into packaging and crating; into transport, for truck and container flooring, where dense hardwood plywood is specified; and into marine and specialty applications, where exterior-grade adhesive and durable species matter. Birch plywood in particular has a premium market for furniture, joinery and machined components.

Laminated veneer lumber and related engineered products occupy the structural end, replacing solid sawn beams in situations where long spans, predictable strength or freedom from warping justify the cost. These products have been the growth end of the sector while commodity sheathing has been lost to oriented strand board.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

Panel making is capital-intensive and concentrated at the mill, so the chain is short but the equipment is specialized: a lathe, a dryer, a glue spreader and a hot press together represent a large fixed investment that only pays if it runs continuously. Mills therefore need a reliable peeler log supply within haulage distance, and that requirement, not the panel market, is what has repeatedly forced the industry to move.

The resin supply chain sits alongside the wood one and is easy to overlook. Formaldehyde-based adhesives depend on methanol and urea, which come from natural gas, so a panel plant is exposed to the gas price described on the natural gas and urea pages as well as to the log price. A resin shortage stops a plywood mill as effectively as a log shortage.

In the seaborne trade, panels move in containers on standard routes and the physical bottlenecks are ordinary port and container-availability constraints rather than anything specific to wood. The real chokepoints are regulatory: a duty determination, a formaldehyde standard or a legality requirement can remove an origin from a market within a quarter, and because panel grades are substitutable, buyers switch source countries rather than reduce purchases.

The structural vulnerability is species and origin documentation. As deforestation and legality rules tighten, mills that cannot trace the veneer in every layer of a panel back to a legal, deforestation-free source will lose access to the highest-value markets, and that pressure falls hardest on operations buying mixed tropical logs on open markets.

## Key companies

- Sveza: birch plywood producer, Russia
- UPM: plywood producer, Finland, listed (UPM)
- Metsä Wood: plywood and LVL producer, Finland
- Georgia-Pacific: panel producer, United States
- Boise Cascade: plywood and LVL producer, United States, listed (BCC)
- Samko Timber: tropical plywood producer, Indonesia, listed (E6R)

## Timeline

- 1905: Rotary-peeled plywood is shown at the Portland exposition. Panels made by peeling Douglas fir on a lathe demonstrated that large, stable sheets could be produced industrially, and the Pacific Northwest became the first centre of the industry. (https://www.apawood.org/apas-history)
- 1934: Waterproof adhesive makes exterior plywood possible. Phenolic resins that survived weather and moisture turned plywood from an interior material into a structural one and opened the sheathing and formwork markets that still dominate demand. (https://www.apawood.org/apas-history)
- 1978: Oriented strand board enters commercial production. A structural panel made from small, low-grade wood chips began taking the North American sheathing market from plywood, a substitution that has continued for four decades. (https://www.apawood.org/osb)
- 1985: Indonesia bans raw log exports. Forcing logs to be processed at home moved the world's tropical plywood industry to Southeast Asia within a few years, and Indonesia and Malaysia dominated the trade into the 1990s. (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02762230)
- 1993-05: Plywood sets its all-time high, nominal and real. Restrictions on Pacific Northwest old-growth logging removed peeler supply from the largest producing region at once, and the Tokyo import quotation reached a peak it has never approached since. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets)
- 2004: California proposes formaldehyde emission limits. Limits on emissions from composite wood products, later adopted nationally in the United States, forced adhesive reformulation and testing across the world's panel industry. (https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/composite-wood-products)
- 2008-05: The United States extends the Lacey Act to wood. Importers became responsible for the legality of their supply chain, a particular problem for panels because a single sheet can contain veneer from many logs and species. (https://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant-imports/lacey-act)
- 2013-03: The EU Timber Regulation takes effect. Due diligence obligations in the largest import market began excluding panel suppliers who could not document the origin of every layer. (https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/forests/deforestation/eu-timber-regulation_en)
- 2018-01: United States duties reshape hardwood plywood imports. Antidumping and countervailing duties on Chinese hardwood plywood redirected sourcing to Vietnam, Cambodia and elsewhere within a year, showing how quickly panel trade moves around trade remedies. (https://www.trade.gov/us-antidumping-and-countervailing-duties)
- 2022-01: Russia bans roundwood exports and birch panel supply tightens. Restrictions on Russian wood, followed by sanctions, removed birch plywood from European markets and pushed buyers toward Chinese and South American alternatives. (https://www.euwid-wood-products.com/news/roundwood-sawnwood/russia-decides-on-roundwood-export-ban/)
- 2023-06: The EU deforestation regulation enters into force. Panels must eventually carry geolocated proof that no layer came from land deforested after 2020, the hardest documentation problem in the wood trade. (https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/forests/deforestation/regulation-deforestation-free-products_en)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most plywood

China produced 60.4 million m3 of plywood and laminated veneer lumber in 2024, 53% of the world's 113.3 million m3 (FAOSTAT forestry). India was second with 11%. Only 11% of world output came from outside the top ten.

### which country exports the most plywood

China exported the most plywood and laminated panels (HS 4412) by value in 2024, 27% of world trade worth $16.9 billion (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 19%. Panels trade far more readily than logs because they are standard-sized and high in value per cubic meter.

### how is plywood made

A conditioned log is rotated against a knife in a lathe, unwinding a continuous ribbon of veneer one to four millimetres thick. The ribbon is clipped, dried and graded, then an odd number of sheets are glued with each layer's grain at right angles to its neighbor and pressed under heat until the adhesive cures.

### why is plywood priced per sheet

The World Bank series quotes US cents per sheet of a specified size on a Tokyo import basis, which makes it consistent over time but specific to that grade. Structural softwood plywood, birch plywood and film-faced formwork panel are all priced separately by private assessment or mill negotiation and do not track this series.

### what is the difference between plywood and OSB

Plywood is made from thin sheets of veneer peeled from large logs and cross-laminated; oriented strand board is made from small wood chips bonded under pressure. OSB uses cheaper, smaller wood and costs less, so it has taken most of the North American sheathing market, while plywood keeps uses needing bending strength, screw holding or appearance.

### why did plywood production move to China

It followed peeler logs and labor cost. North America and Japan led while old-growth softwood was cheap, Indonesia and Malaysia took over after Indonesia's 1985 log export ban, and China then displaced both by importing veneer and logs and later growing poplar and eucalyptus plantations specifically for peeling.

### what moves plywood prices

Construction and concrete formwork demand, peeler log availability, competition from oriented strand board, trade duties, and the cost of formaldehyde-based adhesives, which are derived from natural gas. Duty decisions in particular can redirect trade flows within a single quarter.

## 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 does plywood come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/plywood/.

---

# Where does pork come from?

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

Pork comes mainly from China, which produced 57.1 million tonnes in 2024, 46% of the world's 125.3 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). United States (10%), Brazil (4.3%) and Spain (4%) follow; the top five together supply 68%. The biggest exporter of pork (HS 0203) is the United States (18% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Pigs are raised where grain and eaters are close together, because a pig needs no pasture, converts cereals into meat within months, and is eaten mostly in the country that raised it.

*Meat from pigs, the most eaten meat in China and the European Union and the most sensitive to disease outbreaks.* Also called: pig meat, swine meat, pigmeat, hog.

## Where does pork come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 57.1 million | 46% |
| 2 | United States | 12.6 million | 10% |
| 3 | Brazil | 5.4 million | 4.3% |
| 4 | Spain | 5 million | 4% |
| 5 | Russia | 4.9 million | 3.9% |
| 6 | Germany | 4.3 million | 3.4% |
| 7 | Vietnam | 3.8 million | 3% |
| 8 | Canada | 2.3 million | 1.8% |
| 9 | France | 2.1 million | 1.7% |
| 10 | Poland | 1.9 million | 1.5% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 21% |
| | World | 125.3 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 China produced 57.1 million tonnes, 46% of the world's 125.3 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). United States followed with 10%, then Brazil (4.3%), Spain (4%) and Russia (3.9%). The top five account for 68%, 171 countries reported output and 21% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +8% over the ten years to 2024 and +1% on the previous year.

A pig turns grain into meat faster and more efficiently than cattle and needs housing rather than land, so production concentrates where feed is cheap and where people eat pork. That puts the herd in China, the United States corn belt, Brazil and the pig belts of Spain, Germany and Denmark, close to feed mills rather than to grazing.

The figures count pig meat with the bone on a carcass basis, which is how the trade weighs it. Consumption is concentrated too: pork is the most eaten meat in China and the European Union, while religious restriction removes much of the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia from the market entirely.


## Who exports and imports pork?

### Exporters of meat of swine, fresh, chilled or frozen (HS 0203), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $6.5 billion | 18% |
| 2 | Spain | $6.3 billion | 17% |
| 3 | Germany | $4.1 billion | 11% |
| 4 | Canada | $3.3 billion | 8.9% |
| 5 | Brazil | $2.9 billion | 7.8% |
| 6 | Denmark | $2.9 billion | 7.8% |
| 7 | Netherlands | $2.8 billion | 7.6% |
| 8 | Belgium | $1.8 billion | 4.7% |
| 9 | France | $1.1 billion | 3% |
| 10 | Poland | $894.2 million | 2.4% |
| 11 | Mexico | $685 million | 1.9% |
| 12 | Chile | $622.6 million | 1.7% |
| 13 | Hungary | $518.4 million | 1.4% |
| 14 | Ireland | $439.6 million | 1.2% |
| 15 | Austria | $431.3 million | 1.2% |

### Importers of meat of swine, fresh, chilled or frozen (HS 0203), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Japan | $4.2 billion | 11% |
| 2 | Italy | $3 billion | 8% |
| 3 | Mexico | $2.9 billion | 7.9% |
| 4 | China | $2.3 billion | 6.3% |
| 5 | South Korea | $2.1 billion | 5.5% |
| 6 | Poland | $2 billion | 5.4% |
| 7 | Germany | $1.8 billion | 4.8% |
| 8 | United States | $1.5 billion | 4% |
| 9 | United Kingdom | $1.2 billion | 3.3% |
| 10 | Romania | $1.1 billion | 3.1% |
| 11 | Philippines | $1.1 billion | 2.9% |
| 12 | France | $976.1 million | 2.6% |
| 13 | Czechia | $932.2 million | 2.5% |
| 14 | Greece | $738.7 million | 2% |
| 15 | Netherlands | $695.5 million | 1.9% |

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

United States was the largest exporter of pork (HS 0203) in 2024 with 18% of world export value, ahead of Spain (17%), on world trade of $37 billion (CEPII BACI). Japan was the largest importer with 11%.

The largest producer also buys from abroad, which looks contradictory and is not. China's herd swings hard with disease and policy, and imports fill the gap while it is rebuilt; feet, ears and offal that earn little in western markets are worth carrying halfway around the world to Chinese buyers.

Pork is traded cut by cut rather than as carcasses. Italy buys legs for curing, Japan and South Korea chilled cuts at a premium, Mexico hams and shoulders for processing. Each part of the animal is sold into the market that values it most, which is why export earnings and export tonnage rank countries differently.


## What does pork cost?

### How it is priced

There is no pork price on this page. Lean hog futures are traded in the United States and cash settled to a reported carcass index, and this site does not carry them; no global pork benchmark exists at all, because disease status splits the world into markets that cannot trade with each other. Pigs are sold instead on packer contracts, most of them formula-priced off officially reported cash sales and off carcass grading for weight and lean meat percentage.

The visible references are government market reports: weekly reference prices for pig carcasses in the European Union, daily reported negotiated and formula purchases in the United States, and the cut-out values that packers publish for primal cuts. Producers not on a formula sell into regional spot markets or cooperative pools, and the gap between two national prices can persist for years, since a ban keeps meat from moving to where it is dear.


## What moves the price of pork?

### African swine fever

There is no effective commercial vaccine, mortality approaches total in infected herds, and outbreaks trigger culling and import bans. It has repeatedly removed a large share of a national herd within months, and rebuilding takes a year or more because breeding sows must be produced first.

### Feed cost

Corn and soybean meal make up most of the cost of raising a pig, so grain markets pass through to hog prices within a season. When feed is dear, producers cut sow numbers, which tightens pork supply about a year later, long after the grain price has moved on.

### The herd cycle

Roughly ten to eleven months separate the decision to breed a sow from a market hog, so production responds to today's price with a long lag. That delay produces the classic hog cycle of overshoot and correction, which is visible in every producing country's history.

### Market access and disease status

Access depends on veterinary status, not price. A single confirmed outbreak can close an export market overnight, and reopening it takes negotiation over regionalization, so trade flows redraw themselves around disease maps rather than around cost of production.

### Carcass balance

A pig arrives as a whole animal, and its value depends on selling every part. When demand for offal, fat or particular cuts weakens in one market, the packer either finds another buyer or discounts the whole carcass, so the price of pork in one country depends on appetites in another.

## How is pork produced?

A breeding herd of sows produces litters that are weaned at three to four weeks, grown on in nursery barns and finished on a cereal and oilseed meal diet, reaching slaughter weight at around six months. Genetics, feed formulation and housing are managed to a target lean meat percentage, because that is what the carcass will be graded and paid on.

At the plant, animals are stunned, dressed and split, and the carcass is chilled overnight before being graded and broken into primal cuts. Chilling is what makes the rest of the chain possible: chilled pork moves within a region and a short window, while frozen pork travels between continents.

Further processing takes a large share of output. Bellies are cured and smoked into bacon, legs are salted and dry-cured into hams that mature for months or years, trimmings are ground into sausage.


## What is pork used for?

Most pork is eaten fresh or processed, and processing matters more here than in other meats: cured hams, bacon, sausage and cooked products take a large share of consumption.

The by-products are extensive. Fat is rendered into lard and industrial tallow, skin and bone yield gelatin and collagen for food and pharmaceuticals, blood goes to plasma proteins and feed, and bristles to brushes. Intestines are the source of heparin, an anticoagulant with no easy synthetic substitute, and pig tissue is used in surgical grafts and heart valves, so a share of the animal ends up in medicine rather than food.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain runs from feed mill to barn to packing plant, and the packing plant is the choke. Slaughter capacity is concentrated in a small number of very large, labor-intensive plants, and pigs cannot wait: they keep growing on schedule, so when a plant stops, animals back up behind it within days and the loss is immediate and irreversible.

Beyond the plant, the chain splits by temperature. Chilled pork serves nearby markets on a short clock and earns the premium; frozen pork and offal fill containers for long voyages.

The structural risks are biological and regulatory. Herds are dense and disease moves fast through them, veterinary certification governs which markets are open, and both feed supply and slaughter capacity are concentrated enough that one failure at either end shows up in prices within a week.


## Timeline

- 2007: African swine fever reaches Georgia. The virus entered the Caucasus and spread to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia and Belarus in domestic pigs and wild boar, beginning the westward march that later reached the European Union. (https://www.woah.org/en/disease/african-swine-fever/)
- 2009-05: Trade bodies rule out pork bans over H1N1. A joint FAO, OIE, WHO and WTO statement said properly handled pork was not a source of infection and that trade measures on pigs had no basis in the animal health code, after the name swine flu had already closed markets. (https://www.woah.org/en/joint-wto-oie-who-fao-statement-on-a-h1n1-influenza/)
- 2018-08: African swine fever is confirmed in China. The first occurrence in Asia hit the country that raises most of the world's pigs, cutting the herd sharply and turning China into a large importer while it rebuilt. (https://www.woah.org/en/disease/african-swine-fever/)
- 2018-11: California voters pass Proposition 12. The measure barred the sale of pork from breeding pigs housed below a set space standard, regardless of where the pigs were raised, forcing housing changes on producers in other states and countries. (https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/AHFSS/AnimalCare/)
- 2021-07: African swine fever returns to the Americas. Detection in the Dominican Republic, and then Haiti, ended an absence of nearly forty years and put exporters across North and South America on alert. (https://www.woah.org/en/disease/african-swine-fever/)
- 2023-05: The Supreme Court upholds Proposition 12. In National Pork Producers Council v. Ross the court rejected the industry's commerce clause challenge, confirming that a single state's housing standards can set the terms for a national pork supply chain. (https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/21-468)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most pork

China produced 57.1 million tonnes in 2024, 46% of the world's 125.3 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). United States was second with 10%. The figures are carcass weight with the bone in, which is how the meat trade measures output. The top five producers accounted for 68%, from 171 countries reporting.

### what is african swine fever

A viral disease of domestic pigs and wild boar with mortality that can reach 100 percent and no commercial vaccine in general use. It reached Georgia in 2007, was confirmed in China in August 2018, and reappeared in the Dominican Republic in July 2021 after almost forty years absent from the Americas (WOAH).

### why does china import pork if it produces the most

Because its herd swings with disease and policy, and imports cover the gap while it is rebuilt. China also buys offal and cuts that earn little in western markets, so the trade is partly about matching each part of the carcass to the buyer who values it most.

### which country exports the most pork

United States, with 18% of world export value in 2024, just ahead of Spain at 17%, on world trade of $37 billion (CEPII BACI). Japan was the largest importer at 11%. Pork is traded cut by cut, so rankings by value and by tonnage differ.

### is there a pork price benchmark

Not one carried on this site. Lean hog futures trade in the United States and settle against a reported carcass index, but there is no global pork benchmark, because veterinary bans split the world into markets that cannot trade freely with one another. Most pigs are sold on formula contracts tied to reported cash sales.

### why do pork prices swing so much

Because supply answers slowly and disease answers fast. About ten to eleven months pass between breeding a sow and selling the pig, so producers respond to prices that have already changed, and an outbreak such as African swine fever can remove a large part of a national herd within a single season.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where does potash come from?

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

Potash comes mainly from Canada, which produced 15 million tonnes in 2025, 31% of the world's 49 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Russia (20%), China (13%) and Belarus (12%) follow; the top five together supply 82%. The biggest exporter of potassic fertilizers (HS 3104) is Canada (33% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Potassium chloride, standard grade, FOB Vancouver, was $386.9/t in August 2026, up 9% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Potash is the salt left behind when ancient inland seas dried up, so the mines sit on buried evaporite basins — the Devonian Prairie Evaporite beneath Saskatchewan, the Permian beds of the Urals and Belarus, the Zechstein of northern Germany — and on the Dead Sea, where the evaporation has never stopped.

*Potassium salts, mostly potassium chloride, mined from ancient seabed deposits and spread as fertilizer.* Also called: potassium chloride, muriate of potash, MOP, KCl, potassium fertilizer.

## Where does potash come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Canada | 15 million | 31% |
| 2 | Russia | 10 million | 20% |
| 3 | China | 6.3 million | 13% |
| 4 | Belarus | 6 million | 12% |
| 5 | Germany | 3 million | 6.1% |
| 6 | Laos | 2.4 million | 4.9% |
| 7 | Israel | 2 million | 4.1% |
| 8 | Jordan | 1.8 million | 3.7% |
| 9 | Chile | 600,000 | 1.2% |
| 10 | United States | 500,000 | 1% |
| | Rest of world | 350,000 | 2.9% |
| | World | 49 million | 100% |

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026.

Potash means potassium salts used as fertilizer, and in practice it means potassium chloride, sold as muriate of potash or MOP, which is around 60% potassium oxide equivalent. Production here is measured as K2O equivalent rather than as product weight, following the USGS, so a tonne in the table is roughly 1.6 tonnes of the pink granules a farmer actually buys. In 2025 Canada mined 15 million tonnes, 31% of the world's 49 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Russia was second with 10 million tonnes (20%), China third with 13% and Belarus fourth with 12%, ahead of Germany (6.1%) and Laos (4.9%). Output changed +5% from the previous year. Only 12 countries mine potash at all, and just 2.9% of world output comes from outside the top ten, which makes it the most geographically concentrated of the three major plant nutrients.

The geology explains the concentration. Potassium is abundant in the crust but almost never occurs in a form a plant can use, except where an arm of the sea was cut off and evaporated. As the water disappeared, salts crystallized in order of solubility: first carbonates, then gypsum, then common salt, and last of all the potassium and magnesium salts, sylvite and carnallite, which stay dissolved longest. Those final layers are thin, rare and were usually buried afterwards under later sediment, which is why potash mines are deep and few. The Devonian Prairie Evaporite runs under southern Saskatchewan and into Manitoba and North Dakota; Permian beds of the same kind lie beneath Solikamsk and Berezniki in the Russian Urals, beneath Soligorsk in Belarus, under the North German and English Zechstein, in the Delaware Basin of New Mexico, in Catalonia and in the Khorat Plateau of Laos and Thailand. The Dead Sea and the Chilean salars are the living version of the same process: brine is pumped into shallow ponds and the sun does the work.

Reserves, which the USGS defines as the part of identified resources that could be extracted economically at the time of the estimate, stood at 5.6 billion tonnes of K2O equivalent in 2025. Russia held 2 billion tonnes, 36% of the total, followed by Canada (20%), Laos (18%), Belarus (13%) and United States (3.9%) (USGS MCS). Four countries hold most of what is worth mining, and three of them lie in a band across the northern hemisphere that has nothing to do with where crops are grown. The fourth, Laos, is a recent arrival: deposits known for decades became worth developing when Chinese buyers wanted a supply that did not cross a sanctioned border.

That is the political fact underneath the geology. Potash is mined in a handful of northern countries and used overwhelmingly in the tropics and subtropics, on soils that lose potassium to leaching and on crops such as soybeans, oil palm, sugar cane, coffee and bananas that remove a great deal of it. Every tonne therefore has to travel a long way, usually by rail to a coast and then by bulk carrier, and the countries that need it most have almost none of their own. When sanctions closed the western export routes for Belarusian potash from 2021, the effect was felt in Brazil and Southeast Asia rather than in Europe.


## Who exports and imports potash?

Potash geology is concentrated: Canada, Russia and Belarus hold most of the mineable deposits, and sanctions on Belarus reshaped the trade after 2021.

### Exporters of mineral or chemical fertilizers, potassic (HS 3104), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Canada | $6.6 billion | 33% |
| 2 | Russia | $4.7 billion | 24% |
| 3 | Germany | $1.5 billion | 7.3% |
| 4 | Belarus | $1.1 billion | 5.3% |
| 5 | Israel | $991.4 million | 5% |
| 6 | Laos | $825.6 million | 4.1% |
| 7 | United States | $774.7 million | 3.9% |
| 8 | Jordan | $742.3 million | 3.7% |
| 9 | Uzbekistan | $548.3 million | 2.7% |
| 10 | Belgium | $310.3 million | 1.6% |
| 11 | Turkmenistan | $259.2 million | 1.3% |
| 12 | Spain | $237.8 million | 1.2% |
| 13 | China | $172.2 million | 0.9% |
| 14 | United Kingdom | $150.1 million | 0.8% |
| 15 | Chile | $139 million | 0.7% |

### Importers of mineral or chemical fertilizers, potassic (HS 3104), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | $4 billion | 20% |
| 2 | United States | $3.7 billion | 19% |
| 3 | China | $3.6 billion | 18% |
| 4 | India | $1.1 billion | 5.7% |
| 5 | Indonesia | $889.3 million | 4.5% |
| 6 | Malaysia | $565.8 million | 2.8% |
| 7 | Belgium | $408.4 million | 2% |
| 8 | Poland | $369.1 million | 1.8% |
| 9 | Australia | $346.9 million | 1.7% |
| 10 | Thailand | $327.8 million | 1.6% |
| 11 | France | $213.2 million | 1.1% |
| 12 | Colombia | $203.7 million | 1% |
| 13 | South Korea | $203.2 million | 1% |
| 14 | South Africa | $194.7 million | 1% |
| 15 | Netherlands | $184.1 million | 0.9% |

### Exporters of potassium chloride (HS 310420), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Canada | $6.5 billion | 36% |
| 2 | Russia | $4.6 billion | 25% |
| 3 | Germany | $1.1 billion | 6% |
| 4 | Belarus | $1.1 billion | 5.9% |
| 5 | Israel | $971.7 million | 5.4% |
| 6 | Laos | $821.8 million | 4.5% |
| 7 | Jordan | $723 million | 4% |
| 8 | United States | $601.8 million | 3.3% |
| 9 | Uzbekistan | $511.3 million | 2.8% |
| 10 | Turkmenistan | $259.2 million | 1.4% |
| 11 | Spain | $224.2 million | 1.2% |
| 12 | Chile | $130 million | 0.7% |
| 13 | Belgium | $95.3 million | 0.5% |
| 14 | China | $85.8 million | 0.5% |
| 15 | United Kingdom | $46.9 million | 0.3% |

### Importers of potassium chloride (HS 310420), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | $3.9 billion | 21% |
| 2 | United States | $3.6 billion | 20% |
| 3 | China | $3.6 billion | 20% |
| 4 | India | $1.1 billion | 5.9% |
| 5 | Indonesia | $874.3 million | 4.8% |
| 6 | Malaysia | $491.4 million | 2.7% |
| 7 | Belgium | $384.8 million | 2.1% |
| 8 | Poland | $350.4 million | 1.9% |
| 9 | Thailand | $313.8 million | 1.7% |
| 10 | Australia | $284.7 million | 1.6% |
| 11 | South Korea | $187.9 million | 1% |
| 12 | Colombia | $165 million | 0.9% |
| 13 | France | $164 million | 0.9% |
| 14 | Paraguay | $137.1 million | 0.8% |
| 15 | Morocco | $131.1 million | 0.7% |

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

In 2024 the largest exporter of potassic fertilizers (HS 3104) was Canada, with $6.6 billion, or 33% of the world's $20 billion of export value (CEPII BACI), ahead of Russia (24%), Germany (7.3%), Belarus (5.3%) and Israel (5%). Narrowing to potassium chloride alone under HS 310420, which is the bulk of the business, exports were worth $18.1 billion in 2024, with Canada at 36% and Russia at 25%. The largest importer of potassic fertilizer was Brazil with $4 billion, 20% of the world's $20 billion, then United States (19%), China (18%) and India (5.7%).

Two things in those tables deserve a second look. The first is that a large miner can also be a large importer: China mines a substantial share of world output and still buys heavily, because its own deposits are mostly brine operations in Qinghai and Xinjiang, far from the farms of the east and south, and because domestic output does not cover domestic demand. The second is Brazil, which imports a very large share of the world total while mining almost nothing, an exposure that makes potash a recurring subject in Brazilian industrial policy. Unlike phosphate and nitrogen, potash has almost no processing step that can be relocated: potassium chloride comes out of the mine essentially as the finished product, so the trade table is close to a direct map of the geology.


## What does potash cost?

- Potassium chloride, standard grade, FOB Vancouver: $386.9/t in August 2026; 12-month change +9%; 10-year change +87%; all-time high $1,202/t in April 2022; real high (2024 US$) $1,307/t in April 2022 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

Potash has no futures contract, no exchange and no daily settlement. It is a market of perhaps a dozen sellers and a very large number of buyers, and prices are established in two ways. Most tonnes move under annual or semi-annual contracts, above all the settlements negotiated with buying consortia in China and India, which are announced publicly and then act as a floor or ceiling for everyone else for months. The rest moves as spot cargoes into Brazil and Southeast Asia, and reporting agencies such as Argus, CRU and Profercy publish weekly assessments of those deals by grade and destination. Canadian producers have historically marketed their offshore tonnes jointly through an export association, and Russian and Belarusian producers did the same until that arrangement broke apart.

The series charted here is Potassium chloride, standard grade, FOB Vancouver. In August 2026 it stood at $386.9/t, up 9% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The record monthly average is $1,202/t, set in April 2022 when sanctions on Belarus met a strong crop market; unusually for a commodity with a long history, that same month is also the real high once US consumer prices are taken into account, at $1,307/t. The lowest month in a series that begins in 1960 was $22/t in January 1969. FOB Vancouver means the price of product loaded onto a ship at the British Columbia terminal, so it already contains the long rail haul from Saskatchewan but not the ocean freight; a CFR Brazil or CFR Southeast Asia quote adds that freight and is therefore always higher.

Grade and form change the number. Standard grade is a fine crystal that dissolves quickly and suits direct application and compound granulation; granular and coarse grades are compacted into larger particles so they can be bulk-blended with urea and DAP without segregating, and they command a premium. Soluble and white grades for fertigation and industry are priced higher again, and sulfate of potash, made where chloride would damage the crop, is a separate and much smaller market. The ambiguities worth remembering: production statistics are in K2O equivalent while prices are per tonne of product, so the two cannot be multiplied together; a published contract settlement is a headline number that large buyers may better in practice; and a single FOB origin is not a world price, because the freight from Vancouver to Brazil and from the Baltic to China are different businesses.


## What moves the price of potash?

### The annual China and India contracts

More than any other fertilizer, potash is priced by negotiation rather than by continuous trading, and the two settlements that matter are with Chinese and Indian buying groups. They are announced publicly, cover a large volume for a defined period, and immediately reset expectations for spot business everywhere else. A late settlement leaves the market drifting and inventories drawing down; an early one at a surprising level moves assessments in Brazil and Southeast Asia within days. Traders watch the negotiations themselves, not just the outcome.

### Producer discipline and the structure of supply

A handful of companies control most exportable supply, and for decades they marketed jointly through export associations that allocated volume between members and negotiated as a block. That structure supports price by matching supply to demand rather than running mines flat out. It is also fragile: when one large seller decides it would rather have volume than price, the arrangement can collapse and take the price with it, which is exactly what happened when the Belarusian marketing venture broke apart in 2013.

### Sanctions on Belarus and Russia

Two of the largest producers sit in countries under western sanctions and payment restrictions. The measures do not destroy capacity; they lengthen and complicate its route to market, forcing Belarusian tonnes away from Baltic ports toward Russian ones and toward buyers willing to transact. The result is a persistent gap between what is available in the Atlantic basin and what is available in Asia, and a structural discount for sanctioned material. Any change in the measures moves the price faster than any change in mine output.

### Brazilian and Southeast Asian demand

Potash demand is concentrated in tropical agriculture. Brazil's soybean, corn and sugar cane areas and the oil palm plantations of Indonesia and Malaysia sit on leached soils that hold potassium poorly and grow crops that remove it in quantity. Those buyers import nearly all of what they use, they buy on a seasonal calendar built around planting, and their purchasing decisions therefore drive the spot market. A weak Brazilian real or a poor palm oil price cuts potash volumes quickly.

### Crop prices and the deferral option

Like phosphorus and unlike nitrogen, potassium accumulates in the soil, so a farmer under financial pressure can cut or skip an application for a season and accept a small yield cost. Demand is consequently elastic in the short run and inelastic over several years, because the soil reserve has to be replaced eventually. This produces a characteristic pattern: a collapse in volumes when crop prices fall, followed by a sharper than expected rebound once margins recover and soil tests come back low.

### New capacity and very long lead times

A greenfield potash mine means sinking shafts through water-bearing rock to depths of a kilometer or more, and it takes the better part of a decade and billions of dollars before the first tonne appears. Projects are therefore approved at the top of the cycle and deliver into the bottom of the next one. Large additions under construction in Canada, together with the rapid build-out of capacity in Laos, will arrive whatever the price is when they do.

### Freight, rail and chokepoints

Potash is a low-value bulk cargo that is mined a long way from the sea, so logistics are a large share of delivered cost. Saskatchewan product moves by unit train through the Rockies to Vancouver and Portland, and a rail strike or a washout in the mountains stops exports outright. Russian and Belarusian material depends on Baltic and Black Sea terminals and on who will handle it. Ocean freight rates and Red Sea routing then decide the landed price in India and Southeast Asia.

## How is potash produced?

Two thirds or so of the world's potash comes from conventional underground mines several hundred meters to more than a kilometer deep. Continuous miners with rotating cutting heads chew a soft, banded ore of sylvite, halite and clay from long rooms, leaving pillars to hold up the roof, and the ore is conveyed to a shaft and hoisted. The great hazard is water: potash salts dissolve, so an inflow can destroy a mine, and shafts are sunk through the water-bearing strata above the ore by freezing the ground solid first. Several mines in the Urals and in Saskatchewan have been lost to flooding, and monitoring for brine inflow is a permanent preoccupation.

Where the ore is too deep or too broken to mine, it is dissolved in place. Solution mining pumps heated brine down a well, lets it saturate itself with potassium chloride in the ore body and pumps it back to surface, where the salt is recovered by cooling crystallization or by evaporation in ponds. The Dead Sea and the Chilean and Chinese salars work the same way without a mine at all: brine is drawn from the lake into shallow pans, sun and wind concentrate it, carnallite precipitates and is harvested and then decomposed to potassium chloride.

Whatever the route, the plant has to separate potassium chloride from ordinary salt, which is chemically similar and physically mixed with it. The main tool is froth flotation, in which reagents make sylvite particles hydrophobic so they cling to air bubbles and float while halite sinks. Heavy media separation, electrostatic separation and crystallization are used alongside it. The recovered crystals are dried, screened and sorted into grades: standard, a fine product that goes into compound fertilizer manufacture and direct application, and granular or coarse, made by compacting the fines between rollers into sheets that are broken and screened into hard particles matched to the size of urea and phosphate granules for blending. Sulfate of potash, needed for chloride-sensitive crops such as tobacco, potatoes and fruit, is made either from natural sulfate brines or by reacting potassium chloride with sulfuric acid in a Mannheim furnace, which is why it costs considerably more.


## What is potash used for?

Almost all potash is fertilizer. Potassium is the third of the major plant nutrients and it does not become part of the plant's structure the way nitrogen and phosphorus do; instead it regulates the opening and closing of stomata, moves sugars around the plant, activates enzymes and governs water balance, which is why a well-supplied crop stands up to drought, frost and disease better than a starved one. Deficiency shows as scorched leaf margins, weak stems and poor grain filling. The crops that take the most are those that build a lot of biomass or a lot of sugar: oil palm, sugar cane, soybeans, corn, bananas, potatoes and coffee.

The industrial remainder is small but old. Potassium chloride is used in water softening, in oil and gas drilling fluids where it stabilizes clay-rich shales, in de-icing and as a salt substitute in food. Potassium hydroxide, made by electrolysis of the chloride, is the base for soft soaps, for potassium carbonate used in glass and ceramics, and for a range of specialty chemicals; potassium nitrate goes into fertigation and pyrotechnics. Sulfate of potash serves the chloride-sensitive horticultural market. None of these uses is large enough to compete with agriculture for supply.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain has almost no processing step to relocate. Potassium chloride leaves the mine site as the finished product, so unlike phosphate and nitrogen there is no intermediate that a consuming country can import and upgrade at home. What that leaves is transport, and transport is the whole story. Saskatchewan's mines load unit trains that run west through the Rocky Mountain passes to bulk terminals at Vancouver and Portland, or south into the United States by rail; Russian and Belarusian mines rail their output to Baltic and Black Sea ports; German mines ship down the Elbe and Weser; Dead Sea potash goes to Ashdod and Aqaba; Laotian potash trucks and rails north into China.

On the receiving side the flows are equally few and equally fixed. Brazil discharges at Paranaguá, Santos, São Francisco do Sul and Vila do Conde before an inland haul that can be longer than the ocean voyage. China takes seaborne cargoes at northern ports and land shipments across its southern border. India discharges on both coasts, and Southeast Asian palm oil plantations are supplied through Malaysian and Indonesian ports. Because the product is inert, non-hazardous and stores well, buyers hold real inventory and can wait, which is part of why the price moves in steps rather than continuously.

The single points of failure are rail, water and law. A washout or a labor dispute on the Canadian rail network can halt a third of world exports without touching a mine. Water inflow can take a large mine out of service for years, and has. Sanctions on two large producers have already redrawn the map once, and any further measure or its removal would do so again. Finally, the concentration of reserves in four countries means that the buyers who depend on potash most, in South America, Africa and Southeast Asia, have no domestic alternative at all, which is why import terminals, long-term contracts and, more recently, exploration in Brazil and Ethiopia are treated as questions of national policy rather than of procurement.


## Key companies

- Nutrien: potash and nitrogen producer and crop input retailer, Canada, listed (NTR)
- The Mosaic Company: phosphate and potash producer, United States, listed (MOS)
- K+S: potash, magnesium and salt producer, Germany, listed (SDF)
- ICL Group: specialty minerals and fertilizer producer with a Dead Sea potash business, Israel, listed (ICL)
- Arab Potash Company: Dead Sea potash producer, Jordan, listed
- SQM: potassium, lithium and iodine producer from Chilean brines, Chile, listed (SQM)
- BHP: diversified miner developing the Jansen potash mine, Australia, listed (BHP)
- EuroChem Group: nitrogen, phosphate and potash producer, Switzerland

## Timeline

- 1861-01: The first potash factory opens at Stassfurt. German works began recovering potassium salts from the Stassfurt evaporites in 1861, creating the potash industry and giving Germany a near-monopoly for half a century. (https://d-eiti.de/en/report/salts/)
- 1943-01: Potash found under Saskatchewan. Drilling for oil identified potash in the Devonian evaporites of the Canadian prairies, the deposit that would eventually make Canada the largest producer. (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1285785/000161803422000004/finalesterhazysk1300tech.htm)
- 1962-09: First production at Esterhazy. Saskatchewan's first successful potash mine started up after ground freezing solved the water inflows that had defeated earlier attempts, opening the province's mining era. (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1285785/000161803422000004/finalesterhazysk1300tech.htm)
- 1964-01: Solution mining begins at Belle Plaine. Dissolving the ore in place rather than cutting it made deep Saskatchewan deposits workable and remains one of the lowest-cost routes to potassium chloride. (https://esask.uregina.ca/entry/kalium_chemicals.html)
- 1975-11: Saskatchewan moves to take over its potash mines. The provincial announcement of 12 November 1975 led to the creation of a state potash company, the ancestor of the world's largest producer today. (https://esask.uregina.ca/entry/potash_industry.html)
- 2010-08: BHP launches a hostile bid for PotashCorp. The largest takeover attempt in fertilizer history turned potash into a question of national strategic assets and ended without a deal that November. (https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000855931&type=SC+14D9&dateb=&owner=include&count=40)
- 2013-07: Uralkali walks out of the Belarusian Potash Company. The announcement of 29 July 2013 broke up a marketing venture that had handled a large share of world exports, and the potash price fell to multi-year lows. (https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2013-08-07/russia-breaks-cooperation-belarus-exporting-potash-fertilisers)
- 2018-01: Nutrien is created. The merger of PotashCorp and Agrium completed on 2 January 2018 formed the largest potash producer and crop input retailer in one company. (https://www.nutrien.com/news/press-releases/agrium-and-potashcorp-merger-completed-forming-nutrien-a-leader-in-global-agriculture-1551)
- 2021-06: The European Union bans Belarusian potash imports. The prohibition of 24 June 2021 removed a top-four supplier from the European market and started the redirection of Belarusian tonnes eastward. (https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0315)
- 2021-08: United States sanctions Belaruskali. The designation of 9 August 2021 put one of the largest potash producers under US sanctions and forced buyers and shippers worldwide to reassess the trade. (https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0315)
- 2021-08: BHP approves the Jansen mine. The decision of 17 August 2021 committed billions of dollars to the largest new potash mine in decades, adding a new producer to a market of very few. (https://magazine.cim.org/en/news/2021/long-awaited-bhp-jansen-potash-project-approved-en/)
- 2021-12: United States sanctions the Belarusian Potash Company. Designating the export arm on 2 December 2021, rather than only the miner, cut Belarusian potash off from much of the world market and tightened supply into 2022. (https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0512)
- 2023-10: Jansen stage two approved. A second tranche of investment on 31 October 2023 roughly doubled the planned mine, the largest single addition to future world potash supply. (https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2023/10/31/2769873/0/en/BHP-approves-C-6-4-billion-for-stage-two-of-the-Jansen-potash-project-doubling-investment-in-Canada-and-potash.html)
- 2026-05: Gulf shipping disruption lifts fertilizer prices. The World Bank reported that export disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz pushed its fertilizer index to its highest level since 2022, with potash rising alongside nitrogen and phosphate. (https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/opendata/fertilizer-prices-surge-as-strait-of-hormuz-disruptions-tighten-)

## Frequently asked questions

### Where does potash come from?

From buried salt beds left by ancient seas, and from brines such as the Dead Sea. In 2025 the world mined 49 million tonnes of K2O equivalent across just 12 countries (USGS MCS), led by Canada with 31%, Russia with 20% and China with 13%. The main deposits lie under Saskatchewan, the Urals, Belarus, Germany and Laos.

### Which country produces the most potash?

Canada mines more potash than any other country. In 2025 it produced 15 million tonnes of K2O equivalent, 31% of the world's 49 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Russia followed with 20% and China with 13%. Output is measured as potassium oxide equivalent, so a tonne here is roughly 1.6 tonnes of the potassium chloride a farmer buys.

### Which country has the most potash reserves?

Russia holds the largest potash reserves, 2 billion tonnes of K2O equivalent in 2025, or 36% of the world's 5.6 billion tonnes (USGS MCS). Canada (20%), Laos (18%) and Belarus (13%) follow. Reserves are the part of known deposits that could be mined economically at the time of the estimate, so the figure moves with prices.

### Which country exports the most potash?

Canada was the largest exporter of potassic fertilizers (HS 3104) in 2024, with $6.6 billion, 33% of the world's $20 billion of export value (CEPII BACI), ahead of Russia (24%) and Germany (7.3%). Because potash needs no processing after the mine, the export ranking follows the mining ranking closely, unlike phosphate or nitrogen.

### Who imports the most potash?

Brazil was the largest importer in 2024, taking $4 billion, or 20% of the world's $20 billion of imports (CEPII BACI), followed by United States (19%) and China (18%). Tropical farming regions dominate the buying side because leached soils and high-biomass crops remove more potassium than temperate systems do.

### What is potash used for?

Almost entirely as fertilizer. Potassium regulates water balance, moves sugars around the plant and activates enzymes, so a well-supplied crop resists drought and disease better. Oil palm, sugar cane, soybeans, corn and potatoes take the most. Industrial uses are small: water softening, drilling fluids, soaps, glass and a salt substitute. The world mined 49 million tonnes in 2025 (USGS MCS).

### What is the price of potash?

This site shows monthly averages, not live quotes. The Potassium chloride, standard grade, FOB Vancouver assessment was $386.9/t in August 2026, up 9% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The record monthly average was $1,202/t in April 2022. There is no futures market, so most tonnes are priced under annual contracts negotiated with buyers in China and India.

### What is muriate of potash?

Muriate of potash, or MOP, is potassium chloride, the form in which nearly all potash is sold. It is about 60% potassium oxide equivalent, which is why production statistics in K2O do not match product tonnages. Sulfate of potash is the alternative for crops damaged by chloride, and it costs more. The MOP benchmark was $386.9/t in August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### Why did potash prices spike in 2022?

Sanctions on Belarus from 2021 removed a top-four exporter from western markets at the same time as strong crop prices raised demand, and the invasion of Ukraine added a second large exporter to the risk list. The Potassium chloride, standard grade, FOB Vancouver series reached its record monthly average of $1,202/t in April 2022 and was -44% against five years earlier by August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

## Sources

- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries
- 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 2026-09-06. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where does potash come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/potash/.

---

# Where do potatoes come from?

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

Potatoes come mainly from China, which produced 94.8 million tonnes in 2024, 24% of the world's 390.3 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India (15%), Ukraine (5.4%) and United States (4.9%) follow; the top five together supply 54%. The biggest exporter of potatoes (HS 0701) is France (21% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Potatoes yield more food per hectare than any cereal and keep for months in a cool shed, so they are grown wherever a cool growing season meets a large population, and nearly all of the crop is eaten in the country that grew it.

*A tuber staple that stores well but travels badly, so most of it is eaten in the country that grew it.* Also called: potato, spuds, seed potatoes.

## Where do potatoes come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 94.8 million | 24% |
| 2 | India | 57.1 million | 15% |
| 3 | Ukraine | 21.1 million | 5.4% |
| 4 | United States | 19.1 million | 4.9% |
| 5 | Russia | 18.4 million | 4.7% |
| 6 | Germany | 12.7 million | 3.3% |
| 7 | Bangladesh | 10.6 million | 2.7% |
| 8 | France | 9.2 million | 2.4% |
| 9 | Pakistan | 8.4 million | 2.2% |
| 10 | Egypt | 8.1 million | 2.1% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 34% |
| | World | 390.3 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 China produced 94.8 million tonnes, 24% of the world's 390.3 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India followed with 15%, then Ukraine (5.4%), United States (4.9%) and Russia (4.7%). The top five account for 54%, 154 countries reported output and 34% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +6% over the ten years to 2024 and +1% on the previous year.

Chinese output is spread across the north and the southwest, India's is a winter crop on the Gangetic plain, and Ukraine, Russia and Belarus grow enormous quantities on smallholdings and household plots. Northwest Europe and the American Pacific Northwest grow fewer tonnes but grow them for factories. The Andes, where the crop was domesticated, still hold thousands of native varieties that never enter trade.

Production and trade have very little to do with each other here. A potato is mostly water, so moving potatoes any distance means paying to move water, and freight soon costs more than the crop is worth. Most of what is grown is eaten within a few hundred kilometers of the field.

## Who exports and imports potatoes?

### Exporters of potatoes, fresh or chilled (HS 0701), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | France | $1.5 billion | 21% |
| 2 | Netherlands | $1.2 billion | 17% |
| 3 | Germany | $903.1 million | 13% |
| 4 | Egypt | $465.7 million | 6.5% |
| 5 | Canada | $400.8 million | 5.6% |
| 6 | United States | $349.2 million | 4.9% |
| 7 | Belgium | $310.9 million | 4.3% |
| 8 | China | $261.4 million | 3.7% |
| 9 | Spain | $220.9 million | 3.1% |
| 10 | United Kingdom | $214.8 million | 3% |
| 11 | Pakistan | $168.8 million | 2.4% |
| 12 | India | $121.1 million | 1.7% |
| 13 | Israel | $93.9 million | 1.3% |
| 14 | Denmark | $89.3 million | 1.2% |
| 15 | Italy | $82.3 million | 1.1% |

### Importers of potatoes, fresh or chilled (HS 0701), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Belgium | $941.4 million | 13% |
| 2 | Netherlands | $626 million | 8.7% |
| 3 | Spain | $565.5 million | 7.9% |
| 4 | Germany | $382 million | 5.3% |
| 5 | United States | $378.3 million | 5.3% |
| 6 | Italy | $367.8 million | 5.1% |
| 7 | France | $270.5 million | 3.8% |
| 8 | Portugal | $218.7 million | 3.1% |
| 9 | Egypt | $164.6 million | 2.3% |
| 10 | Mexico | $132 million | 1.8% |
| 11 | Greece | $129.8 million | 1.8% |
| 12 | United Kingdom | $115 million | 1.6% |
| 13 | Romania | $112.3 million | 1.6% |
| 14 | Malaysia | $99.5 million | 1.4% |
| 15 | Vietnam | $96.2 million | 1.3% |

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

France was the largest exporter of potatoes (HS 0701) in 2024 with 21% of world export value, ahead of Netherlands (17%), on world trade of $7.2 billion (CEPII BACI). Belgium was the largest importer with 13%.

The fresh trade counted here is short-haul and specialized: early-season crop into neighboring markets, and seed potatoes, which are certified, disease-tested and worth several times a table potato. France, the Netherlands and Germany trade heavily with each other and ship seed to Africa and the Middle East.

Belgium standing as the largest importer is a processing story rather than a consumption one: it buys raw potatoes to fry, freeze and re-export. The larger trades by value are frozen products and starch, both under different codes, and neither appears in the figures above.

## What do potatoes cost?

### How they are priced

There is no world futures market for potatoes and no free public benchmark price, so this site quotes none. Most of the crop never meets a market price at all. Processing potatoes are contracted before planting at a price per tonne, with deductions for undersize, greening, bruising and low dry matter, and seed is sold by variety and certified class.

The free-buy market, where uncontracted potatoes change hands, is a small residue of the crop and swings violently, because demand barely moves with price while supply is fixed once the crop is lifted. Wholesale market reports and national statistical agencies publish those spot prices, and they are the visible reference, but they describe the tail rather than the body of the market.

## What moves the price of potatoes?

### Contracted acreage

Processors contract acreage before planting to match factory capacity, so most of the crop's price is fixed before anything is known about the season. The uncontracted remainder absorbs all of the surprise, which is why free-buy prices can double or halve in a year while contracted growers see no change at all.

### Late blight

Phytophthora infestans destroys foliage in the field and rots tubers in store, spreads in cool wet weather, and evolves past both fungicides and bred-in resistance. Growers spray on calendar and forecast schedules through the season, so a wet summer raises cost and cuts yield at the same time.

### Storage and sprout control

A crop lifted in weeks has to be sold over a year, so storage decides how much reaches the market and when. Tubers must be kept cool enough not to sprout but warm enough that starch does not turn to sugar, and the withdrawal of older sprout suppressants in Europe has pushed growers onto costlier alternatives.

### Frozen fry demand

Demand for frozen fries grows with fast food and freezer ownership, and it is met by a small number of very large factories. Where that capacity is built decides which regions can sell a processing crop at all, and a new plant reshapes contracting in its catchment for years afterward.

### Seed supply and certification

Table and processing crops are grown from certified seed tubers multiplied through several field generations. Disease found in an early generation propagates forward for years, and a phytosanitary finding can close access to a seed-exporting country, which constrains planting far from where the problem arose.

## How are potatoes produced?

Potatoes are grown from seed tubers rather than true seed, so a crop is a clone of its parent. Certified seed begins as disease-free plantlets in tissue culture, becomes minitubers in a screenhouse, and is multiplied through a fixed number of field generations before sale, because virus load rises with each one.

Seed is planted into ridges, which give the tubers loose soil and keep light off them. The crop is irrigated and sprayed against blight through the summer. Before harvest the haulm, the leafy top, is killed off chemically or mechanically so the skins set and the tubers stop growing, then a harvester lifts the ridge, separates soil and stones, and loads the crop.

Tubers are cured for a week or two at higher temperature so wounds heal, then cooled and stored in the dark. Storage temperature depends on destination: colder for table potatoes, warmer for frying and crisping stock, because cold storage builds up sugars that turn fried product dark and bitter.

## What are potatoes used for?

Potatoes are eaten fresh, made into frozen fries and wedges, sliced into crisps, dried into flakes and granules for mash and snack manufacture, and processed for starch. Potato starch goes into food but also into paper, adhesives and textiles, and it is fermented into alcohol.

By-products are substantial. Peel and pulp from processing go to cattle, and starch factories recover potato protein and a concentrated fruit juice used as fertilizer and as a feed ingredient.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

Storage is the whole chain. A crop is lifted in a few weeks and consumed over a year, so the buildings, ventilation and sprout control between those two points decide how much survives and in what condition. A store that runs warm or damp loses a season's crop quietly, over months, rather than in one visible event.

Processing is concentrated in the Low Countries, northern France, the American Pacific Northwest and Canada, in plants sized to a local catchment because raw material cannot travel far. Frozen product then moves worldwide in refrigerated containers, which is how a crop that barely trades in raw form ends up on every continent.

The single points of failure are seed and blight. Seed multiplication is a narrow pipeline in which one disease finding propagates for years, and blight populations shift faster than resistant varieties can be bred, registered and planted.

## Timeline

- 1500s: The potato leaves the Andes. A crop domesticated in the high Andes reached Europe and then the world, becoming the staple that supports the largest production totals today. (https://cipotato.org/potato/potato-facts-and-figures/)
- 1845: Late blight reaches Ireland. A single pathogen lineage destroyed a monoculture staple, killed about a million people and drove as many abroad, and the disease remains the crop's central problem. (https://elifesciences.org/articles/00731)
- 1940s: The first commercially viable frozen french fries are made. Freezing turned a heavy perishable crop into a light, storable, globally traded product, and created the processing demand that shapes potato growing today. (https://www.simplot.com/company/our-founder)
- 1971: The International Potato Center is founded in Lima. A research center at the crop's center of origin took on the genebank and breeding work that supplies varieties to developing-country growers. (https://cipotato.org/about/)
- 1980s: New blight lineages displace the old ones worldwide. Migration of Mexican-origin strains replaced the long-dominant lineage and gave the pathogen the ability to reproduce sexually, making control harder. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5193357/)
- 2008: The United Nations marks the International Year of the Potato. A crop grown mostly for domestic consumption was pushed onto the food security agenda, prompting expansion programs in Asia and Africa. (https://www.fao.org/agriculture/crops/core-themes/theme/hort-indust-crops/international-year-of-the-potato/en/)
- 2011-07: The potato genome is published. A reference genome gave breeders the tools to work on blight resistance and storage traits in a crop that is slow and awkward to breed conventionally. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21743474/)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most potatoes

China produced 94.8 million tonnes in 2024, 24% of the world's 390.3 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India was second with 15%. Both grow overwhelmingly for their own populations, so neither appears near the top of the export table. World output changed +6% over the ten years to 2024.

### why are potatoes not traded much internationally

Because they are heavy, mostly water, and perishable enough that freight costs more than the crop is worth over any distance. World production reached 390.3 million tonnes in 2024 (FAOSTAT) but fresh trade is small and short-haul. What does travel is seed potatoes, frozen fries and starch.

### which country exports the most potatoes

France led exports of potatoes (HS 0701) in 2024 with 21% of world export value, ahead of Netherlands (17%), on world trade of $7.2 billion (CEPII BACI). Much of that is seed potatoes and short-haul trade between neighbors rather than long-distance shipping. Frozen fries and starch move under separate codes and are worth considerably more.

### what caused the irish potato famine

Late blight, caused by the oomycete Phytophthora infestans, which reached Ireland in 1845 and rotted a crop that much of the population depended on almost exclusively. About a million people died and a million more emigrated. The same disease is still the main threat to potato crops.

### what are seed potatoes

Tubers grown specifically for planting rather than eating. Potatoes are propagated by cloning, so seed must be kept as free of virus and disease as possible. It starts from plantlets in tissue culture and is multiplied through a limited number of field generations under inspection before it is certified and sold.

### how long can potatoes be stored

Most of a year, which is why a crop lifted in a few weeks can be eaten all year round. Tubers are cured so wounds heal, then held cool and dark with sprouting suppressed. The temperature depends on use: colder for table potatoes, warmer for frying stock so sugars do not build up.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where does quinoa come from?

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

Quinoa comes mainly from Peru, which produced 114,462 tonnes in 2024, 69% of the world's 165,893 tonnes (FAOSTAT). Bolivia (30%), Ecuador (0.7%) and Bhutan (<0.1%) follow; the top five together supply 100%. The biggest exporter of quinoa (HS 100850) is Peru (46% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Quinoa evolved on the cold, saline, high-altitude altiplano around Lake Titicaca, where frost and thin air defeat most cereals, and the two countries that share that plateau, Peru and Bolivia, still grow essentially all of it.

*A high-altitude Andean seed eaten like a grain, which went from local staple to global export crop.* Also called: quinua, chenopodium quinoa.

## Where does quinoa come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Peru | 114,462 | 69% |
| 2 | Bolivia | 50,262 | 30% |
| 3 | Ecuador | 1,129 | 0.7% |
| 4 | Bhutan | 40.1 | <0.1% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | <0.1% |
| | World | 165,893 | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 Peru produced 114,462 tonnes, 69% of the world's 165,893 tonnes (FAOSTAT). Bolivia followed with 30%, then Ecuador (0.7%) and Bhutan (<0.1%). The top five account for 100%, only 4 countries reported a crop at all and <0.1% came from anywhere else. World production changed -11% over the ten years to 2024 and +45% on the previous year.

That is the most concentrated production table on this site, and it is partly a statistical artifact. Quinoa is sown in dozens of countries across Europe, North America, Asia and east Africa, but usually in quantities too small or too new to appear in national statistics, so the table understates how far the crop has traveled.

The plant is not a cereal. It is a seed-bearing goosefoot, related to spinach and beet, and its tolerance of frost, drought and salt is what let Andean farmers grow food at altitudes where maize and wheat fail. Peru grows it both in the highlands and, since the boom, on irrigated coastal valleys that yield far more per hectare.


## Who exports and imports quinoa?

### Exporters of quinoa (HS 100850), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Peru | $135.7 million | 46% |
| 2 | Bolivia | $85.9 million | 29% |
| 3 | Spain | $9 million | 3% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $8.2 million | 2.8% |
| 5 | Germany | $8.1 million | 2.7% |
| 6 | Canada | $7.5 million | 2.5% |
| 7 | United States | $7 million | 2.4% |
| 8 | Italy | $6.8 million | 2.3% |
| 9 | India | $5.5 million | 1.9% |
| 10 | France | $4 million | 1.4% |
| 11 | Belgium | $3.5 million | 1.2% |
| 12 | Ecuador | $1.7 million | 0.6% |
| 13 | Slovenia | $1.2 million | 0.4% |
| 14 | Poland | $1.1 million | 0.4% |
| 15 | Austria | $1.1 million | 0.4% |

### Importers of quinoa (HS 100850), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $102.8 million | 35% |
| 2 | Germany | $19.9 million | 6.7% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $16.9 million | 5.7% |
| 4 | Canada | $16.8 million | 5.7% |
| 5 | Italy | $14 million | 4.7% |
| 6 | France | $11.7 million | 4% |
| 7 | China | $10.9 million | 3.7% |
| 8 | Spain | $8 million | 2.7% |
| 9 | United Kingdom | $7 million | 2.4% |
| 10 | Belgium | $6.9 million | 2.3% |
| 11 | Israel | $5.6 million | 1.9% |
| 12 | Australia | $5.3 million | 1.8% |
| 13 | Mexico | $4.3 million | 1.4% |
| 14 | Austria | $3.6 million | 1.2% |
| 15 | Chile | $3.5 million | 1.2% |

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

Peru was the largest exporter of quinoa (HS 100850) in 2024 with 46% of world export value, ahead of Bolivia (29%), on world trade of $295.8 million (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 35%.

Unlike most crops without a price benchmark, quinoa is genuinely export-oriented. A large share of what Peru and Bolivia grow leaves the region, and the buyers are supermarkets and food manufacturers in rich countries rather than neighboring states, which makes the crop unusually exposed to shifts in retail fashion.

Several European entries in the export table are re-exports. Quinoa arrives in bulk at Rotterdam, Antwerp or Spanish ports, is cleaned, sorted, packed and often certified organic, then moves on into the European market, so a share of the trade counted from Spain and the Netherlands was grown in the Andes.


## What does quinoa cost?

### How it is priced

There is no futures market for quinoa and no free public benchmark price, so this site quotes none. It sells on negotiated contracts between Andean exporters and importers, priced per tonne fob Callao and the Pacific ports that serve Bolivia, and differentiated by color, grain size, organic certification and pesticide residue compliance. Peru and Bolivia publish producer price series through their agriculture ministries.

The premium structure matters more than any single number. Organic and fair trade lots, and Bolivian royal quinoa from the salt flats, sell well above conventional coastal grain, and a lot that fails a residue test at the buyer's laboratory can lose its market entirely. Government purchases are minor, confined to school feeding and social programs in the producing countries.


## What moves the price of quinoa?

### Coastal against highland economics

Irrigated coastal fields in Peru yield several times what a highland plot does and take two crops a year, so when coastal area expands, world supply shifts quickly. Highland farmers, who cannot match those yields, are the first pushed out when the price falls.

### Residue testing and certification

Most of the crop is sold as a health food and buyers test it. Shipments rejected at destination in the middle of the last decade damaged confidence in Peruvian coastal quinoa and made traceability and lot-level testing a condition of the trade rather than a source of premium.

### Retail demand in a few rich markets

Demand rests on a narrow base of North American and European shoppers buying quinoa as a health food, and it moves with shelf space and dietary fashion rather than with population or income. A crop this small in tonnage is easily swamped by a modest change in supermarket buying.

### Frost and drought on the altiplano

Highland quinoa grows without irrigation at altitude, where a frost at flowering or a failed rainy season cuts the crop outright. Because the highland crop carries the varietal diversity and the premium origins, a bad altiplano season hits the top of the market hardest.

### New origins outside the Andes

Quinoa grows in dozens of countries and breeding programs are adapting it to temperate day lengths and lower saponin content. Every hectare sown in Europe, North America, India or east Africa is demand the Andes no longer supplies, and the crop has no origin protection.

## How is quinoa produced?

Quinoa is sown as the highland rains begin, or under irrigation on the Peruvian coast, and grows into a tall branching plant carrying dense seed heads that turn red, orange or yellow as they ripen. The crop is cut, dried and threshed, by hand on smallholdings and by combine on coastal fields.

Every quinoa seed is coated in saponins, bitter compounds the plant uses to deter birds and insects, and they must be removed before the grain is edible. Processors either wash the seed and dry it again, or abrade the coating off mechanically, or use both in sequence. Washing produces a saponin-laden effluent that has to be handled; dry polishing avoids that but takes some of the seed with it.

After desaponification the grain is dried to storage moisture, graded by size and cleaned of stones, soil and foreign seed with gravity separators and optical sorters. Color types are kept apart, and organic lots are segregated at every step to keep the certification intact.


## What is quinoa used for?

Nearly all of it is eaten as a grain: boiled whole as a side dish or salad base, milled into flour for gluten-free baking and pasta, flaked or puffed into breakfast cereals and bars, and used in infant foods for its protein quality. In the Andes it also goes into soups and doughs, and the leaves are eaten as a vegetable.

The by-products follow from processing. Saponins washed or abraded off the seed are recovered and sold into detergents, cosmetics and agricultural biopesticides. Broken grain and screenings go to livestock, and stalks and threshing residue are fed to animals or returned to the soil.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Collection is the hard part. Highland quinoa comes from thousands of very small plots, aggregated by cooperatives, associations and buying agents before it reaches a plant near Puno, Juliaca, Oruro or El Alto. Coastal Peruvian quinoa comes from far fewer, far larger farms and arrives at the same plants in truckloads.

Desaponification, sorting and packing concentrate in those plants, and export moves through Callao on the Peruvian coast and through the Pacific ports that serve landlocked Bolivia. Bolivia's dependence on foreign ports and long road hauls is a standing cost disadvantage against Peruvian coastal supply.

The chokepoint is the laboratory rather than the port. A residue failure or a lapsed certificate can strand a container at destination, and because the crop's value rests on its health-food positioning, that risk is priced into every contract and pushes buyers toward the largest and most auditable suppliers.


## Timeline

- 5000 BCE: Quinoa is domesticated in the Andes. Domestication five to seven thousand years ago produced a crop adapted to altitude, frost and salinity, and its cultivation later declined when wheat and barley arrived. (https://elifesciences.org/articles/66873)
- 2013: The UN runs an International Year of Quinoa. The campaign moved quinoa from a regional staple that had been stigmatized as indigenous food to an internationally sought grain, and demand followed. (https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/Successful-International-Year-of-Quinoa-2013-winds-down/en)
- 2013: Peru expands quinoa onto irrigated coastal valleys. Coastal fields yielding several times the highland average and harvesting twice a year multiplied national output within two seasons and undercut Andean smallholders. (https://nacla.org/2018-03-12-quinoa-boom-goes-bust-andes/)
- 2014: The price peaks and then falls. Supply overshot a still-growing demand, and a price that had risen for most of a decade fell back to a fraction of its peak over the following two years. (https://nacla.org/2018-03-12-quinoa-boom-goes-bust-andes/)
- 2015: United States ports reject Peruvian shipments. Containers turned back for exceeding pesticide residue limits, a consequence of chemical inputs used on new coastal ground, made residue testing central to the trade. (https://aesengagement.wordpress.com/2020/06/30/scandal-blame-and-the-politics-of-contamination-in-perus-quinoa-bust/)
- 2022: Genome-wide study confirms a short breeding history. Analysis showed quinoa has been under far less selective breeding than major cereals, which is why yields are low and why adapting it to temperate climates is straightforward. (https://elifesciences.org/articles/66873)
- 2022: Research maps saponin biosynthesis. Understanding the pathway that makes the seed coat bitter supports breeding sweet varieties that need no washing, removing a processing step and its effluent problem. (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2022.964558/full)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most quinoa

Peru produced 114,462 tonnes in 2024, 69% of the world's 165,893 tonnes (FAOSTAT). Bolivia was second with 30%, and the top three together accounted for 100%. Only 4 countries reported a quinoa crop to FAOSTAT, though the plant is sown experimentally in dozens more outside the Andes.

### is quinoa a grain

Not botanically. Quinoa is the seed of a goosefoot plant related to spinach and beet, so it is a pseudocereal rather than a grass like wheat or rice. It is cooked and eaten as a grain, contains no gluten, and is traded under its own customs heading.

### what are saponins and why is quinoa washed

Saponins are bitter compounds in the seed coat that the plant uses to deter birds and insects. They have to be removed before quinoa is edible, either by washing the seed and drying it again or by abrading the coating off mechanically. Some low-saponin varieties are described as sweet quinoa.

### why is quinoa expensive

Because much of it is grown on small highland plots at altitude, with low yields, hand labor and long road hauls, then washed or polished, graded, certified and shipped from the Andes. Organic, fair trade and Bolivian royal quinoa carry further premiums over conventional coastal grain.

### did the quinoa boom hurt farmers in bolivia and peru

The evidence is mixed. Prices rose sharply to a peak in 2014 and raised incomes for growers who had a crop to sell, then fell back as Peruvian coastal production expanded, which hurt highland smallholders who could not match coastal yields. Studies of local consumption have not found a simple picture.

### how is quinoa priced

By negotiated contract between Andean exporters and importers, priced per tonne fob and graded by color, grain size, organic certification and pesticide residue compliance. There is no futures contract and no published world benchmark. Peru and Bolivia publish producer price series through their agriculture ministries.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where do rare earths come from?

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

Rare earths come mainly from China, which produced 270,000 tonnes in 2025, 69% of the world's 390,000 tonnes (USGS MCS). United States (13%), Australia (7.4%) and Myanmar (5.6%) follow; the top five together supply 97%. The biggest exporter of rare-earth metals and compounds (HS 2805) is China (38% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Rare earths are not rare in the crust; what is rare is a deposit where they are concentrated enough, and in the right proportions, to be worth the enormous chemical effort of separating seventeen nearly identical elements from one another.

*A group of seventeen chemically similar metals, mined together and separated at great cost, used in magnets, catalysts and phosphors.* Also called: rare earth elements, REE, neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, NdPr, rare earth oxides.

## Where do rare earths come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 270,000 | 69% |
| 2 | United States | 51,000 | 13% |
| 3 | Australia | 29,000 | 7.4% |
| 4 | Myanmar | 22,000 | 5.6% |
| 5 | Thailand | 4,800 | 1.2% |
| 6 | India | 2,900 | 0.7% |
| 7 | Madagascar | 2,700 | 0.7% |
| 8 | Russia | 2,600 | 0.7% |
| 9 | Brazil | 2,000 | 0.5% |
| 10 | Nigeria | 1,500 | 0.4% |
| | Rest of world | 550 | 0.4% |
| | World | 390,000 | 100% |

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026.

In 2025 China mined 270,000 tonnes of rare-earth oxide equivalent, 69% of the world's 390,000 tonnes (USGS MCS). United States followed with 13%, then Australia (7.4%), Myanmar (5.6%) and Thailand (1.2%). The top five account for 97%. Reserves tell a less concentrated story: China holds 52% of the world's 85.3 million tonnes (USGS MCS).

Mining concentration understates the real position, and this is the single most important thing to understand about the sector. Separating the seventeen lanthanides plus scandium and yttrium from one another requires hundreds of stages of solvent extraction, because the elements differ so little chemically. That capacity is overwhelmingly Chinese, and so is the magnet-making capacity downstream. A country can mine rare earths without being able to do anything useful with them, which is exactly the position most non-Chinese producers have been in.

The deposits themselves come in a few types: carbonatites such as Bayan Obo in Inner Mongolia and Mountain Pass in California, which are rich in the light elements cerium, lanthanum, neodymium and praseodymium; ion-adsorption clays in southern China and Myanmar, which are the main source of the heavy elements dysprosium and terbium that magnets need for heat resistance; and mineral sands containing monazite, a by-product of titanium and zirconium mining.

Production means mined oxide equivalent, not separated oxides and certainly not magnets. World output changed +3% on the previous year, and the trend has been upward as non-Chinese mines opened, but the separation bottleneck has moved much less.

## Who exports and imports rare earths?

Mining is less concentrated than separation: China refines and separates the great majority of world oxide and makes most of the world's sintered magnets, so the mine map understates its position.

### Exporters of alkali and rare-earth metals; scandium and yttrium (HS 2805), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $422.1 million | 38% |
| 2 | Vietnam | $197.4 million | 18% |
| 3 | Australia | $128.2 million | 11% |
| 4 | France | $98.2 million | 8.8% |
| 5 | Germany | $66.9 million | 6% |
| 6 | United States | $53.8 million | 4.8% |
| 7 | Thailand | $45.1 million | 4% |
| 8 | Japan | $15.8 million | 1.4% |
| 9 | Malaysia | $12.6 million | 1.1% |
| 10 | Netherlands | $12.5 million | 1.1% |
| 11 | Singapore | $8.8 million | 0.8% |
| 12 | Kyrgyzstan | $6.3 million | 0.6% |
| 13 | Mexico | $5 million | 0.4% |
| 14 | Russia | $4.2 million | 0.4% |
| 15 | India | $3.8 million | 0.3% |

### Importers of alkali and rare-earth metals; scandium and yttrium (HS 2805), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Japan | $279.6 million | 25% |
| 2 | Malaysia | $129.3 million | 12% |
| 3 | United States | $91.7 million | 8.2% |
| 4 | India | $66.8 million | 6% |
| 5 | France | $48.2 million | 4.3% |
| 6 | Vietnam | $43.8 million | 3.9% |
| 7 | China | $42.4 million | 3.8% |
| 8 | Germany | $39.4 million | 3.5% |
| 9 | Singapore | $35.6 million | 3.2% |
| 10 | Other Asia, nes | $34 million | 3% |
| 11 | United Kingdom | $26.1 million | 2.3% |
| 12 | South Korea | $25.6 million | 2.3% |
| 13 | Thailand | $18.6 million | 1.7% |
| 14 | Canada | $18.3 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | Poland | $17.1 million | 1.5% |

### Exporters of compounds of rare-earth metals, other (HS 284690), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Myanmar | $817.8 million | 34% |
| 2 | Malaysia | $386.7 million | 16% |
| 3 | China | $380.8 million | 16% |
| 4 | Laos | $259.6 million | 11% |
| 5 | Japan | $150 million | 6.3% |
| 6 | United States | $89.4 million | 3.8% |
| 7 | France | $34.3 million | 1.4% |
| 8 | India | $33.5 million | 1.4% |
| 9 | Vietnam | $32.2 million | 1.4% |
| 10 | South Korea | $26.3 million | 1.1% |
| 11 | Germany | $25.6 million | 1.1% |
| 12 | Austria | $17.9 million | 0.8% |
| 13 | Netherlands | $15.9 million | 0.7% |
| 14 | Estonia | $14.9 million | 0.6% |
| 15 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $13.1 million | 0.6% |

### Importers of compounds of rare-earth metals, other (HS 284690), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $1.4 billion | 57% |
| 2 | Japan | $213.2 million | 9% |
| 3 | Vietnam | $188.3 million | 7.9% |
| 4 | United States | $152.3 million | 6.4% |
| 5 | South Korea | $62.1 million | 2.6% |
| 6 | Thailand | $59.4 million | 2.5% |
| 7 | Philippines | $59.2 million | 2.5% |
| 8 | Germany | $51.2 million | 2.2% |
| 9 | Other Asia, nes | $23 million | 1% |
| 10 | North Macedonia | $20 million | 0.8% |
| 11 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $19.8 million | 0.8% |
| 12 | France | $19.6 million | 0.8% |
| 13 | Russia | $18.7 million | 0.8% |
| 14 | Netherlands | $12.2 million | 0.5% |
| 15 | Spain | $11.4 million | 0.5% |

### Exporters of permanent magnets of metal (mostly neodymium-iron-boron) (HS 850511), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $3.1 billion | 62% |
| 2 | Japan | $429.2 million | 8.6% |
| 3 | Vietnam | $292.8 million | 5.9% |
| 4 | Philippines | $284.3 million | 5.7% |
| 5 | Germany | $230.9 million | 4.6% |
| 6 | United States | $94.1 million | 1.9% |
| 7 | Malaysia | $60.3 million | 1.2% |
| 8 | Thailand | $54.6 million | 1.1% |
| 9 | Switzerland | $52.6 million | 1.1% |
| 10 | Netherlands | $39.2 million | 0.8% |
| 11 | South Korea | $35.3 million | 0.7% |
| 12 | Italy | $33.7 million | 0.7% |
| 13 | France | $26.6 million | 0.5% |
| 14 | United Kingdom | $23.8 million | 0.5% |
| 15 | Other Asia, nes | $23.4 million | 0.5% |

### Importers of permanent magnets of metal (mostly neodymium-iron-boron) (HS 850511), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Germany | $619.2 million | 12% |
| 2 | Japan | $569.1 million | 11% |
| 3 | United States | $491.8 million | 9.9% |
| 4 | Vietnam | $382.4 million | 7.7% |
| 5 | South Korea | $306.9 million | 6.2% |
| 6 | Philippines | $298.2 million | 6% |
| 7 | Mexico | $245.4 million | 4.9% |
| 8 | India | $194.6 million | 3.9% |
| 9 | Thailand | $174.2 million | 3.5% |
| 10 | France | $143.5 million | 2.9% |
| 11 | Poland | $136.7 million | 2.7% |
| 12 | China | $130.2 million | 2.6% |
| 13 | Malaysia | $119.5 million | 2.4% |
| 14 | Hungary | $102.7 million | 2.1% |
| 15 | Italy | $92.7 million | 1.9% |

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

China was the largest exporter of rare-earth metals and compounds (HS 2805) in 2024 with 38% of world export value, ahead of Vietnam (18%), on world trade of $1.1 billion (CEPII BACI). Japan was the largest importer with 25%.

Trade statistics for rare earths are genuinely difficult to read. The customs headings mix unseparated concentrates, individual separated oxides worth vastly different amounts, metals and alloys, so a value share does not translate into a quantity share. A large share of world trade is also intra-industry: concentrate moves to China for separation and comes back as oxide or metal, and finished magnets move again under an entirely different heading. The map that matters most, magnet production, does not appear in this table at all.

## What do rare earths cost?

### How they are priced

This page does not quote a rare-earth price, and the reason is worth stating plainly. There is no exchange benchmark and no free, citable public price series. Individual separated oxides, neodymium-praseodymium, dysprosium, terbium, lanthanum, cerium and the rest, are assessed by private price reporting agencies whose data is licensed, and the Chinese domestic market and the export market can diverge substantially. Publishing a number here would mean either paying for a license this site does not have or making one up, so it does neither.

What can be said is how prices are actually set. Most material moves under annual or multi-year contracts between separators and magnet makers, referenced to a private index. Chinese production and export quotas, set administratively, have historically been the largest single influence on the level. Because the elements come out of the ground in fixed proportions, producers face a balance problem: demand is concentrated in neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium for magnets, while cerium and lanthanum come out in far greater quantity than anyone wants and are effectively waste with a disposal cost. The economics of a mine therefore depend on its basket composition, not on a single price.

For readers wanting a directional sense of the market, the volumes and shares on this page, the concentration of separation capacity, and the policy timeline below say more about cost and availability than any single quotation would.

## What moves the price of rare earths?

### Permanent magnet demand

Neodymium-iron-boron magnets in electric vehicle motors, wind turbine generators, robotics, drones, and every hard drive and speaker are the demand that matters. Motors are the largest and fastest-growing use, and each direct-drive wind turbine or traction motor contains kilograms of magnet, so magnet demand tracks electrification directly.

### Chinese export and production policy

Quotas on production and export, environmental enforcement against unlicensed mining, and export licensing on specific heavy elements have repeatedly moved the market. Because separation capacity is concentrated, an administrative decision affects world availability in a way no mine closure would.

### The balance problem

The elements are mined together in fixed geological ratios, but demand is wildly uneven. Producing enough neodymium means producing far more cerium and lanthanum than the market wants, so surplus light elements are stockpiled or discarded. A mine's viability depends on whether its ore is rich in the elements people actually pay for.

### Heavy rare earth supply

Dysprosium and terbium, which let magnets hold their strength at motor operating temperatures, come mainly from ion-adsorption clays in southern China and Myanmar. That supply is small, geographically narrow and exposed to conflict and enforcement, and it is the tightest part of the chain.

### Separation capacity outside China

Building a separation plant is a chemical engineering project of hundreds of stages, with difficult effluent and, where monazite is involved, low-level radioactive thorium residues to manage. Permitting is the binding constraint, which is why announced non-Chinese capacity has taken far longer to arrive than announced non-Chinese mines.

### Substitution and thrifting

Motor designers reduce dysprosium content through grain-boundary diffusion, redesign magnets to use less material, or adopt ferrite magnets and externally excited rotors that avoid rare earths entirely. Each price spike accelerates this work, and the demand lost does not fully return when prices fall.

### Recycling

Magnets from end-of-life vehicles, wind turbines and hard drives contain concentrated, already-separated material, and recovering them avoids the separation step entirely. Volumes remain small because collection and disassembly are difficult, but this is the most plausible route to non-Chinese supply of heavy elements.

## How are rare earths produced?

Mining is conventional: open pit at Bayan Obo and Mountain Pass, in-situ or heap leaching of ion-adsorption clays, or recovery of monazite from mineral sand dredging. The ore is concentrated by flotation or gravity to a mixed rare-earth concentrate, typically cracked with acid or alkali to break down the mineral structure and put the elements into solution.

Then comes the step that defines the industry. Because the lanthanides differ by a single electron in an inner shell, their chemistry is almost identical, and separating them requires solvent extraction in cascades of hundreds of mixer-settler stages, each achieving a tiny enrichment, repeated until the individual oxides reach the required purity. The capital is moderate but the process knowledge, the effluent handling and the permitting are not, and this is where the world's dependence actually sits.

Separated oxides are then reduced to metal, usually by molten salt electrolysis or metallothermic reduction, and alloyed with iron and boron. The alloy is jet-milled to powder, aligned in a magnetic field, pressed, sintered, machined and coated to make a finished magnet. Heavy elements may be added at the grain boundary rather than throughout, which achieves the same heat resistance with far less dysprosium.

Monazite-bearing ores carry thorium, which is mildly radioactive, so residues require licensed disposal. This is a real and often decisive obstacle to permitting separation plants outside China, and it explains part of why the industry consolidated where it did.

## What are rare earths used for?

Permanent magnets are the dominant use by value: neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium go into the magnets that drive electric vehicle traction motors, direct-drive wind turbine generators, industrial robots, actuators, hard drives, headphones and countless small motors. This is the use that makes rare earths strategic.

Beyond magnets, cerium is used as a glass polishing compound and in catalytic converters, lanthanum in petroleum fluid cracking catalysts and in nickel-metal-hydride batteries, europium and terbium as phosphors in lighting and displays, yttrium in high-temperature ceramics and superalloys, gadolinium in medical imaging contrast agents and neutron shielding, and samarium in high-temperature magnets for aerospace and defense. Erbium is essential to the optical amplifiers that make long-haul fiber networks work.

The defense applications, in precision guidance, radar, sonar and aircraft actuators, are small in volume and disproportionate in strategic weight, and they are the reason governments treat rare earth supply as a security question rather than a commercial one.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain runs mine, concentrate, separation, metal, alloy, magnet, and China holds a commanding position at every stage after the first. That is the whole story of rare earth supply risk: opening a mine elsewhere does not reduce dependence if the concentrate must still be shipped for separation, and building a separation plant does not help if there is no magnet maker to buy the oxide.

The tightest single point is heavy rare earth supply from ion-adsorption clays. Those deposits are geographically small, environmentally damaging when mined informally, and partly located in areas affected by conflict in northern Myanmar, from which material crosses into China for processing. A disruption there affects the elements with the fewest substitutes.

Thorium disposal is the quiet constraint on diversification. Any separation project handling monazite must find a licensed route for low-level radioactive residue, and in most jurisdictions that is a multi-year permitting exercise with strong local opposition. It is the reason several announced non-Chinese projects have slipped repeatedly.

The market's own economics are a risk too. Because prices are volatile and administratively influenced, and because a new entrant must sell a full basket including elements nobody wants, financing a mine-to-magnet chain outside China has usually required a government to underwrite part of it. Where that support has been available, projects have advanced; where it has not, they have stalled regardless of the geology.

## Key companies

- China Northern Rare Earth Group: miner and separator, China, listed (600111)
- MP Materials: miner, separator and magnet maker, United States, listed (MP)
- Lynas Rare Earths: miner and separator, Australia, listed (LYC)
- Iluka Resources: mineral sands producer and refiner, Australia, listed (ILU)
- Neo Performance Materials: separator and magnet maker, Canada, listed (NEO)
- Solvay: separator, Belgium, listed (SOLB)

## Timeline

- 1965: Mountain Pass supplies the color television era. Demand for europium phosphors made the California carbonatite the world's dominant source for two decades, the last period in which rare earth supply was not Chinese. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 1983: The neodymium-iron-boron magnet is invented. A magnet far stronger than anything before it created the demand that now defines the industry and made neodymium and praseodymium the elements that matter commercially. (https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/)
- 1998: Mountain Pass suspends separation after effluent problems. Wastewater pipeline failures and the permitting difficulties that followed ended American separation capacity and completed the transfer of the industry to China. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 2010-09: Export restrictions expose the concentration risk. A sharp reduction in Chinese export quotas sent prices for several oxides up by multiples within months and prompted every major economy to start a critical minerals policy. (https://www.iea.org/topics/critical-minerals)
- 2014-03: The World Trade Organization rules against export quotas. A dispute settlement finding required China to remove its rare earth export quota system, though production quotas and environmental enforcement continued to shape supply. (https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds431_e.htm)
- 2015-06: Molycorp's bankruptcy shows the cost of restarting. The collapse of the company that had reopened Mountain Pass demonstrated that mining rare earths without separation and magnet capacity is not a viable business. (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries)
- 2019-05: Rare earths enter trade policy as leverage. Public discussion of restricting supply during a trade dispute made explicit what the 2010 episode had implied, and accelerated stockpiling and diversification programmes. (https://www.iea.org/topics/critical-minerals)
- 2020-12: Myanmar becomes central to heavy rare earth supply. Ion-adsorption clay mining in Kachin State grew into a major source of dysprosium and terbium feeding Chinese separators, adding conflict exposure to the tightest part of the chain. (https://www.iea.org/topics/critical-minerals)
- 2023-12: China restricts export of separation and magnet technology. Adding rare earth processing and magnet-making technology to an export control list targeted the capability gap rather than the material, making diversification harder. (https://www.mofcom.gov.cn/)
- 2025-04: Export licensing extends to specific heavy elements. Licence requirements on named heavy rare earths and magnets containing them disrupted automotive supply chains and prompted emergency qualification of alternative sources. (https://www.iea.org/topics/critical-minerals)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most rare earths

China mined 270,000 tonnes of rare-earth oxide equivalent in 2025, 69% of the world's 390,000 tonnes (USGS MCS). United States was second with 13%. Mining concentration understates the position, because separation and magnet-making are far more concentrated still.

### are rare earths actually rare

No. Cerium is more abundant in the crust than copper. What is rare is a deposit where they are concentrated enough and in the right proportions to justify separating seventeen chemically near-identical elements from one another, which takes hundreds of solvent extraction stages.

### why is there no rare earth price on this page

Because no free, citable public series exists. Individual separated oxides are assessed by private price reporting agencies under license, and Chinese domestic and export prices can diverge. This site does not publish figures it cannot source, so it explains how prices are set instead.

### what are rare earths used for

Mainly permanent magnets for electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, robotics and electronics. Other uses include glass polishing, petroleum cracking catalysts, display and lighting phosphors, medical imaging contrast agents, optical fiber amplifiers and high-temperature ceramics.

### why does China dominate rare earths

Not through geology but through processing. Separation requires hundreds of solvent extraction stages, difficult effluent handling and, for monazite ores, licensed disposal of radioactive thorium residue. That capacity and the magnet-making that follows it are concentrated in China, so mining elsewhere does not by itself reduce dependence.

### what is the rare earth balance problem

The elements come out of the ground in fixed geological ratios but demand is uneven. Producing enough neodymium for magnets means producing far more cerium and lanthanum than anyone wants, which then has to be stockpiled or discarded. A deposit's viability depends on its basket composition.

### how much rare earth is left

China holds 52% of world reserves of 85.3 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Reserves are far less concentrated than production, which is the clearest evidence that the constraint is processing capability rather than geology.

## Sources

- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries
- 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

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

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# Where does rice come from?

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

Rice comes mainly from India, which produced 217.9 million tonnes in 2024, 27% of the world's 819.8 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). China (25%), Bangladesh (7.4%) and Indonesia (6.5%) follow; the top five together supply 71%. The biggest exporter of rice (HS 1006, mostly milled) is India (30% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Thai 5% broken, Bangkok FOB, was $471/t in August 2026, up 26% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Rice is grown where a monsoon can flood a level field for months, so the great alluvial deltas and river plains of South and Southeast Asia, farmed for rice since the crop was domesticated in the Yangtze valley, still hold most of the world's paddy.

*The staple grain of half the world, grown in flooded paddies and traded milled; production is counted as paddy (unmilled).* Also called: paddy rice, milled rice, rice grain, basmati, jasmine rice.

## Where does rice come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | 217.9 million | 27% |
| 2 | China | 207.5 million | 25% |
| 3 | Bangladesh | 60.6 million | 7.4% |
| 4 | Indonesia | 53.1 million | 6.5% |
| 5 | Vietnam | 43.5 million | 5.3% |
| 6 | Thailand | 33.6 million | 4.1% |
| 7 | Myanmar | 27.7 million | 3.4% |
| 8 | Philippines | 19.1 million | 2.3% |
| 9 | Pakistan | 14.6 million | 1.8% |
| 10 | Cambodia | 14.2 million | 1.7% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 16% |
| | World | 819.8 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

Rice is a crop of flooded fields. Asian rice (Oryza sativa) tolerates standing water that drowns weeds and most other cereals, so the plant thrives on flat, water-retentive land with a long warm season and a reliable supply of water, whether from the monsoon or from irrigation canals. Those conditions describe the river plains and deltas of monsoon Asia: the Ganges and Brahmaputra, the Yangtze and Pearl, the Mekong, the Irrawaddy and the Chao Phraya. Terraced hillsides and rain-fed uplands add area but far less grain per hectare.

In 2024 India produced 217.9 million tonnes of paddy, 27% of the world's 819.8 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). China came second with 207.5 million tonnes (25%), followed by Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam. Together the top five grew 71% of the total, and 135 countries reported a crop. World paddy output changed by +10% over the ten years to 2024.

The ranking reflects population as much as climate. China and India each feed more than a billion people on a rice-based diet, and most of what they grow is eaten at home. Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam sit on deltas that can carry two or three crops a year under irrigation. Outside Asia, rice matters in Brazil, the United States (Arkansas, Louisiana, California), Egypt's Nile delta, Madagascar and the irrigated schemes of West Africa, but their combined tonnage is small next to the Asian core; countries outside the top ten grew 16% of the 2024 crop.

The FAOSTAT figures above count paddy, the grain still in its husk. Milled white rice, the form that is eaten and traded, weighs roughly two-thirds as much, which is why production and trade tables on this page are not directly comparable.


## Who exports and imports rice?

### Exporters of rice (HS 1006), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | $11.9 billion | 30% |
| 2 | Thailand | $6.7 billion | 17% |
| 3 | Pakistan | $4.1 billion | 10% |
| 4 | Vietnam | $4.1 billion | 10% |
| 5 | United States | $2.5 billion | 6.4% |
| 6 | Cambodia | $1.9 billion | 4.8% |
| 7 | Myanmar | $1.4 billion | 3.6% |
| 8 | China | $952.2 million | 2.4% |
| 9 | Italy | $907.3 million | 2.3% |
| 10 | Brazil | $588.4 million | 1.5% |
| 11 | Uruguay | $582.6 million | 1.5% |
| 12 | Paraguay | $445.4 million | 1.1% |
| 13 | Belgium | $316.3 million | 0.8% |
| 14 | Netherlands | $280.2 million | 0.7% |
| 15 | Tanzania | $271.5 million | 0.7% |

### Importers of rice (HS 1006), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indonesia | $2.7 billion | 6.8% |
| 2 | Philippines | $2.5 billion | 6.3% |
| 3 | Saudi Arabia | $1.9 billion | 4.8% |
| 4 | Vietnam | $1.7 billion | 4.3% |
| 5 | Iraq | $1.6 billion | 4.2% |
| 6 | United States | $1.6 billion | 4% |
| 7 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $1.1 billion | 2.8% |
| 8 | Malaysia | $1.1 billion | 2.7% |
| 9 | Benin | $963.8 million | 2.4% |
| 10 | China | $905.7 million | 2.3% |
| 11 | United Kingdom | $719.4 million | 1.8% |
| 12 | Senegal | $716.8 million | 1.8% |
| 13 | Iran | $700.9 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | Brazil | $690.2 million | 1.7% |
| 15 | France | $688 million | 1.7% |

### Exporters of semi-milled or wholly milled rice (HS 100630), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | $10.8 billion | 35% |
| 2 | Thailand | $5.8 billion | 19% |
| 3 | Vietnam | $3.8 billion | 12% |
| 4 | Pakistan | $3.2 billion | 10% |
| 5 | United States | $1.4 billion | 4.5% |
| 6 | Myanmar | $880.4 million | 2.8% |
| 7 | Italy | $781.6 million | 2.5% |
| 8 | China | $654.4 million | 2.1% |
| 9 | Cambodia | $473.2 million | 1.5% |
| 10 | Uruguay | $305 million | 1% |
| 11 | Tanzania | $265.6 million | 0.9% |
| 12 | Paraguay | $264.9 million | 0.9% |
| 13 | Brazil | $187.8 million | 0.6% |
| 14 | Netherlands | $187.2 million | 0.6% |
| 15 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $185.3 million | 0.6% |

### Importers of semi-milled or wholly milled rice (HS 100630), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indonesia | $2.4 billion | 7.8% |
| 2 | Philippines | $2.2 billion | 7.2% |
| 3 | Saudi Arabia | $1.9 billion | 6.1% |
| 4 | Iraq | $1.6 billion | 5.3% |
| 5 | United States | $1.5 billion | 4.8% |
| 6 | Malaysia | $1.1 billion | 3.4% |
| 7 | Benin | $927.4 million | 3% |
| 8 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $881.8 million | 2.8% |
| 9 | Iran | $700.9 million | 2.3% |
| 10 | United Arab Emirates | $674.3 million | 2.2% |
| 11 | South Africa | $631.4 million | 2% |
| 12 | China | $611.1 million | 2% |
| 13 | Japan | $592.7 million | 1.9% |
| 14 | Yemen | $588 million | 1.9% |
| 15 | Togo | $552.5 million | 1.8% |

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

Only a small slice of the rice crop crosses a border, because the biggest producers are also the biggest eaters. In 2024 world exports of rice (HS 1006, mostly milled) were worth $39.5 billion (CEPII BACI). India was the largest exporter with 30% of that value, ahead of Thailand (17%) and Pakistan (10%). Most of what ships is milled: India led exports of semi-milled or wholly milled rice (HS 100630) in 2024, with 35% of the value, and parboiled, basmati and jasmine rice each move through their own price ladders.

Buyers are scattered. Indonesia was the largest importer in 2024 with 6.8% of world import value, followed by Philippines and Saudi Arabia. Sub-Saharan Africa, the Philippines, Indonesia, the Gulf states and Iran take the bulk of long-grain white and parboiled cargoes, while basmati flows from India and Pakistan to the Middle East and Europe. Because exportable supply is concentrated in a handful of Asian countries, one government's export rule can move prices for every importer.


## What does rice cost?

- Thai 5% broken, Bangkok FOB: $471/t in August 2026; 12-month change +26%; 10-year change +13%; all-time high $907/t in April 2008; real high (2024 US$) $3,937/t in April 1974 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- Vietnamese 5% broken: $410.9/t in August 2026; 12-month change +8%; 10-year change +18%; all-time high $780/t in June 2008; real high (2024 US$) $1,125/t in June 2008 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- Thai 25% broken: $447/t in August 2026; 12-month change +23%; 10-year change +11%; all-time high $700/t in July 2008; real high (2024 US$) $1,003/t in July 2008 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- Thai A.1 Super (broken): $452.8/t in August 2026; 12-month change +27%; 10-year change +15%; all-time high $762.7/t in April 2008; real high (2024 US$) $1,118/t in April 2008 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

Rice has no single world price. The market quotes a family of origin-and-grade prices, and the most watched is Thai white rice with 5% brokens, free on board (FOB) Bangkok, which the World Bank carries as Thai 5% broken, Bangkok FOB. In August 2026 that series stood at $471/t, up 26% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its nominal high was $907/t in April 2008, during the 2008 export-ban panic, and its low since 1960 was $95.7/t in April 1971. Sister quotes track the same grade elsewhere and lower grades in Thailand: Vietnamese 5% brokens at $410.9/t, Thai 25% brokens at $447/t and Thai A.1 Super, an all-broken grade used for feed and brewing, at $452.8/t.

Grade means the share of broken kernels in a sample: 5% brokens is a premium table rice, 25% a cheaper cargo grade, 100% brokens a byproduct. Parboiled rice (steamed in the husk before milling) and aromatic rices (basmati, jasmine) are priced separately and usually higher. A quote is FOB, meaning the price at the loading port with freight and insurance still to add; buyers in West Africa or the Philippines compare cost-and-freight (CFR) landed prices, so ocean freight is part of the origin competition. Government tenders, such as those run by the Philippines, Indonesia's Bulog and Bangladesh, set visible benchmarks for large lots.

The only active exchange contract is CBOT Rough Rice (ticker ZR, 2,000 hundredweight, quoted in US$/cwt), which prices unmilled US long-grain paddy and is thin next to the Asian physical market. Two ambiguities matter when reading this page: production is counted as paddy while trade and prices refer to milled rice, and the Asian FOB quotes are indicative prices assembled by reporters from trader offers rather than an exchange settlement.


## What moves the price of rice?

### The monsoon and El Niño

Most of Asia's rice depends on the June to September southwest monsoon and its Southeast Asian counterparts. A weak or late monsoon shrinks India's kharif (summer-sown) area and pushes farmers toward shorter crops; El Niño years tend to bring drought to Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia and salt intrusion into the Mekong delta as river flows fall. Because irrigated deltas can partly compensate, the price effect is felt most through the policy response of exporters rather than through a global shortfall.

### India's export policy

India's share of world exports makes its trade rules the single biggest swing factor in the market. Delhi has banned non-basmati exports (2007 to 2008 and July 2023 to September 2024), taxed them, set minimum export prices and prohibited broken-rice shipments (September 2022) whenever domestic prices or the state grain stock looked uncomfortable. Each measure diverts demand to Thailand, Vietnam and Pakistan, whose exportable surpluses are far smaller, so FOB Bangkok jumps even when the world crop is fine.

### Stocks-to-use

Rice is stored as paddy and as milled grain by governments as well as traders, and the stocks-to-use ratio (ending stocks divided by consumption) is the cleanest read on how much cushion the market has. USDA put world milled-rice stocks-to-use at 36% for 2026/27, against 37% in 2025/26 (USDA PSD). A large part of world stocks sits in China and India, where they are not available to importers, so the exporters' own stock position matters more than the headline.

### Importer tenders and panic buying

A few large buyers can move the market by changing when they buy. The Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh and several West African importers purchase through tenders or state agencies, and a run of tenders in a short period, as in the spring of 2008, drains exporters' available cargo and lifts offers for everyone. The reverse also holds: when the Philippines or Indonesia announce a good harvest and pause imports, Vietnamese and Thai prices soften.

### Currencies

FOB prices are quoted in US dollars but exporters' costs are in Thai baht, Vietnamese dong, Indian rupees and Pakistani rupees. A weaker baht lets Thai exporters undercut Vietnam at the same local return, while a strong baht is one reason Thailand lost share after 2011. Importers in Africa face the mirror image: a weaker naira or CFA franc makes the same dollar cargo dearer at home.

### Fertilizer, energy and freight

Rice is a fertilizer-hungry, irrigated crop, so urea prices and the cost of pumping water and drying grain feed straight into farm margins in Vietnam and Thailand. Ocean freight matters more than for most grains because a large share of rice moves in bags on smaller vessels or in containers to ports in West Africa and the Caribbean. Fuel, container availability and Red Sea or Suez disruptions therefore widen or narrow the landed-price gap between Asian and South American origins.

### Pests, disease and salinity

Rice blast fungus, bacterial blight and brown planthopper outbreaks can cut yields across whole provinces, and planthopper resistance to insecticides has recurred in Vietnam and Thailand. In the Mekong and Ganges deltas the long-run threat is salt water pushing upriver in dry years, which forces farmers to skip a crop or switch to shrimp. Breeding at IRRI and national institutes has delivered submergence-tolerant and salt-tolerant lines, but adoption lags the hazard.

## How is rice produced?

Rice varieties fall into two broad groups. Indica types are long-grained, non-sticky and grown across tropical Asia; japonica types are short or medium-grained, stickier and grown in cooler zones such as northern China, Japan, Korea and California. Aromatic rices sit in between: basmati from the Indo-Gangetic plain and jasmine (hom mali) from northeast Thailand command premiums for scent and grain length. Glutinous rice is a separate market in Laos, Thailand and southern China.

The crop is sown either directly or transplanted as seedlings into puddled fields kept under a few centimeters of water for most of the season. In rain-fed systems there is one crop a year, harvested after the monsoon; in the irrigated deltas of Vietnam, Bangladesh and southern China two or three crops are possible, which is why those countries yield far more per hectare of land than their sown area suggests. Harvest calendars are staggered around the region, so some origin is always cutting new crop.

Milling turns paddy into food. The husk is stripped off first to give brown rice, then the bran layers are polished away to give white rice, and the output is graded by the proportion of broken kernels. Parboiling steams paddy before milling, which hardens the grain, reduces breakage and keeps more nutrients; it is the standard form in much of India, Bangladesh and West Africa. Each step yields a byproduct: husk is burned for heat and power at the mill, bran is pressed for rice bran oil or fed to livestock, and brokens go to brewing, noodles and rice flour. Milled rice weighs roughly two-thirds of the paddy that produced it.


### Harvest calendar

- China (Single and late crop): harvest Sep, Oct, Nov. Early crop harvested July–August.
- India (Kharif rice): harvest Oct, Nov, Dec. Rabi rice harvested March–May.
- Bangladesh (Aman): harvest Nov, Dec. Boro harvested April–May.
- Indonesia (Main wet-season crop): harvest Feb, Mar, Apr, May
- Vietnam (Winter–spring (Mekong)): harvest Feb, Mar, Apr. Summer–autumn harvested June–August.
- Thailand (Main crop): harvest Nov, Dec. Second crop harvested March–June.
- Myanmar (Monsoon crop): harvest Oct, Nov, Dec
- Philippines (Wet season): harvest Oct, Nov, Dec

## What is rice used for?

Almost all rice is eaten as grain, boiled or steamed, and it is the daily staple for most of Asia and a growing part of Africa. Processing takes the rest: brokens and flour go into noodles, crackers, baby food and beer as an adjunct starch; polished rice is brewed into sake and other rice wines; bran is refined into cooking oil; and husk and straw fuel boilers, pack goods and feed animals. Rice is rarely used as livestock feed except for broken grades and in years when it is cheaper than corn, which is one reason its price moves independently of the feed-grain complex.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Milling happens close to the fields, because paddy is bulky and spoils if stored wet. Thailand's and Vietnam's export mills cluster along the Chao Phraya and Mekong deltas, where barges carry paddy and milled rice to river ports and on to Bangkok, Laem Chabang, Ho Chi Minh City and Can Tho. India's exporters mill in Punjab and Haryana for basmati and in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal for non-basmati, shipping from Kakinada, Kandla and Mundra. Pakistani rice leaves from Karachi, US rice from New Orleans and the Gulf, and Brazil and Uruguay ship southern-hemisphere paddy and milled rice to Central America and West Africa.

Rice moves in bags and containers as much as in bulk, so port handling and container supply are chokepoints in their own right. Cargoes to West Africa and the Middle East pass the Strait of Malacca and either the Red Sea and Suez or the Cape, and the 2024 Red Sea attacks lengthened the Asia to Europe and West Africa route. Landlocked importers such as Nepal and the Sahel states depend on a single road or rail corridor from the coast.

The single point of failure is policy rather than geography. Exportable surplus is concentrated in India, Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan and the United States, and the largest of those has restricted exports repeatedly. A second vulnerability is the Mekong delta, which supplies most of Vietnam's exports and faces upstream dams, subsidence and salt intrusion at once.


## Key companies

- Ebro Foods: miller, Spain, listed (BME: EBRO)
- KRBL Limited: miller, India, listed (NSE: KRBL)
- Riceland Foods: miller, United States
- Olam Agri: trader, Singapore
- Louis Dreyfus Company: trader, Netherlands
- Wilmar International: miller, Singapore, listed (SGX: F34)

## Timeline

- 1960: IRRI founded in the Philippines. The International Rice Research Institute became the breeding hub whose semidwarf varieties started the Green Revolution in rice. (https://60.irri.org/)
- 1966-11: IRRI releases IR8, the 'miracle rice'. A short, stiff-strawed variety that could take heavy fertilizer without lodging roughly doubled yields where it was adopted across Asia. (https://ricetoday.irri.org/ir8-a-rice-variety-for-the-ages/)
- 2008-04: Export bans by India and Vietnam drive Thai prices above $1,000 a tonne. FAO analysis attributes most of the 2007/08 price surge to export restrictions, not to a crop failure, and the episode still shapes how importers read Indian policy. (https://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/est/PUBLICATIONS/Comm_Working_Papers/EST-WP32.pdf)
- 2008-04: Philippines tenders and panic buying at the peak of the crisis. The largest importer's emergency purchases showed how a few tenders can drain exporters' available cargo in weeks. (https://www.adb.org/features/has-world-learned-2007-2008-food-price-crisis)
- 2011-10: Thailand starts its rice pledging scheme. Paying farmers well above the market price pulled Thai rice off the export market and handed the number-one exporter position to India. (https://www.loc.gov/item/global-legal-monitor/2013-08-07/thailand-crisis-in-thai-rice-pledging-scheme/)
- 2011-10: Chao Phraya floods inundate Thailand's central plain. The floods destroyed a large share of the main-season crop in the country that was then the world's largest exporter. (https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/Report/DownloadReportByFileName?fileName=Grain+and+Feed+Update_Bangkok_Thailand_10-3-2011.pdf)
- 2021-07: Philippines approves Golden Rice for commercial planting. The first biosafety permit for a genetically engineered rice in Asia opened a regulatory path that other countries watch closely. (https://www.irri.org/news-and-events/news/philippines-becomes-first-country-approve-nutrient-enriched-golden-rice)
- 2022-09: India bans broken-rice exports and taxes other grades at 20%. The measures, prompted by a weak monsoon and smaller kharif area, cut off cheap feed-grade rice to China and Africa and marked the start of a two-year cycle of restrictions. (https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/india-india-grain-and-feed-update-october-2022)
- 2023-07: India bans exports of non-basmati white rice. Removing the largest exporter's main grade from the market lifted Thai and Vietnamese quotes to their highest since 2008 and hit African importers hardest. (https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/india-india-bans-export-non-basmati-white-rice)
- 2024-09: India lifts the white rice ban and later drops the minimum export price. Restored Indian supply pushed Asian FOB prices down through the following year and re-established India's export share. (https://www.ifpri.org/blog/india-lifts-export-restrictions-on-rice/)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most rice

India produced the most rice in 2024: 217.9 million tonnes of paddy, or 27% of the world's 819.8 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). China was second with 207.5 million tonnes. Both eat most of what they grow, so the largest producer is not automatically the largest exporter.

### which country exports the most rice

India was the largest rice exporter in 2024, with 30% of the $39.5 billion of world exports of rice (HS 1006, mostly milled) (CEPII BACI). Thailand and Pakistan followed. Because exportable surplus is concentrated in a few Asian countries, one exporter's policy can move prices for every importer.

### which country imports the most rice

Indonesia was the largest rice importer in 2024, taking 6.8% of world import value (CEPII BACI), ahead of Philippines and Saudi Arabia. Importers are scattered across Southeast Asia, West Africa and the Middle East, and several buy through government tenders that set visible benchmark prices.

### what is the price of rice today

The benchmark is Thai white rice with 5% brokens, FOB Bangkok. In August 2026 it was $471/t, up 26% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Vietnamese 5% brokens were $410.9/t and Thai 25% brokens $447/t. Retail prices add milling, packaging, freight and tariffs.

### why did rice prices spike in 2008

Between late 2007 and April 2008 India and Vietnam restricted exports while the Philippines and other importers bought in panic, and Thai prices roughly tripled. FAO's analysis found export bans, not a crop failure, explained most of the rise. The nominal high in the Thai 5% series was $907/t in April 2008 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### is rice production measured as paddy or milled

FAOSTAT production is paddy, the grain still in its husk, and the 2024 world total was 819.8 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Milled white rice weighs roughly two-thirds as much. Trade statistics and price quotes refer to milled rice, which is why production and export figures on this page are not directly comparable.

### what is the difference between 5% and 25% broken rice

The percentage is the share of broken kernels in the sample. Five percent brokens is a premium table grade; 25% brokens is a cheaper cargo grade common in West Africa; 100% brokens goes to feed, brewing and flour. In August 2026 Thai 5% was $471/t and Thai 25% $447/t (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### how much rice is in stock worldwide

USDA estimates world milled-rice stocks-to-use, ending stocks divided by consumption, at 36% for 2026/27, compared with 37% in 2025/26 (USDA PSD). A large part of those stocks sits in China and India and is not available to importers, so exporters' own stock positions matter more for prices.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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
- USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, Production, Supply and Distribution (PSD), 2026-09-06. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://apps.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/
- Harvest calendars (curated from USDA FAS IPAD crop calendars and FAO GIEWS country briefs), curated 2026-09. License: Public domain (USDA) with FAO GIEWS cross-reference (attribution). https://ipad.fas.usda.gov/ogamaps/cropcalendar.aspx

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

---

# Where does salmon come from?

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

The biggest exporter of fresh Atlantic salmon (HS 030214) is Norway (50% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Salmon, farmed Norwegian export price, was $7.14/kg in July 2026, up 7% from a year earlier (IMF PCPS). Farmed salmon needs sheltered coastal water that stays between roughly six and sixteen degrees all year, and only a handful of coastlines qualify: the Norwegian fjords, southern Chile, Scotland, the Faroes and eastern Canada, which is why an industry worth billions sits in so few places.

*Farmed Atlantic salmon raised in sea pens and flown or shipped fresh; the highest-value farmed fish in world trade.* Also called: farmed salmon, atlantic salmon, aquaculture salmon, fresh salmon.

## Who exports and imports salmon?

Norway and Chile grow most farmed salmon; Poland and Denmark appear high in export tables because they smoke and fillet imported fish.

### Exporters of fresh or chilled atlantic salmon and danube salmon (HS 030214), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Norway | $8 billion | 50% |
| 2 | Sweden | $2.8 billion | 17% |
| 3 | Chile | $1.2 billion | 7.3% |
| 4 | United Kingdom | $1.1 billion | 6.7% |
| 5 | Denmark | $976.2 million | 6.1% |
| 6 | Canada | $609.6 million | 3.8% |
| 7 | Iceland | $292.3 million | 1.8% |
| 8 | Australia | $200.9 million | 1.3% |
| 9 | Finland | $160.3 million | 1% |
| 10 | France | $151.8 million | 1% |
| 11 | Netherlands | $149.8 million | 0.9% |
| 12 | Ireland | $92.1 million | 0.6% |
| 13 | United States | $81 million | 0.5% |
| 14 | Spain | $40.1 million | 0.3% |
| 15 | Germany | $35.6 million | 0.2% |

### Importers of fresh or chilled atlantic salmon and danube salmon (HS 030214), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Poland | $2.2 billion | 14% |
| 2 | France | $1.7 billion | 10% |
| 3 | United States | $1.3 billion | 8.2% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $1.3 billion | 7.9% |
| 5 | Italy | $1.2 billion | 7.4% |
| 6 | Spain | $1.2 billion | 7.2% |
| 7 | China | $954.1 million | 6% |
| 8 | Denmark | $898 million | 5.6% |
| 9 | Brazil | $822.2 million | 5.2% |
| 10 | Germany | $667.7 million | 4.2% |
| 11 | United Kingdom | $611.1 million | 3.8% |
| 12 | Lithuania | $272.8 million | 1.7% |
| 13 | South Korea | $252.9 million | 1.6% |
| 14 | Finland | $237.3 million | 1.5% |
| 15 | Portugal | $186.5 million | 1.2% |

### Exporters of fish fillets and other fish meat (HS 0304), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Norway | $4.9 billion | 16% |
| 2 | Chile | $3.8 billion | 13% |
| 3 | China | $2.9 billion | 9.9% |
| 4 | Vietnam | $2.4 billion | 8% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $1.4 billion | 4.7% |
| 6 | Iceland | $1.2 billion | 4.1% |
| 7 | United States | $1.1 billion | 3.7% |
| 8 | Poland | $1 billion | 3.5% |
| 9 | Denmark | $991.2 million | 3.3% |
| 10 | Russia | $861.6 million | 2.9% |
| 11 | Indonesia | $755.2 million | 2.5% |
| 12 | Sweden | $700.1 million | 2.4% |
| 13 | Germany | $600.6 million | 2% |
| 14 | Spain | $538.6 million | 1.8% |
| 15 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $502.1 million | 1.7% |

### Importers of fish fillets and other fish meat (HS 0304), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $7.2 billion | 24% |
| 2 | Japan | $2.6 billion | 8.9% |
| 3 | Germany | $2.1 billion | 7.1% |
| 4 | France | $1.8 billion | 6.1% |
| 5 | Sweden | $1.3 billion | 4.4% |
| 6 | Spain | $1.3 billion | 4.2% |
| 7 | United Kingdom | $1.2 billion | 4.1% |
| 8 | Poland | $1.1 billion | 3.8% |
| 9 | Italy | $1.1 billion | 3.8% |
| 10 | Netherlands | $1.1 billion | 3.7% |
| 11 | Canada | $746.9 million | 2.5% |
| 12 | Israel | $676.6 million | 2.3% |
| 13 | South Korea | $631.6 million | 2.1% |
| 14 | Belgium | $597.4 million | 2% |
| 15 | China | $451.9 million | 1.5% |

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

The trade tables above cover fresh and chilled Atlantic salmon, the highest-value form, and they show the industry's structure clearly. Norway ships whole fresh fish by truck into the European Union and by air freight to Asia and North America, which is why air cargo capacity and jet fuel costs appear in salmon economics in a way they do not for other proteins.

Poland, Denmark and Lithuania appear as significant exporters despite farming very little, because they operate large filleting and smoking industries processing imported Norwegian fish and re-exporting it into the European market. Chile, further from every major market, exports mostly frozen and value-added fillet, principally to the United States, Brazil and Japan. Read the export table as a mix of farming and processing positions, and note that a chilled whole fish and a frozen fillet are very different products under related codes.

## What does salmon cost?

- Salmon, farmed Norwegian export price: $7.14/kg in July 2026; 12-month change +7%; 10-year change -11%; all-time high $11.25/kg in March 2023; real high (2024 US$) $11.69/kg in March 2023 (IMF PCPS).

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

### How it is priced

The series shown is Salmon, farmed Norwegian export price, which was $7.14/kg in July 2026, up 7% from a year earlier (IMF PCPS). The nominal high was $11.25/kg in March 2023.

That is a weekly-derived export price for Norwegian farmed salmon, and it is the closest thing the industry has to a public benchmark. Physical trade references the Nasdaq salmon index, a weekly volume-weighted average of Norwegian spot sales compiled from exporters, and futures on that index are used for hedging. Fish are priced by weight class, since a five to six kilogram fish is worth more per kilogram than a two to three kilogram one, and by quality grade, with superior, ordinary and production grades reflecting appearance and defects.

The market is unusually volatile for a food product, and the reason is biological. A salmon takes about two years from smolt to harvest, so supply in any given quarter was determined by stocking decisions made two years earlier and cannot be changed. Meanwhile demand is weekly and fresh fish cannot be stored, so short-run supply is almost perfectly inelastic and any demand shift moves price sharply. Prices routinely swing by large percentages within a season.

Biomass in the water is the number the industry watches, because it is a direct forecast of harvest volume a few months ahead, and Norwegian and Chilean authorities publish standing biomass regularly.

## What moves the price of salmon?

### Licence availability and biomass caps

Norway limits production through licenses with maximum allowed biomass and, since 2017, a traffic-light system that permits growth only in areas where sea lice pressure on wild salmon is acceptable. Supply growth is therefore a regulatory decision rather than an investment one, which is the single most important feature of this market.

### Sea lice

Parasitic sea lice are the industry's largest biological cost and its main environmental controversy, because lice from farms infect wild smolts. Treatment, whether chemical, thermal, mechanical or by cleaner fish, is expensive and stresses the salmon, and lice levels directly govern whether a region is allowed to expand.

### Sea temperature and algal blooms

Salmon grow fastest in a narrow temperature band, and unusually warm water slows growth, raises disease pressure and can kill fish outright. Harmful algal blooms have caused mass mortalities in Chile and Norway, removing months of supply from a single region without warning.

### Feed costs

Feed is the largest single cost of production, and it contains fishmeal and fish oil alongside plant proteins and oils. The fishmeal price, driven by the Peruvian anchoveta quota described on the fishmeal page, therefore feeds directly into salmon costs, as do soy and rapeseed oil prices.

### Disease outbreaks

Infectious salmon anaemia devastated the Chilean industry in 2007 and 2008, cutting its output by a large proportion and taking years to recover. Because farms are clustered in the same fjord systems, an outbreak spreads within a region and forces coordinated fallowing.

### Air freight capacity

Fresh whole salmon flown to Asia and North America competes for belly cargo space on passenger aircraft. When capacity vanishes or jet fuel prices spike, the delivered cost in distant markets rises sharply and volumes shift toward frozen product.

### Taxation and regulation

Norway's introduction of a resource rent tax on aquaculture changed investment economics in the dominant producing country, and license auction costs, environmental conditions and area-based restrictions all affect how much fish can be grown independently of demand.

## How is salmon produced?

Salmon farming begins in freshwater hatcheries, where eggs are incubated and fry are grown for around a year until they smoltify, undergoing the physiological change that lets them live in seawater. Smolts are then transferred to sea pens, large net enclosures moored in sheltered coastal water, where they grow for roughly fourteen to twenty-two months to a harvest weight of four to six kilograms.

Through that sea phase the fish are fed pelleted feed containing fish oil and fishmeal, plant proteins, vegetable oils, vitamins and the pigment astaxanthin, which gives farmed salmon its color; without it the flesh would be pale. Feed conversion is remarkably efficient, better than any land animal, because salmon are cold-blooded and do not spend energy staying warm or supporting their weight against gravity.

Health management dominates day-to-day operations: lice counting and treatment, vaccination against bacterial and viral disease, and fallowing sites between production cycles to break disease cycles. Cleaner fish, wrasse and lumpfish, are stocked alongside salmon to eat lice, and thermal and mechanical delousing systems have largely replaced chemical treatments.

At harvest, fish are pumped from the pen, stunned, bled and gutted on a wellboat or at a shoreside plant, packed in ice in polystyrene boxes as head-on gutted fish, and shipped within hours. Filleting, smoking and portioning may happen at origin or, more often for the European market, at processing plants in Poland, Denmark or Lithuania. From harvest to a European retail shelf can be under three days.

Land-based recirculating aquaculture, which grows fish to harvest size in tanks on shore, is the industry's most-discussed development. It removes the lice and escape problems and can be sited near markets, but it is capital-intensive and has a difficult record of technical failures.

## What is salmon used for?

Almost all of it is eaten, and the form differs by market. Europe buys fresh whole fish and fillets, and a substantial smoked salmon industry converts a share of it. Japan and increasingly the rest of Asia buy for sashimi and sushi, a use that requires the highest quality and is willing to pay air freight. The United States buys both fresh fillet from Chile and Norway and frozen portions.

Value-added processing has grown steadily: portioned skinless fillets, hot and cold smoked products, gravlax, and prepared meals. That processing captures more margin than selling whole fish and is why the Polish and Danish plants exist.

By-products are a real business rather than waste. Trimmings, frames and heads go to fishmeal and oil, some of which returns to salmon feed; salmon oil is refined for omega-3 supplements; skins are used for leather and, increasingly, in medical dressings; and heads and frames are exported whole to markets that value them as food.

Wild Pacific salmon, a separate market, goes largely to canning, freezing and smoking, with a distinct seasonal supply pattern and a lower price level than farmed Atlantic salmon.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is short, fast and unusually fragile. A fish harvested on Monday in a Norwegian fjord can be on a Paris shelf on Wednesday, and that speed is the product's main selling point. It depends on trucks, ferries and air freight running to schedule, and on a cold chain that never breaks. Any disruption, a border delay, a strike, a loss of air cargo capacity, damages the product itself rather than merely delaying it.

Production is concentrated in two countries and, within them, in a small number of fjord systems where farms sit close enough to share water. That proximity is why disease and lice are collective problems managed by regional coordination and fallowing rather than farm by farm, and why an outbreak removes regional rather than individual supply.

Feed is the upstream dependency, and it links salmon to the fishmeal and vegetable oil markets covered elsewhere on this site. A salmon farmer is exposed to the Peruvian anchoveta quota and to soy and rapeseed oil prices whether or not they think of themselves as a commodity buyer.

The binding constraint on growth is regulatory and biological rather than commercial. Norway will not issue licenses faster than its environmental rules permit, Chile is constrained by its own history of disease and by tighter siting rules, and there are few other coastlines with suitable water. That is why the industry's growth hopes rest on land-based and offshore systems, both of which are technically demanding and capital-hungry, and why salmon has stayed a premium product rather than becoming a cheap protein.

## Key companies

- Mowi: salmon farmer and processor, Norway, listed (MOWI)
- SalMar: salmon farmer, Norway, listed (SALM)
- Lerøy Seafood Group: salmon farmer and processor, Norway, listed (LSG)
- Cermaq: salmon farmer, Norway
- Bakkafrost: salmon farmer and feed producer, Faroe Islands, listed (BAKKA)
- AquaChile: salmon farmer, Chile

## Timeline

- 1970: Commercial salmon farming begins in Norway. The first sea-pen operations proved that Atlantic salmon could be grown to harvest size in fjord water, creating an industry that turned a scarce wild fish into a year-round supermarket product. (https://www.fao.org/fishery/en)
- 1980s: Chile establishes a southern hemisphere industry. Farms in Los Lagos gave the market a counter-seasonal supply close to North American and Asian buyers, and Chile became the second large producer. (https://www.fao.org/fishery/en)
- 1991-01: Norway limits production through licenses. Capping the number and biomass of farms turned supply growth into a regulatory decision, the structural feature that still governs the market. (https://www.fao.org/fishery/en)
- 2007-07: Infectious salmon anaemia devastates Chile. An outbreak cut Chilean production by a large proportion over the following two years, forced coordinated fallowing and reset the industry's approach to biosecurity. (https://www.fao.org/fishery/en)
- 2016-02: An algal bloom kills millions of Chilean fish. A harmful bloom caused mass mortality in southern Chile, removing a substantial share of supply within weeks and demonstrating how quickly environmental events remove production. (https://www.fao.org/fishery/en)
- 2017-10: Norway introduces the traffic-light system. Linking permission to grow to sea lice pressure on wild salmon made environmental performance the gatekeeper of supply growth in the dominant producing country. (https://www.fao.org/fishery/en)
- 2020-03: Air freight collapse disrupts fresh salmon exports. The loss of passenger belly cargo capacity cut off distant fresh markets almost overnight, shifting volume to frozen product and demonstrating the industry's dependence on aviation. (https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS)
- 2022-09: Norway proposes a resource rent tax on aquaculture. A tax on farming profits in the dominant producer changed investment economics and prompted companies to reconsider expansion plans and offshore alternatives. (https://www.regjeringen.no/en/)
- 2024-06: Land-based aquaculture faces technical setbacks. Several recirculating aquaculture projects reported mortality and equipment failures, tempering expectations that land-based farming would relieve the coastal license constraint quickly. (https://www.fao.org/fishery/en)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country exports the most salmon

Norway, with 50% of world export value of fresh Atlantic salmon (HS 030214) in 2024 (CEPII BACI). This page uses trade rather than production because aquaculture output by country comes from FAO fisheries statistics, which this site does not yet carry.

### why is salmon farmed in so few countries

Farmed Atlantic salmon needs sheltered coastal water staying roughly between six and sixteen degrees all year, with enough current and depth. Only the Norwegian fjords, southern Chile, Scotland, the Faroes and eastern Canada offer that at scale, which is why the industry never spread the way poultry farming did.

### why do salmon prices swing so much

A salmon takes about two years from smolt to harvest, so this quarter's supply was fixed by stocking decisions two years ago and cannot change. Fresh fish cannot be stored, so supply is almost perfectly inelastic in the short run and any demand shift moves the price sharply.

### what are sea lice and why do they matter

Parasitic copepods that feed on salmon skin. They are the industry's largest biological cost, and because lice from farms infect wild salmon smolts, lice levels determine whether Norwegian regions are permitted to expand production under the traffic-light system. Treatment is expensive and stresses the fish.

### what is farmed salmon fed

Pelleted feed containing fishmeal and fish oil, plant proteins and vegetable oils, vitamins and astaxanthin, the pigment that gives the flesh its color. Feed conversion is better than any land animal because salmon are cold-blooded and do not support their weight against gravity.

### is wild salmon the same market

No. Wild-caught Pacific salmon from Alaska and Russia is a separate market, sold largely frozen and canned, with its own short season and a lower price level. This page refers to farmed Atlantic salmon, which is available year-round and dominates the fresh trade.

## Sources

- 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
- IMF Primary Commodity Price System (PCPS), 2026-08-06, fetched 6 September 2026. License: © International Monetary Fund. All rights reserved (IMF terms of use). https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS

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

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# Where does sawnwood come from?

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

Sawnwood comes mainly from the United States, which produced 75.5 million m3 in 2024, 17% of the world's 444.9 million m3 (FAOSTAT forestry). China (14%), Russia (8.4%) and Canada (7.9%) follow; the top five together supply 52%. The biggest exporter of sawnwood (HS 4407) is Canada (17% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Cameroon, sapele, FOB Douala, was $648.7/m³ in August 2026, up 1% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Sawmilling happens next to the forest because a log loses roughly half its volume in the saw, so it is always cheaper to ship boards than the logs they came from, and that single fact puts the biggest mills in the softwood belts of North America, the Nordic countries, Russia and increasingly the southern hemisphere plantations.

*Wood sawn lengthwise into boards thicker than six millimetres, the main construction timber.* Also called: lumber, sawn timber, sawn wood, boards, dimensional lumber.

## Where does sawnwood come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (m3) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 75.5 million | 17% |
| 2 | China | 60.7 million | 14% |
| 3 | Russia | 37.2 million | 8.4% |
| 4 | Canada | 35.3 million | 7.9% |
| 5 | India | 24 million | 5.4% |
| 6 | Germany | 23.2 million | 5.2% |
| 7 | Sweden | 17.9 million | 4% |
| 8 | Finland | 11 million | 2.5% |
| 9 | Brazil | 9.7 million | 2.2% |
| 10 | Austria | 9.7 million | 2.2% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 32% |
| | World | 444.9 million | 100% |

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

In 2024 United States produced 75.5 million m3 of sawnwood, 17% of the world's 444.9 million m3 (FAOSTAT forestry). China followed with 14%, then Russia (8.4%), Canada (7.9%) and India (5.4%). The top five together account for 52%, 227 reporting units recorded production, and 32% came from outside the top ten.

Sawnwood means wood sawn lengthwise to a thickness greater than six millimetres: boards, planks, beams and scantlings. It is overwhelmingly a softwood product. Spruce, pine and fir from the boreal and temperate belt account for most of the volume because they grow straight, mill easily, dry predictably and are strong enough for construction framing. Tropical hardwood sawnwood is a small share of volume and a much larger share of value per cubic meter, sold into joinery, flooring, boatbuilding and furniture rather than structural use.

The map follows the softwood forest and the housing market together. The United States and Canada mill for North American construction; Sweden, Finland, Germany and Austria mill for European construction and export; Russia mills for China and, until sanctions complicated it, for Europe; China mills imported logs for its own market; and Brazil and Chile mill fast-grown plantation pine for export. Where a country appears high in production but low in exports, it is milling for itself.

World output changed -1% over the ten years to 2024 and -0% on the previous year. Volume has been broadly flat for a decade while the value of the trade has swung enormously, which tells you that this is a mature industry whose fortunes turn on construction cycles and prices rather than on growth in the quantity of wood cut.

## Who exports and imports sawnwood?

Canada, Russia and Sweden mill softwood for export; China imports logs and sawnwood alike and mills for its own construction industry.

### Exporters of wood sawn or chipped lengthwise, over 6 mm thick (HS 4407), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Canada | $6.5 billion | 17% |
| 2 | Sweden | $3.7 billion | 9.8% |
| 3 | Russia | $3.6 billion | 9.4% |
| 4 | United States | $2.7 billion | 7.1% |
| 5 | Germany | $2.7 billion | 7% |
| 6 | Finland | $2.2 billion | 5.9% |
| 7 | Austria | $1.8 billion | 4.6% |
| 8 | Thailand | $1.3 billion | 3.4% |
| 9 | Latvia | $892 million | 2.3% |
| 10 | Chile | $830.3 million | 2.2% |
| 11 | Brazil | $797.8 million | 2.1% |
| 12 | New Zealand | $639.6 million | 1.7% |
| 13 | Romania | $524.9 million | 1.4% |
| 14 | France | $523.5 million | 1.4% |
| 15 | Croatia | $484.9 million | 1.3% |

### Importers of wood sawn or chipped lengthwise, over 6 mm thick (HS 4407), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $7.7 billion | 20% |
| 2 | China | $6.7 billion | 18% |
| 3 | United Kingdom | $2.3 billion | 5.9% |
| 4 | Japan | $1.5 billion | 4% |
| 5 | Italy | $1.3 billion | 3.5% |
| 6 | Germany | $1.3 billion | 3.3% |
| 7 | Netherlands | $1.2 billion | 3.1% |
| 8 | France | $967.9 million | 2.5% |
| 9 | Egypt | $870.1 million | 2.3% |
| 10 | Mexico | $764.2 million | 2% |
| 11 | Belgium | $674.9 million | 1.8% |
| 12 | Saudi Arabia | $670.6 million | 1.8% |
| 13 | Vietnam | $555.1 million | 1.5% |
| 14 | Austria | $538.5 million | 1.4% |
| 15 | India | $512.8 million | 1.3% |

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

Canada was the largest exporter of sawnwood (HS 4407) in 2024 with 17% of world export value, ahead of Sweden (9.8%), on world trade of $38 billion (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 20%.

A far larger share of sawnwood is traded than of logs, because the saw has already removed the waste and the value density is higher. The two dominant flows are Canadian softwood lumber moving south into United States construction, which has been the subject of a decades-long trade dispute and repeated duties, and Nordic and Russian spruce moving into Europe, north Africa and Asia. Both are structural rather than opportunistic: they exist because forest and market are in different countries and no amount of price movement changes that.

The tropical trade runs the other way in character. It is small in volume, high in value, concentrated in a few species, and increasingly shaped by which suppliers can document legality for European and American buyers. Some producers that once exported logs now export sawnwood instead, not because milling became more attractive but because exporting logs was banned.

## What does sawnwood cost?

- Cameroon, sapele, FOB Douala: $648.7/m³ in August 2026; 12-month change +1%; 10-year change +3%; all-time high $1,088/m³ in June 2008; real high (2024 US$) $1,597/m³ in February 2008 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- Malaysia, dark red meranti: $737.9/m³ in August 2026; 12-month change +1%; 10-year change +3%; all-time high $973.6/m³ in August 2011; real high (2024 US$) $1,863/m³ in August 1994 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

The two World Bank series here are tropical hardwood, and the page should not pretend otherwise. Cameroon, sapele, FOB Douala was $648.7/m³ in August 2026, up 1% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The nominal high was $1,088/m³ in June 2008 and the real high $1,597/m³ in February 2008. Those are sapele from Cameroon and dark red meranti from Malaysia, quoted free on board.

The softwood construction lumber that makes up most of world sawnwood prices somewhere else entirely. In North America it is assessed by private price reporting services as a delivered price for a specified dimension and grade, most famously two-by-four western spruce-pine-fir, and hedged on the CME lumber contract, which covers 27,500 board feet quoted in dollars per thousand board feet. In Europe, sawnwood is largely sold on quarterly or annual contracts negotiated between mills and merchants rather than against a public index. Neither of those markets tracks the tropical quotations above, and a reader looking for the price of framing lumber should go to the CME contract, not to this series.

Physical sawnwood is priced by species, dimension, grade, moisture content and treatment. Kiln-dried structural lumber graded to a published standard sells at a substantial premium to green rough-sawn material, and a board's grade is determined by knots, slope of grain and defects that a machine or a grader assesses piece by piece. The board foot, still used in North America, is a nominal measure that does not correspond to the finished dimensions of the wood, which is why a two-by-four is not two inches by four inches.

## What moves the price of sawnwood?

### Housing starts

Framing lumber demand tracks residential construction almost one for one, so mortgage rates and housebuilding permits are the leading indicator for sawnwood prices. Because mills cannot adjust output quickly and lumber cannot be stored cheaply for long, small changes in construction activity produce large changes in price, which is why lumber is among the most volatile of all industrial commodities.

### Log supply and cost

Logs are the largest input cost and their availability is set by planting decisions made decades earlier, by harvest permits and by export bans in supplying countries. When log costs rise or a supply route closes, as it did for Russian logs in 2022, mills either pay more or run below capacity, and both outcomes lift lumber prices.

### Trade duties

The long-running dispute over Canadian softwood lumber entering the United States has repeatedly produced antidumping and countervailing duties that add directly to the delivered cost of a large share of American supply. Duty rate changes move the North American price without any change in how much wood exists.

### Sawmill capacity and margins

Milling capacity is added slowly and closed permanently, so the industry oscillates between shortage and glut. During a shortage, mills earn extreme margins and add shifts; during a glut, high-cost mills close and their local log supply is stranded. Capacity, not forest area, is usually the binding constraint on how much sawnwood exists in a given year.

### Beetle, fire and windthrow salvage

Large-scale forest damage forces owners to cut and sell timber before it degrades, flooding mills with cheap logs and depressing lumber prices for a few years, then leaving a supply gap that lasts far longer. Mountain pine beetle in British Columbia and spruce beetle in central Europe both ran this cycle.

### Freight and container availability

Sawnwood moves by bulk vessel, container and rail, and it competes for space with higher-value cargo. When container rates spike or railcars are short, delivered prices in importing markets rise even when mill prices do not, and the trade shortens toward nearby suppliers.

### Substitution

Steel and concrete framing compete with wood in mid-rise construction, and engineered products such as cross-laminated timber and laminated veneer lumber compete with solid sawn beams. Relative prices and building codes decide the split, and code changes permitting taller timber buildings have been a slow but real source of new demand.

## How is sawnwood produced?

A log arriving at a sawmill is scanned to find the cutting pattern that yields the most valuable set of boards, then debarked and broken down by a headrig saw. Modern mills use optimising scanners and curve-sawing to follow the natural sweep of a log, which recovers noticeably more wood than sawing straight through. Recovery, the share of log volume that leaves as boards, runs around half for good softwood logs, and the rest becomes chips, sawdust and bark, all of which are sold rather than discarded.

Green boards are edged and trimmed, then dried, either air-dried over months or kiln-dried over days. Drying is what makes lumber dimensionally stable and it is where a great deal of the energy cost sits; mills typically burn their own bark and sawdust to fire the kilns. Dried boards are planed to final dimension, graded, and often stress-tested, then bundled and wrapped.

Grading is the step that turns a commodity into a product. Structural lumber is assigned a grade based on knots, grain slope, wane and other defects, either visually or by machine stress rating, and the grade determines the design values an engineer may use. A board that fails structural grading is sold for lower-value uses. Treatment, pressure-impregnating preservative for ground contact or applying fire retardant, adds another price step.

Volumes on this page are cubic meters of sawnwood, not of the logs consumed. Because recovery is roughly half, producing the world's 444.9 million m3 of sawnwood consumed a substantially larger volume of logs, which is why the sawnwood and roundwood tables are not directly comparable.

## What is sawnwood used for?

Construction takes most of it. Softwood sawnwood becomes wall studs, floor joists, roof trusses, formwork for concrete and the frames of the great majority of houses in North America, the Nordic countries and Japan. Where building traditions favor masonry, as in much of southern Europe, wood is used more for roofs, floors and joinery than for structure, which is why consumption per person varies so widely between countries at similar income levels.

Beyond framing, sawnwood is the input to a long list of secondary industries: furniture, flooring, doors and windows, packaging and pallets, fencing and decking, and the glue-laminated and cross-laminated products that let architects build tall buildings in timber. Pallets alone absorb a large volume of low-grade lumber and are the reason a shortage in construction lumber quickly becomes a shortage in shipping supplies.

Tropical hardwood sawnwood serves a different set of uses where appearance, durability or dimensional stability justify the price: boatbuilding, exterior joinery, high-end flooring and furniture, and musical instruments. Substitution away from these species, driven partly by cost and partly by legality concerns, has been steady for decades.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

Sawmilling is a scale business built next to its log supply, and that creates a tight mutual dependence: a mill needs a haulage radius full of standing timber, and a forest needs a mill within reach to have any value. When one closes, the other loses. Regions therefore experience wood supply shocks as regional economic events rather than as price signals.

The seaborne chain is unremarkable but capacity-constrained at the edges. Bulk and break-bulk vessels move packaged lumber from Nordic, Russian, Chilean and Brazilian ports; containers carry higher-value and tropical material; rail moves Canadian lumber into the United States. The bottlenecks appear at port storage and at rail capacity rather than at sea, and lumber loses out to higher-value cargo when space is scarce.

The genuine single points of failure are policy and pest. A duty decision can reprice a third of a national market overnight, and an insect interception can close a lane. Kiln drying and heat treatment are required by phytosanitary rules for most international shipments precisely because the alternative is exporting forest pests along with the wood, and the treatment certificate is as necessary as the bill of lading.

Finally, the industry's fiber base is shifting. Plantation softwood in the southern hemisphere and the southern United States is displacing boreal natural forest at the margin, and mills built for large old-growth logs do not run well on small plantation stems. Retooling for smaller diameters is a slow, capital-hungry adjustment that constrains how quickly supply can respond to a price spike.

## Key companies

- West Fraser Timber: sawmiller, Canada, listed (WFG)
- Canfor: sawmiller, Canada, listed (CFP)
- Weyerhaeuser: forest owner and sawmiller, United States, listed (WY)
- Stora Enso: sawmiller and forest owner, Finland, listed (STERV)
- Binderholz: sawmiller, Austria
- Arauco: plantation owner and sawmiller, Chile

## Timeline

- 1985: Indonesia bans raw log exports. Forcing logs to be sawn and peeled at home moved tropical processing to Southeast Asia and set the template that other producers copied. (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02762230)
- 2008-05: The United States extends the Lacey Act to wood. Importing wood harvested in breach of a foreign country's laws became an offence, making buyers responsible for the legality of their supply chain. (https://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant-imports/lacey-act)
- 2013-03: The EU Timber Regulation takes effect. Due diligence obligations in the largest import market shifted the compliance burden onto buyers and began excluding suppliers who could not document origin. (https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/forests/deforestation/eu-timber-regulation_en)
- 2022-01: Russia bans roundwood exports. A country supplying roughly a tenth of traded roundwood stopped shipping softwood logs, forcing Chinese and Finnish mills to find fiber elsewhere and tightening sawn supply. (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 six other commodities in a regime requiring geolocated proof of deforestation-free origin, replacing due diligence with documentary evidence. (https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/forests/deforestation/regulation-deforestation-free-products_en)
- 1982-10: The Canada-United States softwood lumber dispute begins. The first countervailing duty petition against Canadian lumber opened a dispute that has recurred through five rounds and still adds duties to a large share of American supply. (https://www.trade.gov/us-antidumping-and-countervailing-duties)
- 2008-06: Tropical sawnwood sets its nominal high. The commodity boom carried the Cameroon sapele quotation to its highest nominal monthly value in the World Bank series, just before construction demand collapsed worldwide. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets)
- 2018-01: Mountain pine beetle salvage runs out in British Columbia. A decade of cutting beetle-killed timber ended, permanent mill closures followed, and the province's annual allowable cut was reduced, removing a long-standing source of cheap North American fiber. (https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/industry/forestry)
- 2021-05: North American framing lumber sets a record. Mills cut output expecting a pandemic collapse while home improvement and housebuilding surged instead, producing the sharpest lumber price spike on record and a wave of new mill investment. (https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/agriculture/lumber-and-softs/lumber.html)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most sawnwood

United States produced 75.5 million m3 in 2024, 17% of the world's 444.9 million m3 (FAOSTAT forestry). China was second with 14%. Sawnwood means wood sawn lengthwise thicker than six millimetres, and it is overwhelmingly softwood.

### which country exports the most lumber

Canada exported the most sawnwood (HS 4407) by value in 2024, 17% of the world total of $38 billion (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 20%, and the flow between those two has been subject to trade duties for four decades.

### why did lumber prices spike

Sawmills cut output in early 2020 expecting a construction collapse, but home improvement and housebuilding surged instead. Because mills cannot add capacity quickly and lumber cannot be stockpiled cheaply, a modest demand increase produced the sharpest price spike on record before capacity caught up.

### what is the difference between lumber and sawnwood

They are the same product under different names: lumber in North America, sawn timber or sawnwood elsewhere, meaning wood sawn lengthwise thicker than six millimetres. FAOSTAT uses sawnwood. Board feet, used in North America, is a nominal measure, which is why a two-by-four is not two inches by four.

### how much of a log becomes lumber

Roughly half by volume for good softwood logs; the rest becomes chips, sawdust and bark, all of which are sold to pulp mills, panel plants or burned for kiln energy. That recovery rate is why sawnwood production of 444.9 million m3 in 2024 consumed a substantially larger volume of logs (FAOSTAT forestry).

### is the lumber price on this page the same as framing lumber

No. The two World Bank series here are tropical hardwood, sapele from Cameroon and meranti from Malaysia, quoted free on board. North American framing lumber is assessed separately by private services and hedged on the CME lumber contract, and does not track these quotations.

### what moves sawnwood prices

Housing starts above all, then log cost and availability, trade duties, sawmill capacity, salvage harvests after fire or beetle damage, and freight. Mill capacity rather than forest area is usually the binding constraint in any given year, which is why prices can spike while forests stand uncut.

## 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 does sawnwood come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/sawnwood/.

---

# Where does sesame seed come from?

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

Sesame seed comes mainly from India, which produced 866,111 tonnes in 2024, 13% of the world's 6.7 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Myanmar (11%), Sudan (9.4%) and Nigeria (6.7%) follow; the top five together supply 46%. The biggest exporter of sesame seed (HS 1207) is India (7.4% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Sesame is a short-season, drought-tolerant oilseed that yields on poor soil with little more than hand labor and rain, so it is grown by smallholders across the Sahel and the dry tropics of Asia rather than on capitalized farms.

*A drought-tolerant oilseed pressed for oil and ground into tahini, grown across the Sahel and Asia.* Also called: sesame, sesame seeds, til, benniseed.

## Where does sesame seed come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | 866,111 | 13% |
| 2 | Myanmar | 720,000 | 11% |
| 3 | Sudan | 626,173 | 9.4% |
| 4 | Nigeria | 450,000 | 6.7% |
| 5 | Pakistan | 435,928 | 6.5% |
| 6 | Ethiopia | 435,456 | 6.5% |
| 7 | Brazil | 399,400 | 6% |
| 8 | China | 380,000 | 5.7% |
| 9 | Chad | 291,397 | 4.4% |
| 10 | Tanzania | 272,670 | 4.1% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 27% |
| | World | 6.7 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 India produced 866,111 tonnes, 13% of the world's 6.7 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Myanmar followed with 11%, then Sudan (9.4%), Nigeria (6.7%) and Pakistan (6.5%). The top five account for 46%, 69 countries reported output and 27% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +8% over the ten years to 2024 and +5% on the previous year.

That is a far flatter distribution than most traded crops, and it splits into two blocs. The Asian one, India, Myanmar, Pakistan, China and Bangladesh, grows mostly for domestic pressing and food. The African one, Sudan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Chad, Burkina Faso and Niger, grows largely for export, much of it from rainfed smallholdings on the Sahel and the Sudanese clay plains.

Brazil is the outlier. It took sesame up as a rotation crop on the cerrado over the past decade and grows it mechanically at a scale no traditional origin matches. Almost everywhere else the crop is sown, weeded and cut by hand, which caps yields and makes planting a decision about available labor rather than about machinery.


## Who exports and imports sesame seed?

### Exporters of other oil seeds and oleaginous fruits (HS 1207), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | $581.6 million | 7.4% |
| 2 | Niger | $576 million | 7.3% |
| 3 | Sudan | $574.2 million | 7.3% |
| 4 | China | $447.7 million | 5.7% |
| 5 | Nigeria | $391.4 million | 5% |
| 6 | Brazil | $375.4 million | 4.8% |
| 7 | Pakistan | $327.4 million | 4.1% |
| 8 | Ethiopia | $270.9 million | 3.4% |
| 9 | Mozambique | $269.8 million | 3.4% |
| 10 | Tanzania | $268.1 million | 3.4% |
| 11 | Australia | $239.7 million | 3% |
| 12 | United States | $221.5 million | 2.8% |
| 13 | Canada | $212.5 million | 2.7% |
| 14 | Paraguay | $211.5 million | 2.7% |
| 15 | Chad | $204.5 million | 2.6% |

### Importers of other oil seeds and oleaginous fruits (HS 1207), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $2.2 billion | 27% |
| 2 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $497.6 million | 6.3% |
| 3 | India | $475.8 million | 6% |
| 4 | Japan | $418.5 million | 5.3% |
| 5 | United States | $417.9 million | 5.3% |
| 6 | Germany | $311 million | 3.9% |
| 7 | South Korea | $278.6 million | 3.5% |
| 8 | Netherlands | $211.2 million | 2.7% |
| 9 | Israel | $151.8 million | 1.9% |
| 10 | Mexico | $143.7 million | 1.8% |
| 11 | Saudi Arabia | $138.5 million | 1.8% |
| 12 | France | $136.1 million | 1.7% |
| 13 | Egypt | $125.3 million | 1.6% |
| 14 | Vietnam | $121.2 million | 1.5% |
| 15 | Spain | $118.3 million | 1.5% |

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

India was the largest exporter of sesame seed (HS 1207) in 2024 with 7.4% of world export value, ahead of Niger (7.3%), on world trade of $7.9 billion (CEPII BACI). China was the largest importer with 27%.

The customs line is broader than the crop: HS 1207 covers several oilseeds alongside sesame, so the world value on this line overstates sesame by itself. The rankings within it still describe the trade, because sesame dominates the flows of the countries named.

What stands out is how concentrated demand is against how dispersed supply is. China takes 27% of imports and also appears among exporters with 5.7%, buying African seed to crush and selling processed product on. Turkey (Türkiye) and Japan are the other large structural buyers, and India and Turkey (Türkiye) both import and export.


## What does sesame seed cost?

### How it is priced

There is no futures market and no free public benchmark price for sesame, so this site quotes none. Seed is bought at village markets and roadside assembly points by traders, aggregated by exporters and sold on contract to crushers and food manufacturers. Ethiopia sells much of its crop through a national commodity exchange with defined grades and delivery centres, which is unusual; most origins have no organized marketplace at all.

Contracts specify origin, color, purity, oil content and free fatty acid, and whitish hulled seed for confectionery is worth far more than mixed brown seed for crushing. Buyers in China and Japan apply their own standards, and residue testing has been part of the price since European controls tightened.


## What moves the price of sesame seed?

### Chinese buying

One country takes over a quarter of world imports on this line and crushes most of it for oil, so its stock position and crushing margins set the tone for African origins. When Chinese buyers step back, seed piles up at African ports with nowhere else to go in that volume.

### Rain in the Sahel

Sesame is sown on the rains and matures in three to four months, so one wet season decides the crop. It tolerates drought better than most crops, but late rain at harvest splits capsules and stains the seed, cutting it out of the premium hulled market.

### Conflict and export routes

Much of African production comes from areas with fragile security. Sudan's crop grows in Gedaref and Kassala and leaves through Port Sudan, and the fighting that began in 2023 disrupted planting, finance and the route to the coast in one of the largest exporting countries.

### Contaminant and residue rules

Sesame carries salmonella and pesticide risk, and consignments are tested at the border. European emergency controls introduced after ethylene oxide was found in Indian seed in 2020 brought certification and heavy sampling, raising cost and cutting volumes from that origin.

### Allergen labelling

Sesame became a declarable major allergen in the United States from 2023, pushing bakeries and manufacturers into segregated handling or out of using it. Against that, tahini and hummus demand in Europe and North America has grown steadily for years.

## How is sesame seed produced?

Sesame is an annual herb sown at the start of the rains and cut three to four months later. Seed forms in capsules up the stem, and in traditional varieties those capsules shatter when ripe and spill the seed. That trait shapes everything: the crop is cut slightly early, stacked in stooks to dry, then shaken over cloth to release the seed, which is why the harvest is almost entirely manual.

Seed is cleaned, destoned and graded on color and purity, then takes one of two paths. Seed for confectionery, tahini and bakery is hulled, by soaking and abrasion or by alkali treatment, then washed, dried and optically sorted into white grades. Seed for oil is crushed as it is, usually after roasting, because the roasted flavour is the point of Asian sesame oil.

Crushing is by expeller press for the roasted culinary oil and by press or solvent for cheaper refined grades. Sesame oil carries natural antioxidants and resists rancidity better than most seed oils, so it stores and ships without special handling.


## What is sesame seed used for?

The crop divides between oil and whole seed. Roasted sesame oil is a flavouring in East Asian cooking rather than a frying medium, while pressed and refined sesame oil is a cooking oil in India and the Middle East. Whole seed goes on bread, into confectionery such as halva and sesame snaps, and is ground into tahini, the base of hummus.

By-products are useful rather than incidental. The meal left after crushing is a high-protein animal feed, and hulls go to feed and fuel. Sesamin and sesamolin extracted from the oil are sold as antioxidant ingredients, and sesame oil has long been used as a carrier oil in pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain starts with a very large number of very small farms and narrows quickly. Traders assemble seed at rural markets, exporters clean and bag it inland or at a port, and it leaves in containers. Hulling and roasting plants sit in the buying countries rather than at origin, so most value beyond cleaning is added abroad.

Port Sudan, Lagos, Dar es Salaam and Djibouti for Ethiopian seed are the pinch points, and long inland haulage is the larger cost for landlocked Chad, Niger and Burkina Faso. The seed itself is dry and stable and needs no cold chain.

The structural risks are quality and security. A contaminant finding can shut an origin out of a market within weeks, and because so much production sits where conflict, currency controls and export bans are ordinary hazards, supply moves for political reasons as often as agronomic ones.


## Timeline

- 3000 BCE: Sesame is domesticated in South Asia. One of the oldest oilseeds in cultivation, it spread early into Mesopotamia and Africa and is still grown across broadly the same dry tropical belt. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 2008: Ethiopia opens a commodity exchange that trades sesame. Defined grades, warehouse delivery and published trading gave one African origin a formal marketplace, unusual in a crop otherwise sold bilaterally between traders. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 2010s: Chinese buying comes to dominate the African sesame trade. Growth in Chinese crushing pulled Sudanese, Ethiopian and Nigerian seed east and made one country's demand the main determinant of African farm gate prices. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 2020-10: The European Union imposes emergency controls on Indian sesame. Ethylene oxide found far above the residue limit brought mandatory certification and heavy border sampling, and the same contaminant was later found across many other imported foods. (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eur/2020/1540)
- 2023-01: Sesame becomes a declarable major allergen in the United States. The FASTER Act added sesame to the allergens that must be labelled plainly, changing handling and in some cases formulation for bakeries and manufacturers. (http://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-food-labeling-and-critical-foods/food-allergies)
- 2023-04: War in Sudan disrupts one of the largest exporting origins. Fighting cut planting, trade finance and the haulage route to Port Sudan in a country where sesame is among the most valuable exports after gold. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most sesame

India produced 866,111 tonnes in 2024, 13% of the world's 6.7 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Myanmar was second with 11%. Production is unusually dispersed: 69 countries reported a crop and 27% came from outside the top ten.

### who buys the most sesame seed

China was the largest importer on this trade line in 2024 with 27% of world imports, ahead of Turkey (Türkiye) with 6.3% (CEPII BACI). Most of it is crushed for oil. Japan, South Korea and the tahini industries of the Middle East and Europe are the other structural buyers.

### what is sesame seed used for

Two things, and they use different seed. Whole seed goes on bread, into halva and sesame snaps, and is ground into tahini for hummus. The rest is crushed for oil: roasted sesame oil as an East Asian flavouring, and lighter pressed oil as a cooking oil in India and the Middle East.

### why is sesame harvested by hand

Because traditional varieties shatter. The seed capsules split open when fully ripe and spill the seed on the ground, so the crop must be cut slightly early, stood in stooks to dry and then shaken out over cloth. Non-shattering varieties exist but have not displaced the traditional ones at scale.

### what is the difference between hulled and natural sesame seed

Hulled seed has had the outer coat removed by soaking and abrasion or by alkali treatment, leaving a white seed used in bakery, confectionery and tahini. Natural seed keeps its coat, is browner, and is generally crushed for oil. Hulled white grades sell at a substantial premium.

### why was sesame added to the allergen list

Because sesame allergy is common enough to warrant plain labelling. The United States FASTER Act made sesame the ninth major food allergen with effect from January 2023, so it must be declared on labels, and manufacturers have had to segregate handling or reformulate to avoid cross-contact.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where does shrimp come from?

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

The biggest exporter of crustaceans (HS 0306) is Ecuador (20% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Mexico, US import price, No. 1 shell-on, was $8.6/kg in October 2023, down 25% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Most shrimp is now farmed rather than caught, and it is farmed where warm shallow coastal land sits beside brackish water and cheap labor, which is why Ecuador's estuaries and the deltas of Andhra Pradesh and the Mekong supply the trade while the old wild fisheries of the Gulf of Mexico and Southeast Asia have become marginal to it.

*Farmed and wild-caught crustaceans, frozen at source and shipped as headless shell-on or peeled product.* Also called: prawns, shrimps, vannamei, black tiger prawn, farmed shrimp.

## Who exports and imports shrimp?

Ecuador and India farm and export whole shrimp; Vietnam and China also process imported raw material for re-export, so their export figures include other countries' shrimp.

### Exporters of crustaceans, including shrimps and prawns (HS 0306), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ecuador | $6.3 billion | 20% |
| 2 | India | $4.5 billion | 14% |
| 3 | Canada | $3.1 billion | 9.8% |
| 4 | Vietnam | $2.2 billion | 6.8% |
| 5 | Russia | $2.1 billion | 6.6% |
| 6 | Indonesia | $1.3 billion | 4.2% |
| 7 | Argentina | $1.2 billion | 3.9% |
| 8 | United States | $964.5 million | 3% |
| 9 | China | $941.6 million | 3% |
| 10 | Thailand | $752.3 million | 2.4% |
| 11 | Netherlands | $521.5 million | 1.6% |
| 12 | Greenland | $508.4 million | 1.6% |
| 13 | Spain | $467.3 million | 1.5% |
| 14 | Denmark | $456.6 million | 1.4% |
| 15 | Australia | $361 million | 1.1% |

### Importers of crustaceans, including shrimps and prawns (HS 0306), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $8.7 billion | 27% |
| 2 | United States | $7.2 billion | 23% |
| 3 | Japan | $1.8 billion | 5.8% |
| 4 | Spain | $1.5 billion | 4.6% |
| 5 | France | $1.1 billion | 3.6% |
| 6 | South Korea | $1.1 billion | 3.5% |
| 7 | Italy | $887.9 million | 2.8% |
| 8 | Canada | $777.5 million | 2.4% |
| 9 | Hong Kong | $724.3 million | 2.3% |
| 10 | Netherlands | $593 million | 1.9% |
| 11 | Other Asia, nes | $540.8 million | 1.7% |
| 12 | Vietnam | $534.2 million | 1.7% |
| 13 | Belgium | $489.3 million | 1.5% |
| 14 | United Kingdom | $476.6 million | 1.5% |
| 15 | Germany | $448.9 million | 1.4% |

### Exporters of frozen shrimps and prawns, other (HS 030617), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ecuador | $6.1 billion | 33% |
| 2 | India | $4.4 billion | 23% |
| 3 | Vietnam | $1.6 billion | 8.6% |
| 4 | Argentina | $1.2 billion | 6.3% |
| 5 | Indonesia | $1.1 billion | 5.6% |
| 6 | Thailand | $563.3 million | 3% |
| 7 | China | $558.4 million | 3% |
| 8 | Spain | $273.8 million | 1.5% |
| 9 | Venezuela | $255 million | 1.4% |
| 10 | Honduras | $229.6 million | 1.2% |
| 11 | Netherlands | $209.1 million | 1.1% |
| 12 | Bangladesh | $208.5 million | 1.1% |
| 13 | Peru | $176.9 million | 0.9% |
| 14 | Malaysia | $155 million | 0.8% |
| 15 | Mexico | $152.2 million | 0.8% |

### Importers of frozen shrimps and prawns, other (HS 030617), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $4.8 billion | 25% |
| 2 | China | $4.4 billion | 23% |
| 3 | Japan | $1.2 billion | 6.4% |
| 4 | Spain | $1.1 billion | 6% |
| 5 | France | $681.9 million | 3.6% |
| 6 | Italy | $563.7 million | 3% |
| 7 | South Korea | $476.7 million | 2.5% |
| 8 | Netherlands | $412.2 million | 2.2% |
| 9 | United Kingdom | $403.7 million | 2.1% |
| 10 | Canada | $362.4 million | 1.9% |
| 11 | Other Asia, nes | $360.3 million | 1.9% |
| 12 | Russia | $350 million | 1.9% |
| 13 | Belgium | $332.4 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | Germany | $329.8 million | 1.8% |
| 15 | Vietnam | $307.4 million | 1.6% |

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

Two markets take most of the shrimp that crosses a border, and they want different things. China imported 27% of world crustacean imports by value in 2024 and United States 23%, followed by Japan on 5.8%, Spain on 4.6% and France on 3.6% (CEPII BACI). On frozen shrimp specifically, United States was the largest buyer with 25% and China took 23% of $18.8 billion. China buys large volumes of whole, head-on shrimp for its own consumption and for reprocessing; the United States buys headless, peeled and value-added product for retail and foodservice, which is why Indian and Vietnamese plants that can peel and cook at scale supply it while Ecuadorian volume flows the other way across the Pacific.

Processing and re-export blur the map further. Vietnam and China both import raw shrimp, peel, cook, bread or skewer it and ship it on, so their export lines include material farmed elsewhere, and the same tonne can appear twice in world trade statistics. Thailand, once the largest exporter, retains a processing industry considerably larger than its farming sector after disease cut its output in the 2010s. Trade remedies shape the flows as much as cost does: the United States has maintained antidumping duties on frozen warmwater shrimp from several countries since the mid-2000s and added countervailing duty orders in the 2020s, and each rate change alters which origin is cheapest at a US port without changing what any farm produces.


## What does shrimp cost?

- Mexico, US import price, No. 1 shell-on: $8.6/kg in October 2023; 12-month change -25%; 10-year change -48%; all-time high $19.25/kg in August 2014; real high (2024 US$) $54.82/kg in January 1979 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

Shrimp has no futures contract and no single benchmark. It is priced per pound or per kilogram against a specification with four parts: species, origin, form and count. Count is the key term, the number of shrimp per pound, quoted as a range such as 16/20, 21/25, 31/35 or 41/50, and larger shrimp carry a substantial premium per kilogram, so a farm's decision about when to harvest is a decision about which price it will receive. Form runs from head-on shell-on through headless shell-on to peeled and deveined, cooked, tail-on and breaded, each adding processing cost and yield loss. The reference quotes traders use are US import price assessments by count and form, weekly Ecuadorian farm-gate and FOB Guayaquil prices, and Indian farm-gate prices in the main growing districts.

The series carried here is Mexico, US import price, No. 1 shell-on, and it needs reading with care: it is a wild-caught Mexican shrimp import price, not a farmed vannamei price, and its most recent observation is October 2023, at $8.6/kg, down 25% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The series high was $19.25/kg in August 2014 and its inflation-adjusted peak was far higher and much earlier, $54.82/kg in January 1979. The low since the series began in 1960 was $1.43/kg in January 1960, and over ten years the series was -48%.

Three ambiguities follow from all this. A quoted shrimp price is meaningless without its count and form, and headline comparisons across sources frequently mix them. Farmed and wild shrimp are different markets with different cost structures and different price cycles, and a wild-caught benchmark will not track a farmed one. And the trade data on this page sits under a heading that includes crab and lobster, so the crustacean table and the frozen shrimp table give different country rankings for good reasons rather than as an error.


## What moves the price of shrimp?

### Disease in the ponds

Shrimp have no adaptive immune system, so there are no vaccines and control depends on excluding pathogens and managing water. White spot syndrome virus, which spread through Asia from the early 1990s and reached the Americas at the end of that decade, and acute hepatopancreatic necrosis disease, the bacterial cause of early mortality syndrome that emerged in China and swept through Southeast Asia, have each removed a large share of a producing country's output within two seasons. Enterocytozoon hepatopenaei, a microsporidian that stunts growth without killing, does the same damage more quietly.

### Ecuador's cost structure

Large low-density ponds with tidal water exchange, cheap electricity for aeration, farms of a scale that supports mechanization, and hatcheries in the species' native range give Ecuador a cost per kilogram that other origins cannot match. When it expands, it expands into the cheapest end of the market and sets the floor everyone else must clear. That is why an Ecuadorian production increase depresses prices worldwide even in segments Ecuador does not itself supply, and why other origins compete on processing rather than on raw cost.

### United States trade remedies

Antidumping duties on frozen warmwater shrimp from several exporting countries have been in place since the mid-2000s, and countervailing duty orders were added in the 2020s. The rates are recalculated in periodic administrative reviews, company by company, and a change of a few percentage points shifts which origin lands cheapest at a US port. Because the United States is one of the two largest buyers, these decisions redirect trade flows on announcement, independently of farm costs or harvests.

### Feed cost

Feed is the largest single cost in a grow-out pond, and shrimp feed is built on fishmeal, soybean meal, wheat flour and fish oil. When fishmeal rises on a poor Peruvian season, or soybean meal on a South American drought, the farm-gate price a producer needs in order to stock the next cycle rises with it. Because the biological cycle is three to four months, the cost shock and the harvest it affects are separated by a season, so feed prices predict farm-gate prices better than they explain them.

### The stocking cycle and its lag

A farmer decides whether to stock a pond based on the price at the time of stocking and receives the price three to four months later. When prices fall, ponds go unstocked, and the shortfall arrives a season later, by which time prices have often recovered and everyone stocks at once. That lag produces a characteristic cycle of oversupply and shortage that has nothing to do with weather or disease, and it is amplified in Ecuador where farms are large enough to change stocking decisions quickly.

### US foodservice demand and cold storage

Shrimp is the largest seafood category in American consumption, sold heavily through restaurants and through retail promotions built around a target price point. Importers and distributors carry months of frozen inventory, so demand reaches the exporting country through the cold store rather than directly: a heavy inventory position means no buying regardless of a good harvest, and a drawdown means aggressive buying regardless of a poor one. Cold storage holdings are therefore watched as closely as production.

### Antibiotic residues and market access

Farmed shrimp is tested at the border for banned antibiotic residues, and a pattern of detections can put an exporter or a country onto import alert, which requires every subsequent shipment to be tested and held. Certification schemes for farm practice add a second layer for European and North American retailers. A residue finding is therefore an access event rather than a quality discount: it removes a supplier from a market entirely, and the volume has to find a home somewhere with looser controls.

### Rainfall, salinity and El Nino in the growing regions

Grow-out ponds depend on brackish water within a species' salinity tolerance, and heavy rain dilutes them, drops the temperature and stresses the animals into disease. Ecuadorian El Nino years bring exactly that, and monsoon flooding does the same in Andhra Pradesh and the Mekong delta. Because the effect works through disease outbreaks rather than through direct mortality, the loss shows up as a poor harvest a month or two after the rain rather than immediately.

## How is shrimp produced?

Farmed shrimp begins in a hatchery. Broodstock, increasingly from closed specific-pathogen-free breeding programs held by a small number of genetics suppliers, are conditioned and spawned; the eggs hatch into nauplii and pass through zoea and mysis stages into postlarvae over roughly three weeks, feeding first on algae and then on brine shrimp and formulated diets. Postlarvae are counted and sold to farms, sometimes via an intermediate nursery that grows them a little larger before they go into the main pond.

Grow-out takes three to four months. Ponds are stocked at densities that vary enormously by system, from a few animals per square meter in Ecuador's extensive ponds to dozens in intensive Asian systems, and they are aerated with paddlewheels because dissolved oxygen is the binding constraint at high density. Shrimp are fed pelleted diets several times a day, and the feed conversion ratio, typically between 1.4 and 1.7 kilograms of feed per kilogram of shrimp, is the number a farm manages against. Water quality, salinity and pathogen exclusion determine whether the crop reaches harvest at all. Harvest is by draining the pond or seining it, and the animals go straight into an ice slurry, because shrimp deteriorate quickly and melanosis, the black spotting on the shell, begins within hours.

At the plant shrimp are washed, graded by size on a machine that sorts by count, and processed to order: heads removed, shell stripped and the vein taken out, cooked or left raw, sometimes butterflied, skewered or breaded. Freezing is either individually quick frozen, where each animal is frozen separately in a spiral or tunnel freezer and then glazed with a film of ice to prevent freezer burn, or block frozen for industrial buyers. Product is metal-detected, sampled for antibiotic residues and microbiology, packed in cartons marked by count and form, and shipped in refrigerated containers. Wild-caught shrimp follows a shorter path, usually graded and frozen on board a trawler or landed iced for a shoreside plant.


## What is shrimp used for?

Shrimp is food and nothing else, which makes its demand unusually simple and unusually sensitive to price points. In the United States it is the largest seafood category by consumption, sold through restaurant menus, through retail freezer cabinets in standard bag sizes and through prepared foods, with promotions built around a target retail price that importers work backwards from. In China and across East Asia much of it is bought whole and head-on, fresh or frozen, for home cooking and banquet use, which is why Ecuadorian shell-on product suits that market and Indian peeled product does not.

Form determines who buys it. Large counts of head-on shell-on and black tiger go to Asian and southern European markets that value appearance and size; small counts of peeled and deveined shrimp go into salads, sandwiches, ready meals and industrial food manufacturing; breaded and cooked product supplies restaurant chains that need a consistent portion at a fixed cost. Shells and heads left after peeling are not wasted: they are rendered into shrimp meal for aquaculture feed and pet food, and are the industrial source of chitin and its derivative chitosan.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Processing capacity does not sit where the shrimp is farmed. Ecuador exports a high proportion of its harvest whole and frozen with minimal handling, and much of the peeling, cooking and value-adding that its shrimp eventually receives happens in China and Vietnam, which buy raw material from several origins to keep large plants and skilled labor forces occupied. India built its plants alongside its farms in Andhra Pradesh to serve the United States directly. Thailand kept a processing industry considerably larger than the farming sector that once fed it. The consequence is that a country's export figure measures its plants as much as its ponds.

Everything moves in refrigerated containers at minus 18 degrees Celsius or colder, from Guayaquil across the Pacific to Chinese ports and through the Panama Canal to the US East Coast and Europe, from Visakhapatnam, Chennai and Kolkata westward through Suez or eastward to Asia, and from Ho Chi Minh City and Haiphong to Japan, the United States and Europe. Reefer container availability, plug capacity on vessels and the reliability of the cold chain through transshipment are real constraints, and canal or Red Sea disruptions lengthen voyages for a product where every extra week is inventory cost.

The single points of failure are biological and regulatory rather than physical. Shrimp cannot be vaccinated, so a novel pathogen in a densely stocked region can remove a large share of an origin's output within two seasons and has repeatedly done so. Broodstock genetics are supplied by a handful of companies, which concentrates the risk in the animals themselves. Two markets take about half of world imports, so a trade remedy decision or an import alert in either one reroutes a large volume at short notice. And because there is no futures market and no benchmark contract, a farmer facing a three-to-four-month production lag has no way to lock in a price before stocking.


## Key companies

- Thai Union Group: processor, Thailand, listed
- Minh Phu Seafood Corporation: processor, Vietnam, listed
- Avanti Feeds: feed producer, India, listed
- Grupo Nueva Pescanova: producer, Spain
- Skretting: feed producer, Norway

## Timeline

- 1985: Asian shrimp farming expands as hatchery technology spreads. Reliable hatchery production of postlarvae turned shrimp farming from a pond-stocking gamble into an industry, and Asian output multiplied within a few years. (https://www.fao.org/4/ag164e/AG164E01.htm)
- 1992: White spot syndrome virus first reported in farmed shrimp in East Asia. A pathogen with no vaccine and near-total mortality entered the industry and has shaped where and how shrimp can be farmed ever since. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12656988/)
- 1998-10: WTO Appellate Body rules against the US shrimp import ban. The shrimp-turtle decision set the terms on which importing countries may condition market access on how a fishery is conducted, a template later applied well beyond shrimp. (https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds58_e.htm)
- 1999: White spot syndrome virus reaches Ecuador and Central America. Ecuadorian exports fell by roughly two-thirds, and the collapse pushed the region toward domesticated specific-pathogen-free vannamei stock, which is the basis of its later dominance. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7172539/)
- 2005-01: US finds its domestic shrimp industry injured by imports from six countries. The determination cleared the way for antidumping duties that have shaped which origins supply the American market for two decades. (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2005-01-27/html/05-1487.htm)
- 2009: India admits Penaeus vannamei to commercial farming. Switching from black tiger to a faster-growing domesticated species let smallholder ponds in Andhra Pradesh scale up, and India became a leading exporter within a decade. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12621314/)
- 2009: Acute hepatopancreatic necrosis disease first recorded in southern China. The bacterial cause of early mortality syndrome appeared in Chinese ponds and then spread through Southeast Asia, redrawing the export map. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6889531/)
- 2013: Early mortality syndrome halves Thailand's farmed shrimp output. The largest exporter of the previous decade fell out of the top ranks in two seasons, and its plants turned to processing imported raw material instead. (https://www.fao.org/in-action/globefish/news-events/news/news-detail/Shrimp---March-2014/en)
- 2015: Research quantifies aquaculture as the leading driver of Southeast Asian mangrove loss. Documenting the link between pond expansion and mangrove clearance gave regulators and retailers the basis for the sourcing standards now applied to farmed shrimp. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4720307/)
- 2021: Ecuador overtakes India as the largest shrimp exporter. Low-cost extensive farming beat processing-led supply chains on price, and the trade reoriented toward whole frozen shrimp shipped across the Pacific. (https://thefishsite.com/articles/global-shrimp-production-sees-significant-growth-in-2021-gorjan-nikolik-rabobank)
- 2023-09: Farm-gate vannamei prices fall to historic lows on oversupply. Simultaneous expansion in Ecuador, India and Vietnam met flat demand, and the resulting price collapse showed how sharply the stocking cycle overshoots. (https://www.fao.org/in-action/globefish/news-events/news/news-detail/Shrimp-market-bleak/en)
- 2024-12: US clears countervailing duties on shrimp from Ecuador, India and Vietnam. A second layer of duties on top of the existing antidumping orders changed the relative landed cost of every major origin at a US port. (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2024-12-17/html/2024-29730.htm)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country exports the most shrimp

Ecuador led exports of frozen shrimps and prawns in 2024 with 33% of the $18.8 billion traded, ahead of India on 23% and Vietnam on 8.6% (CEPII BACI). This page carries no production-by-country data, so exports are the origin measure used here.

### where does most shrimp come from

Most is farmed rather than caught, in warm shallow coastal ponds. Ecuador's estuaries in Guayas and El Oro, the deltas of Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal in India, and the Mekong delta in Vietnam supply the bulk of the traded volume. Ecuador alone shipped 33% of world frozen shrimp exports in 2024 (CEPII BACI).

### who imports the most shrimp

China imported 27% of world crustacean imports by value in 2024 and United States 23% (CEPII BACI). On frozen shrimp specifically, United States was the largest buyer with 25%. China buys whole head-on shrimp, while the United States buys headless, peeled and value-added product.

### what is the price of shrimp per kilo

There is no single benchmark, because a shrimp price depends on species, origin, count per pound and form. The series carried here, Mexico, US import price, No. 1 shell-on, was $8.6/kg at its most recent observation in October 2023 (World Bank Pink Sheet). That is a wild-caught Mexican import price, not a farmed vannamei price.

### what is the difference between vannamei and black tiger shrimp

Vannamei is the Pacific white shrimp, native to the eastern Pacific, domesticated into specific-pathogen-free breeding lines, tolerant of dense stocking and ready for market in three to four months. Black tiger is a larger Indo-Pacific species that sells at a premium but is harder to breed in captivity and more vulnerable to disease. Vannamei supplies most of the world trade.

### why is shrimp so cheap now

Farmers decide whether to stock a pond based on today's price and harvest three to four months later, so the industry regularly overshoots. Simultaneous expansion in Ecuador, India and Vietnam met flat demand and drove farm-gate prices to historic lows in 2023. The benchmark series was -48% over ten years to October 2023 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### is farmed shrimp safe to eat

Farmed shrimp entering the United States and European Union is tested at the border for banned antibiotic residues, and repeated detections put an exporter on an import alert requiring every shipment to be tested and held. Product is also sampled for microbiology at the processing plant. This site does not give health advice, but the testing regime is why residue findings function as market-access events.

### what does shrimp count mean

Count is the number of shrimp per pound, written as a range such as 16/20, 21/25 or 41/50, and it is the main determinant of price: fewer shrimp per pound means larger animals and a higher price per kilogram. A quote is meaningless without it, together with the form, meaning head-on, headless, peeled, cooked or breaded.

### why do shrimp diseases matter so much

Shrimp have no adaptive immune system, so there is no vaccine and control depends on excluding pathogens. White spot syndrome virus cut Ecuadorian exports by around two-thirds after reaching the Americas in 1999, and early mortality syndrome halved Thailand's output by 2013. A single outbreak can remove a leading exporter from the market within two seasons.

## Sources

- 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 does shrimp come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/shrimp/.

---

# Where does silk come from?

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

Silk comes mainly from India, which produced 260,000 tonnes in 2024, 56% of the world's 464,010 tonnes (FAOSTAT). China (32%), Uzbekistan (6.5%) and Vietnam (3.4%) follow; the top five together supply 98%. The biggest exporter of silk (HS 5002) is China (48% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Silk survives where mulberry grows year round and where households will still do a month of exacting, unpaid-looking work for a few kilograms of cocoons, which is why it concentrates in warm rural Asia rather than in rich countries.

*Filament reeled from the cocoon of the mulberry silkworm, the only natural continuous-filament fibre.* Also called: raw silk, silkworm cocoons, mulberry silk, sericulture.

## Where does silk come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | 260,000 | 56% |
| 2 | China | 147,000 | 32% |
| 3 | Uzbekistan | 30,066 | 6.5% |
| 4 | Vietnam | 15,884 | 3.4% |
| 5 | North Korea | 2,581 | 0.6% |
| 6 | Thailand | 2,000 | 0.4% |
| 7 | Iran | 1,800 | 0.4% |
| 8 | Brazil | 1,581 | 0.3% |
| 9 | Tajikistan | 1,414 | 0.3% |
| 10 | Afghanistan | 500 | 0.1% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 0.3% |
| | World | 464,010 | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 India produced 260,000 tonnes, 56% of the world's 464,010 tonnes (FAOSTAT). China followed with 32%, then Uzbekistan (6.5%), Vietnam (3.4%) and North Korea (0.6%). The top five account for 98%, 22 countries reported output and 0.3% came from outside the top ten. World production changed -34% over the ten years to 2024 and +1% on the previous year.

These figures count silkworm cocoons suitable for reeling, not finished silk thread, and the difference is large: roughly six to eight kilograms of fresh cocoons yield a kilogram of reeled raw silk. Few countries appear at all, because sericulture needs mulberry, a warm season and patient household labor in the same place.

That labor is the whole story. A crop of worms takes about a month from hatching to cocoon and has to be fed fresh chopped leaves several times a day, so rearing has stayed with smallholders even as the rest of the textile chain industrialized, and it retreats wherever rural wages rise.


## Who exports and imports silk?

### Exporters of raw silk, not thrown (HS 5002), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $177.8 million | 48% |
| 2 | Vietnam | $91.6 million | 25% |
| 3 | Italy | $30.5 million | 8.3% |
| 4 | Brazil | $18.8 million | 5.1% |
| 5 | Uzbekistan | $14.8 million | 4% |
| 6 | Qatar | $10.6 million | 2.9% |
| 7 | Romania | $5.9 million | 1.6% |
| 8 | United Kingdom | $5 million | 1.4% |
| 9 | India | $4.3 million | 1.2% |
| 10 | North Korea | $4.1 million | 1.1% |
| 11 | Slovenia | $4 million | 1.1% |
| 12 | Germany | $1.1 million | 0.3% |
| 13 | Azerbaijan | $240,000 | 0.1% |
| 14 | Thailand | $176,878 | <0.1% |
| 15 | France | $138,065 | <0.1% |

### Importers of raw silk, not thrown (HS 5002), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | $119 million | 32% |
| 2 | Romania | $77.5 million | 21% |
| 3 | Italy | $36.3 million | 9.8% |
| 4 | Vietnam | $35.7 million | 9.7% |
| 5 | France | $17.1 million | 4.6% |
| 6 | Japan | $12.1 million | 3.3% |
| 7 | Slovenia | $9.8 million | 2.6% |
| 8 | United Kingdom | $6.6 million | 1.8% |
| 9 | Pakistan | $6 million | 1.6% |
| 10 | Iran | $5.8 million | 1.6% |
| 11 | China | $5.1 million | 1.4% |
| 12 | United States | $5.1 million | 1.4% |
| 13 | Myanmar | $5 million | 1.4% |
| 14 | Qatar | $5 million | 1.4% |
| 15 | Tunisia | $5 million | 1.4% |

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

China was the largest exporter of silk (HS 5002) in 2024 with 48% of world export value, ahead of Vietnam (25%), on world trade of $369.6 million (CEPII BACI). India was the largest importer with 32%.

The production and export tables disagree on purpose. Cocoons are grown in one set of countries and reeled into raw silk in another, and China reels the fine, even grades that high-end weaving demands. India is the largest cocoon producer and the largest buyer of raw silk at once, because its weaving and handloom sector consumes more thread than its filatures produce.

By value this is one of the smallest trades covered on this site, and it is a trade in an intermediate good: Italy imports raw silk to weave and exports fabric worth many times the thread, so the money in silk sits well downstream of the farm.


## What does silk cost?

### How it is priced

There is no futures market in silk and no free public benchmark price carried on this site, so none is quoted here. Cocoons are sold at government-supervised or cooperative auction markets in the producing districts, where the bid depends on the yield of dry cocoon and reelable filament rather than green weight. Raw silk is then sold by reelers on contract, priced per kilogram against grade and denier.

Grade does most of the work in the price. Raw silk is classified for evenness, cleanness and strength, and only the higher grades reel from bivoltine cocoons suited to power looms; coarser multivoltine silk sells at a discount into handloom and furnishing use. The visible references are auction results in India, Chinese export quotations and private assessments, and Chinese domestic policy has repeatedly set the tone for all of them.


## What moves the price of silk?

### Rural labor cost

Silk is the most labor-intensive fiber in commercial use, from leaf picking through rearing to reeling. When rural wages rise or workers move to cities, farmers stop rearing regardless of the silk price, which is why output has trended down in every country that has industrialized.

### Silkworm disease and egg quality

Pébrine and flacherie can wipe out a rearing, and because eggs come from specialist producers, a contaminated batch spreads the loss across many households at once. Egg quality control is the difference between a crop and a season wasted.

### Bivoltine and multivoltine stock

Bivoltine worms produce longer, more even filament that reels to the top grades, but they are harder to rear in hot weather. Multivoltine stock is robust and yields coarser silk, so the mix a country rears sets the grades it can sell and the prices it can reach.

### Synthetic substitution

Polyester and viscose filament imitate silk's drape at a fraction of the cost, so silk no longer competes on performance for most uses. Demand now rests on the fiber's identity in luxury clothing and furnishing, which makes it sensitive to fashion and to discretionary spending.

### Mulberry and weather

Leaf supply sets how many worms can be reared. Drought, frost or disease in the mulberry stands caps rearings months before any cocoon reaches market, and mulberry is a perennial, so a lost plantation is not replaced within a season.

## How is silk produced?

Eggs are produced by specialist grainages and hatched to order. The larvae are fed chopped mulberry leaves through five growth stages over about a month, then mount frames and spin a cocoon from a single continuous filament, extruded as liquid protein and bonded by sericin, the gum that sets the shape.

Cocoons are then stifled with hot air or steam to kill the pupa, because a moth that emerges cuts the filament and leaves nothing to reel. Dried cocoons store for months. At the filature they are soaked in hot water to soften the sericin, the filament ends are found, and several filaments are combined with a slight twist into one reelable strand of raw silk, which is skeined and graded.

Raw silk is then thrown into yarn, degummed, dyed and woven. Pierced cocoons, outer floss and reeling waste are carded and spun into noil and spun silk, which are shorter-fibered and cheaper.


## What is silk used for?

Almost all silk goes into textiles: saris, scarves, ties, shirting, lining and dress fabric, plus furnishings such as upholstery and rugs. It holds dye brilliantly and is strong for its weight, and those properties, rather than any technical necessity, keep it in production against far cheaper synthetics. Surgical sutures are one of the few remaining technical uses.

Pupae left after reeling are eaten in several countries and otherwise pressed for oil or milled into animal feed; sericin recovered from degumming goes into cosmetics; waste fiber becomes spun silk. Mulberry itself yields fruit, fodder and wood, and silk protein is now drawn on for medical and biomaterial research.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain begins in households and ends in luxury retail, which is an unusual span for any commodity. Egg producers supply rearers, rearers sell cocoons at local markets, filatures reel, weavers convert, and the cloth sells for thousands of times the value of the leaf.

Reeling is the chokepoint. A filature needs skilled operators and steady cocoon supply, and once a reeling district closes it does not reopen, because the skills disperse. That is why countries can keep growing cocoons long after they have lost the ability to reel top grades, and why the fine end of the trade has concentrated in China.

The other vulnerabilities are biological and demographic. Egg supply is concentrated in a few grainages, disease moves quickly through crowded rearing rooms, and rearers are aging in most producing countries, a slower and more final constraint than any harvest failure.


## Timeline

- 200 BCE: Silk moves west along the Silk Roads. Overland and maritime routes carried Chinese silk into Central Asia, Persia and the Mediterranean, making it the first luxury commodity to move between civilizations in quantity. (https://www.unesco.org/en/silkroads)
- 1865: Pasteur is sent to investigate pébrine. The disease was destroying the French silk industry, and the egg-selection method that came out of the work saved European sericulture and helped establish that specific germs cause specific diseases. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9831405/)
- 1907: Japan becomes the largest raw silk exporter. Japanese exports passed China's after two decades of mechanized reeling and research investment, and raw silk became the country's leading export earner. (https://inserco.org/en/japan)
- 1941: Japanese silk output goes into decline. War cut production and exports, and nylon took the stocking market that had absorbed much of Japan's raw silk, a substitution that never reversed. (https://inserco.org/en/japan)
- 1965: Japan starts importing raw silk. Domestic demand outgrew a shrinking home industry, marking the point at which the largest producer of the early twentieth century became a buyer. (https://inserco.org/en/japan)
- 1990s: Central Asian sericulture collapses. Uzbek cocoon output fell from 33,000 tonnes in 1990 to 21,000 tonnes in 1997 as Soviet support and trading links ended and cheap Chinese silk arrived on world markets. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8780608/)
- 2005: A regional silk association is founded in Tashkent. The FAO and the Uzbek government convened producers from the Black Sea, Caspian and Central Asian countries to rebuild sericulture, and the group has since grown to 22 member countries. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8780608/)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most silk

India produced 260,000 tonnes of silkworm cocoons in 2024, 56% of the world's 464,010 tonnes (FAOSTAT), ahead of China at 32%. Reeled raw silk is a different measure: China supplied 48% of world raw silk export value in 2024 (CEPII BACI).

### why is silk so expensive

Because it is grown by hand. Rearing takes about a month of feeding fresh mulberry leaves several times a day, roughly six to eight kilograms of fresh cocoons are needed for a kilogram of reeled silk, and reeling is skilled work. Labor, not raw material, sets the cost.

### how is silk made

Silkworm larvae eat mulberry leaves for about a month, then spin a cocoon from one continuous filament. The cocoons are stifled with heat, soaked in hot water to soften the sericin gum, and several filaments are reeled together into a single strand of raw silk, which is then thrown, degummed, dyed and woven.

### do silkworms die to make silk

In conventional reeling, yes. The pupa is killed with hot air or steam before the moth can emerge, because an emerging moth cuts the filament and makes the cocoon unreelable. Cocoons left to hatch can still be carded and spun into shorter-fibered silk, which is coarser and sells for less.

### which country imports the most raw silk

India, with 32% of world import value in 2024 (CEPII BACI). It is also the largest producer of cocoons, because its weaving and handloom industry consumes more thread, and finer grades, than its own reeling capacity supplies.

### why has silk production fallen

Because rural labor has become expensive and synthetics have taken the uses that once needed silk. World cocoon output changed -34% over the ten years to 2024 (FAOSTAT), and the decline follows industrialization in producing regions rather than any shortage of mulberry or worms.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

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# Where does silver come from?

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

Silver comes mainly from Mexico, which produced 6,300 tonnes in 2025, 24% of the world's 26,000 tonnes (USGS MCS). Peru (14%), China (13%) and Bolivia (5.8%) follow; the top five together supply 62%. The biggest exporter of silver (HS 7106) is China (16% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Handy & Harman, New York, was $65.4/troy oz in August 2026, up 71% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Silver rides with other metals: it crystallizes in the epithermal veins of Mexico's Sierra Madre and the Andes, but it also sits inside the lead, zinc and copper sulfides of Australia, Poland and Chile, so most silver is dug up by mines that are not looking for it.

*A precious metal that is also an industrial one: most mined silver is a by-product of lead, zinc, copper and gold mines.* Also called: Ag, silver bullion, silver ore, sterling silver.

## Where does silver come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mexico | 6,300 | 24% |
| 2 | Peru | 3,600 | 14% |
| 3 | China | 3,400 | 13% |
| 4 | Bolivia | 1,500 | 5.8% |
| 5 | Chile | 1,400 | 5.4% |
| 6 | Poland | 1,300 | 5% |
| 7 | Russia | 1,200 | 4.6% |
| 8 | United States | 1,100 | 4.2% |
| 9 | Australia | 1,000 | 3.8% |
| 10 | India | 800 | 3.1% |
| | Rest of world | 2,100 | 17% |
| | World | 26,000 | 100% |

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026.

Silver is mined almost everywhere and is the main product almost nowhere. On this page silver production means mine output of silver metal, unless refined or recycled silver is named. In 2025 Mexico mined 6,300 tonnes, 24% of the world's 26,000 tonnes (USGS MCS). Peru followed at 14% and China at 13%, then Bolivia at 5.8% and Chile at 5.4%, with Poland, Russia and United States close behind. Output outside the 14 countries listed separately came to 17%, and world mine production changed +3% from the previous year.

The single most important fact about silver supply is that it is a by-product. The Silver Institute's annual survey put primary silver mines at 26% of world mine production in 2025, a record low, against 29% from lead-zinc mines, 28% from copper mines and 16% from gold mines (Silver Institute, World Silver Survey 2026). That has a consequence most commodities do not share: silver supply barely responds to the silver price. A lead-zinc mine sets its production rate on the economics of lead and zinc, and the silver it recovers arrives regardless. When silver doubles, primary silver mines can push a little harder, but they are too small a share of the total to move the balance quickly, and when silver halves, by-product output does not fall.

The geology follows two families. Epithermal veins form where hot fluids rise through fractures near the surface above volcanic arcs and deposit silver sulfides and sulfosalts in the top kilometer of crust; that is the Sierra Madre Occidental of Mexico, the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes and the historic districts of Nevada and Idaho. The second family is silver locked inside base-metal sulfides: the sediment-hosted lead-zinc beds of Australia and China, the copper-silver shale of southwest Poland, the volcanogenic lenses of Peru and Sweden, and the copper porphyries of Chile, from which silver is recovered in the refinery rather than at the mine.

Reserves, the part of identified deposits that could be mined economically at the time of the estimate, were 610,000 tonnes in 2025, with Peru holding 18%, Russia 15% and Australia 15% (USGS MCS). Those reserves are mostly silver contained in deposits that will be mined for something else, so the figure describes a co-product inventory rather than a set of silver mines waiting to be built.


## Who exports and imports silver?

The United Kingdom, Switzerland and Hong Kong appear high in the export table because they vault and trade silver rather than mine it.

### Exporters of silver, unwrought, semi-manufactured or in powder form (HS 7106), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $5.2 billion | 16% |
| 2 | United Kingdom | $3.4 billion | 10% |
| 3 | Mexico | $3.1 billion | 9.2% |
| 4 | United Arab Emirates | $2.1 billion | 6.3% |
| 5 | South Korea | $2.1 billion | 6.2% |
| 6 | Germany | $2.1 billion | 6.1% |
| 7 | Switzerland | $1.9 billion | 5.7% |
| 8 | Japan | $1.5 billion | 4.4% |
| 9 | United States | $1.4 billion | 4.1% |
| 10 | Poland | $1.3 billion | 3.8% |
| 11 | Canada | $1.2 billion | 3.7% |
| 12 | Kazakhstan | $770.2 million | 2.3% |
| 13 | Hong Kong | $758.8 million | 2.3% |
| 14 | Russia | $587.9 million | 1.8% |
| 15 | Italy | $584.2 million | 1.7% |

### Importers of silver, unwrought, semi-manufactured or in powder form (HS 7106), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $5.8 billion | 17% |
| 2 | India | $5.6 billion | 17% |
| 3 | United Kingdom | $4.2 billion | 13% |
| 4 | Hong Kong | $4.1 billion | 12% |
| 5 | Canada | $1.5 billion | 4.5% |
| 6 | Japan | $1.4 billion | 4.2% |
| 7 | China | $1.3 billion | 3.9% |
| 8 | Switzerland | $1.2 billion | 3.7% |
| 9 | United Arab Emirates | $1.1 billion | 3.4% |
| 10 | Germany | $1.1 billion | 3.2% |
| 11 | Italy | $748.9 million | 2.2% |
| 12 | Thailand | $680.2 million | 2% |
| 13 | Other Asia, nes | $591.4 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | France | $587.6 million | 1.8% |
| 15 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $459.2 million | 1.4% |

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

The silver export table (HS 7106, silver unwrought, semi-manufactured or in powder form) mixes three quite different activities: shipping metal out of mines, moving bullion between vaults, and exporting industrial silver in grain, sheet and powder. In 2024 China was the largest exporter with 16% of the world's $33.5 billion, followed by United Kingdom at 10% and Mexico at 9.2% (CEPII BACI). United States and India were the largest importers, each taking about a sixth of world imports, with United Kingdom and Hong Kong next.

Reading the two lists together shows what silver actually is. Mexico appears high in exports because it mines silver. The United Kingdom appears high in both directions because London holds the vaults that underpin the wholesale market, and bars move in and out as prices and lease rates shift. Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates are trading gateways. India is the world's great physical buyer, importing bullion and grain for jewelry, silverware and, increasingly, solar and electronics manufacturing, and its import duty creates a domestic premium that can pull metal in or push it back out. The United States imports for industry, for coin blanks and for exchange-approved vaults in New York. Because the same bar can cross a border twice in a year, silver trade values overstate how much new metal exists.


## What does silver cost?

- Handy & Harman, New York: $65.4/troy oz in August 2026; 12-month change +71%; 10-year change +234%; all-time high $92.1/troy oz in January 2026; real high (2024 US$) $156.4/troy oz in January 1980 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- Silver, LBMA (IMF): $58.6/troy oz in July 2026; 12-month change +56%; 10-year change +194%; all-time high $91.21/troy oz in January 2026; real high (2024 US$) $87.61/troy oz in January 2026 (IMF PCPS).

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

### How it is priced

Silver has a London benchmark and a New York futures market, linked by arbitrage. The LBMA Silver Price is set once each business day at noon London time in an electronic auction, in which participants submit orders until buying and selling balance; the result in US$/troy oz is the reference for physical contracts, mine sales and refiners' invoices. It launched on 15 August 2014, replacing the London silver fixing that a small group of banks had run since the nineteenth century, and it is administered by ICE Benchmark Administration. Wholesale trading itself is loco London, meaning unallocated metal held in London vaults, and it is settled in 1,000 oz good delivery bars.

In the United States the COMEX silver contract, ticker SI, trades 5,000 troy oz lots quoted in US$/troy oz and delivers 1,000 oz bars into approved New York vaults. Futures normally trade above spot by roughly the cost of interest and storage, and when that relationship breaks, as it does when tariff worries or vault shortages pull metal across the Atlantic, bars are flown between London and New York to close the gap. The Shanghai Gold Exchange quotes a yuan price, and India's exchanges price against landed cost including duty. Lease rates, the cost of borrowing metal in London, are the market's stress gauge: they sit near zero in normal conditions and spike when unallocated holders want physical bars.

The series charted here is Handy & Harman, New York. In August 2026 it averaged $65.4/troy oz, up 71% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The highest monthly average was $92.1/troy oz in January 2026; adjusted for US inflation the real record was $156.4/troy oz in January 1980, at the end of the attempted corner that broke in March 1980, and the lowest monthly average since the series began in 1960 was $0.9/troy oz in January 1960. Mines are price takers twice over: they sell concentrate at the silver value of the contained metal minus refining charges, and the concentrate buyer decides how much of the silver is payable at all.


## What moves the price of silver?

### By-product supply that ignores the silver price

Because most silver arrives as a by-product of lead, zinc, copper and gold mining, the supply curve is close to vertical in the short run. A rally does not call forth much new metal, and a collapse does not remove much, so shocks are absorbed almost entirely by price and by above-ground stocks. It also means silver supply is hostage to other markets: a wave of zinc mine closures or a copper strike cuts silver output even when silver is expensive.

### Solar cell manufacturing

Silver paste screen-printed onto photovoltaic cells carries the current off the cell, and there is no equally conductive substitute in production at scale. Solar has become one of the largest industrial uses of silver, so annual installation volumes in China, India, Europe and the United States now feed directly into the balance. Cell makers cut silver loading per watt every year through finer lines and copper plating research, so demand growth is the product of rising installations and falling intensity.

### Electronics and other industrial demand

Silver is the best electrical and thermal conductor of any metal, so it appears in contacts, switches, relays, conductive inks, brazing alloys, membrane switches and multilayer ceramic capacitors, and in the electrical architecture of vehicles, which use more of it as they add electronics. This demand is dispersed across thousands of products in small quantities, which makes it price-insensitive: a switch contains cents of silver and cannot easily be redesigned to contain less.

### Investment demand in bars, coins and funds

Silver is bought as a store of value as well as an input, and investment demand is the swing factor in most price moves. Exchange-traded funds holding physical bars, retail coin and bar purchases in the United States, Germany and India, and futures positioning together decide whether investors are absorbing metal or releasing it. Because the investment market is small in dollar terms compared with gold's, a modest flow of money produces a large move in price.

### The gold price and the gold-silver ratio

Silver trades with gold most of the time and amplifies it. The same forces that lift gold, falling real interest rates, a weaker dollar, monetary and geopolitical anxiety, lift silver more in percentage terms, and hurt it more when they reverse. Traders watch the ratio of the two prices as a rough gauge of whether silver is cheap or expensive relative to its usual relationship, and large moves in the ratio often mark turning points in investor appetite.

### Vaulted stocks and lease rates

The wholesale market runs on unallocated claims against bars in London and New York vaults. When holders convert claims into metal, or when bars are shipped to another jurisdiction, the free float shrinks and the cost of borrowing silver rises sharply. Because industrial buyers need physical bars on a schedule, a squeeze in the borrowing market feeds through to the spot price quickly, and it can occur while total reported stocks still look comfortable.

### Indian imports and the domestic premium

India is the largest physical buyer and the most price-sensitive. Its purchases rise when the rupee price falls and stall when it spikes, and its import duty creates a domestic premium that signals whether the country is pulling metal in. Indian households also sell back silverware and jewelry when prices are high, which adds recycled supply at exactly the moment the market is tight and acts as a brake on rallies.

## How is silver produced?

How silver is produced depends on what the mine is looking for. At a primary silver mine, epithermal vein ore is mined underground, crushed and ground, and treated either by cyanide leaching, which dissolves silver as it does gold, or by flotation into a silver-rich concentrate. Older Mexican and Bolivian operations used the patio and pan amalgamation processes, and before them simple smelting of rich surface ore; the modern equivalents are Merrill-Crowe zinc precipitation for leach solutions and conventional flotation for sulfide ore.

At a lead-zinc mine, silver reports to the lead concentrate, and it is recovered inside the lead smelter. Molten lead bullion is treated by the Parkes process, in which zinc is stirred into it; silver and gold prefer the zinc and rise as a crust that is skimmed, distilled to drive off the zinc and cupelled to leave doré. At a copper mine, silver dissolves into the anode during electrolytic refining and settles as anode slime at the bottom of the cell, together with gold, selenium and tellurium; the slime is treated separately. In both cases the silver is a credit on someone else's invoice.

Doré from all these routes goes to refiners, who part gold from silver by electrolysis in the Moebius or Balbach-Thum cells and cast the result into 1,000 oz good delivery bars for the wholesale market, or into grain, sheet and shot for industry. Recycled silver enters the same refineries from three streams: industrial scrap such as spent brazing alloy, electrical contacts and photographic and X-ray fixer; jewelry and silverware, which comes back when prices are high; and, in growing volume, end-of-life solar panels and electronics, though recovery from those is still limited.


## What is silver used for?

Silver is unusual in being both an industrial commodity and a monetary metal, and industry now takes the larger share. The Silver Institute put industrial applications at 58% of total silver demand in 2025, with photovoltaics alone accounting for 17% of world demand and more than a quarter of the industrial total, ahead of electrical and electronic components, brazing alloys and solders (Silver Institute, World Silver Survey 2026). Jewelry and silverware are the next largest uses, concentrated in India, China, Thailand and Italy, and net physical investment in bars and coins makes up much of the rest.

The properties behind those uses are simple. Silver has the highest electrical and thermal conductivity of any element and the highest optical reflectivity, and its oxide still conducts, which is why silver contacts do not fail when they tarnish. It is also an effective biocide, used in wound dressings and antimicrobial coatings. Photography, once the largest single use, has collapsed to a small share as film gave way to digital sensors, and the market absorbed that decline over two decades. Unlike gold, a large part of the silver ever mined has been consumed and dispersed in products too dilute to recover.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Mining is spread across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia, but refining and vaulting are concentrated. A relatively small number of accredited refiners, in Switzerland, Germany, the United States, Japan, South Korea, India, China and Australia, produce the good delivery bars that the wholesale market accepts, and the LBMA's good delivery list decides whose bars can settle a London trade. That accreditation, rather than geography, is what makes a bar fungible.

The physical market runs through vaults rather than ports. London vaults hold the unallocated metal behind the loco London market and the stock backing most European exchange-traded funds; New York vaults hold COMEX-eligible and registered stocks; Zurich, Singapore, Shanghai and Mumbai hold regional inventories. Bars move between them by air freight when price differences, tariffs or lease rates justify the cost, and those flows can be large enough to drain one center while filling another. United Kingdom appears near the top of both the export and import tables in 2024 for exactly this reason (CEPII BACI).

The chokepoints are financial and regulatory rather than physical. A shortage of free-floating metal in London, rather than a shortage of silver in the world, is what produces spikes in lease rates and in the spot price. Tariff decisions on bullion entering the United States redirect bars across the Atlantic. Indian import duty governs the largest physical demand. Sanctions have removed some Russian refiners' bars from the accepted lists. On the mine side, the risk is indirect: because silver is a by-product, a labor dispute in Peruvian copper or an environmental shutdown in Chinese lead-zinc removes silver from the market for reasons that have nothing to do with silver at all.


## Key companies

- Fresnillo: miner, Mexico, listed (FRES)
- Industrias Peñoles: miner, Mexico, listed (PE&OLES)
- KGHM Polska Miedź: miner, Poland, listed (KGH)
- Pan American Silver: miner, Canada, listed (PAAS)
- Glencore: trader, Switzerland, listed (GLEN)
- Korea Zinc: refiner, South Korea, listed (010130)
- Metalor Technologies: refiner, Switzerland

## Timeline

- 1545-04: Silver found at Cerro Rico, Potosí. The mountain discovered in 1545 became the largest silver source in the world and sent bullion across the Atlantic and, on the Manila galleons, to Asia, creating the first global money supply. (https://www.worldhistory.org/article/2049/the-silver-of-the-conquistadors/)
- 1859-06: Comstock Lode discovered in Nevada. The first major silver strike in the United States, near Virginia City, made the country a significant producer and financed a mining industry that reshaped the American West. (https://www.nps.gov/places/virginia-city-historic-district.htm)
- 1873-02: US Coinage Act ends free coinage of silver. The act of 12 February 1873 dropped the standard silver dollar, removing silver's monetary role and setting off a generation of political conflict over the metal. (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-17/pdf/STATUTE-17-Pg424.pdf)
- 1890-07: Sherman Silver Purchase Act. The Treasury was directed to buy 4.5 million ounces of silver bullion a month, the largest official support the metal has ever received. (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-26/pdf/STATUTE-26-Pg289.pdf)
- 1893-11: The Sherman Act is repealed. Repeal on 1 November 1893, during a banking panic, ended government purchases and left silver to trade as an industrial commodity. (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-28/pdf/STATUTE-28-Pg4.pdf)
- 1934-06: US Silver Purchase Act. A policy of holding a quarter of monetary reserves in silver drained metal out of world markets, with severe effects on countries still on a silver standard. (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-48/pdf/STATUTE-48-Pg1178.pdf)
- 1965-07: Silver removed from US dimes and quarters. The Coinage Act of 23 July 1965 replaced silver with cupronickel cladding over a copper core, ending silver's place in circulating coin and releasing a vast stock of coin silver. (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-79/pdf/STATUTE-79-Pg254.pdf)
- 1980-01: Silver peaks near $50 an ounce. The London fix reached $49.45 in January 1980 at the top of an attempted corner, a nominal high that stood for three decades and an inflation-adjusted high that still stands. (https://silverinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/2012WorldSilverSurvey.pdf)
- 1980-03: Silver Thursday. Prices collapsed on 27 March 1980 after exchanges restricted new long positions and raised margins; the regulator declined to suspend trading the following day. (https://www.cftc.gov/About/HistoryoftheCFTC/history_1980s.html)
- 1998-02: Berkshire Hathaway discloses a large silver position. The 1997 annual letter reported the purchase of 111.2 million ounces on the argument that bullion inventories had fallen materially, briefly tightening the physical market. (https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1997.html)
- 2006-04: First US silver exchange-traded fund launches. The iShares Silver Trust began trading on 21 April 2006 and let investors hold bullion through a brokerage account, adding a visible and fast-moving source of demand. (https://www.ishares.com/us/products/239855/ishares-silver-trust-fund)
- 2011-04: Silver approaches its 1980 high and reverses. The London fix reached $48.70 on 28 April 2011 before five margin increases in nine days on the futures exchange triggered a sharp reversal. (https://silverinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/2012WorldSilverSurvey.pdf)
- 2014-08: LBMA Silver Price replaces the London silver fix. From 15 August 2014 a single daily electronic auction at noon London time set the benchmark, ending a fixing process that dated from the nineteenth century. (https://www.lbma.org.uk/alchemist/issue-77/london-precious-metal-prices-raising-the-benchmark)
- 2021-02: Retail buying drives a silver squeeze. Exchange-traded product holdings reached a record 1.18 billion ounces on 3 February 2021 as retail investors bought coins and bars in coordinated fashion. (https://silverinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/SNFeb2021six.pdf)
- 2025-10: London liquidity squeeze lifts silver to records. Falling London inventories and a shift of metal into New York vaults sent lease rates and prices sharply higher, producing record annual prices. (https://silverinstitute.org/elevated-lease-rates-regional-liquidity-tightness-and-robust-investor-interest-resulted-in-record-silver-prices-in-2025/)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most silver

Mexico mines the most silver. In 2025 it produced 6,300 tonnes, 24% of the world's 26,000 tonnes (USGS MCS). Peru was second at 14% and China third at 13%. Most of that silver came out of mines dug for lead, zinc, copper or gold rather than from mines looking for silver.

### where does silver come from

Silver comes from two kinds of deposit: epithermal veins in Mexico, Peru and Bolivia, and silver locked inside the lead, zinc and copper sulfides of Australia, Poland, Chile and China. In 2025 mines produced 26,000 tonnes (USGS MCS). The Silver Institute reports that 74% of it was recovered as a by-product in 2025, so silver output is decided by other metals' economics.

### why is silver a by-product

Because it substitutes for base metals in their crystal structures and travels with them. Silver reports to the lead concentrate at a lead-zinc mine and to the anode slime at a copper refinery, so it is recovered wherever those metals are processed. The Silver Institute put primary silver mines at just 26% of world mine output in 2025, which is why silver supply barely responds to the silver price.

### what is silver used for

Industry took 58% of silver demand in 2025, led by photovoltaic cells, where silver paste carries current off the cell, followed by electrical contacts, electronics, brazing alloys and solder (Silver Institute). Jewelry and silverware are next, concentrated in India, China and Thailand, and bars and coins account for much of the rest. Photography, once the largest use, is now a small share.

### what is the price of silver today

This site shows monthly averages, not live quotes. The Handy & Harman, New York price averaged $65.4/troy oz in August 2026, up 71% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The highest monthly average was $92.1/troy oz in January 2026; the inflation-adjusted record was $156.4/troy oz in January 1980. Live quotes come from the London market and COMEX.

### how is the silver price set

The benchmark is the LBMA Silver Price, an electronic auction run once each business day at noon London time and quoted in US dollars per troy ounce. It launched on 15 August 2014, replacing the London silver fixing. COMEX silver futures in New York trade 5,000 troy oz lots and are linked to London by arbitrage. Wholesale trading settles in 1,000 oz good delivery bars held in London vaults.

### which country exports the most silver

China led silver exports (HS 7106) in 2024 with 16% of the world's $33.5 billion (CEPII BACI), ahead of United Kingdom and Mexico. The largest importers were United States and India. The table mixes mine output, industrial silver and bullion moving between vaults, so a bar can be counted more than once in a year.

### why did silver hit $50 in 1980

An attempt to corner the market built enormous long positions through the late 1970s while inflation was high. COMEX and the exchanges then restricted new long positions and raised margins, and the price collapsed on 27 March 1980, a day known as Silver Thursday. In inflation-adjusted terms that month remains the record: $156.4/troy oz in January 1980 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

## Sources

- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries
- 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
- IMF Primary Commodity Price System (PCPS), 2026-08-06, fetched 6 September 2026. License: © International Monetary Fund. All rights reserved (IMF terms of use). https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS

Text last reviewed 2026-09-06. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where does silver come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/silver/.

---

# Where does sisal come from?

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

Sisal comes mainly from Brazil, which produced 93,261 tonnes in 2024, 40% of the world's 233,961 tonnes (FAOSTAT). Tanzania (26%), Kenya (9%) and Madagascar (7.5%) follow; the top five together supply 89%. The biggest exporter of sisal (HS 5305) is India (39% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Sisal is an agave that yields on thin, dry ground where almost nothing else pays, so it is grown on semi-arid land in northeastern Brazil and East Africa rather than on land that could grow food.

*A hard leaf fibre cut from agave plants, used for agricultural twine, rope and polishing cloth.* Also called: sisal fibre, agave sisalana, henequen.

## Where does sisal come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | 93,261 | 40% |
| 2 | Tanzania | 61,216 | 26% |
| 3 | Kenya | 20,940 | 9% |
| 4 | Madagascar | 17,592 | 7.5% |
| 5 | China | 14,292 | 6.1% |
| 6 | Haiti | 12,118 | 5.2% |
| 7 | Mexico | 6,735 | 2.9% |
| 8 | Morocco | 1,709 | 0.7% |
| 9 | South Africa | 1,256 | 0.5% |
| 10 | Venezuela | 1,183 | 0.5% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 1.6% |
| | World | 233,961 | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 Brazil produced 93,261 tonnes, 40% of the world's 233,961 tonnes (FAOSTAT). Tanzania followed with 26%, then Kenya (9%), Madagascar (7.5%) and China (6.1%). The top five account for 89%, 24 countries reported output and 1.6% came from outside the top ten. World production changed -10% over the ten years to 2024 and -1% on the previous year.

Sisal is a hard fiber, cut from the leaf rather than the stem or seed, and the plant is a drought-tolerant agave that tolerates poor soil and long dry spells. That is its economic point: it yields a saleable crop where the alternative is grazing or nothing, which is why it anchors rural incomes in the Brazilian sertão and the dry belts of Tanzania, Kenya and Madagascar.

The two production systems differ sharply. East African output comes largely from estates with their own processing plants, a structure inherited from the colonial period; Brazilian output comes from many smallholders who cut leaves and take them to shared decorticating machines.


## Who exports and imports sisal?

### Exporters of coconut, abaca, sisal and other vegetable textile fibres (HS 5305), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | $268.2 million | 39% |
| 2 | Sri Lanka | $169.8 million | 25% |
| 3 | Kenya | $49.2 million | 7.2% |
| 4 | Brazil | $39.1 million | 5.7% |
| 5 | Philippines | $21.9 million | 3.2% |
| 6 | Ecuador | $21.7 million | 3.2% |
| 7 | Tanzania | $20.8 million | 3% |
| 8 | Netherlands | $17.4 million | 2.5% |
| 9 | Vietnam | $15.5 million | 2.3% |
| 10 | Spain | $8.2 million | 1.2% |
| 11 | Thailand | $7.6 million | 1.1% |
| 12 | Belgium | $7.6 million | 1.1% |
| 13 | Madagascar | $5.2 million | 0.8% |
| 14 | China | $4.3 million | 0.6% |
| 15 | Indonesia | $3.5 million | 0.5% |

### Importers of coconut, abaca, sisal and other vegetable textile fibres (HS 5305), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $179.3 million | 26% |
| 2 | United States | $66.8 million | 9.8% |
| 3 | United Kingdom | $42.7 million | 6.2% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $34.2 million | 5% |
| 5 | Nigeria | $27.2 million | 4% |
| 6 | Mexico | $26.9 million | 3.9% |
| 7 | Morocco | $25.5 million | 3.7% |
| 8 | Spain | $24.9 million | 3.6% |
| 9 | Canada | $19 million | 2.8% |
| 10 | Japan | $18.3 million | 2.7% |
| 11 | Peru | $17 million | 2.5% |
| 12 | France | $11.9 million | 1.7% |
| 13 | Germany | $11.4 million | 1.7% |
| 14 | Australia | $10.6 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | Philippines | $8.7 million | 1.3% |

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

India was the largest exporter of sisal (HS 5305) in 2024 with 39% of world export value, ahead of Sri Lanka (25%), on world trade of $684.5 million (CEPII BACI). China was the largest importer with 26%.

That table needs a warning label. The code groups coconut, abaca, sisal and other vegetable fibers together, so its leading exporters ship coir and abaca rather than sisal, and it cannot be read as a sisal ranking. Kenya and Brazil are the sisal names within it; the production table above is the better guide to who grows the crop.

Sisal itself leaves in two forms. Baled fiber goes to spinners, above all in China, which turns it into twine, yarn and cloth; twine, rope and buffing products spun at origin leave as finished goods, keeping more value where the leaves were cut.


## What does sisal cost?

### How it is priced

There is no futures market for sisal and no free public benchmark price carried on this site, so none is quoted here. Fiber is sold on contract between estates or decorticating cooperatives and spinning mills, priced by grade: length, color, cleanliness and strength, with the long clean grades going to yarn and short tow to lower uses. Producer boards in East Africa publish indicative prices, and trade assessments circulate by subscription.

What really anchors the price is the alternative. Polypropylene twine does most of the jobs sisal once did, so the fiber cannot be priced far above the plastic it competes with. At the other end, hand cutting sets a floor: when the price falls below what a day's cutting is worth, fields are left uncut, and supply drops without any decision to plant less.


## What moves the price of sisal?

### Synthetic twine

Polypropylene baler and binder twine took the agricultural market that sisal had held for a century, and it is cheaper, lighter and immune to rot. That substitution set a ceiling on sisal's price which no amount of demand for natural fiber has since lifted.

### Cutting labor

Leaves are cut by hand, one at a time, in heat and among spines, and must be processed within hours. Where rural wages rise or workers leave, plantations go uncut whatever the fiber is worth, so labor availability decides supply as directly as rainfall does.

### The planting lag

A new field yields nothing for two to four years and then cuts for several years before it flowers and dies. Supply therefore answers today's price late and then keeps answering after the price has fallen, which has produced long swings between glut and shortage.

### Rainfall

The plant survives drought but does not produce well in it. Extended dry spells thin the leaves and cut fiber yields in East Africa and northeastern Brazil, and shortfalls in both regions tend to arrive together.

### Plastic restrictions and new uses

Composites for vehicle panels, geotextiles for erosion control and specialty pulp for papers give sisal outlets that did not exist when the twine market collapsed. These markets are small but growing, and they depend on regulation and design choices rather than on price.

## How is sisal produced?

Sisal is propagated from bulbils or suckers taken off the parent plant and grown on in nurseries. The first leaves are cut two to four years later, and a plant is then cut once or twice a year for several years, until it throws up a flowering pole and dies.

Cut leaves must be decorticated within hours, before the sap dries and stains the fiber. A decorticator crushes and scrapes the leaf, leaving long strands, which are washed, sun dried, brushed to separate and straighten them, then graded and baled. The fiber is a small fraction of the leaf's weight; the rest is water and green waste.

Spinning follows the logic of any coarse fiber: strands are combed, drawn and twisted into twine, rope or yarn, or woven into matting and buffing cloth. Short and broken fiber, known as tow, sells separately into padding, plaster reinforcement and pulp.


## What is sisal used for?

Sisal's historic core was agricultural twine, binding sheaves and later baling hay, and cordage for industry. Twine and rope remain the largest outlets, alongside carpets, rugs and matting, plaster and cement reinforcement, and buffing and polishing cloth used in metal finishing, where the fiber's stiffness is the whole point.

The by-products matter, because the fiber is a small share of the leaf. The pulp and juice left after decortication can be digested for biogas and returned as fertilizer, and were long a source of pharmaceutical steroid precursors. Specialty pulp made from sisal goes into tea bags, filters and currency papers, where high tear strength matters more than cost.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain starts with a machine, not a market. Because leaves spoil within hours of cutting, decorticating capacity has to sit in the field, which ties growers to a nearby plant and makes it the point at which the crop becomes a commodity. Estates own theirs; smallholders queue for shared machines, and the work has a long record of injury.

After brushing and baling, fiber moves by road to port and by container to spinners, with China the dominant buyer. Producing countries that keep their own spinning capacity export twine and rope instead, worth more per tonne and less exposed to the fiber price.

The vulnerabilities are the planting lag and the plant itself. Fields abandoned in a downturn take years to recover, closed decorticating plants are rarely rebuilt, and because sisal dies after flowering, a plantation is a depreciating asset that must be replanted on a schedule whether or not the price justifies it.


## Timeline

- 1893: Sisal is introduced to German East Africa. Bulbils brought from Florida, and originally from Mexico, established the East African sisal industry on land the colonial administration treated as unproductive. (https://www.uni-potsdam.de/en/botanischer-garten/unser-garten/kolonialismus/faserproduktion)
- 1950s: A high-yielding hybrid lifts East African output. The new variety released in the late 1950s raised yields per hectare and made Tanzania the world's leading sisal producer at independence. (https://www.uni-potsdam.de/en/botanischer-garten/unser-garten/kolonialismus/faserproduktion)
- 1964: The sisal market collapses. Synthetic fibers took the cordage and twine market, and production in the main growing countries fell by up to 80 percent over the following two decades. (https://www.uni-potsdam.de/en/botanischer-garten/unser-garten/kolonialismus/faserproduktion)
- 1970s: Polypropylene baler twine becomes standard. Cheap plastic twine displaced sisal in the mechanized hay and straw baling that had been its largest single use, permanently shrinking the market. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/fibers/jute-and-hard-fibers/en)
- 1990s: Brazil becomes the largest producer. Smallholder cultivation in the semi-arid northeast expanded as East African estates contracted, shifting the center of the industry across the Atlantic. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 2000s: Specialty pulp and composites are pursued as new outlets. Work on sisal pulp for tea bag, filter and currency papers, and on fiber-reinforced panels, sought higher-value uses to replace the lost twine market. (https://www.fao.org/4/y1873e/y1873e09.htm)
- 2020s: Plastic restrictions renew interest in hard fibers. Rules against single-use plastics and demand for biodegradable geotextiles and packaging gave sisal a growing, if small, market for the first time in decades. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/fibers/jute-and-hard-fibers/en)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most sisal

Brazil produced 93,261 tonnes in 2024, 40% of the world's 233,961 tonnes (FAOSTAT). Tanzania was second with 26%. Brazilian sisal comes mostly from smallholders in the semi-arid northeast, while East African production is estate based. The top five producers accounted for 89%, from 24 countries reporting.

### what is sisal used for

Agricultural twine and rope above all, then carpets, rugs and matting, plaster and cement reinforcement, and buffing cloth for metal polishing, where the fiber's stiffness is the point. Newer uses include fiber-reinforced composite panels, erosion-control fabric and specialty papers such as tea bags and filters.

### why did sisal decline

Because synthetic fiber replaced it. The cordage and twine markets went to nylon and then to polypropylene, and production in the main growing countries fell steeply after 1964. World output changed -10% over the ten years to 2024 (FAOSTAT), so the contraction has not stopped.

### how is sisal fiber made

Leaves are cut by hand and decorticated within hours, before the sap dries and stains the fiber. A machine crushes and scrapes the leaf, leaving long strands that are washed, sun dried, brushed and graded by length and color. Fiber is only a small share of the leaf; the rest is water and pulp.

### which country imports the most sisal

China leads the trade code that covers sisal, with 26% of import value in 2024 (CEPII BACI), and it is the main buyer of raw sisal fiber for spinning. The code also covers coir and abaca, so its totals are wider than sisal alone.

### is sisal the same as agave

Sisal comes from one agave species, Agave sisalana, grown for the fiber in its leaves. Henequen, a related agave grown mainly in Mexico, gives a softer and weaker fiber and is counted separately. Neither is the agave used to make tequila, which is grown for its sugars rather than its fiber.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

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# Where does sorghum come from?

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

Sorghum comes mainly from the United States, which produced 8.7 million tonnes in 2024, 14% of the world's 64.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Nigeria (10%), India (8.4%) and Sudan (8.4%) follow; the top five together supply 48%. The biggest exporter of grain sorghum (HS 1007) is the United States (58% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, US No. 2, Gulf export, was $189.5/t in August 2020, up 28% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Sorghum is a C4 grass domesticated in the dry savanna of northeast Africa, and it will set a crop on rainfall and soils that would kill maize, which is why it remains the staple cereal of the Sahel and the Horn while in the Americas and Australia it is grown as a drought-insurance feed grain on the dry edge of the corn belt.

*A drought-tolerant cereal eaten as a staple across the Sahel and India and fed to livestock elsewhere.* Also called: milo, grain sorghum, jowar, great millet.

## Where does sorghum come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 8.7 million | 14% |
| 2 | Nigeria | 6.5 million | 10% |
| 3 | India | 5.4 million | 8.4% |
| 4 | Sudan | 5.4 million | 8.4% |
| 5 | Mexico | 4.5 million | 7% |
| 6 | Ethiopia | 4.1 million | 6.4% |
| 7 | Brazil | 4.1 million | 6.4% |
| 8 | China | 3.1 million | 4.8% |
| 9 | Argentina | 2.5 million | 3.9% |
| 10 | Australia | 2.4 million | 3.8% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 27% |
| | World | 64.2 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

Sorghum grows where maize gives up. It is a C4 grass from the dry savanna of northeast Africa, with a deep fibrous root system, a waxy cuticle that limits water loss, leaves that roll to reduce exposure, and the ability to stop growing during a drought and resume when rain returns rather than dying. It also tolerates heat, brief flooding and soils too alkaline or too shallow for other cereals. Those traits define its geography twice over: it is the staple cereal of the semi-arid tropics, and it is the drought-insurance grain on the dry margin of the world's maize belts.

In 2024 United States produced 8.7 million tonnes, 14% of the world's 64.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT), from the southern plains of Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma where rainfall is too unreliable for corn. Nigeria was second with 10% and India and Sudan tied on 8.4%, followed by Mexico at 7%. That top five contains two completely different industries. Nigeria, Sudan, Ethiopia, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and Cameroon grow sorghum as food, on smallholdings, for porridge, flatbread and beer, and almost none of it is sold across a border. The United States, Australia, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico grow it mechanically as a feed grain and a rotation crop, and it is their crop that supplies world trade.

India sits between the two. Its jowar is a traditional food grain of the Deccan, increasingly grown in the post-monsoon rabi season for both food and fodder, and its area has been declining for decades as irrigation and higher-value crops displace it. 116 countries reported a crop in 2024, and everything outside the top ten still amounted to 27%, which reflects how many African and Asian countries grow sorghum somewhere.

The world total has been broadly flat with sharp annual swings: production changed -6% over the ten years to 2024, but +13% over five and +12% in the last year alone (FAOSTAT), because so much of the crop is rain-fed in variable climates. Within that, Bolivia grew at +10.4% a year over the decade, Australia at +6.7% and Brazil at +6%, while Mexico contracted at -6% and United States at -2.3%.


## Who exports and imports sorghum?

Nigeria, Ethiopia and Sudan grow large crops that are eaten at home; the export trade is dominated by the United States, Argentina and Australia selling feed grain to China.

### Exporters of grain sorghum (HS 1007), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $1.6 billion | 58% |
| 2 | Australia | $611 million | 23% |
| 3 | Argentina | $261.2 million | 9.6% |
| 4 | France | $48.5 million | 1.8% |
| 5 | Brazil | $41 million | 1.5% |
| 6 | Hungary | $23.6 million | 0.9% |
| 7 | Tanzania | $21.6 million | 0.8% |
| 8 | Uganda | $21 million | 0.8% |
| 9 | South Africa | $19.3 million | 0.7% |
| 10 | India | $18.4 million | 0.7% |
| 11 | Ukraine | $10.4 million | 0.4% |
| 12 | Kenya | $6.5 million | 0.2% |
| 13 | Paraguay | $6 million | 0.2% |
| 14 | United Kingdom | $4.1 million | 0.2% |
| 15 | Uzbekistan | $3.9 million | 0.1% |

### Importers of grain sorghum (HS 1007), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $2.2 billion | 81% |
| 2 | Ethiopia | $43 million | 1.6% |
| 3 | Japan | $39.3 million | 1.4% |
| 4 | South Africa | $35.2 million | 1.3% |
| 5 | Eritrea | $34.7 million | 1.3% |
| 6 | Italy | $27.3 million | 1% |
| 7 | Spain | $27.2 million | 1% |
| 8 | Sudan | $25.7 million | 0.9% |
| 9 | South Sudan | $24.5 million | 0.9% |
| 10 | Kenya | $20.4 million | 0.8% |
| 11 | Other Asia, nes | $18.6 million | 0.7% |
| 12 | Mexico | $15.3 million | 0.6% |
| 13 | Uganda | $14.4 million | 0.5% |
| 14 | Botswana | $14 million | 0.5% |
| 15 | Germany | $8.5 million | 0.3% |

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

The sorghum trade is the most lopsided of any major grain, on both sides at once. In 2024 United States exported $1.6 billion, 58% of the world's $2.7 billion in export value, and Australia supplied 23% and Argentina 9.6% (CEPII BACI). Those three countries account for the overwhelming majority of the trade, and everything below them, including France and Brazil, is marginal. On the buying side China took 81% of the world's $2.7 billion of imports, a degree of single-buyer concentration with no parallel in the grain complex; Ethiopia and Japan were a distant second and third at 1.6% and 1.4%.

China buys sorghum for two distinct reasons. It is a feed grain that has at times fallen outside the tariff-rate quotas that constrain corn imports, which made it an attractive substitute for compound feed mills in Guangdong and the coastal provinces. And it is the traditional raw material for baijiu, the distilled spirit made in Sichuan, Guizhou and Shandong, which needs a specific tannin and starch profile that imported sorghum can supply. The result is that a policy decision in Beijing or a tariff change on a single trade lane can move most of the world's sorghum trade at once, which is exactly what happened in 2018. Meanwhile the countries that grow the most sorghum per head, in the Sahel and the Horn, appear in the import table too: Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan and South Sudan all buy sorghum, usually as food aid or emergency supply during a drought or a conflict, which is a completely different market from the feed and distilling trade.


## What does sorghum cost?

- US No. 2, Gulf export: $189.5/t in August 2020; 12-month change +28%; 10-year change +32%; all-time high $302.5/t in August 2011; real high (2024 US$) $918.3/t in October 1974 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

Sorghum has no futures contract anywhere. It is priced as a corn substitute, and the mechanism is simple: an export elevator at the United States Gulf quotes sorghum as a basis, a premium or discount, against the nearby Chicago corn futures contract, and buyers compare the delivered cost of sorghum with the delivered cost of corn on an energy and protein basis. When Chinese demand is strong the basis goes to a large premium over corn, because there is no alternative supplier of scale; when Chinese demand disappears the basis collapses to a discount and the crop goes into domestic feedlots and ethanol plants instead.

The series charted on this page is US No. 2, Gulf export, an export quotation for United States number two yellow sorghum loaded at the Gulf. In August 2020 it stood at $189.5/t, up 28% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its nominal record was $302.5/t in August 2011, during the North American drought of that summer, and over ten years the series has changed +32% and over five +3%. The inflation-adjusted picture is very different from the nominal one: the real high was $918.3/t in October 1974, during the grain shock of the 1970s, against a series low of $35/t in March 1960 and a start in 1960.

Three things qualify that quote. First, it is FOB at the United States Gulf, so it is a price at the loading elevator: an importer in China pays ocean freight, and the delivered cost swings with panamax rates and with Panama Canal transit conditions. Second, the grade is United States number two, defined by test weight, moisture, broken kernels and foreign material, and food-grade white sorghum for milling trades separately and at a premium. Third, and most important, this is an export price for a grain that most of the world's growers never sell. The farm-gate price for red sorghum in a Sahelian market is set by local harvest, transport cost and food aid deliveries, and it has almost nothing to do with the Gulf quotation.


## What moves the price of sorghum?

### Chinese purchasing and trade policy

China takes the large majority of internationally traded sorghum, so its buying decisions are the market. Because Chinese demand comes from both feed mills substituting for corn and distilleries making baijiu, it responds to domestic corn prices, tariff-rate quota policy and spirits demand at once. Trade measures aimed at the United States, such as the anti-dumping investigation and tariffs of April 2018, do not reduce world supply; they redirect cargoes, collapse the Gulf basis and lift Australian and Argentine premiums instead.

### The corn price

Sorghum is bought as a corn substitute in feed rations and in ethanol plants, so its price is anchored to corn and moves within a band around it. Sorghum has slightly less digestible starch than corn unless it is steam-flaked, so it normally trades at a discount; when export demand appears it can trade at a premium and domestic feeders switch back to corn. Anything that moves the Chicago corn market therefore moves sorghum with it, before any sorghum-specific factor applies.

### Drought on the US southern plains

Almost all United States sorghum is dryland, grown in Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma precisely because the rainfall is too unreliable for corn. The crop tolerates drought better than maize but not indefinitely: a dry summer cuts yields sharply and a severe one causes abandonment of planted area before harvest. Because a single country supplies most of the export trade, a plains drought is felt directly in the world market rather than being absorbed by other suppliers.

### The Australian summer crop

Australia is the second exporter and its sorghum is a summer crop planted from September to January on the Darling Downs in Queensland and in northern New South Wales, harvested from February. It is therefore counter-seasonal to the northern hemisphere and fills the gap between United States harvests. Its size depends on summer rainfall and on stored soil moisture at planting, and when the Australian crop is large it competes directly for Chinese demand.

### Drought and conflict in the Sahel and the Horn

The largest African producers grow sorghum for food, so shocks there change consumption and food security rather than export prices. Repeated Sahelian droughts since the late 1960s and the war in Sudan since April 2023 have cut planted area and harvests in countries where sorghum is the staple cereal. The effect on the world market shows up as import demand for food aid rather than as any change in the Gulf quotation.

### Pests, weeds and bird damage

Sorghum's field risks are biological and hard to insure against. The sugarcane aphid became a serious pest of grain sorghum across the United States and Mexico in the 2010s and requires scouting and treatment. In Africa the parasitic witchweeds of the genus Striga attach to sorghum roots and can devastate a crop on depleted soils, affecting tens of millions of hectares. Birds strip ripening panicles, which is why high-tannin, bird-resistant varieties exist despite their lower feed value.

### Industrial and food-grade demand

Beyond feed, sorghum goes into fuel ethanol in the United States, where it qualifies as an advanced biofuel feedstock under certain conditions, into baijiu distilling in China, and into a growing gluten-free food market that uses white, tannin-free, food-grade grain. These outlets are smaller than feed but they are less price-elastic, and food-grade contracts are agreed before planting, which supports acreage in a way commodity feed demand does not.

### Freight and the Gulf basis

Sorghum is a low-value bulk cargo shipped a long way, so ocean freight and canal transit are a large part of the delivered cost. When panamax rates rise or Panama Canal draft restrictions force longer routings, Australian and Argentine sorghum gains against United States Gulf cargoes for Asian buyers. The Gulf basis absorbs this: it widens or narrows to keep American grain competitive, which is why the FOB quotation can move without any change in the underlying corn market.

## How is sorghum produced?

Sorghum is planted after the soil warms, because the seedling is sensitive to cold, and it takes roughly 90 to 140 days from planting to harvest depending on variety and latitude. It is sown shallow into a firm seedbed at relatively low seeding rates, tillers to fill gaps, and produces its grain in a panicle at the top of the stem rather than in a cob or a spike. The plant's drought strategy is to slow down rather than to die: under water stress it rolls its leaves, closes stomata and can pause development for a fortnight, then resume when rain arrives, which is why it produces something in years when maize produces nothing.

Type matters as much as variety. Grain sorghum is the short, high-yielding crop grown for the seed. Forage sorghum and sudangrass hybrids are grown tall and cut green for silage or grazing. Sweet sorghum has a juicy stem with high sugar content and is crushed for syrup or fermented for ethanol; it was promoted in the United States from the 1850s as a domestic sugar source under the name Chinese sugar-cane. Broomcorn is grown for the stiff fibers of its panicle. Within grain sorghum, white and tan varieties with no condensed tannins are grown for milling and food, while red and bronze grain goes to feed, and high-tannin varieties are planted where birds are a serious problem, at a cost in digestibility.

Harvest is by combine once the grain has dried below about 14 percent moisture, sometimes after a desiccant is applied to even up ripening. The grain is stored much like maize and moves through the same country elevators and rail system. For feed, sorghum's starch is protected by a protein matrix that makes it less digestible than maize when fed whole, so it is usually rolled, ground or steam-flaked to open the kernel, and steam-flaking is standard in feedlots that use it heavily. For food, the grain is decorticated to remove the bran and then milled into flour or coarse semolina.

The by-products are used rather than discarded. Sorghum stover is a valuable dry-season fodder across Africa and India, which is one reason farmers keep growing tall varieties that yield less grain. Distillers' grains from ethanol production and from baijiu distilleries go to livestock feed, and the bran removed in decortication is rich in antioxidants and sold as a food ingredient.


## What is sorghum used for?

Sorghum has two lives. In the Sahel, Sudan, Ethiopia and parts of India it is a human staple: ground into flour for the thick porridges known as tô and ugali, fermented into the flatbread injera alongside teff, rolled into jowar bhakri, steamed as a couscous, and brewed into traditional opaque beers across West and southern Africa. That food use accounts for most of the crop in the countries that grow the most of it, and it is why African production statistics move with rainfall and conflict rather than with world prices.

In the Americas, Australia and China it is an industrial grain. Most of it is fed to cattle, pigs and poultry, usually processed to improve starch availability. In the United States a share goes to fuel ethanol; in China it is the base grain for baijiu, where the tannin and starch profile of specific varieties is part of the product specification. Smaller but growing outlets include gluten-free flour and snacks, pet food, birdseed and, in the case of broomcorn, brush fiber. Forage and sweet sorghum are separate crops grown for silage and syrup respectively and are not counted in the grain figures on this page.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The export chain is short and unusually thin. United States sorghum moves from farm bins in Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma by truck to country elevators, then by unit train to export elevators at Corpus Christi, Houston and other Texas Gulf ports, and out in panamax vessels bound for China. Australian sorghum comes off the Darling Downs by road to Brisbane; Argentine sorghum moves down to the up-river terminals around Rosario. Discharge is at Chinese ports serving the coastal feed mills and, for distilling grain, moving inland to Sichuan, Guizhou and Shandong.

The subsistence chain has no comparable infrastructure. Sorghum grown in Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, northern Nigeria and Sudan is threshed by hand or with small mechanical threshers, stored on-farm in granaries, milled locally, and traded in regional markets that may be hundreds of kilometers from a paved road. Cross-border flows within West Africa and the Horn are substantial but poorly captured in customs statistics, and the visible international trade in these countries is largely humanitarian purchasing.

The single points of failure are concentration on both sides of the trade. With United States supplying 58% of world export value and China buying 81% of world imports in 2024 (CEPII BACI), the market is effectively one lane. A drought on the United States southern plains removes most of the exportable surplus; a Chinese tariff or a regulatory decision removes most of the demand; and there is no third party large enough to absorb either shock. Physically, the Texas Gulf export elevators and the Panama Canal transit are the constrained links, and for the food-security half of the picture the fragility is different again: sorghum-dependent regions have thin markets, little storage and no futures market at all to signal a coming shortage.


## Key companies

- Cargill: grain originator, exporter and feed manufacturer, United States
- CHS Inc.: farmer-owned cooperative, grain handling and export, United States, listed (CHSCP)
- Bunge Global: grain originator and exporter, United States, listed (BG)
- Archer-Daniels-Midland: grain originator and processor, United States, listed (ADM)
- COFCO International: grain trader and importer into China, Switzerland
- GrainCorp: grain handler and export terminals, Australia, listed (GNC)

## Timeline

- 1857: Sweet sorghum promoted as a US sugar crop. Introduced in the 1850s as Chinese sugar-cane, sweet sorghum was pushed as a domestic sweetener when cane sugar was scarce, and syrup production peaked at about 20 million gallons a year by the early 1900s. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_sorghum)
- 1957: The United States funds witchweed eradication. Congress allocated funds against Striga after its discovery in the country, and the quarantine and control program that followed cut the parasitized area by about 99 percent, a contrast with Africa where Striga still affects some 40 million hectares. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Striga)
- 1968: The great Sahelian drought begins. Six years of failed rains from 1968 destroyed grazing and cereal harvests across West Africa, killed up to 100,000 people and a third of the livestock, and made drought tolerance the central criterion for sorghum breeding in the region. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahel_drought)
- 1972: ICRISAT is founded. The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics was set up at Hyderabad with sorghum and millet among its mandate crops, and became the main public breeding program for the dryland cereals. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Crops_Research_Institute_for_the_Semi-Arid_Tropics)
- 1972-06: Soviet grain buying lifts the whole cereal complex. Large Soviet purchases of American grain from mid-1972 drained world stocks and pushed cereal prices up sharply into 1974, which is why sorghum's inflation-adjusted record sits in that period. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Grain_Robbery)
- 1984: The second Sahel drought. Sahelian countries recorded some of the lowest rainfall ever measured in 1983 and 1984, a second failure that entrenched food aid dependence in the sorghum-growing belt even as human losses were lower than in the 1970s. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahel_drought)
- 2013: China starts buying American sorghum. Chinese feed mills began importing US sorghum as a complement to domestic maize, a trade that grew to roughly a billion dollars a year and turned a minor grain into a major export earner. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorghum)
- 2018-04: China's tariffs cut off the US sorghum trade. Retaliatory measures in April 2018 abruptly ended the largest sorghum trade lane, collapsing the Gulf basis and stranding cargoes already at sea. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorghum)
- 2020-01: The Phase One trade agreement. The agreement signed on 15 January 2020 included Chinese commitments to buy American agricultural goods, and sorghum shipments to China resumed at scale afterward. (https://ustr.gov/phase-one)
- 2020: China becomes the dominant sorghum importer. Chinese purchases grew to exceed those of all other countries combined, giving one buyer decisive influence over a trade supplied mainly by one seller. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorghum)
- 2023-04: War breaks out in Sudan. Fighting from 15 April 2023 disrupted farming in one of the largest sorghum-producing countries, and famine has since been confirmed in several regions where sorghum is the staple cereal. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudanese_civil_war_(2023%E2%80%93present))

## Frequently asked questions

### Which country produces the most sorghum?

United States produced 8.7 million tonnes in 2024, 14% of the world's 64.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT), followed by Nigeria at 10% and India and Sudan at 8.4% each. The American crop is a mechanized feed grain; the African crops are hand-grown staples eaten close to where they are harvested.

### Which country exports the most sorghum?

United States exported $1.6 billion in 2024, 58% of the world's $2.7 billion of sorghum exports, ahead of Australia at 23% and Argentina at 9.6% (CEPII BACI). Those three supply almost the entire trade, and everything below them is marginal by comparison.

### Which country imports the most sorghum?

China bought 81% of the world's $2.7 billion of sorghum imports in 2024 (CEPII BACI), a concentration with no parallel among grains. Ethiopia was a distant second at 1.6% and Japan third at 1.4%. China uses imported sorghum for animal feed and for distilling baijiu.

### How much does sorghum cost?

The US No. 2, Gulf export quotation was $189.5/t in August 2020, up 28% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). That is a price at the loading elevator, so buyers pay ocean freight on top. The nominal record was $302.5/t in August 2011; in inflation-adjusted terms the real high was $918.3/t in October 1974.

### Is sorghum traded on a futures exchange?

No. Sorghum has no futures contract, so it is priced as a basis, a premium or discount, against Chicago corn futures at United States Gulf export elevators, and buyers compare it with corn on feeding value. The reference series used here was $189.5/t in August 2020 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### Why is sorghum so drought tolerant?

It is a C4 grass with deep fibrous roots, a waxy leaf coating that limits water loss, leaves that roll under stress, and the ability to pause growth during a dry spell and resume when rain returns. That is why it is the staple across the Sahel and why Nigeria, Sudan and Ethiopia together grew a large share of the world's 64.2 million tonnes in 2024 (FAOSTAT).

### What is sorghum used for?

In Africa and India it is a human staple, ground for porridge and flatbreads and brewed into traditional beers. In the Americas, Australia and China it is mainly livestock feed, plus fuel ethanol in the United States and baijiu distilling in China. Only a small share crosses borders: exports were worth $2.7 billion in 2024 against production of 64.2 million tonnes in 2024 (CEPII BACI, FAOSTAT).

### Is sorghum production growing?

It swings sharply from year to year because so much of it is rain-fed. World output was 64.2 million tonnes in 2024, a change of +12% on the year, +13% over five years and -6% over ten (FAOSTAT). Brazil has grown at +6% a year over the decade while Mexico contracted at -6%.

### What is the difference between sorghum and milo?

Milo is the American name for grain sorghum, generally the red or bronze feed types grown on the southern plains, and the two words describe the same crop. Sweet sorghum, forage sorghum and broomcorn are separate types grown for syrup, silage and brush fiber and are not counted in the 64.2 million tonnes of grain reported for 2024 (FAOSTAT).

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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 2026-09-06. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where does sorghum come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/sorghum/.

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# Where do soybeans come from?

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

Soybeans come mainly from Brazil, which produced 144.5 million tonnes in 2024, 36% of the world's 397.7 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). United States (30%), Argentina (12%) and China (5.2%) follow; the top five together supply 87%. The biggest exporter of soybeans (HS 1201) is Brazil (54% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, US, CIF Rotterdam, was $482/t in August 2026, up 18% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Soybeans want a hot, wet summer on deep, level, mechanizable soil, which the US Corn Belt, Brazil's Cerrado and Argentina's Pampas supply on a scale no other region can match, and breeding for low latitudes let Brazil push the crop into the tropics after the 1970s.

*An oilseed legume crushed into meal (animal feed) and oil (cooking oil and biodiesel); the world's most traded farm product by value.* Also called: soya beans, soya, soybean, soy, soybean oil, soybean meal, soymeal.

## Where do soybeans come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | 144.5 million | 36% |
| 2 | United States | 118.8 million | 30% |
| 3 | Argentina | 48.2 million | 12% |
| 4 | China | 20.7 million | 5.2% |
| 5 | India | 15.1 million | 3.8% |
| 6 | Paraguay | 11.1 million | 2.8% |
| 7 | Canada | 7.6 million | 1.9% |
| 8 | Russia | 7 million | 1.8% |
| 9 | Ukraine | 6.6 million | 1.7% |
| 10 | Bolivia | 3.2 million | 0.8% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 3.7% |
| | World | 397.7 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

The soybean is a warm-season legume that sets its crop during long summer days and wants steady rain through flowering and pod fill. It was domesticated in northern China, but the countries that grow it at scale are in the Americas, where flat land, deep soils, cheap fertilizer-free nitrogen (the plant fixes its own) and full mechanization make it the most profitable way to use a summer field. In 2024 Brazil produced 144.5 million tonnes, 36% of the world's 397.7 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). United States grew 118.8 million tonnes (30%) and Argentina 48.2 million tonnes (12%); the top five countries accounted for 87% of the crop.

Brazil's rise is the story of the last fifty years. Public breeding at Embrapa produced varieties that flower at low latitudes, lime and phosphate corrected the acid soils of the Cerrado savanna, and cheap land in Mato Grosso, Goiás and the new frontier of Matopiba let farms expand in blocks of thousands of hectares. Output in Brazil grew at +5.2% a year over the decade to 2024, against +1.1% in United States (FAOSTAT). A second crop of corn planted straight after the soybean harvest in January and February pays for the land twice.

The United States grows soybeans in rotation with corn across Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and the rest of the Corn Belt, with the Mississippi river system to carry the crop to the Gulf. Argentina's crop sits on the humid Pampas around Rosario, which is also where most of it is crushed. Behind those three come China and India; China, the crop's home, grows a large area of food-grade beans but imports many times more for crushing. Ten years of expansion lifted world output by +30% to 2024.


## Who exports and imports soybeans?

Argentina exports little bean but is the largest exporter of meal and oil because it crushes at home; Brazil and the US ship mostly whole beans to China.

### Exporters of soya beans (HS 1201), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | $43.2 billion | 54% |
| 2 | United States | $24.7 billion | 31% |
| 3 | Paraguay | $3.2 billion | 3.9% |
| 4 | Canada | $2.5 billion | 3% |
| 5 | Argentina | $2.1 billion | 2.6% |
| 6 | Ukraine | $1.3 billion | 1.7% |
| 7 | Uruguay | $459.3 million | 0.6% |
| 8 | Russia | $357.6 million | 0.4% |
| 9 | Benin | $300.6 million | 0.4% |
| 10 | Netherlands | $277.1 million | 0.3% |
| 11 | Togo | $249.4 million | 0.3% |
| 12 | Nigeria | $216.2 million | 0.3% |
| 13 | China | $139 million | 0.2% |
| 14 | Niger | $133.6 million | 0.2% |
| 15 | Romania | $124.8 million | 0.2% |

### Importers of soya beans (HS 1201), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $47.2 billion | 59% |
| 2 | Mexico | $3 billion | 3.7% |
| 3 | Argentina | $2.9 billion | 3.6% |
| 4 | Spain | $2.5 billion | 3.1% |
| 5 | Japan | $1.8 billion | 2.2% |
| 6 | Thailand | $1.8 billion | 2.2% |
| 7 | Egypt | $1.7 billion | 2.1% |
| 8 | Germany | $1.7 billion | 2.1% |
| 9 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $1.6 billion | 2% |
| 10 | Indonesia | $1.4 billion | 1.7% |
| 11 | Other Asia, nes | $1.2 billion | 1.5% |
| 12 | Italy | $1.2 billion | 1.4% |
| 13 | Iran | $1.1 billion | 1.4% |
| 14 | Netherlands | $1.1 billion | 1.3% |
| 15 | Vietnam | $1 billion | 1.3% |

### Exporters of soya-bean oil (HS 1507), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Argentina | $6 billion | 45% |
| 2 | Brazil | $1.3 billion | 9.7% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $517.2 million | 3.8% |
| 4 | United States | $497.4 million | 3.7% |
| 5 | Russia | $478.8 million | 3.5% |
| 6 | Paraguay | $411.8 million | 3% |
| 7 | Bolivia | $401 million | 3% |
| 8 | Spain | $370.9 million | 2.7% |
| 9 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $350.6 million | 2.6% |
| 10 | Ukraine | $319.5 million | 2.4% |
| 11 | Thailand | $277.5 million | 2.1% |
| 12 | Malaysia | $157.9 million | 1.2% |
| 13 | China | $155.9 million | 1.2% |
| 14 | Egypt | $154.9 million | 1.1% |
| 15 | Italy | $151.7 million | 1.1% |

### Importers of soya-bean oil (HS 1507), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | $4.1 billion | 30% |
| 2 | Canada | $716.2 million | 5.3% |
| 3 | Bangladesh | $630.3 million | 4.7% |
| 4 | China | $587.9 million | 4.4% |
| 5 | Morocco | $529.3 million | 3.9% |
| 6 | Peru | $529.1 million | 3.9% |
| 7 | Algeria | $465.5 million | 3.4% |
| 8 | South Korea | $356.2 million | 2.6% |
| 9 | United States | $301.6 million | 2.2% |
| 10 | Spain | $293.3 million | 2.2% |
| 11 | Colombia | $288 million | 2.1% |
| 12 | Poland | $239.9 million | 1.8% |
| 13 | Chile | $220.8 million | 1.6% |
| 14 | Zimbabwe | $217 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | Dominican Republic | $201.6 million | 1.5% |

### Exporters of soya-bean oilcake (meal) (HS 2304), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Argentina | $9.8 billion | 28% |
| 2 | Brazil | $9.7 billion | 28% |
| 3 | United States | $6.4 billion | 18% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $1.1 billion | 3.1% |
| 5 | India | $975.1 million | 2.8% |
| 6 | China | $841.5 million | 2.4% |
| 7 | Germany | $832.5 million | 2.4% |
| 8 | Paraguay | $773.8 million | 2.2% |
| 9 | Bolivia | $585.8 million | 1.7% |
| 10 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $540.5 million | 1.6% |
| 11 | Ukraine | $339.2 million | 1% |
| 12 | Russia | $311.1 million | 0.9% |
| 13 | Slovenia | $255.8 million | 0.7% |
| 14 | Nigeria | $213.7 million | 0.6% |
| 15 | Belgium | $189.7 million | 0.5% |

### Importers of soya-bean oilcake (meal) (HS 2304), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indonesia | $2.3 billion | 6.6% |
| 2 | Vietnam | $2.2 billion | 6.3% |
| 3 | Philippines | $1.6 billion | 4.5% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $1.4 billion | 4.1% |
| 5 | Poland | $1.4 billion | 4% |
| 6 | Germany | $1.4 billion | 3.9% |
| 7 | France | $1.3 billion | 3.6% |
| 8 | Thailand | $1.3 billion | 3.6% |
| 9 | Iran | $1.2 billion | 3.3% |
| 10 | Spain | $1.1 billion | 3% |
| 11 | Colombia | $886.4 million | 2.5% |
| 12 | United Kingdom | $886 million | 2.5% |
| 13 | Japan | $864.9 million | 2.5% |
| 14 | Mexico | $825.2 million | 2.4% |
| 15 | Italy | $800.2 million | 2.3% |

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

Soybeans are the most valuable farm product in world trade, and the flow is unusually lopsided: three exporters, one importer. In 2024 exports of soybeans (HS 1201) were worth $80.5 billion (CEPII BACI). Brazil shipped 54% of that value and United States 31%, with Paraguay a distant third. On the buying side China alone took 59% of world imports, most of it whole beans for its own crushing industry, followed by Mexico and Argentina.

Argentina looks small in the bean table because it crushes at home and exports the products. Argentina was the largest exporter of soybean meal (HS 2304) in 2024 with 28% of the value, and Argentina led soybean oil (HS 1507) with 45% in 2024. Meal goes mainly to feed compounders in Europe and Southeast Asia; oil goes to India, North Africa and, increasingly, to biofuel plants. Whether a country sells beans, meal or oil depends on its crush capacity, its export taxes and the wishes of its largest customer.


## What do soybeans cost?

- US, CIF Rotterdam: $482/t in August 2026; 12-month change +18%; 10-year change +17%; all-time high $737/t in June 2022; real high (2024 US$) $3,336/t in June 1973 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- Soybean meal, Argentine 45-46% CIF Rotterdam: $403/t in August 2026; 12-month change +14%; 10-year change +1%; all-time high $651/t in August 2012; real high (2024 US$) $4,131/t in July 1973 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- Soybean oil, Dutch FOB ex-mill: $1,638/t in August 2026; 12-month change +32%; 10-year change +99%; all-time high $1,963/t in May 2022; real high (2024 US$) $6,428/t in October 1974 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How they are priced

The reference price is the Chicago Board of Trade soybean future (ticker ZS, 5,000 bushels, quoted in US cents per bushel; a bushel is 60 pounds or about 27.2 kilograms). CBOT also lists soybean oil (ZL, 60,000 pounds, US¢/lb) and soybean meal (ZM, 100 short tons, US$/short ton), and the three together let a crusher lock in the "board crush", the margin between beans bought and products sold. Every physical trade is quoted as a basis to the nearest Chicago contract: a Brazilian cargo might be offered at Paranaguá as a premium or discount to the March future, and a Gulf of Mexico cargo as a premium to the same month.

The World Bank's series, which this page uses, is US, CIF Rotterdam, a delivered price for US beans at the main European import port. In August 2026 it stood at $482/t, up 18% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its nominal record was $737/t in June 2022, and its low since 1960 was $88/t in October 1960. Products are quoted separately: Soybean oil, Dutch FOB ex-mill was $1,638/t and Soybean meal, Argentine 45-46% CIF Rotterdam was $403/t in the same month. A CIF quote includes freight and insurance to the destination port; an FOB quote does not, so the gap between Rotterdam CIF and a Gulf or Paranaguá FOB is mostly ocean freight.

Quality terms are simpler than for grains: contracts specify moisture, foreign material, damaged kernels and, for crushers, oil and protein content, which vary by origin and season. Two ambiguities matter. First, "soybean prices" can mean beans, oil or meal, and they often move in different directions when biofuel policy lifts oil while a big crush weighs on meal. Second, production on this page is beans as harvested, while USDA's balance sheet runs on marketing years that start in September for the United States and in the following January or February for South America.


## What moves the price of soybeans?

### South American weather and ENSO

Brazil plants from September and Argentina from October, so the northern-hemisphere winter is the southern crop's growing season. La Niña tends to bring drought to Argentina and southern Brazil, El Niño excess rain at harvest; either can cut yields in the countries that supply most of world exports. Because South America's harvest lands in the first half of the year, its weather sets the price for the second half of the US marketing year.

### US acreage and the corn-soy ratio

American farmers choose each spring between corn and soybeans on much of the same land, and the ratio of new-crop soybean to corn futures, together with fertilizer costs, tips the decision. A ratio well above 2.5 pulls acres toward soybeans. Planting intentions and the June acreage report from USDA are therefore market events in their own right, before a single pod has set.

### Chinese demand and the hog herd

China buys most of the world's traded beans to make meal for pigs and poultry and oil for cooking. The size of its hog herd, the recovery from African swine fever after 2018, feed-ration rules that cap soymeal inclusion, and the timing of state-reserve purchases and auctions all show up in Chicago within days. Chinese crush margins, quoted daily in Dalian, are watched as a proxy for near-term import appetite.

### Stocks-to-use

The stocks-to-use ratio, ending stocks divided by consumption, is the market's shorthand for how tight supply is. USDA put world soybean stocks-to-use at 29% for 2026/27, against 30% in 2025/26 (USDA PSD). Traders watch the US ratio more closely than the world figure, because US stocks are the ones that can be shipped at short notice; a US ratio in single digits has coincided with the sharpest price spikes.

### Biofuel mandates

Soybean oil is the main feedstock for US biodiesel and renewable diesel, so the Environmental Protection Agency's blending volumes, the 45Z production credit and state low-carbon fuel standards set a floor under oil demand. Brazil's biodiesel blend mandate, raised in steps through the 2020s, does the same at home. When policy lifts oil, crushers run harder and meal becomes the byproduct, which pushes meal prices down and can lift bean demand while depressing product margins.

### Trade policy and tariffs

China's 25% retaliatory tariff on US beans in July 2018 cut US shipments to China by about three-quarters within a year and redirected Chinese demand to Brazil; the 2020 Phase One deal and the November 2025 purchase commitment partly reversed the flows. Argentina taxes bean exports more heavily than meal and oil, which is why it crushes at home. The EU deforestation regulation adds a traceability cost to Brazilian and Paraguayan beans. Each rule changes which origin is cheapest for a given buyer rather than the world balance.

### Currencies: the real and the peso

Brazilian farmers sell in dollars and pay costs in reais, so a weaker real raises their local price and encourages both selling and planting; a strong real does the opposite and slows farmer sales, tightening port premiums. Argentina's gap between official and parallel peso rates, and periodic 'soy dollar' schemes offering farmers a better rate, decide when the Argentine crop comes to market.

### Palm oil and other substitutes

Soybean oil competes with palm, rapeseed and sunflower oil in food and fuel, and soybean meal competes with rapeseed meal, corn distillers' grains and fishmeal in feed. When Indonesian palm exports are restricted, as in 2022, soybean oil rallies with them; when Ukraine's sunflower oil returns to market, it weighs on the whole vegetable-oil complex. Bean prices follow the weighted value of the two products they contain.

## How are soybeans produced?

Soybeans are sown in spring in the United States (late April to June) and in the southern spring in South America (September to December), and harvested about four to five months later. Varieties are grouped by maturity to match day length at each latitude, and almost all of the commercial crop in the three big exporters carries herbicide-tolerant or insect-resistant traits introduced from 1996 onward. Non-GM, identity-preserved beans are a small premium market for tofu, natto and soy milk, mostly grown under contract for Japan, Korea and Europe.

A combine strips the pods and threshes the beans, which are dried to about 13% moisture, stored in silos or bags and moved by truck, rail and barge. The crop's value is unlocked at the crusher. Beans are cleaned, cracked, dehulled and rolled into flakes; hexane extracts the oil, and the defatted flakes are toasted and ground into meal. A tonne of beans yields roughly four-fifths meal and a little under a fifth crude oil, plus hulls that go into cattle feed. Mechanical expeller presses do the same job at smaller scale and leave more oil in the meal.

Crude soybean oil is degummed (which yields lecithin), refined, bleached and deodorized for the table, or sent to a biodiesel or renewable-diesel plant. Meal is sold by protein content, typically 44% to 48%, and hipro Argentine meal is the benchmark grade in Rotterdam. Because the products are worth more than the bean, crush margins, not bean prices alone, decide how fast the crop is processed and where.


### Harvest calendar

- Brazil: harvest Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr
- United States: harvest Sep, Oct, Nov
- Argentina: harvest Mar, Apr, May, Jun
- China: harvest Sep, Oct
- India: harvest Sep, Oct
- Paraguay: harvest Jan, Feb, Mar
- Canada: harvest Sep, Oct
- Russia: harvest Sep, Oct

## What are soybeans used for?

Most of the world's soybeans are crushed, and most of the meal feeds chickens, pigs, dairy cattle and farmed fish, which is why soybean demand tracks meat consumption rather than direct human eating. The oil is the second most used vegetable oil after palm: it fries food, fills bottles of cooking oil, goes into margarine and mayonnaise, and, in the United States and Brazil, into diesel substitutes under blending mandates. Whole beans become tofu, soy milk, tempeh, natto, edamame and soy sauce, mostly in East Asia, and lecithin from oil refining is an emulsifier in chocolate and baked goods. Industrial uses include inks, adhesives and polyols for foams.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Crushing concentrates where beans and feed demand meet. China has the largest crush industry, built along its coast to receive imported beans; Argentina's plants line the Paraná above and below Rosario and ship meal and oil from the same docks; the US Midwest and Brazil's Mato Grosso and Paraná states process for domestic feed and export. Independent crushers matter, but four merchants, Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus, together with COFCO and Viterra (part of Bunge from July 2025), own much of the world's crush and export elevator capacity.

Brazil's crop leaves through Santos and Paranaguá in the south and, in growing volume, through the "Northern Arc" ports of Itaqui, Barcarena and Santarém, reached by the BR-163 highway and the Tapajós river. US beans travel down the Mississippi and Illinois rivers by barge to Gulf elevators near New Orleans, or by rail to Pacific Northwest terminals for Asia. Argentine exports depend on the depth of the Paraná below Rosario, which in 2021 fell so far that ships loaded a sixth less than usual.

The chokepoints are rivers and roads: Mississippi low water in the autumns of 2022 and 2023, Paraná droughts, Brazilian truck strikes and unpaved sections of BR-163 in the wet season, and the Panama Canal's draft limits during the 2023 drought. The demand-side single point of failure is China, which takes most of the traded crop; any change in its tariffs, reserve purchases or hog herd reshuffles the whole map.


## Key companies

- Archer Daniels Midland: crusher, United States, listed (NYSE: ADM)
- Bunge Global: crusher, United States, listed (NYSE: BG)
- Cargill: crusher, United States
- Louis Dreyfus Company: trader, Netherlands
- COFCO International: trader, Switzerland
- Wilmar International: crusher, Singapore, listed (SGX: F34)

## Timeline

- 1973-06: United States embargoes soybean exports. A brief ban meant to cool domestic prices convinced Japan and other buyers to fund an alternative supplier, and Brazil's soybean industry grew from that decision. (https://www.agpolicy.org/weekcol/217.html)
- 1996: Herbicide-tolerant soybeans go on sale in the United States. Glyphosate-tolerant varieties spread to most of the US crop within a few years and made no-till soybean farming the norm across the Americas. (https://www.ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/publications/41422/28463_aer810j_1_.pdf?v=86716)
- 2004-11: Asian soybean rust found in Louisiana. The fungus that had already cut yields in Brazil arrived in the continental United States, adding a fungicide cost and a new weather-driven risk to the US crop. (https://apsjournals.apsnet.org/doi/10.1094/PD-89-0774A)
- 2006-07: Amazon Soy Moratorium signed by Brazilian crushers and exporters. Traders agreed not to buy soybeans from land deforested in the Amazon biome, which pushed expansion toward the Cerrado and became the template for later deforestation rules. (https://greenpeace.org/archive-international/Global/international/code/2014/amazon/index.html)
- 2008-07: Argentina's senate rejects the sliding-scale export tax. Four months of farm strikes over Resolution 125 blocked shipments and showed how Argentine tax policy governs when its crop reaches the market. (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2008/7/17/argentina-senate-rejects-grain-tax)
- 2012-07: US drought pushes Chicago soybeans to a record. The worst Midwest drought since 1988 cut yields and set the nominal price high that later rallies were measured against. (https://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/archive/2013/01_11_2013.php)
- 2018-07: China imposes a 25% tariff on US soybeans. The largest buyer's retaliation in the trade war collapsed US shipments to China and locked in Brazil as its main supplier. (https://www.piie.com/blogs/trade-and-investment-policy-watch/2018/trump-china-and-tariffs-soybeans-semiconductors)
- 2020-01: Brazil overtakes the United States as the largest producer. USDA's forecast for the 2019/20 crop confirmed a shift that had been building for two decades and moved the center of the soybean market south. (https://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2020/01/brazil-forecast-to-overtake-u-s-as-leading-soybean-producer-usda-fas-report/)
- 2020-01: US-China Phase One agreement signed. China committed to large farm purchases, and US soybean sales to China rebounded, though the totals fell short of the targets. (https://www.fas.usda.gov/topics/china-phase-one-agreement)
- 2021-06: Paraná River falls to its lowest in decades. Ships at Rosario loaded far less than normal and Argentine meal and oil exports were delayed, exposing the river as a chokepoint for the world's top product exporter. (https://www.spglobal.com/commodity-insights/en/news-research/latest-news/agriculture/070221-feature-parched-parana-river-disrupts-argentinas-soybean-exports)
- 2025-07: Bunge completes its acquisition of Viterra. The merger created one of the largest oilseed crushers and grain handlers, consolidating export capacity in the Americas and Australia. (https://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2025/07/bunge-completes-8-billion-merger-with-grain-trader-viterra/)
- 2025-11: China agrees to resume US soybean purchases. After a months-long halt, Beijing committed to buy 12 million tonnes by early 2026 and 25 million tonnes a year to 2028, reopening the largest bilateral flow in the market. (https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2025/11/us-china-soybean-deal-comparing-past-export-levels-and-global-market-impacts.html)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most soybeans

Brazil produced the most soybeans in 2024: 144.5 million tonnes, or 36% of the world's 397.7 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). United States was second with 118.8 million tonnes and Argentina third. Together the top five countries grew 87% of the crop.

### which country exports the most soybeans

Brazil exported the most soybeans in 2024, 54% of the $80.5 billion of world exports of soybeans (HS 1201) (CEPII BACI). United States was second. Argentina ranks lower for beans because it crushes most of its crop and led soybean meal exports in 2024.

### who buys the most soybeans

China imported 59% of world soybean imports by value in 2024 (CEPII BACI), far ahead of Mexico and Argentina. It buys whole beans to crush at home into meal for pigs and poultry and oil for cooking, which is why its hog herd and tariffs move the world price.

### what is the price of soybeans today

The Chicago future is the reference; the delivered benchmark used here, US, CIF Rotterdam, was $482/t in August 2026, up 18% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Soybean oil was $1,638/t and soybean meal $403/t in the same month.

### what are soybeans used for

Most soybeans are crushed. The meal, about four-fifths of the weight, feeds chickens, pigs, cattle and farmed fish; the oil goes into cooking oil, margarine and biodiesel. Whole beans become tofu, soy milk and soy sauce, mainly in East Asia. In 2024 the world grew 397.7 million tonnes (FAOSTAT), and the largest single buyer was China.

### why did Brazil overtake the US in soybeans

Breeding for tropical day lengths, liming of Cerrado soils and cheap land let Brazil expand far faster than the United States over the decade to 2024: Brazil grew at +5.2% a year and United States at +1.1% (FAOSTAT). A second corn crop after soybeans and China's shift to Brazilian supply after the 2018 tariffs sealed the change, which USDA recorded for the 2019/20 crop.

### how much soybean is in stock worldwide

USDA estimates world soybean stocks-to-use, ending stocks divided by use, at 29% for 2026/27, against 30% in 2025/26 (USDA PSD). The US ratio matters more to prices than the world figure because US stocks can be shipped at short notice, and Brazilian stocks are drawn down before its harvest each January.

### why does Argentina export soybean meal instead of beans

Argentina taxes bean exports more heavily than meal and oil, and its crushers along the Paraná near Rosario can process the crop at home. Argentina was the largest soybean meal exporter in 2024 with 28% of the value, and Argentina led soybean oil (CEPII BACI).

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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
- USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, Production, Supply and Distribution (PSD), 2026-09-06. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://apps.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/
- Harvest calendars (curated from USDA FAS IPAD crop calendars and FAO GIEWS country briefs), curated 2026-09. License: Public domain (USDA) with FAO GIEWS cross-reference (attribution). https://ipad.fas.usda.gov/ogamaps/cropcalendar.aspx

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

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# Where does steel come from?

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

Steel comes mainly from China, which produced 980 million tonnes in 2025, 52% of the world's 1.9 billion tonnes (USGS MCS). India (8.4%), United States (4.3%) and Japan (4.3%) follow; the top five together supply 72%. The biggest exporter of hot-rolled steel coil (HS 7208) is China (28% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Steel is made where there is either iron ore and coal or a large pool of scrap and cheap electricity, and because it is heavy, cheap per tonne and needed everywhere, almost every industrial country has built its own industry rather than importing.

*Iron alloyed with a little carbon, made in blast furnaces from iron ore or in electric arc furnaces from scrap; the most used metal on earth.* Also called: crude steel, raw steel, pig iron, rebar, hot-rolled coil, HRC.

## Where does steel come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 980 million | 52% |
| 2 | India | 160 million | 8.4% |
| 3 | United States | 82 million | 4.3% |
| 4 | Japan | 81 million | 4.3% |
| 5 | Russia | 65 million | 3.4% |
| 6 | South Korea | 60 million | 3.2% |
| 7 | Germany | 38 million | 2% |
| 8 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 37 million | 1.9% |
| 9 | Brazil | 35 million | 1.8% |
| 10 | Iran | 32 million | 1.7% |
| | Rest of world | 230 million | 17% |
| | World | 1.9 billion | 100% |

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026.

In 2025 China produced 980 million tonnes of raw steel, 52% of the world's 1.9 billion tonnes (USGS MCS). India followed with 8.4%, then United States (4.3%), Japan (4.3%) and Russia (3.4%). The top five account for 72%. Pig iron, the molten iron from blast furnaces that feeds most steelmaking, came to {{prod.Pig iron.world}}, led by {{prod.Pig iron.top1.name}} with {{prod.Pig iron.top1.share}} (USGS MCS).

One country makes more steel than the rest of the world combined, which is a genuinely unusual degree of concentration for a product this fundamental, and it happened within about twenty-five years. The gap between raw steel and pig iron figures is informative: where the two are close, a country makes steel mainly from iron ore in blast furnaces; where raw steel far exceeds pig iron, it is recycling scrap in electric arc furnaces. The United States is the clearest example of the second model, with the large majority of its steel made from scrap.

Steel is not one product but hundreds. Long products, rebar, sections and wire rod, go into construction. Flat products, hot-rolled and cold-rolled coil and plate, go into vehicles, appliances, pipe and machinery. Stainless, described on the chromium page, is a separate and much smaller market. The grades are not substitutable and the mills that make them are different, so a shortage of one can coincide with a glut of another.

World output changed +1% on the previous year. Steel demand tracks construction and manufacturing investment more closely than consumer spending, which is why it is treated as a leading indicator of industrial activity.

## Who exports and imports steel?

China makes more steel than the rest of the world combined but exports a small share of it; the export table is led by China, Japan, South Korea and the European Union.

### Exporters of iron and steel (chapter) (HS 72), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $72.9 billion | 16% |
| 2 | Germany | $30.6 billion | 6.6% |
| 3 | Japan | $29.2 billion | 6.3% |
| 4 | Indonesia | $26.3 billion | 5.7% |
| 5 | South Korea | $25.9 billion | 5.6% |
| 6 | United States | $19.3 billion | 4.2% |
| 7 | France | $15 billion | 3.3% |
| 8 | Belgium | $15 billion | 3.3% |
| 9 | Italy | $14.8 billion | 3.2% |
| 10 | Brazil | $12.4 billion | 2.7% |
| 11 | Russia | $12.3 billion | 2.7% |
| 12 | Netherlands | $12.1 billion | 2.6% |
| 13 | India | $11.4 billion | 2.5% |
| 14 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $10.4 billion | 2.3% |
| 15 | Other Asia, nes | $9.1 billion | 2% |

### Importers of iron and steel (chapter) (HS 72), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $34 billion | 7.4% |
| 2 | China | $30.3 billion | 6.6% |
| 3 | Germany | $25.7 billion | 5.6% |
| 4 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $23.1 billion | 5% |
| 5 | Italy | $21.4 billion | 4.6% |
| 6 | India | $17 billion | 3.7% |
| 7 | Mexico | $16.3 billion | 3.5% |
| 8 | Vietnam | $14 billion | 3% |
| 9 | South Korea | $14 billion | 3% |
| 10 | France | $12.3 billion | 2.7% |
| 11 | Netherlands | $12.1 billion | 2.6% |
| 12 | Poland | $12 billion | 2.6% |
| 13 | Belgium | $11.8 billion | 2.6% |
| 14 | Spain | $11.6 billion | 2.5% |
| 15 | Thailand | $11.2 billion | 2.4% |

### Exporters of ferrous waste and scrap (HS 7204), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $6.3 billion | 14% |
| 2 | Germany | $4.2 billion | 9.4% |
| 3 | United Kingdom | $3.4 billion | 7.6% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $3 billion | 6.7% |
| 5 | France | $2.9 billion | 6.5% |
| 6 | Japan | $2.6 billion | 5.8% |
| 7 | Canada | $1.9 billion | 4.4% |
| 8 | Belgium | $1.6 billion | 3.5% |
| 9 | Poland | $1.4 billion | 3.1% |
| 10 | Australia | $1.1 billion | 2.5% |
| 11 | Czechia | $988.5 million | 2.2% |
| 12 | Sweden | $690.9 million | 1.5% |
| 13 | Denmark | $658.5 million | 1.5% |
| 14 | Austria | $602.8 million | 1.3% |
| 15 | Romania | $577.9 million | 1.3% |

### Importers of ferrous waste and scrap (HS 7204), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $8.3 billion | 18% |
| 2 | India | $4.8 billion | 11% |
| 3 | Italy | $2.5 billion | 5.6% |
| 4 | Belgium | $2.5 billion | 5.5% |
| 5 | Germany | $2.1 billion | 4.7% |
| 6 | United States | $2 billion | 4.4% |
| 7 | Pakistan | $1.6 billion | 3.6% |
| 8 | Bangladesh | $1.6 billion | 3.6% |
| 9 | Vietnam | $1.6 billion | 3.5% |
| 10 | Egypt | $1.6 billion | 3.5% |
| 11 | Netherlands | $1.5 billion | 3.2% |
| 12 | Spain | $1.3 billion | 3% |
| 13 | Other Asia, nes | $1.3 billion | 2.9% |
| 14 | South Korea | $1.2 billion | 2.8% |
| 15 | Finland | $1.1 billion | 2.4% |

### Exporters of flat-rolled iron or non-alloy steel, hot-rolled, not clad (HS 7208), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $19.4 billion | 28% |
| 2 | Japan | $9.5 billion | 14% |
| 3 | South Korea | $6.2 billion | 9% |
| 4 | Germany | $3.2 billion | 4.6% |
| 5 | Belgium | $2.5 billion | 3.6% |
| 6 | Other Asia, nes | $2 billion | 2.8% |
| 7 | France | $1.9 billion | 2.8% |
| 8 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $1.9 billion | 2.7% |
| 9 | United States | $1.8 billion | 2.7% |
| 10 | India | $1.7 billion | 2.5% |
| 11 | Netherlands | $1.7 billion | 2.5% |
| 12 | Italy | $1.6 billion | 2.3% |
| 13 | Vietnam | $1.5 billion | 2.1% |
| 14 | Russia | $1.3 billion | 1.9% |
| 15 | Canada | $1.2 billion | 1.7% |

### Importers of flat-rolled iron or non-alloy steel, hot-rolled, not clad (HS 7208), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Vietnam | $6.4 billion | 9.3% |
| 2 | Italy | $4.1 billion | 5.9% |
| 3 | South Korea | $3.1 billion | 4.4% |
| 4 | India | $2.8 billion | 4.1% |
| 5 | Germany | $2.8 billion | 4% |
| 6 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $2.7 billion | 3.9% |
| 7 | Spain | $2.5 billion | 3.6% |
| 8 | United Arab Emirates | $2.4 billion | 3.5% |
| 9 | Mexico | $2.4 billion | 3.5% |
| 10 | United States | $2.4 billion | 3.4% |
| 11 | Poland | $2.1 billion | 3% |
| 12 | Saudi Arabia | $1.9 billion | 2.8% |
| 13 | Thailand | $1.7 billion | 2.4% |
| 14 | Malaysia | $1.6 billion | 2.3% |
| 15 | Indonesia | $1.5 billion | 2.2% |

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

China was the largest exporter of hot-rolled steel coil (HS 7208) in 2024 with 28% of world export value, ahead of Japan (14%), on world trade of $69.1 billion (CEPII BACI). Vietnam was the largest importer with 9.3%.

Only a modest share of world steel crosses a border, because it is heavy and cheap relative to freight and because most countries protect their mills. That protection is the defining feature of the trade: steel is the most frequent subject of antidumping and safeguard actions of any manufactured product, and duty schedules rather than costs often determine who supplies whom. The other feature is that trade flows in semi-finished form as well as finished: slab and billet move from countries with ore and coal to countries with rolling mills but no ironmaking, which is a large and often overlooked part of the trade.

## What does steel cost?

### How it is priced

This page quotes no steel price, because there is no free public benchmark. Hot-rolled coil, the closest thing to a reference product, is assessed regionally by private price reporting agencies, free-on-board China, ex-works Northern Europe, and Midwest United States, and those assessments differ by hundreds of dollars a tonne at the same moment because trade barriers keep the regions apart. Futures on CME, SGX and the Shanghai and Dalian exchanges settle against those private indices.

What this site can show is the input side, and it is more informative than a single steel quotation would be. A blast furnace route mill buys iron ore and coking coal, and the spread between the finished steel price and the cost of those inputs is what determines whether it runs. Both inputs have benchmark series on this site: see the iron ore and coal pages. An electric arc furnace mill buys scrap and electricity instead, so its economics follow the scrap price and the power tariff.

The useful mental model is that steel is a conversion margin business. Mills do not really sell steel; they sell the transformation of ore and coal, or scrap and power, into a product, and their profit is the spread. When Chinese mills expand output into a weak market, that spread compresses worldwide, which is why steel trade disputes are so persistent: overcapacity in one country compresses margins everywhere it can ship.

## What moves the price of steel?

### Chinese construction and property

China makes more than half the world's steel and consumes most of it domestically in construction. Property starts and infrastructure spending there therefore drive world steel demand, and a Chinese property downturn pushes surplus steel into export markets, depressing prices and triggering trade actions elsewhere.

### Iron ore and coking coal costs

For blast furnace mills these two inputs dominate variable cost. When ore or coal prices spike, the conversion margin compresses and higher-cost mills bank furnaces. The relationship runs both ways: mill cuts then reduce ore and coal demand, which is why the three markets move together.

### Scrap availability and price

Electric arc furnaces melt scrap, and their share of world output is rising as decarbonisation policy favors them. Scrap availability depends on how much steel was consumed decades earlier and on collection infrastructure, so mature economies have plenty and fast-growing ones do not. Scrap price sets the floor for the whole product.

### Trade remedies

Antidumping duties, countervailing duties and safeguard quotas are more consequential in steel than in almost any other traded good. A duty determination can close a market to an origin within weeks, redirecting flows and creating price differences between regions that persist for years.

### Energy and carbon costs

Blast furnaces emit around two tonnes of carbon dioxide per tonne of steel, so carbon pricing, border adjustment mechanisms and the cost of switching to hydrogen-based direct reduction now sit directly in the cost structure of European mills and increasingly elsewhere.

### Capacity cycles

Steel plants are enormous, long-lived and politically difficult to close, so overcapacity persists far longer than in most industries. Governments repeatedly support loss-making mills for employment reasons, which prolongs downturns and is the root cause of chronic trade friction.

### Automotive and appliance demand

Flat products depend on vehicle and appliance production, which is more cyclical and more sensitive to interest rates than construction. A car contains around a tonne of steel, so vehicle output translates directly into flat-product demand, and the shift to electric vehicles changes the grade mix toward electrical steels.

## How is steel produced?

There are two routes and the distinction runs through everything else on this page. The integrated route starts with iron ore, which is sintered or pelletised and charged into a blast furnace with coke and limestone. Coke, made by baking coal in the absence of air, both provides heat and chemically strips oxygen from the ore, producing molten pig iron with a high carbon content. That iron goes to a basic oxygen furnace where oxygen is blown through it to burn out the excess carbon, producing steel. Roughly seven-tenths of world steel is made this way.

The electric arc route melts scrap, and sometimes direct-reduced iron, using graphite electrodes that strike an arc through the charge. It uses a fraction of the energy of the integrated route and emits far less carbon dioxide, but it depends on scrap availability and on the impurities that come with scrap, which limit the grades it can make without careful sorting or dilution with virgin iron units.

Either way the liquid steel is refined in a ladle, where alloying elements are added, then continuously cast into slabs, blooms or billets. Those semi-finished shapes are reheated and rolled: slabs into flat products, blooms and billets into sections, rebar and wire rod. Flat products may then be cold rolled, annealed, coated with zinc or aluminium-zinc, and painted.

Direct reduction is the third route and the one that matters for the future. It uses natural gas, or increasingly hydrogen, to strip oxygen from ore in the solid state, producing direct-reduced iron that feeds an electric arc furnace. Combined with clean electricity, this is the main credible path to low-carbon primary steel.

## What is steel used for?

Construction takes roughly half of all steel: rebar and structural sections in buildings and infrastructure, sheet piling, and the reinforcing that makes concrete work. This is why steel demand tracks construction cycles and why Chinese property has been the dominant global variable for two decades.

Mechanical engineering and machinery take the next largest share, followed by automotive, where a vehicle contains around a tonne across body, chassis, engine and components. Metal goods, appliances, packaging in the form of tinplate cans, and electrical equipment absorb the rest. Pipe and tube for oil, gas and water is a large specialized market with its own grades and pricing.

Steel's most underrated property is recyclability. It is magnetic, easily separated from mixed waste, and can be melted repeatedly without meaningful loss of quality, which is why it is the most recycled material on earth by weight. That recycling loop is also why the industry's decarbonisation path runs through electric arc furnaces: the scrap already exists, and melting it is far less carbon-intensive than making iron from ore.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

An integrated steelworks is one of the largest single industrial installations ever built, combining coke ovens, sinter plant, blast furnace, oxygen converter, casters and rolling mills on one site with its own port. Because a blast furnace cannot be stopped and restarted casually, a campaign runs for fifteen to twenty years between relines, and mills run continuously through demand downturns rather than idling. That inflexibility is the source of the industry's chronic overcapacity problem.

The raw material chain feeding it is one of the largest bulk shipping operations in the world: iron ore from Australia and Brazil and coking coal from Australia, Canada and the United States, moving in capesize vessels to China, Japan, Korea and Europe. The chokepoints are the Pilbara and Brazilian export ports and the Australian coal terminals, and weather disruptions there register in ore and coal prices within days.

Electric arc mills have a different and more local chain: scrap collected within a few hundred kilometers, electricity from the grid, and graphite electrodes, which are a specialized product made from petroleum needle coke and were themselves the subject of a severe shortage in 2017 and 2018 that raised steelmaking costs worldwide.

The decarbonisation transition is the structural risk and opportunity. Replacing coal-based ironmaking with hydrogen-based direct reduction requires enormous quantities of clean hydrogen and electricity, and where a mill can get those cheaply is not necessarily where mills are today. Several European producers have concluded that it is cheaper to make iron near cheap renewable power and ship it, which would separate ironmaking from steelmaking geographically for the first time since the industrial revolution.

## Key companies

- China Baowu Steel Group: steelmaker, China, listed (600019)
- ArcelorMittal: steelmaker, Luxembourg, listed (MT)
- Nippon Steel: steelmaker, Japan, listed (5401)
- POSCO: steelmaker, South Korea, listed (005490)
- Nucor: electric arc furnace steelmaker, United States, listed (NUE)
- Tata Steel: steelmaker, India, listed (TATASTEEL)

## Timeline

- 1856-08: The Bessemer converter makes bulk steel possible. Blowing air through molten iron to burn out carbon cut the cost of steel by an order of magnitude and turned it from a specialty material into the structural basis of industrial society. (https://worldsteel.org)
- 1952: Basic oxygen steelmaking is commercialised. Using pure oxygen instead of air made steelmaking faster and cleaner and displaced the Bessemer and open-hearth processes, and it remains the dominant primary route today. (https://worldsteel.org)
- 1960s: Continuous casting replaces ingot pouring. Casting liquid steel directly into slabs and billets removed a whole reheating and rolling stage, raising yield and cutting energy use substantially across the industry. (https://worldsteel.org)
- 1969: The mini-mill model spreads. Small electric arc furnaces melting local scrap to make rebar proved that steel could be made competitively without a blast furnace, beginning the shift toward scrap-based production in mature economies. (https://worldsteel.org)
- 1996: China passes 100 million tonnes of annual output. The start of an expansion that would take Chinese production past the rest of the world combined within twenty-five years and reshape every raw material market feeding it. (https://worldsteel.org)
- 2008-09: The financial crisis exposes global overcapacity. Demand collapsed while capacity built during the boom kept producing, beginning a long period of weak margins and intensifying trade disputes. (https://worldsteel.org)
- 2016-04: The Global Forum on Steel Excess Capacity is created. Governments formally acknowledged that structural overcapacity, not cyclical weakness, was the industry's central problem, though the forum produced little binding change. (https://www.oecd.org/industry/ind/steel.htm)
- 2018-03: United States Section 232 tariffs take effect. A twenty-five percent tariff on steel imports on national security grounds reshaped trade flows worldwide and prompted retaliatory and defensive measures in the European Union and elsewhere. (https://www.trade.gov/us-antidumping-and-countervailing-duties)
- 2021-08: Hydrogen direct reduction produces its first commercial steel. Fossil-free steel made with hydrogen instead of coke demonstrated a credible decarbonisation route, though at volumes and costs far from displacing blast furnaces. (https://worldsteel.org)
- 2023-10: The EU carbon border adjustment mechanism begins reporting. Importers of steel into the European Union had to start reporting embedded emissions ahead of financial obligations, making carbon intensity a trade variable for the first time. (https://taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu/carbon-border-adjustment-mechanism_en)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most steel

China produced 980 million tonnes of raw steel in 2025, 52% of the world's 1.9 billion tonnes (USGS MCS) — more than the rest of the world combined. India was second with 8.4%.

### how is steel made

Two main routes. The integrated route smelts iron ore with coke in a blast furnace to make pig iron, then blows oxygen through it to remove carbon. The electric arc route melts scrap using graphite electrodes. Roughly seven-tenths of world steel comes from the first route.

### why is there no steel price on this page

Because there is no free public benchmark. Hot-rolled coil is assessed regionally by private agencies, and the regional prices differ by hundreds of dollars a tonne because trade barriers keep markets apart. This site shows the iron ore and coal input benchmarks instead and explains the conversion margin.

### what is the difference between pig iron and steel

Pig iron is the high-carbon molten iron that comes out of a blast furnace; it is brittle and not directly useful. Steel is made by removing most of that carbon in an oxygen converter. In 2025 world pig iron output was {{prod.Pig iron.world}} against 1.9 billion tonnes of raw steel (USGS MCS).

### is steel recyclable

Yes, and it is the most recycled material on earth by weight. Steel is magnetic and easily separated from mixed waste, and it can be melted repeatedly without meaningful loss of quality. That recycling loop underpins the electric arc furnace route and the industry's decarbonisation plans.

### why are there so many steel trade disputes

Because blast furnaces cannot be idled cheaply and governments protect mills for employment reasons, overcapacity persists far longer than in other industries. Surplus output is exported, depressing prices elsewhere, and importing countries respond with antidumping duties and safeguards.

### how much carbon dioxide does steelmaking emit

The blast furnace route emits around two tonnes of carbon dioxide per tonne of steel, because coke both heats the furnace and chemically strips oxygen from iron ore. Electric arc furnaces melting scrap emit far less, and hydrogen-based direct reduction is the main route being developed for low-carbon primary steel.

## Sources

- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries
- 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

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

---

# Where does sugar come from?

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

Sugar comes mainly from Brazil, which produced 42 million tonnes in 2023, 22% of the world's 187.6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India (20%), Thailand (5.5%) and China (5.3%) follow; the top five together supply 57%. The biggest exporter of sugar (HS 1701) is Brazil (47% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, World raw sugar (ISA daily price), was $0.38/kg in August 2026, up 3% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Sugar cane needs a year of tropical heat and rain followed by a dry spell to ripen, so it dominates in Brazil, India and Thailand, while sugar beet fills the temperate gap in Europe and Russia; the split, and Brazil's option to make ethanol instead, are legacies of colonial plantations and the 1970s oil shocks.

*Sucrose crystallized from sugar cane (four-fifths of supply) or sugar beet; traded raw (No. 11) and refined white (No. 5).* Also called: raw sugar, cane sugar, beet sugar, sugarcane, sugar cane, sugar beet, white sugar.

## Where does sugar come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2023 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | 42 million | 22% |
| 2 | India | 37 million | 20% |
| 3 | Thailand | 10.3 million | 5.5% |
| 4 | China | 10 million | 5.3% |
| 5 | United States | 8.3 million | 4.4% |
| 6 | Pakistan | 6.8 million | 3.6% |
| 7 | Russia | 6.6 million | 3.5% |
| 8 | Mexico | 5.6 million | 3% |
| 9 | Germany | 4.6 million | 2.4% |
| 10 | Australia | 4.2 million | 2.2% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 28% |
| | World | 187.6 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2023.

Sugar is sucrose, and two very different plants make it. Sugar cane is a giant tropical grass that stores sugar in its stalk over twelve to eighteen months and yields best where a hot, wet growing season is followed by a cool or dry ripening period: Brazil's Center-South, the Indo-Gangetic plain, Thailand's northeast, Guangxi in southern China, Pakistan's Punjab and Mexico. Sugar beet is a temperate root crop sown in spring and lifted in autumn across northern France, Germany, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Egypt's delta and the northern United States. Cane accounts for the large majority of world sugar; beet is the reason Europe and Russia appear at all.

The production figures on this page count centrifugal raw sugar, the crystallized product of both plants. In 2023 Brazil produced 42 million tonnes, 22% of the world's 187.6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT), followed by India with 37 million tonnes (20%) and Thailand (5.5%). The top five made 57% of the total. Behind those figures sit the crops themselves: world sugar cane harvested in 2024 weighed 1.9 billion tonnes, led by Brazil, and sugar beet 293.6 million tonnes, led by Russia (FAOSTAT).

Why Brazil? Cane came to the Portuguese colony in the sixteenth century, but the modern industry was built by policy: the Proálcool program of 1975 taught mills to switch between sugar and ethanol, flex-fuel cars from 2003 gave ethanol a domestic market, and the flat, rain-fed land of São Paulo, Goiás and Minas Gerais allowed fully mechanized harvesting. India's position rests on a different mechanism: a government-set cane price that rewards farmers regardless of the sugar market, so area stays high in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra whether or not the world needs the sugar. Thailand's growers sit between cassava and cane and switch with relative prices, and the European Union's beet industry contracted after quotas ended in 2017.


## Who exports and imports sugar?

### Exporters of cane or beet sugar and chemically pure sucrose (HS 1701), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | $20.5 billion | 47% |
| 2 | Thailand | $2.5 billion | 5.8% |
| 3 | India | $2.2 billion | 5.1% |
| 4 | France | $1.7 billion | 3.9% |
| 5 | Australia | $1.6 billion | 3.8% |
| 6 | Germany | $1.3 billion | 2.9% |
| 7 | Morocco | $861.4 million | 2% |
| 8 | Guatemala | $757.5 million | 1.8% |
| 9 | Poland | $654.6 million | 1.5% |
| 10 | Saudi Arabia | $599.2 million | 1.4% |
| 11 | Russia | $545.3 million | 1.3% |
| 12 | Netherlands | $518.8 million | 1.2% |
| 13 | South Africa | $492.3 million | 1.1% |
| 14 | Mexico | $436.4 million | 1% |
| 15 | Ukraine | $434.2 million | 1% |

### Importers of cane or beet sugar and chemically pure sucrose (HS 1701), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indonesia | $2.8 billion | 6.5% |
| 2 | United States | $2.6 billion | 6% |
| 3 | Saudi Arabia | $2.1 billion | 4.9% |
| 4 | China | $1.8 billion | 4.1% |
| 5 | India | $1.7 billion | 3.8% |
| 6 | United Arab Emirates | $1.3 billion | 3% |
| 7 | Italy | $1.2 billion | 2.7% |
| 8 | Malaysia | $1.1 billion | 2.6% |
| 9 | Algeria | $1.1 billion | 2.5% |
| 10 | Egypt | $1.1 billion | 2.4% |
| 11 | South Korea | $959 million | 2.2% |
| 12 | Morocco | $932.4 million | 2.2% |
| 13 | Bangladesh | $870.1 million | 2% |
| 14 | Spain | $855.7 million | 2% |
| 15 | Canada | $802.6 million | 1.9% |

### Exporters of raw cane sugar (HS 170114), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | $16.1 billion | 73% |
| 2 | Australia | $1.6 billion | 7.4% |
| 3 | Thailand | $1.1 billion | 5.2% |
| 4 | South Africa | $349.6 million | 1.6% |
| 5 | India | $340.2 million | 1.5% |
| 6 | Mexico | $298.3 million | 1.4% |
| 7 | Guatemala | $266.5 million | 1.2% |
| 8 | El Salvador | $182.3 million | 0.8% |
| 9 | Dominican Republic | $147.7 million | 0.7% |
| 10 | Nicaragua | $143.4 million | 0.7% |
| 11 | Argentina | $126.5 million | 0.6% |
| 12 | Eswatini | $111.1 million | 0.5% |
| 13 | Colombia | $110 million | 0.5% |
| 14 | Belize | $89.8 million | 0.4% |
| 15 | Mauritius | $88.4 million | 0.4% |

### Importers of raw cane sugar (HS 170114), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indonesia | $2.7 billion | 12% |
| 2 | United States | $1.7 billion | 7.6% |
| 3 | India | $1.6 billion | 7.3% |
| 4 | China | $1.5 billion | 6.8% |
| 5 | United Arab Emirates | $1.2 billion | 5.4% |
| 6 | Algeria | $1 billion | 4.8% |
| 7 | Malaysia | $970.5 million | 4.4% |
| 8 | Egypt | $937.6 million | 4.3% |
| 9 | Morocco | $922.8 million | 4.2% |
| 10 | Saudi Arabia | $880.8 million | 4% |
| 11 | South Korea | $859.5 million | 3.9% |
| 12 | Bangladesh | $758.8 million | 3.4% |
| 13 | Canada | $740.2 million | 3.4% |
| 14 | Nigeria | $718.1 million | 3.3% |
| 15 | Japan | $718 million | 3.3% |

### Exporters of refined sugar (HS 170199), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | $2.8 billion | 15% |
| 2 | India | $1.8 billion | 9.7% |
| 3 | France | $1.6 billion | 8.7% |
| 4 | Thailand | $1.4 billion | 7.4% |
| 5 | Germany | $1.2 billion | 6.7% |
| 6 | Morocco | $860.9 million | 4.7% |
| 7 | Poland | $643.4 million | 3.5% |
| 8 | Saudi Arabia | $594.3 million | 3.2% |
| 9 | Guatemala | $486.8 million | 2.7% |
| 10 | Netherlands | $476.1 million | 2.6% |
| 11 | Ukraine | $433.2 million | 2.4% |
| 12 | Russia | $417.9 million | 2.3% |
| 13 | Belgium | $348.8 million | 1.9% |
| 14 | Egypt | $327.5 million | 1.8% |
| 15 | United States | $325.9 million | 1.8% |

### Importers of refined sugar (HS 170199), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Italy | $1 billion | 5.6% |
| 2 | Spain | $700 million | 3.8% |
| 3 | United States | $664.5 million | 3.6% |
| 4 | Belgium | $541 million | 2.9% |
| 5 | Sudan | $525.3 million | 2.9% |
| 6 | Mexico | $488.4 million | 2.7% |
| 7 | Libya | $483.5 million | 2.6% |
| 8 | Germany | $417.9 million | 2.3% |
| 9 | Cambodia | $391.9 million | 2.1% |
| 10 | Sri Lanka | $364 million | 2% |
| 11 | Israel | $362 million | 2% |
| 12 | Somalia | $333.7 million | 1.8% |
| 13 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $328.6 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | Chile | $292.7 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | Netherlands | $291.5 million | 1.6% |

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

Raw and refined sugar are separate markets. Raw sugar (HS 170114, about 96 to 99 degrees polarization) ships in bulk from mills to refineries near the consumer; refined white sugar (HS 170199) ships in bags and containers, mostly to countries without refineries. In 2024 world exports of sugar (HS 1701) were worth $43.1 billion (CEPII BACI), and Brazil supplied 47% of that value, followed by Thailand (5.8%) and India. Brazil led raw sugar exports in 2024 with 73% of the value, while Brazil led refined exports in 2024 with 15%.

Importers are more spread out. Indonesia was the largest in 2024 with 6.5% of world import value, ahead of United States and Saudi Arabia. Standalone refineries in the Gulf, the Red Sea, Algeria, Malaysia and Indonesia buy raws from Brazil and sell whites into their regions, so a country can be a large importer of raws and an exporter of whites at once. India's exports swing from nothing to several million tonnes depending on the season and its government's quota, which is the single largest source of uncertainty in the trade.


## What does sugar cost?

- World raw sugar (ISA daily price): $0.38/kg in August 2026; 12-month change +3%; 10-year change -14%; all-time high $1.24/kg in November 1974; real high (2024 US$) $7.55/kg in November 1974 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- EU white sugar: $0.38/kg in August 2026; 12-month change 0%; 10-year change +3%; all-time high $0.78/kg in April 2008; real high (2024 US$) $3.6/kg in January 1975 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- US domestic raw (No. 16): $0.82/kg in August 2026; 12-month change +1%; 10-year change +30%; all-time high $1.26/kg in November 1974; real high (2024 US$) $7.67/kg in November 1974 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

Two futures contracts anchor the market. ICE Futures US Sugar No. 11 (ticker SB, 112,000 pounds, quoted in US cents per pound) is the world raw sugar price, deliverable FOB at ports in Brazil and a list of other origins. ICE Futures Europe White Sugar No. 5 (ticker W, 50 tonnes, US$/t) prices refined sugar delivered FOB in bulk containers. The difference between the two, the "white premium", is the margin available to a refinery, and it widens when refined stocks run short. Physical trades add a premium or discount for origin, polarization and delivery period, and Brazilian raws are often sold months ahead against the futures curve.

The series used on this page is World raw sugar (ISA daily price), which the International Sugar Organization computes from the No. 11 settlement. In August 2026 it stood at $0.38/kg, up 3% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its nominal high was $1.24/kg in November 1974, and its low since 1960 was $0.03/kg in September 1966. Two protected markets are quoted separately: the US domestic raw price (No. 16) was $0.82/kg and the EU white price $0.38/kg in the same month. Both sit above the world price because tariffs and quotas keep world sugar out.

Three ambiguities matter. Production here is centrifugal raw sugar, so India's and Brazil's totals depend on how much cane the mills chose to turn into ethanol rather than sugar. Cane and beet tonnages are shown separately and are not sugar. And a world price in dollars per kilogram converts to cents per pound by multiplying by 100 and dividing by 2.2046, so the No. 11 quote and the World Bank series read differently for the same day.


## What moves the price of sugar?

### Brazil's sugar-ethanol mix

Center-South mills can send cane juice to sugar or to ethanol, and they switch with the relative price. When gasoline prices set by Petrobras rise or Brazil's ethanol blend mandate tightens, ethanol pays better and the sugar mix falls; when world sugar rallies, the mix climbs into the high forties as a share of cane. Because Brazil supplies most of the traded raw sugar, a few points of mix equal millions of tonnes of supply, and crude oil prices feed into sugar through this channel.

### Weather in the Center-South and the monsoon in India

Brazil's cane is rain-fed and harvested from April to November; a dry spring in São Paulo cuts both cane tonnage and sugar content, and fires in a dry August can destroy standing cane. India's cane and Thailand's depend on the monsoon, and a weak season shows up a year later in lower crush and export bans. El Niño years have tended to combine Indian and Thai shortfalls with wet Brazilian harvests that slow crushing.

### Stocks-to-use

Sugar keeps well, so stocks buffer the market and the stocks-to-use ratio signals how much cushion exists. USDA put world centrifugal sugar stocks-to-use at — for 2026/27, against — in 2025/26 (USDA PSD). Much of the stock sits in India and China, where policy rather than price decides whether it is exported, so traders discount those tonnes when judging tightness in the free market.

### India's export policy

India is the swing exporter. Its government sets the cane price farmers receive, caps or bans exports when domestic prices rise (as in the 2023/24 season), subsidizes exports when stocks pile up (a policy a WTO panel ruled against in 2021), and directs cane to ethanol under its blending program. Each decision is announced season by season, so the size of India's exportable surplus is the main unknown in every annual balance.

### The Brazilian real

Mills sell sugar in dollars and pay cane growers, wages and fuel in reais. A weaker real raises the local value of each cent per pound, encouraging mills to price sugar for export and to favor sugar over ethanol; a stronger real does the reverse. Because Brazil is the marginal supplier, the No. 11 price in dollars tends to move inversely with the real even when the crop is unchanged.

### Energy and the white premium

Refining is energy-intensive and refineries in the Gulf, Europe and Asia buy raws against the No. 11 and sell whites against the No. 5. When natural gas or coal prices spike, refining margins compress unless the white premium widens, and refiners cut runs. Ocean freight matters too: raws move in bulk on Supramax ships and whites in containers, so the two contracts respond to different freight markets.

### Import policy in China and Indonesia

China regulates sugar imports through a tariff-rate quota, automatic import licenses and, at times, a sliding-scale duty; Indonesia licenses raws for its refineries season by season. Changes in either country's rules shift several million tonnes of demand between the world market and domestic stocks, and Chinese out-of-quota tariffs decide whether syrup and premix imports become a back door for sugar.

### Substitutes and sweetener demand

High-fructose corn syrup competes with sugar in soft drinks where corn is cheap, chiefly the United States, and non-caloric sweeteners and sugar taxes have flattened per-person consumption in richer countries. Growth comes from South and Southeast Asia and Africa, where incomes and processed-food sales rise. Beet sugar in the EU also competes with isoglucose since quotas ended, capping the EU white price.

## How is sugar produced?

Cane is planted from stalk cuttings and cut for the first time after twelve to eighteen months, then regrows as ratoons for four or five further annual harvests before replanting. Brazil's Center-South harvests from April to November, India from October to April, Thailand from December to April, so some origin is always crushing. Mechanical harvesters cut green cane in Brazil and Australia; hand-cut cane, often burned first to strip the leaves, remains common in India and much of Asia and Africa. Cane must reach the mill within a day or two of cutting because sucrose begins to invert as soon as the stalk is severed, which is why mills sit inside their own cane fields.

At the mill the cane is shredded and crushed or diffused to extract juice, which is clarified with lime and heat, evaporated to syrup and boiled under vacuum until sucrose crystallizes. Centrifuges spin the crystals free of the mother liquor, giving raw sugar of roughly 96 to 99 degrees polarization (the sucrose share by weight) and molasses. The fibrous residue, bagasse, fuels the mill's boilers and, in Brazil, exports electricity to the grid; molasses and juice are fermented to ethanol; filter mud returns to the fields. Beet is different: roots are sliced into cossettes, sugar is diffused out in hot water, the juice is purified with lime and carbon dioxide and crystallized directly into white sugar, leaving beet pulp for cattle and molasses for yeast and feed.

Refining turns raw sugar into white. Raws are washed (affination), dissolved, decolorized with carbon or ion-exchange resins, filtered and recrystallized to a color below 45 ICUMSA units, the specification for refined sugar in most contracts. Plantation white made directly at the mill (around 150 ICUMSA) serves domestic markets in India and elsewhere, and very-high-polarization raws sit between the two. Sugar content per tonne of cane runs at roughly a tenth to an eighth, and it falls when cane is harvested wet or too young.


### Harvest calendar

- Brazil (Centre-South cane): harvest Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov. North-East cane crushed September–March.
- India (Cane crushing season): harvest Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, Oct, Nov, Dec
- Thailand (Cane): harvest Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, Dec
- China (Cane (Guangxi)): harvest Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, Nov, Dec
- United States (Beet): harvest Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec. Cane harvested October–March in Louisiana and Florida.
- Pakistan (Cane): harvest Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, Nov, Dec
- Mexico (Cane): harvest Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Nov, Dec
- France (Beet): harvest Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec

## What is sugar used for?

Most sugar is eaten, either from the bag or, more often, inside soft drinks, confectionery, baked goods, dairy desserts and processed foods; industrial buyers take the larger share in rich countries and households in poorer ones. The next largest use is fuel: Brazil turns a large part of its cane into ethanol for flex-fuel cars and India diverts cane juice and molasses to meet its blending target. Molasses feeds yeast, rum and cattle; bagasse generates power and makes paper and packaging; and sucrose is a fermentation feedstock for citric acid, amino acids and bioplastics. Sugar's competitors in sweetening are corn syrup and non-caloric sweeteners.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Milling is tied to the cane field, so processing concentrates in the growing regions: hundreds of mills across São Paulo and Goiás, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, Thailand's northeast and Guangxi. Ownership is concentrated too. Raízen, Tereos, Wilmar, Mitr Phol, COFCO and the Indian mill groups operate clusters of mills, and Brazil's sugar leaves through a handful of terminals at Santos and Paranaguá, reached by road and by Rumo's rail line from the interior. Refineries sit at the other end, in Dubai, Jeddah, Algeria, Malaysia, Indonesia and the ports of Europe and North America, and turn raws into the white sugar their regions consume.

Santos is the chokepoint. Sugar competes for berths and rail slots with soybeans and corn, and in the peak months of the Center-South crush a queue of ships waits outside the port; a wet harvest or a truckers' strike delays loadings for everyone. Thailand's exports funnel through Laem Chabang and the river terminals below Bangkok, India's through Kandla and Mundra on the west coast. Raws to Asia and the Middle East cross the Atlantic and round the Cape or pass Suez, so Red Sea disruption lengthens the route for a third of world trade.

The single points of failure are Brazil's Center-South, which supplies most of the free-market raws, and Indian policy, which can add or remove millions of tonnes with one notification. A dry spring or a wave of fires in São Paulo has no substitute at short notice, because other exporters' surpluses are small and the refineries that depend on Brazilian raws cannot switch feedstock.


## Key companies

- Raízen: miller, Brazil, listed (B3: RAIZ4)
- Südzucker: refiner, Germany, listed (FRA: SZU)
- Tereos: miller, France
- ASR Group: refiner, United States
- Mitr Phol Group: miller, Thailand
- Wilmar International: refiner, Singapore, listed (SGX: F34)
- Balrampur Chini Mills: miller, India, listed (NSE: BALRAMCHIN)
- COFCO International: trader, Switzerland

## Timeline

- 1974-11: World raw sugar peaks above 65 cents a pound. The spike, driven by a poor European beet crop, Soviet buying and inflation fears, remains the nominal record for the New York contract and spurred the corn-syrup industry in the United States. (https://www.winton.com/news/the-sweet-and-sour-history-of-sugar-prices)
- 1975-11: Brazil launches the Proálcool ethanol program. Decree 76.593 tied cane to fuel, giving Brazilian mills the sugar-or-ethanol option that sets the world raw price to this day. (https://bioenfapesp.org/gsb/lacaf/documents/papers/05_ISAF_2016_Cortez_et_al.pdf)
- 2003-03: First flex-fuel car goes on sale in Brazil. Cars that run on any blend of gasoline and ethanol created a domestic fuel market that mills can switch into whenever sugar pays less. (https://www.just-auto.com/news/brazil-reaches-15-years-of-flex-fuel-vehicles/)
- 2005-05: WTO rules against EU sugar export subsidies. Brazil, Australia and Thailand won the case that forced the reform of the EU regime and cut subsidized European exports from the world market. (https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds266_e.htm)
- 2011-02: Raw sugar hits a 30-year high near 36 cents a pound. Two short crops in India and rain in Brazil emptied stocks and set the high-water mark for the modern No. 11 market. (https://www.barchart.com/story/news/24821109/will-sugar-follow-cocoa-and-fcoj)
- 2017-09: EU sugar production quotas end. After nearly fifty years, European beet growers could plant freely and export, adding a swing supplier of white sugar to the world market. (https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_17_3487)
- 2021-08: Raízen lists on B3 and buys Biosev. The Cosan-Shell venture's IPO and acquisition made it the largest cane processor in the world's largest exporter. (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001430162/000155485522000330/csan-20211231.htm)
- 2021-12: WTO panel finds India's sugar subsidies illegal. Brazil, Australia and Guatemala showed that Indian cane price support and export subsidies exceeded WTO limits; India appealed and kept its policies, but the ruling shapes how it structures export aid. (https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news21_e/579_580_581r_e.htm)
- 2023-10: India extends sugar export restrictions indefinitely. Keeping the 2023/24 crop at home after a patchy monsoon removed the second-largest producer from the export market and supported world prices through the season. (https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/india-india-restricts-sugar-exports-beyond-october-31-indefinite-period)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most sugar

Brazil produced the most centrifugal sugar in 2023: 42 million tonnes, or 22% of the world's 187.6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India was second with 37 million tonnes. The ranking counts crystallized sugar, so it depends on how much cane each country turned into ethanol instead.

### which country exports the most sugar

Brazil exported the most sugar in 2024, 47% of the $43.1 billion of world exports of sugar (HS 1701) (CEPII BACI). Brazil led raw sugar and Brazil led refined white sugar. India's exports swing with its government's annual quota.

### is sugar made from cane or beet

Both. Sugar cane, a tropical grass, supplies the large majority; sugar beet, a temperate root, supplies the rest, mainly in Europe and Russia. In 2024 the world harvested 1.9 billion tonnes of cane, led by Brazil, and 293.6 million tonnes of beet, led by Russia (FAOSTAT). Both give the same sucrose.

### what is the price of sugar today

The world raw sugar price (World raw sugar (ISA daily price)) was $0.38/kg in August 2026, up 3% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Protected markets sit higher: US raw sugar (No. 16) was $0.82/kg and EU white sugar $0.38/kg in the same month. Futures trade on ICE as Sugar No. 11 in cents per pound.

### why does Brazil dominate sugar exports

Brazil combines cheap rain-fed land, mechanized harvesting and the option to make ethanol instead of sugar, which lets mills sell whichever pays more. Brazil supplied 73% of world raw sugar exports by value in 2024 (CEPII BACI). The industry's shape dates to the Proálcool program of 1975 and flex-fuel cars from 2003.

### what is the difference between raw and refined sugar

Raw sugar is the brownish crystal a cane mill produces, about 96 to 99 percent sucrose, shipped in bulk to refineries. Refined white sugar is raw sugar washed, decolorized and recrystallized to under 45 ICUMSA color units. Raw trades as ICE No. 11 in cents per pound, white as No. 5 in dollars per tonne; the gap is the white premium.

### how much sugar is in stock worldwide

USDA estimates world centrifugal sugar stocks-to-use, ending stocks divided by consumption, at — for 2026/27, compared with — in 2025/26 (USDA PSD). Much of that stock sits in India and China, where governments decide whether it is exported, so free-market tightness can be greater than the world ratio suggests.

### why do India's sugar export bans matter

India is the second-largest producer and its government sets a cane price that keeps area high regardless of world prices. When domestic prices rise it restricts exports, as for the 2023/24 season, and when stocks pile up it has subsidized them. Its exportable surplus, which ranges from zero to millions of tonnes, is the largest unknown in each year's balance.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2023. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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
- USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, Production, Supply and Distribution (PSD), 2026-09-06. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://apps.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/
- Harvest calendars (curated from USDA FAS IPAD crop calendars and FAO GIEWS country briefs), curated 2026-09. License: Public domain (USDA) with FAO GIEWS cross-reference (attribution). https://ipad.fas.usda.gov/ogamaps/cropcalendar.aspx

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

---

# Where does sunflower oil come from?

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

Sunflower oil comes mainly from Russia, which produced 7 million tonnes in 2023, 31% of the world's 22.7 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Ukraine (27%), Argentina (7.5%) and Turkey (Türkiye) (4%) follow; the top five together supply 73%. The biggest exporter of sunflower and safflower oil (HS 1512) is Ukraine (28% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Sunflower oil, EU port, was $1,492/t in August 2026, up 17% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Sunflower is a short-season, drought-tolerant crop that suits the black-earth steppe better than maize does, and Russia and Ukraine dominate because Soviet breeding programs doubled the seed's oil content and because both countries taxed seed exports until crushing moved inside their own borders.

*Oil pressed from sunflower seeds, a light cooking oil concentrated in the Black Sea basin.* Also called: sunflower seed oil, sunflower seed, sunflowerseed oil, sunoil.

## Where does sunflower oil come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2023 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Russia | 7 million | 31% |
| 2 | Ukraine | 6 million | 27% |
| 3 | Argentina | 1.7 million | 7.5% |
| 4 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 900,600 | 4% |
| 5 | Hungary | 765,400 | 3.4% |
| 6 | Bulgaria | 683,000 | 3% |
| 7 | France | 619,600 | 2.7% |
| 8 | Romania | 567,500 | 2.5% |
| 9 | Kazakhstan | 537,125 | 2.4% |
| 10 | Spain | 481,200 | 2.1% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 15% |
| | World | 22.7 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2023.

The sunflower came from North America but became a commodity crop in Russia. Breeding programs from the early twentieth century raised the oil content of the seed from around 30 percent to over 50, turning a garden plant into an oilseed, and the varieties that resulted spread back to the Americas and to Europe. Agronomically it fits the steppe. It has a deep taproot that finds moisture other crops cannot, it tolerates heat and drought better than maize, and it matures in about 120 days, which suits a continental climate with a short summer. It is grown across a broad band of temperate country: the black-earth belt from Ukraine through southern Russia into Kazakhstan, the Danube plain in Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary, the Argentine Pampas, Anatolia, and the Great Plains of the United States.

In 2023 Russia pressed 7 million tonnes of crude sunflower-seed oil, 31% of the world's 22.7 million tonnes, and Ukraine 6 million tonnes (27%) (FAOSTAT). Between them the two supplied more than half the world's output. Argentina was third with 1.7 million tonnes, then Turkey (Türkiye) with 900,600 tonnes and Hungary with 765,400 tonnes; everything outside the ten largest producers came to 15%, across 83 reporting countries. World oil output was +61% against ten years earlier and +24% against five, the fastest growth of any major vegetable oil, driven by Russia at +7.8% a year and Ukraine at +5.9%.

The seed table looks much the same, which is the point. World sunflower seed production was 52.2 million tonnes in 2024, with Russia on 33%, Ukraine on 21% and Argentina on 7.5% (FAOSTAT). The seed is crushed close to where it grows, because sunflower seed is bulky relative to its oil content and expensive to ship, and because both leading countries have taxed seed exports specifically to keep the crushing margin at home. That policy, rather than any natural advantage in processing, is why the Black Sea exports oil and meal rather than seed, and why a war in one corner of the region removes a large share of the world's traded vegetable oil rather than a share of its oilseed.


## Who exports and imports sunflower oil?

Ukraine and Russia crush most of what they grow and export the oil rather than the seed; India and the European Union are the largest buyers.

### Exporters of sunflower seeds (HS 1206), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $836.6 million | 18% |
| 2 | Romania | $665.2 million | 14% |
| 3 | France | $537.8 million | 11% |
| 4 | Bulgaria | $531.5 million | 11% |
| 5 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $363.1 million | 7.7% |
| 6 | Moldova | $316.8 million | 6.7% |
| 7 | Hungary | $228.7 million | 4.9% |
| 8 | United States | $214.6 million | 4.6% |
| 9 | Kazakhstan | $93.6 million | 2% |
| 10 | Russia | $90.7 million | 1.9% |
| 11 | Slovakia | $82.6 million | 1.8% |
| 12 | Serbia | $79.8 million | 1.7% |
| 13 | Spain | $73.8 million | 1.6% |
| 14 | Argentina | $72.3 million | 1.5% |
| 15 | Ukraine | $70.1 million | 1.5% |

### Importers of sunflower seeds (HS 1206), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bulgaria | $395.8 million | 8.4% |
| 2 | Romania | $318.4 million | 6.8% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $317.3 million | 6.7% |
| 4 | Russia | $281.8 million | 6% |
| 5 | Germany | $261.1 million | 5.5% |
| 6 | Spain | $260.4 million | 5.5% |
| 7 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $202.6 million | 4.3% |
| 8 | Ukraine | $200 million | 4.2% |
| 9 | France | $199.9 million | 4.2% |
| 10 | Hungary | $155.5 million | 3.3% |
| 11 | Iraq | $137.1 million | 2.9% |
| 12 | Iran | $134.5 million | 2.9% |
| 13 | China | $130.9 million | 2.8% |
| 14 | Austria | $125 million | 2.7% |
| 15 | United States | $117.9 million | 2.5% |

### Exporters of sunflower-seed, safflower or cotton-seed oil (HS 1512), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ukraine | $5.3 billion | 28% |
| 2 | Russia | $4.4 billion | 23% |
| 3 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $1.3 billion | 6.9% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $1.1 billion | 5.8% |
| 5 | Argentina | $888.8 million | 4.7% |
| 6 | Hungary | $798.7 million | 4.3% |
| 7 | Bulgaria | $620.3 million | 3.3% |
| 8 | France | $552.7 million | 2.9% |
| 9 | Kazakhstan | $429.7 million | 2.3% |
| 10 | Spain | $342.9 million | 1.8% |
| 11 | Romania | $295.2 million | 1.6% |
| 12 | Poland | $269.2 million | 1.4% |
| 13 | Belgium | $265.4 million | 1.4% |
| 14 | Germany | $216.3 million | 1.2% |
| 15 | Serbia | $184.1 million | 1% |

### Importers of sunflower-seed, safflower or cotton-seed oil (HS 1512), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | $3.3 billion | 17% |
| 2 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $1.2 billion | 6.5% |
| 3 | China | $1.1 billion | 5.7% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $925 million | 4.9% |
| 5 | Spain | $896 million | 4.8% |
| 6 | Italy | $864.2 million | 4.6% |
| 7 | Belgium | $775.8 million | 4.1% |
| 8 | Egypt | $685.5 million | 3.7% |
| 9 | Germany | $535.1 million | 2.9% |
| 10 | Romania | $526.9 million | 2.8% |
| 11 | Poland | $521.3 million | 2.8% |
| 12 | Iraq | $516.9 million | 2.8% |
| 13 | France | $476.5 million | 2.5% |
| 14 | Bulgaria | $347.5 million | 1.9% |
| 15 | United States | $284.4 million | 1.5% |

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

Two neighboring countries supply about half the world's traded sunflower oil. Exports of sunflower and safflower oil (HS 1512) were worth $18.8 billion in 2024, with Ukraine on 28% of the value and Russia on 23%, ahead of Turkey (Türkiye) on 6.9%, Netherlands on 5.8% and Argentina on 4.7% (CEPII BACI). The Netherlands and Turkey appear high on both sides of the table because they refine, bottle and re-export Black Sea oil rather than because they grow much of it. On the buying side India took 17% of world imports by value, far more than anyone else, followed by Turkey (Türkiye) on 6.5% and China on 5.7%. India is the single largest customer and switches between sunflower, palm and soybean oil according to the landed price and its own import duties.

Note the heading. HS 1512 covers sunflower-seed, safflower and cotton-seed oil together, so the basket is slightly wider than sunflower alone; a small share of the value in that table is not sunflower. The seed trade under HS 1206 is a different market entirely, worth $4.7 billion in 2024, and it is led by China on 18% and Romania on 14%, with Bulgaria and Romania the largest buyers. That flow is mostly large striped confectionery seed for snacks and birdfeed, plus seed moving short distances into neighboring crushing plants across the Danube basin, and it should not be read as the oilseed leaving the region.


## What does sunflower oil cost?

- Sunflower oil, EU port: $1,492/t in August 2026; 12-month change +17%; 10-year change +80%; all-time high $2,361/t in March 2022; real high (2024 US$) $2,950/t in June 2008 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

Sunflower oil has no futures contract with meaningful liquidity. Prices are assessed by reporting agencies from physical business, quoted in dollars per tonne FOB the Black Sea ports for crude oil in bulk, or delivered into European and Indian ports on a CIF basis. A cargo is specified by free fatty acid content, moisture and impurities, color, and by whether it is crude, once-refined or fully refined; the standard commodity grade is crude sunflower oil in a parcel of a few thousand tonnes. Because the trade is concentrated in a small number of exporters and a small number of loading berths, assessments move on port and vessel news as much as on crop news.

The series used here is Sunflower oil, EU port, which stood at $1,492/t in August 2026, up 17% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its nominal record was $2,361/t in March 2022, at the point when Black Sea loadings stopped; adjusted for US consumer prices the real peak was higher and earlier, $2,950/t in June 2008. The low since the series began in 2002 was $543/t in August 2003, and over ten years the series was +80%.

Three distinctions matter for anyone quoting a sunflower oil price. The oil comes in three fatty acid types: standard high-linoleic, high-oleic bred for heat stability and shelf life, and mid-oleic, and they carry different premiums and are contracted separately. Production data on this page is crude oil while the trade line includes refined and bottled product, so tonnages and values are not directly comparable. And sunflower oil is read against the rest of the vegetable oil complex rather than on its own: its premium or discount to palm, soybean and rapeseed oil is what decides whether an Indian or Egyptian buyer books a Black Sea cargo at all.


## What moves the price of sunflower oil?

### War risk and Black Sea navigation

About half the world's traded sunflower oil loads from a handful of Ukrainian and Russian ports on one sea. Anything that closes or threatens those berths, from naval blockade and missile strikes on port infrastructure to war-risk insurance premiums and the availability of vessels willing to enter, removes supply that no other origin can replace at scale. The market reprices on shipping and insurance news rather than on the standing crop, and the 2022 record was set by loadings stopping, not by a harvest failing.

### Export duties and quotas on seed and oil

Both leading producers have used export taxes and quotas to keep seed at home and, at times, to hold down domestic cooking oil prices. Ukraine's duty on seed exports, imposed in the late 1990s, is the reason its crushing industry exists; Russia has applied a high seed export duty and floating duties on oil and meal since 2021. Each change moves the split between what is crushed at home and what is sold abroad, and a duty announcement moves the FOB assessment within a day.

### Indian import demand and duty policy

India is by far the largest buyer of sunflower oil and imports the great majority of the edible oil it consumes. Its government adjusts import duties on crude and refined vegetable oils to balance consumer prices against domestic oilseed farmers, and its refiners switch between sunflower, palm and soybean oil on landed cost. A duty change or a shift in the palm discount can redirect a month of Black Sea loadings, which is why Indian tariff notifications matter to a Ukrainian crusher.

### Steppe drought and the short season

Sunflower is planted in April and May and filled in July and August, and its deep taproot buys it tolerance rather than immunity. A dry, hot July across southern Ukraine and the Russian Volga and Rostov regions cuts both seed weight and oil content, so a modest tonnage loss can translate into a larger loss of oil. Because both countries crush what they grow, that shortfall arrives directly in the exportable oil balance rather than being buffered by seed trade.

### Substitution across the vegetable oil complex

Sunflower oil competes with palm, soybean and rapeseed oil in frying, bottling and food manufacturing, and buyers move between them on price rather than on preference for most uses. A large Indonesian palm crop or a strong South American soybean harvest widens the discount sunflower must offer; a shortage in either pulls sunflower up with them. The complex moves together, and sunflower's own supply news shows up as a change in its spread to palm rather than as an isolated move.

### Crush margins and meal demand

A crusher sells both oil and meal, and sunflower meal at roughly 28 to 38 percent protein depending on how much hull is removed competes with soybean and rapeseed meal in feed rations. When soybean meal is cheap, the sunflower crush margin narrows and mills slow down even when oil is well bid, which tightens oil supply from the same crop. Meal demand from European and Turkish feed compounders is therefore a quiet but real input into the oil price.

### European import policy and land routes

When sea routes are constrained, Black Sea oil and seed move overland and down the Danube through Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland, which depresses prices in those markets and has repeatedly triggered national import restrictions on Ukrainian agricultural goods. Those restrictions do not change the world balance but they redirect flows and widen the gap between inland and seaborne prices, and they determine how much of a crop can actually reach a buyer when ports are unreliable.

### High-oleic segregation

High-oleic sunflower oil, bred to resist oxidation, is contracted separately from the standard high-linoleic type and commands a premium from snack and food service buyers who need long fry life without hydrogenation. Growing it requires isolation from other sunflower fields and segregated handling from the field to the tank, so supply responds slowly and the premium can widen sharply when a food manufacturer switches a product line. That segment moves partly independently of the commodity price.

## How is sunflower oil produced?

Sunflower is sown in April and May in the northern hemisphere and in October and November in Argentina, into warm soil at wide row spacing. The head is a composite of hundreds of florets, each of which becomes a seed, and the plant is largely insect-pollinated, so bee availability affects seed set. It flowers for two to three weeks and fills over another six, then dries down in the field until the back of the head turns brown; harvest runs from August to October in the Black Sea and from March in Argentina. A combine with a special header takes the heads without threshing the whole stalk, and the seed is dried to about 8 percent moisture because it stores badly when damp and its high oil content makes it prone to heating.

At the crush plant seed is cleaned and usually dehulled, since hull adds fiber to the meal and abrasive material to the press. The kernels are flaked between rollers, conditioned with heat, pressed in a screw press to remove most of the oil, and the cake is extracted with hexane to recover the rest. A tonne of seed yields roughly 400 to 450 kilograms of crude oil, 350 to 400 kilograms of meal and the balance as hulls, which are burned for process heat or pelleted as fuel and bedding.

Refining sunflower oil requires one step the other major oils do not. The oil contains natural waxes that crystallize and cloud it at low temperature, so after degumming, neutralization, bleaching and deodorizing it must be winterized, chilled and filtered to remove those waxes, before it can be bottled as a clear oil. That step is why refining capacity, and not just crushing capacity, determines who can serve the bottled retail market. Two seed types run through the same plants: the small black oilseed varieties described here, and the large striped confectionery seed grown for roasting, snacking and birdfeed, which is not crushed at all.


## What is sunflower oil used for?

Sunflower oil is overwhelmingly a food oil. Its neutral flavor, light color and high smoke point make it a general frying and cooking oil across the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, North Africa, India and southern Europe, and it is the standard bottled retail oil in much of that territory. In food manufacturing it goes into mayonnaise, dressings, margarine and canned fish, and the high-oleic type is used by snack fryers and food service operators who need a long fry life without hydrogenated fat. Small volumes of cold-pressed oil are sold as a specialty product, and lecithin is recovered during degumming as an emulsifier.

The crop's second product is meal. Sunflower meal, at roughly 28 to 38 percent protein depending on how thoroughly the seed was dehulled, is a mid-protein feed for cattle, sheep and poultry, valued for its fiber as much as its protein and traded heavily into European, Turkish and North African feed rations. Hulls are used as boiler fuel and bedding, the striped confectionery seed is sold roasted for snacking and as the main ingredient in wild bird feed, and the stalks are left or incorporated as field residue.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Crushing sits inside the producing countries by design. Ukraine's plants cluster around Poltava, Kropyvnytskyi, Kharkiv and the Mykolaiv and Odesa hinterland; Russia's are in Rostov, Krasnodar, Voronezh and Belgorod; Argentina's are in Buenos Aires province near the deep-water berths; and the European Union's are in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Spain. Refining and bottling, the step that needs winterizing capacity, is spread more widely, with substantial capacity in Turkey, the Netherlands, Spain and India, which is why those countries show up as importers and re-exporters at the same time.

Bulk oil leaves through Odesa, Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi in Ukraine and Novorossiysk, Taman and Rostov in Russia, in parcel tankers of a few thousand tonnes, with smaller volumes moving by barge down the Danube through Izmail and Reni and by rail and truck into Poland, Romania and Hungary. From the Black Sea the routes run through the Bosphorus and the Mediterranean to Spain, Italy and North Africa, and through Suez to India and Southeast Asia. Because the oil is loaded into shore tanks before a vessel arrives, tank farm capacity at the ports is a real constraint: when loadings stop, crushing stops within weeks because there is nowhere to put the oil.

The concentration is the vulnerability. Two adjacent countries at war with each other produce and ship about half the world's traded sunflower oil through one sea with a single narrow outlet, and one buyer takes a sixth of world imports. There is no futures market to hedge, no strategic stock, and no alternative origin that could add several million tonnes at short notice. The market's shock absorber is not another sunflower supplier at all; it is the ability of Indian, Egyptian and European buyers to switch to palm and soybean oil, which is why sunflower disruptions raise the price of every vegetable oil rather than sunflower's alone.


## Key companies

- Bunge Global: crusher, United States, listed (NYSE: BG)
- Cargill: trader, United States
- Archer Daniels Midland: crusher, United States, listed (NYSE: ADM)
- Louis Dreyfus Company: trader, Netherlands
- ViOil: crusher, Ukraine

## Timeline

- 1960: Soviet high-oil sunflower varieties become the basis of commercial production. Breeding that lifted seed oil content from about 30 percent to over 50 turned sunflower into an oilseed worth crushing and gave the steppe its export crop. (https://theconversation.com/making-sunlight-liquid-a-brief-history-of-sunflowers-99418)
- 1999: Ukraine imposes an export duty on sunflower seed. Taxing raw seed forced the crop into domestic crushers and built the refining and crushing industry that made Ukraine the largest oil exporter rather than a seed supplier. (https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/report/downloadreportbyfilename?filename=Oilseeds+and+Products+Annual_Kiev_Ukraine_4-3-2019.pdf)
- 2008: WTO accession commits Ukraine to cut its sunflower seed export duty. The duty was reduced but not removed, and by then the crushing capacity it had created was permanent, locking in the pattern of exporting oil rather than seed. (https://apps.fas.usda.gov/newgainapi/api/Report/DownloadReportByFileName?fileName=Oilseeds+and+Products+Annual_Kyiv_Ukraine_04-15-2021)
- 2021: Ukraine reaches its peak share of world sunflower oil supply. One country supplying roughly a third of world output and exporting almost all of it set up the concentration risk that the following year exposed. (https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/104023)
- 2021-07: Russia imposes a high export duty on sunflower seed and floating duties on oil. The duties pushed Russian seed into domestic crushers and gave the state a lever over how much oil left the country, tightening the world balance before the war. (https://interfax.com/newsroom/top-stories/114482/)
- 2022-02: Russia's invasion of Ukraine halts Black Sea sunflower oil exports. Loadings from the ports that ship about half the world's traded sunflower oil stopped, and the price reached its record within weeks. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9368568/)
- 2022-04: UK supermarkets ration cooking oil. Retail rationing in a wealthy importing country showed how little substitutable inventory sits between a Black Sea berth and a supermarket shelf. (https://www.grocerygazette.co.uk/2022/04/13/sainsburys-co-op-sunflower-oil/)
- 2022-07: Black Sea Grain Initiative signed in Istanbul. A negotiated corridor reopened Ukrainian ports to agricultural exports, and sunflower oil prices fell back from their record as loadings resumed. (https://www.un.org/en/black-sea-grain-initiative)
- 2023-04: European Union restricts Ukrainian grain and oilseed imports into five neighbors. Overland flows that bypassed the sea had collapsed prices in central Europe, and the restrictions split the Ukrainian crop into seaborne and blocked inland streams. (https://epthinktank.eu/2023/09/20/ukrainian-grain-understanding-the-import-bans/)
- 2023-06: Destruction of the Kakhovka dam cuts irrigation across southern Ukraine. Losing the reservoir that watered a large area of southern farmland removed irrigated capacity from a region that grows sunflower and grain. (https://ukraine.un.org/en/249742-kakhovka-dam-destruction-inflicted-us14-billion-damage-and-loss-ukraine-government-ukraine)
- 2023-07: Russia ends the Black Sea Grain Initiative. The corridor's collapse returned shipping and insurance risk to the center of the sunflower oil price, where crop size had briefly displaced it. (https://www.un.org/en/black-sea-grain-initiative/background)
- 2023-09: Poland, Hungary and Slovakia keep national import bans after the EU measure lapses. National restrictions outlasting the European one showed that the overland route out of Ukraine depends on politics in transit countries, not only on the war. (https://epthinktank.eu/2023/09/20/ukrainian-grain-understanding-the-import-bans/)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most sunflower oil

Russia produced 7 million tonnes of crude sunflower-seed oil in 2023, 31% of the world's 22.7 million tonnes, with Ukraine second on 6 million tonnes (27%) (FAOSTAT). Between them the two supply more than half of world output, and both crush the seed at home rather than exporting it.

### which country exports the most sunflower oil

Ukraine led exports of sunflower and safflower oil (HS 1512) in 2024 with 28% of the $18.8 billion traded, ahead of Russia on 23% (CEPII BACI). The heading also covers safflower and cotton-seed oil. India was the largest buyer, taking 17% of world imports.

### what is the price of sunflower oil per tonne

Sunflower oil, EU port averaged $1,492/t in August 2026, up 17% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). There is no liquid futures contract, so prices are assessed from physical cargoes, usually quoted FOB the Black Sea ports. The record was $2,361/t in March 2022.

### why did sunflower oil prices go up in 2022

Because loading stopped, not because the crop failed. Ukraine and Russia together supply about half of world exports through Black Sea ports, and the invasion in February 2022 closed those berths. Sunflower oil, EU port reached its record of $2,361/t in March 2022 (World Bank Pink Sheet), and importing countries as far away as the United Kingdom rationed cooking oil.

### who buys the most sunflower oil

India imported 17% of world sunflower and safflower oil by value in 2024, well ahead of Turkey (Türkiye) on 6.5% and China on 5.7% (CEPII BACI). India imports most of the edible oil it consumes and switches between sunflower, palm and soybean oil on landed cost and import duty.

### is sunflower oil healthy

This site does not give dietary advice, but the composition is a matter of record: standard sunflower oil is high in polyunsaturated linoleic acid, while high-oleic varieties are bred to be predominantly monounsaturated and to resist oxidation during frying. Both are refined and winterized to remove waxes before bottling, and the two types are contracted and priced separately.

### what is the difference between sunflower oil and high oleic sunflower oil

High-oleic sunflower oil comes from varieties bred to produce mostly oleic acid rather than linoleic acid, which makes it far more stable at frying temperatures and gives it a longer shelf life. It must be grown in isolation and handled separately from the field to the tank, so it is contracted apart from standard oil and carries a premium.

### how much oil comes from sunflower seed

Roughly 400 to 450 kilograms of crude oil per tonne of seed, plus 350 to 400 kilograms of meal at 28 to 38 percent protein and the balance as hulls. Globally, 52.2 million tonnes of sunflower seed in 2024 supported 22.7 million tonnes of crude sunflower oil in 2023 (FAOSTAT).

### what is sunflower meal used for

It is a mid-protein animal feed, running about 28 to 38 percent protein depending on how much hull is removed before crushing, and it is fed to cattle, sheep and poultry across Europe, Turkey and North Africa. Because a crusher sells both oil and meal, weak meal demand narrows the crush margin and slows oil production from the same crop.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2023. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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 does sunflower oil come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/sunflower-oil/.

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# Where does tea come from?

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

Tea comes mainly from China, which produced 16.3 million tonnes in 2024, 50% of the world's 32.7 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India (19%), Kenya (8.2%) and Sri Lanka (4.6%) follow; the top five together supply 86%. The biggest exporter of tea (HS 0902) is Kenya (18% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Average of three auctions, was $2.91/kg in August 2026, down 4% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Camellia sinensis wants acid soil, heavy reliable rain and warm days without frost, which puts the big producers in the monsoon belt of Asia and on the volcanic highlands either side of the equator in East Africa; the colonial plantation system then decided which of those places grew tea for export rather than for the pot at home.

*Leaves of Camellia sinensis, withered, rolled, oxidized and dried, then sold at auction or by contract.* Also called: tea leaves, black tea, green tea, camellia sinensis.

## Where does tea come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 16.3 million | 50% |
| 2 | India | 6.2 million | 19% |
| 3 | Kenya | 2.7 million | 8.2% |
| 4 | Sri Lanka | 1.5 million | 4.6% |
| 5 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 1.4 million | 4.3% |
| 6 | Vietnam | 1.2 million | 3.5% |
| 7 | Indonesia | 658,000 | 2% |
| 8 | Bangladesh | 437,652 | 1.3% |
| 9 | Uganda | 414,945 | 1.3% |
| 10 | Argentina | 356,753 | 1.1% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 5.1% |
| | World | 32.7 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

Tea is the leaf of a single evergreen species, Camellia sinensis, in two main varieties: the small-leaved sinensis type from China, which tolerates cold and suits green tea, and the large-leaved assamica type, which yields more in hot, wet lowlands and makes most of the world's black tea. The plant wants acid, free-draining soil, rainfall spread through the year rather than delivered in one burst, warm days, cool nights and no frost. Altitude slows growth and concentrates flavor, which is why the highest-priced leaf comes from Darjeeling, the Sri Lankan high country and the Kenyan highlands rather than from the most productive fields.

In 2024 China harvested 16.3 million tonnes of tea leaves, 50% of the world's 32.7 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India was second with 19%, then Kenya (8.2%), Sri Lanka (4.6%) and Turkey (Türkiye) (4.3%). One caution about that table: FAOSTAT counts tea leaves as plucked, the fresh green leaf, not the dried product that reaches a shop. Roughly four to five kilograms of green leaf make one kilogram of made tea, so the figures here are several times larger than the made-tea totals quoted by the trade.

The shape of the map is colonial as much as climatic. China has grown and drunk tea for well over a thousand years and still consumes most of what it produces, largely as green tea. India's industry was created in the 1830s when the East India Company planted Assam to break China's monopoly, and Assam and West Bengal still supply most of an output that India also mostly drinks. Sri Lanka's tea replaced a coffee industry that leaf rust destroyed after 1869. Kenya's crop began as an experimental planting in 1903 and became a major industry only after smallholders were allowed in, which is why Kenya now grows 8.2% of world output on a mixture of estates and half a million small farms.

Growth has been fast and uneven. 47 countries reported production in 2024, and everything outside the top ten came to only 5.1%. World output changed +37% over the ten years to 2024, driven mostly by China at +5.5% a year and by African origins: Uganda grew at +3.9% and Rwanda at +4%, while Sri Lanka contracted at -1.8%.


## Who exports and imports tea?

The United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom re-export blended and packed tea they do not grow; Kenya, Sri Lanka and India dominate the leaf that leaves the farm.

### Exporters of tea, whether or not flavoured (HS 0902), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kenya | $1.4 billion | 18% |
| 2 | Sri Lanka | $1.4 billion | 18% |
| 3 | China | $1.3 billion | 17% |
| 4 | India | $843.1 million | 11% |
| 5 | Poland | $269.1 million | 3.5% |
| 6 | Japan | $256.3 million | 3.4% |
| 7 | United Arab Emirates | $233.9 million | 3.1% |
| 8 | Germany | $230.9 million | 3% |
| 9 | United Kingdom | $134.9 million | 1.8% |
| 10 | Vietnam | $114.1 million | 1.5% |
| 11 | United States | $88.4 million | 1.2% |
| 12 | Other Asia, nes | $86.5 million | 1.1% |
| 13 | Argentina | $84.1 million | 1.1% |
| 14 | Malawi | $73.3 million | 1% |
| 15 | Netherlands | $73 million | 1% |

### Importers of tea, whether or not flavoured (HS 0902), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pakistan | $624.2 million | 8.2% |
| 2 | United States | $576.7 million | 7.6% |
| 3 | United Kingdom | $381.3 million | 5% |
| 4 | United Arab Emirates | $371 million | 4.9% |
| 5 | Russia | $348.8 million | 4.6% |
| 6 | Saudi Arabia | $294.1 million | 3.9% |
| 7 | Morocco | $240.5 million | 3.2% |
| 8 | Iraq | $236.9 million | 3.1% |
| 9 | Germany | $235.5 million | 3.1% |
| 10 | Egypt | $221.6 million | 2.9% |
| 11 | Ghana | $175.5 million | 2.3% |
| 12 | France | $170.4 million | 2.2% |
| 13 | Japan | $163.6 million | 2.2% |
| 14 | China | $156 million | 2.1% |
| 15 | Poland | $149.2 million | 2% |

### Exporters of black tea (fermented), in packages over 3 kg (HS 090240), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kenya | $1.3 billion | 37% |
| 2 | India | $665 million | 18% |
| 3 | Sri Lanka | $660.7 million | 18% |
| 4 | China | $181 million | 5% |
| 5 | Argentina | $79.8 million | 2.2% |
| 6 | Malawi | $73 million | 2% |
| 7 | Rwanda | $59.8 million | 1.7% |
| 8 | Vietnam | $59.4 million | 1.7% |
| 9 | Germany | $57 million | 1.6% |
| 10 | Uganda | $51.2 million | 1.4% |
| 11 | Indonesia | $49.7 million | 1.4% |
| 12 | Nepal | $32.1 million | 0.9% |
| 13 | Switzerland | $22.6 million | 0.6% |
| 14 | Other Asia, nes | $21.1 million | 0.6% |
| 15 | Tanzania | $20.1 million | 0.6% |

### Importers of black tea (fermented), in packages over 3 kg (HS 090240), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pakistan | $608.8 million | 17% |
| 2 | United Arab Emirates | $290.2 million | 8.1% |
| 3 | United Kingdom | $270.2 million | 7.5% |
| 4 | Russia | $255.4 million | 7.1% |
| 5 | Egypt | $205 million | 5.7% |
| 6 | United States | $182.4 million | 5.1% |
| 7 | Iran | $140.8 million | 3.9% |
| 8 | Saudi Arabia | $125.4 million | 3.5% |
| 9 | China | $117.4 million | 3.3% |
| 10 | Iraq | $114.3 million | 3.2% |
| 11 | Germany | $92.5 million | 2.6% |
| 12 | Japan | $90.4 million | 2.5% |
| 13 | India | $70.6 million | 2% |
| 14 | Poland | $63.2 million | 1.8% |
| 15 | Azerbaijan | $60.1 million | 1.7% |

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

Production and export rankings diverge more sharply for tea than for almost any other soft commodity, because the largest producer barely exports. In 2024 the leading exporter of tea (HS 0902) was Kenya with 18% of the world's $7.6 billion in export value, level with Sri Lanka on 18%, then China (17%) and India (11%) (CEPII BACI). Kenya and Sri Lanka export almost everything they make; China and India drink almost everything they make. Narrow the lens to bulk black tea in packages over three kilograms (HS 090240), the leaf that actually moves through the auctions, and the concentration is starker still: Kenya alone accounted for 37% of that $3.6 billion trade in 2024, ahead of India and 18% for Sri Lanka.

The buyers are drinking nations rather than rich ones. Pakistan was the largest importer in 2024 with 8.2% of the world's $7.6 billion, followed by United States (7.6%), United Kingdom (5%), United Arab Emirates (4.9%) and Russia (4.6%) (CEPII BACI). Several of the names on both lists are re-exporters that grow nothing: the United Arab Emirates blends and re-ships through Dubai, Poland and Germany pack tea for the European market, and the United Kingdom imports bulk leaf, blends it and sends part of it out again. Reading the two tables together separates the three trades in tea: leaf leaving the farm, bulk tea moving to a blending hall, and branded packets moving to a supermarket.


## What does tea cost?

- Average of three auctions: $2.91/kg in August 2026; 12-month change -4%; 10-year change +5%; all-time high $3.37/kg in August 2022; real high (2024 US$) $15.06/kg in April 1977 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- Colombo auction, Sri Lanka: $3.61/kg in August 2026; 12-month change -9%; 10-year change +4%; all-time high $4.49/kg in September 2022; real high (2024 US$) $18.61/kg in April 1977 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- Kolkata auction, India: $2.85/kg in August 2026; 12-month change -5%; 10-year change +11%; all-time high $4.07/kg in August 2020; real high (2024 US$) $17.6/kg in April 1979 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- Mombasa auction, Kenya: $2.25/kg in August 2026; 12-month change +5%; 10-year change -3%; all-time high $3.39/kg in July 2015; real high (2024 US$) $11.12/kg in January 1977 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

Tea has no futures market. There is no contract to hedge, no clearing house and no screen price, and that single fact shapes everything about how the trade works. Tea is sold instead at physical auctions held weekly in the producing countries, plus a growing volume of private treaty and direct sales between estates and packers. The auction centers that matter are Mombasa for Kenya and most of East Africa, Colombo for Sri Lanka, and Kolkata, Guwahati, Coimbatore and Coonoor for India, with smaller centers in Chittagong, Jakarta, Limbe and Nairobi. Each works the same way: producers consign lots to a licensed broker, the broker circulates a catalogue and samples about a fortnight ahead, buyers taste and value every lot, and the lots are sold by open outcry or on an electronic platform to the highest bidder. Price is per kilogram, and each lot clears on its own merits, which is why an auction average conceals an enormous spread between the best and worst leaf sold on the same day.

The World Bank series used here is Average of three auctions, which blends the three main centers. It stood at $2.91/kg in August 2026, down 4% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its nominal record was $3.37/kg in August 2022, but in inflation-adjusted terms the real high was $15.06/kg in April 1977; the lowest monthly average since the series began in 1960 was $0.71/kg in November 1972. The three centers do not move together. In August 2026 the Colombo auction, Sri Lanka was $3.61/kg, -9% from a year earlier, the Kolkata auction, India was $2.85/kg (-5%) and the Mombasa auction, Kenya was $2.25/kg (+5%). Colombo usually sits at a premium because Ceylon orthodox leaf is bought for character; Mombasa usually sits at a discount because its CTC leaf is bought in bulk for blending.

Three ambiguities are worth stating plainly. First, auction prices are for made tea, dried and graded, quoted in dollars per kilogram, while the production table on this page counts fresh green leaf. Second, the auction average is not a world price: it covers the black tea that passes through three salerooms, and it says almost nothing about the green tea that China grows and drinks, which never crosses an auction floor. Third, an increasing share of tea is sold direct from estate to packer at negotiated prices that are never published, so the auction is a reference for a market it no longer entirely contains.


## What moves the price of tea?

### Rain in the Kenyan highlands

Kenya supplies the bulk of the black tea that clears at Mombasa, and its bushes are almost entirely rain-fed. The long rains from March to May and the short rains from October to December set how much leaf is plucked, and a failed season cuts volumes at auction within weeks because tea has no storage buffer between bush and saleroom. Frost and hail on the high fields do the same thing faster. Because Kenyan leaf sets the price of the blending grades, its weather moves the world average.

### Auction supply and the quality mix

Each auction lot is priced on its own, so the published average moves when the composition of what is offered changes, not only when demand changes. A flush of coarse rainy-season leaf drags the average down even if the best lots hold their value; a short crop of fine leaf lifts it. Buyers also refuse lots, and unsold percentages at Mombasa and Colombo are watched as a measure of whether packers think prices are too high.

### Producer currencies

Tea is quoted in dollars while wages, fertilizer and fuel are paid in shillings, rupees and taka. When the Kenyan shilling or the Sri Lankan rupee weakens, growers receive more local currency for the same dollar bid and can afford to sell more, which tends to push the dollar auction price down over the following months. A strengthening producer currency does the reverse and can make estates hold leaf back rather than accept a low bid.

### Fertilizer and energy costs

Tea yield responds directly to nitrogen, and the crop is fertilizer-hungry by the standards of a perennial. When urea and ammonium sulfate prices rise, smallholders cut application rates and yields fall a season later. Factory costs move the same way: withering troughs, dryers and CTC rollers run on electricity and firewood or furnace oil, so an energy shock raises the cost of turning green leaf into made tea and squeezes the margin between farm-gate and auction price.

### Buying power in the importing countries

The largest tea importers are middle-income countries whose purchases depend on foreign exchange availability as much as on taste. When Pakistan, Egypt or Iraq face a currency shortage or restrict letters of credit, orders at Mombasa thin out immediately; when Russian or Middle Eastern demand returns, the same grades clear at a premium. Because a handful of destinations take much of the bulk trade, a payments problem in one of them is a market event.

### Sri Lanka's input and policy shocks

Colombo prices are unusually sensitive to domestic policy because Sri Lanka's estates operate on thin margins and export nearly all their output. The 2021 ban on imported agrochemicals cut yields sharply and lifted Colombo quotations even as volumes fell, a reminder that the auction price and the value of the crop can move in opposite directions. Wage settlements on the estates and fuel subsidies have similar effects on cost and on how much leaf is plucked.

### Blending and substitution between origins

Large packers buy to a recipe and a price, not to an origin. If Mombasa CTC becomes expensive relative to Indian, Ugandan, Malawian or Rwandan leaf, blenders shift their buying and the spread between auctions narrows. This substitution caps how far any single center can rally while the others are well supplied, and it is why the three-auction average is a more stable indicator than any one saleroom.

### Sustainability schemes and traceability costs

Most bulk tea sold to European and North American packers now carries a certification, and audit, traceability and compliance costs sit on top of the auction price. Certification requirements change what a factory must document about wages, agrochemicals and land use, which raises the cost of the marginal lot from a small grower. The effect is not on the headline price so much as on which producers can reach which buyers.

## How is tea produced?

Tea is picked, not harvested. Skilled pluckers take the bud and the top two leaves of each new shoot, which is where the flavor and caffeine concentrate, and a bush is plucked every seven to fourteen days through the growing season for decades. In Assam and East Africa the plucking round runs almost year-round with peaks after the rains; Darjeeling has distinct flushes, the first in spring and the more valuable second flush in early summer; China's best green teas are picked in a narrow window before the spring rains. Green leaf is perishable, so it must reach a factory within a few hours, which is why processing sits in the middle of the fields rather than at a port.

Black tea is made in four steps. Withering spreads the leaf in troughs under moving air for ten to eighteen hours to remove much of its water and soften it. Disruption breaks the cells and releases the enzymes: the orthodox method rolls whole leaf on a rolling table to keep it intact, while the CTC method, crush, tear and curl, invented in 1930, passes leaf through counter-rotating toothed rollers to produce small hard particles that brew fast and strong. Oxidation then runs for one to three hours in a warm, humid room, turning colorless catechins into the theaflavins and thearubigins that give black tea its color and body. Firing in a hot-air dryer stops oxidation and takes the moisture down to a few percent, and the tea is then sorted by particle size into grades: broken pekoe, pekoe fannings, pekoe dust and dust for CTC, or orange pekoe and flowery broken orange pekoe for orthodox.

Green tea skips oxidation. The leaf is fixed immediately after plucking, by steaming in Japan or pan-firing in China, which deactivates the enzymes before they can work, then rolled and dried. Oolong is partly oxidized and stopped part-way; white tea is simply withered and dried; and dark teas such as pu-erh are fermented by microbes over months or years. The yield ratio is roughly constant across methods: about four to five kilograms of fresh leaf make one kilogram of made tea, so a factory handling a hundred tonnes of green leaf a day is a modest operation by weight and a large one by value.

By-products are minor. Tea waste and fannings go into instant tea and tea bags, prunings are returned to the soil, and spent leaf is composted or burned. Made tea keeps for a year or more if it is dry and sealed, which is what makes an auction system workable: the leaf can wait a fortnight for a catalogue and several weeks more for a ship without losing much value.


## What is tea used for?

Almost all tea is drunk. Black tea dominates the traded market and goes into blends, tea bags and the strong milk teas of South Asia, the Middle East and East Africa. Green tea dominates Chinese and Japanese domestic consumption. Beyond leaf tea, the largest processed outlet is instant or soluble tea, made by extracting brewed liquor and spray-drying it, which absorbs a lot of low-grade fannings and dust, and ready-to-drink bottled tea, which has grown fastest in East Asia and North America.

Non-beverage uses are small. Tea extracts are sold for their polyphenols into supplements and cosmetics, decaffeination yields caffeine as a saleable by-product, and tea seed oil is pressed in parts of China. The FAO Intergovernmental Group on Tea, which is the body that tracks the market, reports consumption in made-tea terms, so any comparison with the green leaf production figures on this page needs the conversion applied first.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The tea chain is unusual because the first processing step cannot be moved. Green leaf wilts within hours, so every producing region has factories inside the fields, and ownership of those factories decides who captures value. In Kenya the smallholder crop runs through factories owned by the growers through the Kenya Tea Development Agency, which is why so much of the crop reaches Mombasa as a standardized CTC product. In Assam and Sri Lanka the estate and its factory are usually the same business. From the factory, made tea moves in paper sacks or foil-lined bulk packs to a warehouse near the auction center, where brokers draw samples for the catalogue.

Mombasa is the pivot of the African trade and the largest black tea auction by volume, drawing leaf from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Malawi and Mozambique, much of it by road along the Northern Corridor. Colombo handles Sri Lanka's orthodox crop and is the oldest continuously running center, first held in 1883. Kolkata, Guwahati and the southern Indian centers handle India's. Once sold, tea moves in containers to blending and packing plants: Dubai for the Middle East and Africa, the United Kingdom and Poland for Europe, Egypt and Pakistan for their own markets. A packet on a European shelf typically contains leaf from several origins bought at several auctions weeks apart.

The chokepoints are inland and administrative rather than maritime. Mombasa port and the road and rail links behind it carry nearly all of East Africa's tea, and congestion there delays catalogues rather than merely cargoes. Kenya's auction depends on a functioning warehouse and broker system in a single city. Sri Lanka's crop leaves through Colombo alone. For Europe-bound tea the Suez route matters, since a diversion around the Cape adds weeks to a low-value, high-volume cargo. The concentration that matters most, though, is commercial: a small number of multinational packers buy a large share of the bulk grades sold at Mombasa and Colombo, so their buying decisions set the clearing price for hundreds of thousands of smallholders.


## Key companies

- Lipton Teas and Infusions: blender and brand owner, Netherlands
- Tata Consumer Products: blender and brand owner (Tetley), India, listed (TATACONSUM)
- Associated British Foods: blender and brand owner (Twinings), United Kingdom, listed (ABF)
- Kenya Tea Development Agency: smallholder factory operator and exporter, Kenya
- James Finlay: tea estate operator and trader, United Kingdom
- McLeod Russel India: tea estate operator, India, listed (MCLEODRUSS)
- MJF Group: producer and brand owner (Dilmah), Sri Lanka

## Timeline

- 1679: The London tea auction begins. The East India Company held its first tea auction in Leadenhall Street, creating the institution that priced most of the world's tea for the next three centuries. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Tea_Auction)
- 1839-01: Assam tea is auctioned in London. The first consignment of Indian-grown tea sold in London on 10 January 1839 proved that tea could be produced outside China and started the plantation industry in Assam. (https://todayinbritishhistory.com/2014/01/assam-tea-first-auctioned-london-10-january-1839/)
- 1861-12: The first tea auction in India. Brokers held the first Calcutta sale on 27 December 1861, establishing the auction that still prices most north Indian tea from Kolkata. (https://calcuttateatradersassociation.com/history.php)
- 1867: Tea planted at Loolecondera in Ceylon. James Taylor cleared about twenty acres near Kandy and planted Assam hybrid seed, beginning the industry that replaced Ceylon's coffee estates after leaf rust destroyed them. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loolecondera)
- 1883-07: The first Colombo tea auction. Five lots were offered on 30 July 1883 at a Colombo broker's office; regular sales followed from 1885 and Colombo became the world's oldest continuously running tea auction. (https://www.historyofceylontea.com/ceylon-publications/maxwell-fernando-archive/public-auctions.html)
- 1903: Tea reaches Kenya. The first seedlings were planted at Limuru as an experiment; commercial estates followed in 1924 and African smallholders were admitted only in 1956. (https://www.teaboard.or.ke/kenya-tea/history-of-kenyan-tea)
- 1930: CTC processing invented. Crush, tear and curl machinery produced a fast-brewing, strong particle tea that suited tea bags and mass blending, and it now accounts for most of the black tea traded internationally. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_processing)
- 1956-11: The East African export auction opens. Small quantities of secondary grades were first offered in Nairobi under the East African Tea Trade Association; the sale moved to Mombasa in 1969 and became the largest black tea auction by volume. (https://eatta.co.ke/)
- 1964-01: The Kenya Tea Development Authority is created. A statutory body took over smallholder tea from the colonial arrangement, opening the crop to hundreds of thousands of small farmers who now grow most of Kenya's tea. (https://ktdateas.com/our-history/)
- 1998-06: The London tea auction closes. The last sale was held on 29 June 1998, completing the shift of price discovery from the consuming country to the producing countries' own salerooms. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Tea_Auction)
- 2021-04: Sri Lanka bans imported agrochemicals. An overnight prohibition on synthetic fertilizer and pesticide cut tea yields sharply before it was reversed in November 2021, and Colombo quotations rose as volumes fell. (https://news.mongabay.com/2022/10/photos-how-sri-lankas-forced-organic-transition-crippled-its-tea-industry/)

## Frequently asked questions

### Which country produces the most tea?

China harvested 16.3 million tonnes of tea leaves in 2024, 50% of the world's 32.7 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India was second with 19% and Kenya third with 8.2%. Those figures count fresh green leaf as plucked; made tea weighs roughly a quarter as much, and China drinks nearly all of its own crop.

### Which country exports the most tea?

Kenya and Sri Lanka were level in 2024, each with about 18% of the world's $7.6 billion of tea exports, ahead of China at 17% (CEPII BACI). For bulk black tea alone, Kenya supplied 37% of that trade, because Kenya exports almost everything it grows.

### Which country imports the most tea?

Pakistan was the largest importer in 2024, taking 8.2% of the world's $7.6 billion of tea imports, ahead of United States at 7.6% and United Kingdom at 5% (CEPII BACI). Several large importers, including the United Arab Emirates and Poland, blend and re-export rather than drink what they buy.

### How much does tea cost?

The Average of three auctions averaged $2.91/kg in August 2026, down 4% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Individual salerooms differ widely: the Colombo auction, Sri Lanka sold at $3.61/kg while the Mombasa auction, Kenya sold at $2.25/kg in August 2026. Those are wholesale prices for made tea sold in bulk at auction, before blending, packing, shipping, retail margin and tax are added on top.

### How is the price of tea decided?

At weekly physical auctions, not on a futures exchange. Brokers catalogue lots at Mombasa, Colombo, Kolkata and other centers, buyers taste samples and bid, and each lot clears on its own quality. The World Bank's three-auction average was $2.91/kg in August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet); its record was $3.37/kg in August 2022.

### Is there a futures market for tea?

No. Tea is the largest agricultural commodity with no futures contract anywhere, so growers and packers cannot hedge and rely on auction sales, forward contracts and direct deals instead. Price discovery happens at the salerooms: the three-auction average stood at $2.91/kg in August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### What is the difference between black tea and green tea?

Both come from Camellia sinensis. Black tea is withered, broken, oxidized for one to three hours and then dried; green tea is heated immediately after plucking to stop oxidation. Black tea dominates the traded market, and $3.6 billion of bulk black tea crossed borders in 2024 (CEPII BACI), while most green tea is drunk in the country that grows it.

### Why is Kenyan tea cheaper than Sri Lankan tea?

Kenya makes mostly CTC tea, small hard particles bought in bulk for tea bags and blends, while Sri Lanka makes mostly orthodox whole leaf bought for its character and sold in smaller lots. In August 2026 the Mombasa auction, Kenya averaged $2.25/kg against $3.61/kg at the Colombo auction, Sri Lanka (World Bank Pink Sheet), a gap that reflects grade rather than quality of husbandry.

### How much tea does the world produce?

The world harvested 32.7 million tonnes of tea leaves in 2024, spread across 47 countries, with everything outside the top ten adding up to 5.1% (FAOSTAT). Output changed +37% over the previous ten years. Those are green leaf figures; made tea is roughly a quarter of that weight.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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 2026-09-06. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where does tea come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/tea/.

---

# Where does tin come from?

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

Tin comes mainly from China, which produced 71,000 tonnes in 2025, 24% of the world's 290,000 tonnes (USGS MCS). Indonesia (21%), Peru (11%) and Brazil (9.7%) follow; the top five together supply 76%. The biggest exporter of unwrought tin (HS 8001) is Indonesia (26% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, LME cash, was $55,385/t in August 2026, up 64% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Tin crystallizes as cassiterite in the last, water-rich fluids to escape from cooling granite, so the mines follow granite belts: the Southeast Asian tin belt from Myanmar through Malaysia to Bangka, the Bolivian Andes, the pegmatites of the African Great Lakes, Rondônia in Brazil and, historically, Cornwall.

*A soft metal used mostly as solder in electronics, plus tinplate and chemicals; the smallest of the major base metals.* Also called: Sn, cassiterite, tin ore, tin concentrate, solder.

## Where does tin come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 71,000 | 24% |
| 2 | Indonesia | 61,000 | 21% |
| 3 | Peru | 33,000 | 11% |
| 4 | Brazil | 28,000 | 9.7% |
| 5 | DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) | 27,000 | 9.3% |
| 6 | Bolivia | 15,000 | 5.2% |
| 7 | Myanmar | 12,000 | 4.1% |
| 8 | Australia | 12,000 | 4.1% |
| 9 | Vietnam | 11,000 | 3.8% |
| 10 | Malaysia | 5,000 | 1.7% |
| | Rest of world | 1,700 | 5.2% |
| | World | 290,000 | 100% |

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026.

Tin is the smallest of the major base metals by volume, and its supply is unusually fragile. On this page tin production means mined tin measured by its metal content, unless refined metal is named. In 2025 China mined 71,000 tonnes, 24% of the world's 290,000 tonnes (USGS MCS). Indonesia was second at 21%, then Peru at 11%, Brazil at 9.7% and DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) at 9.3%. Bolivia and Myanmar follow, and countries outside the 14 listed separately accounted for 5.2%. World mine output changed -1% from the previous year. To see the scale, the whole world's tin mine output is less than a tenth of its nickel and well under a fiftieth of its copper.

The geology is granite. Tin is carried in the last watery fluids to escape from a cooling granite body and crystallizes as cassiterite, a hard, heavy tin oxide, in veins, greisens and pegmatites at the granite's margins. Because cassiterite is dense and chemically tough, it survives weathering and concentrates downhill in river gravels and offshore sands, so most historic tin came from placer deposits worked by dredge, gravel pump and, on Bangka and Belitung, from the sea floor. The great tin belts are the Southeast Asian arc running from Myanmar through Thailand and Malaysia to the Indonesian islands, the Bolivian Andes, the pegmatite fields of Rwanda, Burundi and eastern DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo), Rondônia in Brazil, Nigeria's Jos Plateau, southern China's Yunnan and Guangxi, and Cornwall, where mining ended in the 1990s.

Reserves, the part of identified deposits that could be mined economically at the time of the estimate, stood at 5.7 million tonnes in 2025. Indonesia held 25%, China 21%, and Brazil and Myanmar each about an eighth (USGS MCS). Reserve life for tin is shorter than for most metals, and exploration spending is small because the market is small; a large share of supply comes from artisanal and small-scale miners whose output is not backed by any reserve statement at all.


## Who exports and imports tin?

Indonesia restricts unrefined exports and ships refined metal; Myanmar's Wa region supplies concentrate to Chinese smelters, so mine and metal maps differ.

### Exporters of tin ores and concentrates (HS 2609), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) | $602 million | 34% |
| 2 | Australia | $308.3 million | 17% |
| 3 | Nigeria | $301 million | 17% |
| 4 | Republic of the Congo | $146.3 million | 8.3% |
| 5 | Rwanda | $78.6 million | 4.4% |
| 6 | Bolivia | $64 million | 3.6% |
| 7 | Indonesia | $45.6 million | 2.6% |
| 8 | Thailand | $31.9 million | 1.8% |
| 9 | Namibia | $25.7 million | 1.4% |
| 10 | Laos | $22.8 million | 1.3% |
| 11 | Vietnam | $21.9 million | 1.2% |
| 12 | Russia | $21.4 million | 1.2% |
| 13 | Tanzania | $16.1 million | 0.9% |
| 14 | Venezuela | $15.1 million | 0.8% |
| 15 | Myanmar | $14.1 million | 0.8% |

### Importers of tin ores and concentrates (HS 2609), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $1.3 billion | 72% |
| 2 | Malaysia | $290.5 million | 16% |
| 3 | Thailand | $190.6 million | 11% |
| 4 | United Arab Emirates | $9.4 million | 0.5% |
| 5 | Poland | $8.4 million | 0.5% |
| 6 | Brazil | $1.2 million | 0.1% |
| 7 | Myanmar | $865,500 | <0.1% |
| 8 | Hong Kong | $854,339 | <0.1% |
| 9 | Rwanda | $375,670 | <0.1% |
| 10 | Belgium | $280,107 | <0.1% |
| 11 | Namibia | $247,548 | <0.1% |
| 12 | United Kingdom | $209,775 | <0.1% |
| 13 | Saudi Arabia | $201,963 | <0.1% |
| 14 | Cuba | $187,627 | <0.1% |
| 15 | Mexico | $123,743 | <0.1% |

### Exporters of unwrought tin (HS 8001), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indonesia | $1.7 billion | 26% |
| 2 | Peru | $973.4 million | 15% |
| 3 | Bolivia | $691.1 million | 11% |
| 4 | Malaysia | $545.3 million | 8.5% |
| 5 | China | $487.9 million | 7.6% |
| 6 | Brazil | $304.1 million | 4.7% |
| 7 | Belgium | $290.5 million | 4.5% |
| 8 | Thailand | $247.2 million | 3.8% |
| 9 | Poland | $167.4 million | 2.6% |
| 10 | Spain | $141.3 million | 2.2% |
| 11 | Singapore | $116 million | 1.8% |
| 12 | United States | $108.2 million | 1.7% |
| 13 | Netherlands | $90.4 million | 1.4% |
| 14 | Germany | $83.8 million | 1.3% |
| 15 | Italy | $64.4 million | 1% |

### Importers of unwrought tin (HS 8001), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $707.7 million | 11% |
| 2 | China | $707.7 million | 11% |
| 3 | Japan | $592.6 million | 9.2% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $537.6 million | 8.3% |
| 5 | South Korea | $452.2 million | 7% |
| 6 | India | $404.5 million | 6.3% |
| 7 | Germany | $402.6 million | 6.3% |
| 8 | Singapore | $232.3 million | 3.6% |
| 9 | Belgium | $228.4 million | 3.5% |
| 10 | Other Asia, nes | $211.7 million | 3.3% |
| 11 | United Kingdom | $193.8 million | 3% |
| 12 | Spain | $174.1 million | 2.7% |
| 13 | Italy | $157.5 million | 2.4% |
| 14 | Thailand | $134.5 million | 2.1% |
| 15 | Austria | $130.6 million | 2% |

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

Tin trades mostly as finished metal, which is unusual. Concentrate (HS 2609) is a small trade worth $1.8 billion in 2024; DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) was the largest exporter at 34%, with Australia and Nigeria next, and China took 72% of imports (CEPII BACI). Unwrought tin (HS 8001) is more than three times larger. In 2024 Indonesia led exports of unwrought tin (HS 8001) with 26% of the world's $6.4 billion, ahead of Peru and Bolivia, while United States and China were the largest importers.

Two policies shape those tables. Indonesia requires tin destined for export to be refined, assayed and traded through a domestic exchange before it can leave, and it licenses each mine's annual production plan, so the country appears as a major exporter of ingot and almost none of ore. In the other direction, concentrate from the Wa-administered area of northeastern Myanmar crosses the border to smelters in Yunnan and is refined in China, which is why the world's largest tin smelting country is a modest miner in some years and its imports of concentrate matter more than its own mines. Concentrate from the African Great Lakes, tagged and traced under schemes that grew out of conflict-minerals rules, ships to smelters in Southeast Asia. The result is a metal whose refined output is concentrated in a handful of smelters while its ore comes from dozens of small, informal operations.


## What does tin cost?

- LME cash: $55,385/t in August 2026; 12-month change +64%; 10-year change +201%; all-time high $55,385/t in August 2026; real high (2024 US$) $71,323/t in October 1978 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- Tin, standard grade, LME spot (IMF): $52,882/t in July 2026; 12-month change +57%; 10-year change +197%; all-time high $53,238/t in May 2026; real high (2024 US$) $50,027/t in June 2026 (IMF PCPS).

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

### How it is priced

The benchmark is the London Metal Exchange tin contract, ticker SN, traded in 5 t lots quoted in US$/t and settled by delivery of refined tin of at least 99.85% purity into an LME warehouse. The lot is smaller than for the other base metals because tin is worth so much more per tonne. As with the rest of the LME complex there is a cash price for delivery in two days and a three-month price, and the spread between them signals nearby scarcity. The Shanghai Futures Exchange lists a yuan contract, and Indonesia's commodity and derivatives exchange runs the domestic ingot auction through which exports must pass.

Tin is the least liquid of the LME base metals. Open interest and traded volume are a small fraction of copper's or aluminum's, and warehouse stocks are often measured in a few thousand tonnes, which is days of world consumption rather than weeks. That combination makes the price jumpy: a single smelter outage, a licensing delay or a large position can move the cash price by double-digit percentages in a week, and the cash-to-three-month spread swings into steep backwardation more readily than in any other LME contract.

The series charted here is LME cash. In August 2026 it averaged $55,385/t, up 64% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The highest monthly average in the series was $55,385/t in August 2026; adjusted for US inflation the real high was $71,323/t in October 1978, during the years when an international agreement supported the price with a buffer stock, and the lowest monthly average since the series began in 1960 was $2,163/t in May 1960. Miners selling concentrate receive the exchange value of the contained tin minus a treatment charge and minus penalties for iron, arsenic, bismuth and tungsten, and low-grade or impure concentrate can carry deductions large enough to decide whether a deposit is worth mining.


## What moves the price of tin?

### Electronics production and solder demand

Solder is the largest use of tin, and solder is used to attach components to circuit boards, so tin demand follows semiconductor and electronics assembly rather than construction. Smartphone, server, appliance and automotive electronics build rates in China, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and Malaysia set the pace. Because tin is a small fraction of the cost of a finished board, demand is insensitive to the metal price in the short run, which means shocks show up in price rather than in volume.

### Myanmar supply to Chinese smelters

Concentrate from the Wa-administered area of northeastern Myanmar became a major feed for smelters in Yunnan within a few years of the deposits being opened, and it is governed by an authority that has suspended and restarted mining by decree. Because that feed supports a large share of Chinese refined output, an order to halt mining removes concentrate from the world market with almost no notice, and stockpiles at the border give only a few months of cover before smelters have to cut runs.

### Indonesian export licensing

Indonesian exports must pass through domestic refining, assay and exchange trading, and every mine works to an annual production plan approved by the ministry. When approvals are slow, shipments stall for months even though the ore is in the ground and the smelters are built. Enforcement campaigns against unlicensed mining and against ore smuggled between islands have the same effect. Licensing delays have repeatedly cut the country's exports by large fractions of a year's shipments.

### Artisanal and small-scale mining

A large share of world tin is dug by small operators with pumps, sluices and small dredges, in Indonesia, Myanmar, DR Congo, Rwanda, Nigeria and Bolivia. Their output responds fast to price, which cushions rallies, but it also disappears fast when governments enforce permits, when a rainy season floods pits or when security deteriorates. Because these miners hold no reserves and publish no plans, the supply side of the tin market is harder to forecast than any other base metal.

### Exchange stocks and the size of the contract

Tin's warehouse inventories are small enough that they can fall to a few days of world consumption, and its futures contract is the least traded on the LME. A single delivery, or a single dominant warrant holder, can push the cash price far above the three-month price. That structural thinness is why tin has produced the sharpest spikes and the deepest backwardations in the base metals complex, and why some industrial buyers hedge with over-the-counter contracts instead.

### Recycling and thrifting in solder

Tin is recovered from solder dross, from tinplate scrap and from electronic waste, and secondary supply expands when prices are high. Manufacturers also reduce tin per joint: finer pitch components, thinner stencils and alternative alloys all cut usage, and the move from tin-lead to lead-free solder two decades ago raised tin content per joint but was followed by steady thrifting. These adjustments are slow, so they set the long-run ceiling on price rather than the short-run one.

### Conflict-minerals and traceability rules

Tin is one of the four metals covered by US and European rules requiring companies to trace the origin of tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold. Compliance schemes tag bags of concentrate at the mine and audit smelters, and a smelter that loses its conformant status finds Western buyers unwilling to take its metal. This does not change how much tin exists, but it splits the market into audited and unaudited material and redirects flows, which shows up as regional premium differences.

## How is tin produced?

Tin ore is almost always cassiterite, tin dioxide. Hard-rock mines follow veins and greisen zones at granite margins, underground or in open pits; placer operations dredge river gravels and offshore sands, or wash them with gravel pumps. Because cassiterite is much denser than quartz, concentration is done by gravity rather than flotation: jigs, spirals, shaking tables and dense-medium separators upgrade the ore into a concentrate that can run well above half tin by weight in placer operations and lower in hard-rock ones. Magnetic and electrostatic separation removes ilmenite, monazite and other heavy minerals that travel with it.

Smelting is simple in outline and fussy in practice. Concentrate is reduced with carbon in a reverberatory or electric furnace at high temperature to give crude tin and a tin-bearing slag; because tin and iron reduce at similar conditions, the slag is re-smelted separately to recover the tin without dragging iron into the metal. Crude tin is then refined by liquation, in which the metal is melted just above its low melting point so that iron-rich dross can be skimmed, followed by treatment with additives to remove copper, arsenic, antimony, lead and bismuth, and in some plants by electrolytic refining. The product is ingot at or above the exchange purity standard.

Secondary tin comes from three streams: dross and residues from solder pots and tinplate lines, which are returned to smelters; tinplate scrap, from which tin can be stripped chemically before the steel is recycled; and electronic waste, where tin is recovered alongside copper and precious metals in smelters designed for complex feed. Recovery from electronics is incomplete, because solder is thin, spread across a board and mixed with many other materials, so a large share of tin in end-of-life electronics is lost.


## What is tin used for?

Solder is the market. The International Tin Association put solder at 51% of world tin use in 2023, out of a total of 433,000 t, ahead of chemicals, tinplate, lead-acid batteries, copper alloys and glass (International Tin Association, tin use survey 2024). Solder joins components to printed circuit boards and wires to terminals, and tin gives the alloy a low melting point, good wetting of copper and enough strength to hold a joint through thermal cycling. Regulations restricting lead in electronics pushed the industry from tin-lead alloys to tin-silver-copper and other lead-free formulations, which carry more tin per joint; the same survey found lead-free alloys had reached about 92% of electronics solder by 2023.

The other uses are older. Tinplate, thin steel coated with a few micrometres of tin, is the material of the food can: it resists corrosion, is non-toxic and can be soldered and printed. Tin chemicals stabilize PVC against heat and light, catalyze polyurethane foams and coat glass containers. Tin is added to lead-acid battery grids and to copper to make bronze, the alloy that gave an age its name, and to make pewter and bearing metals. Indium tin oxide, a transparent conductor, coats touchscreens and displays. Tin's low toxicity relative to lead has made it the substitute of choice in several applications from which lead has been removed.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Refining is far more concentrated than mining. A small group of smelters in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Peru, Bolivia, Thailand and Brazil produce most of the world's refined tin, and several of them are the only significant plant in their country. That is why Indonesia led exports of unwrought tin in 2024 with 26% of world export value (CEPII BACI) while China took 72% of world concentrate imports in the same period: one country ships ingot made from its own ore, another imports ore and ships the metal.

The physical routes are short and specific. Concentrate crosses the Myanmar border into Yunnan by road; Indonesian ingot leaves Bangka and Belitung through Pangkalpinang and Muntok; Peruvian and Bolivian tin goes out through Callao and Arica; concentrate from the African Great Lakes is trucked to Dar es Salaam and Mombasa and shipped to Southeast Asian smelters; Australian concentrate leaves through Townsville. Refined metal then moves to electronics assembly in China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and South Korea, and to LME warehouses in Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and the Netherlands.

The single points of failure are unusually stark. One administrative decision in one region of Myanmar can idle a large share of Chinese smelting capacity. One ministry's licensing schedule governs Indonesian exports. A single mine in eastern DR Congo carries a significant share of world concentrate and sits in an area subject to armed conflict, so a security incident there is a supply event. Warehouse stocks are too small to absorb any of these for long, and there is no strategic stockpile or buffer scheme of the kind that once existed. Tin is the base metal where the gap between the size of the market and the size of the shocks is widest.


## Key companies

- Yunnan Tin: smelter, China, listed (000960)
- PT Timah: miner, Indonesia, listed (TINS)
- Malaysia Smelting Corporation: smelter, Malaysia, listed (5916)
- Alphamin Resources: miner, Mauritius, listed (AFM)
- Minsur: miner, Peru, listed (MINSURI1)
- Thailand Smelting and Refining Company: refiner, Thailand
- Empresa Metalúrgica Vinto: smelter, Bolivia

## Timeline

- 1985-10: International Tin Council buffer stock fails. The council could no longer support the price on 24 October 1985, the London Metal Exchange suspended tin trading, and the last serious attempt to manage a metal price by buffer stock ended in default. (https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/written-answers/1985/oct/29/tin)
- 1989-01: LME tin trading resumes. Tin returned to the exchange in 1989 after a four-year hiatus, restoring a public benchmark price for a market that had traded in the dark. (https://www.fastmarkets.com/insights/how-the-london-tin-market-sleepwalked-into-a-once-in-a-lifetime-spread-squeeze-corrected/)
- 1998-03: South Crofty closes in Cornwall. The last working tin mine in Europe shut on 6 March 1998, ending an industry that had operated in Cornwall for thousands of years. (https://www.cornwallforever.co.uk/history/south-crofty-tin-mine-closes)
- 2003-01: EU restricts lead in electronic equipment. The RoHS directive of 27 January 2003 pushed the electronics industry off tin-lead solder and onto lead-free alloys that carry more tin per joint, lifting demand in tin's largest end use. (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eudr/2002/95/pdfs/eudr_20020095_adopted_en.pdf)
- 2005-01: China becomes the largest tin producer. Chinese output moved to the front of the world ranking in 2005 and has stayed there, displacing the older Malaysian, Bolivian and Thai order. (https://www.ytc.cn/)
- 2009-01: Tin confirmed as the smallest LME base metal contract. Full-year 2008 exchange volumes put tin at about 1.5 million lots against 48.3 million for aluminum, a thinness that still shapes how violently the price moves. (https://www.internationaltin.org/tin-lags-growth-in-lme-trading-volumes/)
- 2013-08: Indonesia requires exchange trading before export. Routing every tin ingot export through a domestic exchange cut monthly shipments by most of their volume within weeks and lifted the LME price sharply. (https://www.internationaltin.org/latest-developments-on-indonesian-tin-trading/)
- 2017-05: EU conflict minerals regulation adopted. The regulation of 17 May 2017 required European importers of tin ore and tin metal above set thresholds to run OECD-aligned due diligence, with the main obligations applying from January 2021. (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eur/2017/821/pdfs/eur_20170821_adopted_en.pdf)
- 2019-09: Bisie reaches commercial production in DR Congo. A very high-grade new mine in North Kivu began commercial output in the third quarter of 2019 and became a significant swing supplier of concentrate. (https://www.alphaminresources.com/2019/10/16/alphamin-announces-quarterly-production-and-sales-report/)
- 2022-03: LME tin reaches $51,000 a tonne. Post-pandemic electronics demand, disrupted logistics and record-low exchange stocks produced a near-vertical squeeze in March 2022. (https://www.fastmarkets.com/insights/tin-price-high-demand-for-technology-renewables/)
- 2023-01: San Rafael halts during Peruvian protests. The suspension of one large Peruvian mine on 12 January 2023 showed how few individual assets carry world tin supply. (https://www.internationaltin.org/san-rafael-operations-halted-after-peruvian-protests/)
- 2023-04: Myanmar's Wa authorities announce a mining suspension. The order of 15 April 2023, effective 1 August, halted an area supplying roughly a tenth of world tin concentrate and most of China's imported feed. (https://www.internationaltin.org/myanmars-wa-state-announces-tin-mining-suspension-from-august/)
- 2024-01: Indonesian licensing delays collapse exports. A switch to three-year work plans left approvals unissued and January 2024 exports fell by 99% from a year earlier, removing a fifth of world refined supply. (https://www.internationaltin.org/growing-concern-over-indonesian-output-amid-licensing-delays/)
- 2025-03: Bisie suspends mining as conflict advances. The operator ceased mining on 13 March 2025 as armed groups moved toward North Kivu, removing about 7% of world mined tin at a stroke. (https://www.alphaminresources.com/2025/03/13/alphamin-temporarily-ceases-mining-operations/)
- 2026-01: Tin sets a nominal record. The three-month contract closed at $53,462/t on 15 January 2026, above the March 2022 squeeze high, on continued supply disruption. (https://www.internationaltin.org/tin-hits-nominal-all-time-high/)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most tin

China mines the most tin. In 2025 it produced 71,000 tonnes of tin content in ore, 24% of the world's 290,000 tonnes (USGS MCS). Indonesia was second at 21% and Peru third at 11%. Tin is the smallest of the major base metals: world mine output is well under a fiftieth of copper's.

### where does tin come from

Tin comes from cassiterite, a dense tin oxide that crystallizes at the edges of cooling granite and washes into river gravels and offshore sands. The main belts run from Myanmar through Malaysia to the Indonesian islands, through the Bolivian Andes, the pegmatites of Rwanda and eastern DR Congo, and Rondônia in Brazil. Mines produced 290,000 tonnes of tin content in 2025 (USGS MCS).

### what is tin used for

Solder took 51% of world tin use in 2023, joining components to circuit boards and wires to terminals; rules restricting lead in electronics raised the tin content of each joint (International Tin Association). Tin also coats steel to make tinplate for food cans, stabilizes PVC, catalyzes polyurethane foam, alloys with copper to make bronze, and coats screens as indium tin oxide.

### what is the price of tin today

This site shows monthly averages, not live quotes. The LME cash price averaged $55,385/t in August 2026, up 64% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The highest monthly average in the series was $55,385/t in August 2026; the inflation-adjusted peak was $71,323/t in October 1978. Live quotes come from the London Metal Exchange.

### why is tin so volatile

Because the market is small and the supply is fragile. Tin is the least traded base metal on the London Metal Exchange, and warehouse stocks can fall to a few days of world consumption. Much of the ore comes from small, informal miners and from two jurisdictions whose export rules change by decree, so a single licensing delay or mining suspension removes a large share of supply with little warning.

### which country has the most tin reserves

Indonesia holds the largest tin reserves, 25% of the world's 5.7 million tonnes in 2025, ahead of China at 21% and Brazil at 12% (USGS MCS). Reserve life is shorter than for most metals, and exploration spending is modest because the market is small relative to copper, aluminum or nickel.

### which country exports the most tin

For refined unwrought tin (HS 8001), Indonesia led exports in 2024 with 26% of the world's $6.4 billion (CEPII BACI), ahead of Peru and Bolivia. For tin ores and concentrates (HS 2609) the largest exporter was DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) at 34%, and China bought 72% of world concentrate imports.

### what happened to the international tin agreement

The International Tin Council supported the price with a buffer stock and export controls for decades. In October 1985 it ran out of money, defaulted on its contracts and stopped buying, and the London Metal Exchange suspended tin trading for about four years. Prices collapsed and many mines closed. No producer body has attempted a buffer stock in tin since, which is one reason the market is so exposed to shocks.

## Sources

- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries
- 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
- IMF Primary Commodity Price System (PCPS), 2026-08-06, fetched 6 September 2026. License: © International Monetary Fund. All rights reserved (IMF terms of use). https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS

Text last reviewed 2026-09-06. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where does tin come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/tin/.

---

# Where does tobacco come from?

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

Tobacco comes mainly from China, which produced 2.3 million tonnes in 2024, 37% of the world's 6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India (12%), Brazil (11%) and Indonesia (5.9%) follow; the top five together supply 70%. The biggest exporter of unmanufactured tobacco (HS 2401) is Brazil (20% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, US import unit value, unmanufactured, was $6,723/t in June 2026, down 4% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Tobacco grows almost anywhere with a frost-free season of about four months, so the crop settled not where the climate is unique but where cheap, careful hand labor and curing fuel are available and where a state monopoly or a leaf merchant guaranteed a buyer, which is why the map runs from China and India through Brazil to Zimbabwe and Malawi.

*Cured leaf of the tobacco plant, traded green or processed into strip before it is made into cigarettes.* Also called: tobacco leaf, unmanufactured tobacco, flue-cured tobacco, burley.

## Where does tobacco come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 2.3 million | 37% |
| 2 | India | 727,203 | 12% |
| 3 | Brazil | 637,749 | 11% |
| 4 | Indonesia | 353,386 | 5.9% |
| 5 | Zimbabwe | 236,815 | 3.9% |
| 6 | Pakistan | 184,982 | 3.1% |
| 7 | United States | 147,520 | 2.4% |
| 8 | Malawi | 119,957 | 2% |
| 9 | Tanzania | 117,464 | 1.9% |
| 10 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 108,000 | 1.8% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 19% |
| | World | 6 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

Tobacco is the cured leaf of Nicotiana tabacum, and unlike coffee or cocoa it has no narrow climatic band. It needs a frost-free growing season of about four months, warm days, moderate rainfall and light, well-drained soil; sandy soils give the mild, bright leaf that cigarettes are built around, and heavier soils give the fuller-bodied leaf used for blending. Because the plant itself is undemanding, the geography of tobacco is really the geography of labor and institutions. The crop takes an enormous number of hand operations per hectare, from transplanting seedlings to priming individual leaves as they ripen up the stalk, and the leaf is worthless until it has been cured, which requires barns and fuel. Countries with abundant careful field labor and a buyer who will finance inputs against the coming crop are the ones that grow it.

In 2024 China produced 2.3 million tonnes of unmanufactured tobacco, 37% of the world's 6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Almost none of that leaves the country: China's tobacco is grown, bought, manufactured and sold inside a state monopoly. India followed with 12%, then Brazil (11%), Indonesia (5.9%) and Zimbabwe (3.9%). Brazil's crop is concentrated in the three southern states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná and is grown almost entirely under contract to leaf merchants for export; Zimbabwe's is grown on the highveld around Harare, and Malawi's on the central plateau.

This is one of the few field crops whose world output is shrinking. World production changed -16% over the ten years to 2024 and -7% over five (FAOSTAT). The decline is concentrated in the traditional producers: United States contracted at -9.4% a year over that decade and China at -2.8%, while Indonesia grew at +6.1% and Zimbabwe at +2.6%. 130 countries reported a crop in 2024, an unusually wide spread, and everything outside the top ten still came to 19% because so many countries grow a little tobacco for a domestic factory.

Leaf types matter more than country of origin for how a crop is used. Flue-cured Virginia, grown in Brazil, China, India, Zimbabwe and the southeastern United States, provides the bright, high-sugar body of most cigarette blends. Burley, air-cured and low in sugar, comes from Malawi, Brazil, the United States and Mozambique and carries flavor casings well. Oriental, a small-leaved sun-cured type from Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria and North Macedonia, is used in small proportions for aroma. Dark fire-cured and dark air-cured leaf goes to cigars, snuff and chewing products.


## Who exports and imports tobacco?

Brazil, Zimbabwe and Malawi sell leaf; Belgium, Germany and Poland export cigarettes made from leaf they import, so the manufactured trade points at Europe.

### Exporters of unmanufactured tobacco and tobacco refuse (HS 2401), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | $2.8 billion | 20% |
| 2 | India | $1.5 billion | 11% |
| 3 | Zimbabwe | $1.3 billion | 9.5% |
| 4 | United States | $1 billion | 7.4% |
| 5 | Belgium | $599.9 million | 4.3% |
| 6 | Tanzania | $599.1 million | 4.2% |
| 7 | China | $580.3 million | 4.1% |
| 8 | Malawi | $577.4 million | 4.1% |
| 9 | Germany | $416.8 million | 3% |
| 10 | Italy | $371.6 million | 2.6% |
| 11 | Zambia | $351.2 million | 2.5% |
| 12 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $349.2 million | 2.5% |
| 13 | Argentina | $335.2 million | 2.4% |
| 14 | Indonesia | $260.5 million | 1.8% |
| 15 | Mozambique | $252.7 million | 1.8% |

### Importers of unmanufactured tobacco and tobacco refuse (HS 2401), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Belgium | $1.9 billion | 14% |
| 2 | China | $1.8 billion | 13% |
| 3 | Indonesia | $872.6 million | 6.2% |
| 4 | United States | $729.3 million | 5.2% |
| 5 | United Arab Emirates | $651.4 million | 4.6% |
| 6 | Germany | $572.9 million | 4.1% |
| 7 | Egypt | $523.1 million | 3.7% |
| 8 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $517.2 million | 3.7% |
| 9 | Poland | $462 million | 3.3% |
| 10 | Dominican Republic | $389.8 million | 2.8% |
| 11 | Vietnam | $372.1 million | 2.6% |
| 12 | Russia | $304 million | 2.2% |
| 13 | South Korea | $286.1 million | 2% |
| 14 | Greece | $253.8 million | 1.8% |
| 15 | Italy | $220.7 million | 1.6% |

### Exporters of cigars and cigarettes (HS 2402), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Poland | $5.1 billion | 21% |
| 2 | Germany | $1.9 billion | 7.7% |
| 3 | Indonesia | $1.6 billion | 6.5% |
| 4 | Czechia | $1.4 billion | 5.8% |
| 5 | Dominican Republic | $1.1 billion | 4.7% |
| 6 | Netherlands | $979 million | 4% |
| 7 | South Korea | $944.4 million | 3.9% |
| 8 | Romania | $922 million | 3.8% |
| 9 | Lithuania | $813.2 million | 3.4% |
| 10 | Portugal | $766.4 million | 3.2% |
| 11 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $532.3 million | 2.2% |
| 12 | Switzerland | $514.8 million | 2.1% |
| 13 | Nicaragua | $447.8 million | 1.8% |
| 14 | Cuba | $416.8 million | 1.7% |
| 15 | Serbia | $411.2 million | 1.7% |

### Importers of cigars and cigarettes (HS 2402), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Germany | $3.4 billion | 14% |
| 2 | Italy | $2.1 billion | 8.5% |
| 3 | United States | $1.7 billion | 7% |
| 4 | Spain | $1.2 billion | 5% |
| 5 | France | $1.1 billion | 4.6% |
| 6 | Japan | $834.2 million | 3.4% |
| 7 | Hong Kong | $636.4 million | 2.6% |
| 8 | Netherlands | $624.4 million | 2.6% |
| 9 | Vietnam | $619.3 million | 2.6% |
| 10 | Singapore | $545 million | 2.3% |
| 11 | Belgium | $499.6 million | 2.1% |
| 12 | United Arab Emirates | $448.1 million | 1.9% |
| 13 | Saudi Arabia | $398.8 million | 1.6% |
| 14 | Iraq | $325.8 million | 1.3% |
| 15 | Cambodia | $295.4 million | 1.2% |

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

The tobacco trade splits cleanly in two, and reading only one half gives the wrong picture. Unmanufactured leaf (HS 2401) moves from farming countries to manufacturing countries; cigars and cigarettes (HS 2402) move out of a handful of factory countries to the world. In 2024 the largest exporter of unmanufactured tobacco (HS 2401) was Brazil with 20% of the world's $14.1 billion in export value, followed by India (11%), Zimbabwe (9.5%) and United States (7.4%) (CEPII BACI). Southern Africa is heavily represented further down the list, with Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique together supplying a significant slice of the world's burley and flue-cured leaf.

The importers are not the smokers. Belgium took 14% of the world's $14.1 billion of leaf imports in 2024, ahead of China (13%), Indonesia (6.2%) and United States (5.2%) (CEPII BACI). Belgium tops that table because Antwerp is the entry point for leaf destined for European factories and because leaf merchants hold stock there, not because Belgians smoke more than their neighbors. Turn to manufactured product and the geography inverts: the leading exporter of cigars and cigarettes (HS 2402) in 2024 was Poland with 21% of a $24.2 billion trade, ahead of Germany and Indonesia, while the largest importer was Germany (14%). Poland and Germany grow comparatively little leaf and export cigarettes made from leaf they buy in; the value added in this chain sits in the factory, not the field.


## What does tobacco cost?

- US import unit value, unmanufactured: $6,723/t in June 2026; 12-month change -4%; 10-year change +40%; all-time high $7,054/t in August 2025; real high (2024 US$) $18,553/t in January 1960 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

Tobacco has no futures contract and no exchange anywhere in the world. There is nothing to hedge against, no clearing house and no daily settlement price, and that absence is the defining feature of the market. Leaf is sold in three ways instead. Most of the world's export crop is grown under integrated contracts: a leaf merchant supplies seed, fertilizer and extension advice before planting and buys the cured leaf back at a grade-based schedule agreed in advance. Some countries still run physical auction floors, notably Zimbabwe and Malawi, where bales are laid out in rows, graded, and sold by walking buyers to the highest bidder. And in China the state monopoly sets purchase prices administratively for a crop it also manufactures and sells.

The series charted here, US import unit value, unmanufactured, is therefore not a market price at all. It is a unit value: the declared customs value of unmanufactured tobacco imported into the United States divided by its weight, published monthly. It stood at $6,723/t in June 2026, down 4% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its nominal record was $7,054/t in August 2025; adjusted for United States inflation the real high was $18,553/t in January 1960, and the lowest monthly value since the series began in 1960 was $1,001/t in August 1971. Over ten years it changed +40% and over five +62%.

Read that series with care, because a unit value moves for two different reasons. It rises when leaf genuinely becomes dearer, and it also rises when the mix of what the United States buys shifts toward higher grades, toward threshed strip rather than whole leaf, or toward origins that sell finer tobacco. A shift in the share of cheap filler in the import basket can move the number as much as a drought can. It is a useful indicator of the direction of leaf costs over years, and a poor indicator of what a grower in Malawi received last week. The two other ambiguities on this page are the usual ones: production figures are unmanufactured leaf at farm weight, before threshing losses, and the leaf trade and the cigarette trade are separate markets with separate leaders.


## What moves the price of tobacco?

### Cigarette volumes and smoking prevalence

Leaf demand is derived demand: it depends on how many cigarettes are made, not on how many people smoke in any one country. Prevalence has fallen for decades across high-income markets and manufacturers have offset part of that with price increases rather than volume, so the tonnes of leaf required have declined slowly and steadily. This is the background against which every other driver operates, and it is why world production has contracted over the past decade while most other crops expanded.

### Regulation and excise taxation

Excise duties, advertising bans, plain packaging, flavor restrictions and public smoking bans all reduce the volume of manufactured product sold, and each measure in a large market removes a measurable quantity of leaf demand a season or two later. The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, in force since 2005, has spread these measures across most countries. Regulation also changes blend composition, since restrictions on flavors and additives alter how much burley or oriental leaf a manufacturer needs.

### China's closed system

China grows and consumes more tobacco than any other country inside a state monopoly that buys leaf at administered prices and sells cigarettes through a controlled distribution network. Because that volume barely touches the world market, changes in Chinese planting quotas affect world production statistics without moving international leaf prices much. The exception runs the other way: when China buys imported leaf for blending, as it does in some years, it is a large enough buyer to tighten the export market.

### Weather and curing conditions in Brazil and southern Africa

The export crop is concentrated in a few regions with distinct seasons. Drought or hail in southern Brazil during the November to March growing season, or a late start to the rains on the Zimbabwean highveld, cuts volumes and lifts the price of the grades those origins supply. Curing matters as much as growing: rain during the flue-curing period, or a shortage of firewood or coal for barns, downgrades leaf that was sound when it left the field.

### Contract terms and merchant inventories

Two leaf merchants handle a large share of the internationally traded crop, buying under contract, threshing, redrying and holding aged stock for manufacturers. Their inventory position governs how much they contract for the following season: when stocks are heavy they cut contracted hectares and growers plant something else, and when stocks are thin they raise contracted volumes and prices firm. Because contracting happens before planting, the market corrects with a lag of a full season or more.

### Producer currencies

Leaf is invoiced in dollars while growing costs are paid in reais, kwacha and rupees. A weaker Brazilian real raises what a southern Brazilian grower earns for the same dollar price and encourages planting the following season, which adds supply and softens dollar prices with a one-year lag. The same mechanism works in Malawi and Zimbabwe, where a devaluation can transform grower margins without any change in the international price of leaf.

### Substitution toward other nicotine products

Heated tobacco sticks use less leaf per unit than a conventional cigarette, and nicotine pouches and vaping products use extracted or synthetic nicotine rather than cut leaf at all. As manufacturers shift volume toward these categories, the tonnes of leaf required per unit of nicotine sold falls. The effect is gradual but structural, and it is one reason leaf demand can decline faster than the number of nicotine users.

### Labor and compliance costs

Tobacco is among the most labor-intensive field crops, and buyers now audit their supply chains for child labor, green tobacco sickness, wood use in curing barns and land clearing. Compliance raises the cost of the marginal bale from a smallholder and pushes merchants toward larger, more easily monitored growers. It also raises curing costs where regulations require sustainable fuel, since a flue-curing barn burns a considerable quantity of wood or coal for every tonne of leaf.

## How is tobacco produced?

Tobacco starts in a nursery. Seed is minute, so it is sown in float trays or seedbeds and transplanted by hand into the field after six to ten weeks. The plant is topped, meaning the flower head is removed, to push growth into the leaves, and the suckers that then form in the leaf axils are removed repeatedly by hand or with chemical inhibitors. Harvesting depends on the type. Flue-cured tobacco is primed: leaves are picked a few at a time as they ripen from the bottom of the stalk upward, over several passes across several weeks. Burley and dark tobaccos are usually stalk-cut, the whole plant severed and hung to cure together.

Curing is what turns a green leaf into a commodity, and the method defines the type. Flue-cured, or Virginia, leaf hangs in a sealed barn where heated air is circulated for about a week, yellowing the leaf and locking in its sugars. Burley is air-cured for four to eight weeks in a ventilated barn with no added heat, which burns off the sugars and leaves a leaf that absorbs casings and flavors. Dark tobaccos are fire-cured over smoldering hardwood, which gives the smoky character used in snuff and some cigars. Oriental leaf is sun-cured on strings. Curing losses are large: cured leaf weighs a small fraction of the green leaf that entered the barn.

Cured leaf is graded and baled on the farm and delivered to an auction floor or a merchant's buying station, where it is graded again by stalk position, color, body and quality. From there it goes to a green leaf threshing plant, which is the industrial heart of the trade. Threshing separates the lamina, the fleshy part of the leaf that becomes cut filler, from the stem; both are redried to a controlled moisture content and packed, the strip into cartons or cases of about two hundred kilograms. Packed strip is then aged for one to three years in a warehouse, during which enzymatic and microbial changes mellow the leaf before it can be blended.

The manufacturing stage happens somewhere else entirely. Aged strip is conditioned, cut into shreds, blended with reconstituted sheet made from stems and leaf fines, expanded to increase filling power, dosed with casings and flavors, and fed to a cigarette maker that produces thousands of units a minute. By-products of the chain are real if minor: stems for reconstituted sheet and for nicotine extraction, tobacco dust for agricultural pesticide in some markets, and seed oil pressed in a few origins.


## What is tobacco used for?

Nearly all tobacco is smoked, and cigarettes account for the overwhelming majority of it. The rest of the leaf market is divided between cigars and cigarillos, largely from the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Honduras and Cuba; roll-your-own and pipe tobacco; waterpipe or shisha tobacco, which is heavily molasses-based and consumed mainly in the Middle East; and smokeless products including snus, moist snuff and chewing tobacco. Newer categories use less leaf or none: heated tobacco sticks contain a compressed plug of processed tobacco, while nicotine pouches and most vaping liquids use extracted or synthetically produced nicotine.

Non-consumption uses are marginal. Nicotine extracted from stems and waste is sold as an insecticide in some jurisdictions and as an input to nicotine replacement products, tobacco seed oil is pressed on a small scale, and stems and dust are composted or burned as boiler fuel at threshing plants. Tobacco is also a workhorse of plant biology laboratories, where Nicotiana benthamiana is used as an expression system for proteins and vaccines, but the quantities involved are negligible against the 6 million tonnes of leaf the world grew in 2024 (FAOSTAT).


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain has three concentration points. The first is the leaf merchant. A small number of companies contract with growers across Brazil, Africa, Asia and North America, run the threshing and redrying plants, hold the aged inventory and sell strip to manufacturers on multi-year agreements. Growers rarely deal with a cigarette company directly, and the merchant's contracting decision each year is what determines how many hectares get planted. The second is the threshing plant itself: these are large, capital-intensive facilities, and a region's crop typically has one or two within economic reach.

The third is manufacturing, which is more concentrated than either. A handful of multinationals plus China's state monopoly account for most of the world's cigarette output, and their factories cluster in a few countries: Poland exported 21% of the world's cigars and cigarettes by value in 2024 (CEPII BACI), and Germany, Indonesia, Czechia and the Dominican Republic follow. The physical routes are straightforward. Brazilian strip leaves through Rio Grande, Paranaguá and Santos; Malawian and Zambian leaf travels by road to Beira, Nacala or Durban; Zimbabwean leaf goes out through the same southern African ports; and European-bound leaf lands at Antwerp, which is why Belgium sits at the top of the leaf import table.

The single points of failure are financial and regulatory rather than physical. A merchant withdrawing from an origin removes the credit that lets smallholders buy fertilizer, and the crop shrinks the following season regardless of price. A change in excise policy in a large consuming market alters contracted volumes across several origins at once. And because leaf must be aged for years before use, the industry carries long inventories, which means a demand shock takes several seasons to work through to planting decisions and a supply shock takes just as long to show up in a finished product.


## Key companies

- Philip Morris International: cigarette and heated tobacco manufacturer, Switzerland, listed (PM)
- British American Tobacco: cigarette manufacturer, United Kingdom, listed (BATS)
- Japan Tobacco: cigarette manufacturer, Japan, listed (2914)
- Altria Group: cigarette manufacturer for the US market, United States, listed (MO)
- Imperial Brands: cigarette manufacturer, United Kingdom, listed (IMB)
- Universal Corporation: leaf merchant and processor, United States, listed (UVV)
- Pyxus International: leaf merchant and processor, United States, listed (PYYX)
- China National Tobacco Corporation: state monopoly for leaf purchase and manufacture, China

## Timeline

- 1612: John Rolfe plants Caribbean tobacco in Virginia. Seed from the Orinoco region produced a leaf that Europeans would buy, and the first barrels shipped to England in 1614 made tobacco the cash crop of English North America. (https://www.worldhistory.org/John_Rolfe/)
- 1881-03: The Bonsack cigarette machine is patented. A machine that formed, pasted and cut cigarettes continuously replaced hand rolling and made mass-market cigarettes possible, transforming leaf demand from a niche into an industry. (https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-A-Bonsack)
- 1911-05: The American Tobacco Company is broken up. The US Supreme Court ruled on 29 May 1911 that the company had monopolized the industry, and the resulting successors became the structure of the modern cigarette business. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._American_Tobacco_Co.)
- 1964-01: The US Surgeon General links smoking and cancer. The report published on 11 January 1964 was the first authoritative government finding of causation and began the long decline in smoking prevalence in high-income countries. (https://cdc.gov/tobacco-surgeon-general-reports/about/history.html)
- 1998-11: The Master Settlement Agreement. Forty-six US states settled with the major manufacturers on 23 November 1998 for payments of about $206 billion through 2025 plus advertising restrictions, permanently raising the cost of selling cigarettes in the United States. (https://www.publichealthlawcenter.org/topics/commercial-tobacco-control/master-settlement-agreement)
- 2000: Zimbabwe's fast track land reform. The redistribution of commercial farms cut a tobacco crop that had been one of the country's largest exports; output later recovered on a smallholder and contract-farming base rather than on large estates. (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057070.2022.2030954)
- 2003-05: The WHO tobacco treaty is adopted. The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control was adopted on 21 May 2003, the first treaty negotiated under WHO auspices, committing parties to advertising bans, warnings and tax measures. (https://fctc.who.int/convention/the-who-framework-convention-on-tobacco-control-an-overview)
- 2004-10: The United States ends its tobacco quota system. The Fair and Equitable Tobacco Reform Act, signed on 22 October 2004, abolished the marketing quotas and price supports dating from 1938 and bought out quota holders, after which US production fell sharply. (https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2004/11/17/04-25526/the-fair-and-equitable-tobacco-reform-act-of-2004)
- 2005-02: The tobacco treaty enters into force. The Framework Convention took effect on 27 February 2005 and became one of the most widely ratified treaties in UN history, spreading regulation to most tobacco-consuming countries. (https://www.who.int/europe/teams/tobacco/who-framework-convention-on-tobacco-control-(who-fctc))
- 2009-06: The US FDA gains authority over tobacco products. The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, signed on 22 June 2009, let the FDA regulate manufacture and marketing and banned descriptors such as light and mild. (https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/rules-regulations-and-guidance-related-tobacco-products/family-smoking-prevention-and-tobacco-control-act-overview)
- 2012-12: Australia requires plain packaging. From 1 December 2012 all tobacco had to be sold in standardized drab packs without branding, a measure since copied by other countries and upheld against trade challenges. (https://www.who.int/westernpacific/newsroom/feature-stories/item/reducing-the-appeal-of-smoking-first-experiences-with-australia-s-plain-tobacco-packaging-law)

## Frequently asked questions

### Which country produces the most tobacco?

China grew 2.3 million tonnes of unmanufactured tobacco in 2024, 37% of the world's 6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India was second with 12% and Brazil third with 11%. Almost all Chinese leaf stays inside a state monopoly that also manufactures and sells the cigarettes, so it barely reaches the world market.

### Which country exports the most tobacco?

Brazil was the largest exporter of unmanufactured tobacco in 2024, with 20% of the world's $14.1 billion in export value, ahead of India at 11% and Zimbabwe at 9.5% (CEPII BACI). Brazil leads because its southern states grow flue-cured and burley leaf under contract almost entirely for export.

### Which country exports the most cigarettes?

Poland exported 21% of the world's $24.2 billion of cigars and cigarettes in 2024, ahead of Germany at 7.7% and Indonesia at 6.5% (CEPII BACI). Poland grows relatively little leaf; it hosts large factories that buy imported leaf and ship finished product across Europe.

### How much does tobacco leaf cost?

There is no exchange price. The indicator on this page, US import unit value, unmanufactured, was $6,723/t in June 2026, down 4% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). It is the customs value of US leaf imports divided by weight, so it moves with the mix of grades bought as well as with the underlying cost of leaf. Its record was $7,054/t in August 2025.

### Is there a futures market for tobacco?

No. Tobacco has never had a futures contract on any exchange. Most export leaf is grown under contracts agreed with a merchant before planting, some is sold on physical auction floors in Zimbabwe and Malawi, and China's crop is bought at administered prices. The unit value series used here was $6,723/t in June 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### Is tobacco production falling?

Yes, in aggregate. World output was 6 million tonnes in 2024, a change of -16% over ten years and -7% over five (FAOSTAT). The fall is concentrated in older producers: the United States contracted at -9.4% a year over that decade, while Indonesia grew at +6.1% and Zimbabwe at +2.6%.

### What is the difference between flue-cured and burley tobacco?

Flue-cured, or Virginia, leaf is dried in a sealed barn with heated air over about a week, which preserves its natural sugars and gives the bright body of most cigarette blends. Burley is air-cured for four to eight weeks with no added heat, leaving a low-sugar leaf that carries added flavors. Both are counted in the 6 million tonnes the world grew in 2024 (FAOSTAT).

### Which country imports the most tobacco leaf?

Belgium took 14% of the world's $14.1 billion of unmanufactured tobacco imports in 2024, ahead of China at 13% and Indonesia at 6.2% (CEPII BACI). Belgium ranks first because Antwerp is where leaf merchants land and hold stock bound for European factories, not because of domestic consumption.

### Does the United States still grow tobacco?

Yes, but far less than it did. United States produced 147,520 tonnes in 2024, 2.4% of world output, and has been contracting at -9.4% a year over the past decade (FAOSTAT). It still exported $1 billion of leaf in 2024, 7.4% of world export value (CEPII BACI), mostly high-grade flue-cured and burley.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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 2026-09-06. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where does tobacco come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/tobacco/.

---

# Where do tomatoes come from?

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

Tomatoes come mainly from China, which produced 61.6 million tonnes in 2024, 33% of the world's 188.3 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India (11%), Turkey (Türkiye) (7.8%) and United States (5.7%) follow; the top five together supply 61%. The biggest exporter of tomatoes (HS 0702) is Mexico (29% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Tomatoes are two crops inside one row of statistics: a fresh salad fruit grown close to its market, often under glass or plastic, and a processing crop that needs a dry sunny summer and a paste factory within a short truck ride.

*The world’s largest vegetable crop by weight, split between fresh salad fruit and processing tomatoes for paste.* Also called: tomato, processing tomatoes, tomato paste.

## Where do tomatoes come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 61.6 million | 33% |
| 2 | India | 21.3 million | 11% |
| 3 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 14.6 million | 7.8% |
| 4 | United States | 10.7 million | 5.7% |
| 5 | Egypt | 7.5 million | 4% |
| 6 | Italy | 6 million | 3.2% |
| 7 | Spain | 4.6 million | 2.4% |
| 8 | Mexico | 4.4 million | 2.3% |
| 9 | Brazil | 4.4 million | 2.3% |
| 10 | Nigeria | 3.7 million | 2% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 26% |
| | World | 188.3 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 China produced 61.6 million tonnes, 33% of the world's 188.3 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India followed with 11%, then Turkey (Türkiye) (7.8%), United States (5.7%) and Egypt (4%). The top five account for 61%, 168 countries reported output and 26% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +7% over the ten years to 2024 and +2% on the previous year.

Chinese tonnage is split between fresh production near the cities and the processing crop of Xinjiang, where dry summers and long days suit a machine-harvested tomato. India and Turkey grow mainly for fresh domestic markets. The American crop is dominated by California's Central Valley and is almost entirely for processing, and the Mediterranean adds Egypt, Italy and Spain.

The two crops are different plants. Processing varieties are determinate, bred for thick skins and high soluble solids, and are cut once by machine. Fresh varieties are indeterminate, trained upward and picked by hand over months. FAOSTAT counts them together, which is part of why the world total is so large.

## Who exports and imports tomatoes?

### Exporters of tomatoes, fresh or chilled (HS 0702), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mexico | $3.5 billion | 29% |
| 2 | Netherlands | $1.8 billion | 15% |
| 3 | Morocco | $1.6 billion | 13% |
| 4 | Spain | $1.2 billion | 10% |
| 5 | Canada | $554.4 million | 4.6% |
| 6 | France | $515.5 million | 4.3% |
| 7 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $464.6 million | 3.8% |
| 8 | Belgium | $361.2 million | 3% |
| 9 | Italy | $214.4 million | 1.8% |
| 10 | China | $199.9 million | 1.7% |
| 11 | Azerbaijan | $175.6 million | 1.5% |
| 12 | Germany | $149.1 million | 1.2% |
| 13 | United States | $138.2 million | 1.1% |
| 14 | Portugal | $112 million | 0.9% |
| 15 | Poland | $109.2 million | 0.9% |

### Importers of tomatoes, fresh or chilled (HS 0702), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $3.8 billion | 32% |
| 2 | Germany | $1.7 billion | 14% |
| 3 | France | $1.1 billion | 9% |
| 4 | United Kingdom | $782.7 million | 6.5% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $511.8 million | 4.2% |
| 6 | Canada | $388.9 million | 3.2% |
| 7 | Russia | $373.1 million | 3.1% |
| 8 | Poland | $355.8 million | 2.9% |
| 9 | Spain | $267 million | 2.2% |
| 10 | Italy | $204.3 million | 1.7% |
| 11 | Romania | $177.4 million | 1.5% |
| 12 | Sweden | $157.3 million | 1.3% |
| 13 | Czechia | $147.8 million | 1.2% |
| 14 | Belgium | $121.8 million | 1% |
| 15 | Switzerland | $115.8 million | 1% |

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

Mexico was the largest exporter of tomatoes (HS 0702) in 2024 with 29% of world export value, ahead of Netherlands (15%), on world trade of $12.1 billion (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 32%.

The fresh trade is regional rather than global. Tomatoes bruise and last days rather than weeks, so they move by truck over short distances: Mexico into the United States, Morocco and Spain into Europe, with the Netherlands both growing under glass and re-exporting other people's fruit.

What actually travels the world is paste, and it is not in these figures. Tomato paste is concentrated several times over, filled hot into sterile bags inside drums or bins, and shipped at ambient temperature under a different code, to be remanufactured into ketchup, sauce and canned goods near the consumer.

## What do tomatoes cost?

### How they are priced

There is no futures market and no free public benchmark price for tomatoes, so this site quotes none. Processing tomatoes are contracted before planting, often through grower bargaining associations, at a price per tonne with a premium or deduction for the soluble solids measured at delivery.

Fresh tomatoes are sold quite differently, on daily wholesale markets, at auction, or on supermarket programs priced by the week, and the two prices move for different reasons. Processing prices are set once a year against carryover paste stocks and expected acreage. Fresh prices swing with the weather and with whatever arrived that morning.

## What moves the price of tomatoes?

### Contracted acreage

The processing crop is planted to contract, so the size of the pack is decided before a seed goes into the ground. Processors set acreage against the paste they still hold, and growers accept or plant something else. A misjudged contracting round shows up a year later as either a shortage or a warehouse of unsold paste.

### Carryover paste stocks

Paste keeps for a year or more, so the stock carried into a season sets the tone for the next one. A large carryover pushes contract prices down and acreage with them; an empty warehouse does the reverse. Because the crop is annual and the product is storable, the market cycles rather than settles.

### Energy in protected cultivation

Fresh tomatoes for northern markets are grown in heated and sometimes lit glasshouses, where gas and electricity are a large share of cost. An energy price shock changes what growers plant and whether they heat at all, and it moves European winter fresh prices more than any agronomic factor.

### Seed-borne virus

Tomato brown rugose fruit virus spreads by contact and on seed, defeats the resistance gene that protects against related viruses, and can ruin a glasshouse crop. Outbreaks force growers to destroy plantings and disinfect everything, and phytosanitary rules on seed and young plants now shape how material is sourced.

### Border access and entry prices

Fresh tomato trade runs through negotiated market access: an entry price and tariff quota into the European Union, a suspension agreement governing Mexican fruit entering the United States. Because both main flows are regional and regulated, a change in those terms can move prices faster than a bad harvest.

## How are tomatoes produced?

Processing tomatoes are transplanted or direct seeded into drip-irrigated fields, ripen together on determinate plants, and are taken in one machine pass that cuts the vine, shakes the fruit free and sorts it optically. They must reach a factory within hours, where they are washed, chopped, heated to set or break down pectin, screened, evaporated into paste and filled aseptically.

Fresh tomatoes for supermarkets are increasingly grown hydroponically under glass or plastic, in rockwool or coir, trained up strings, pollinated by bumblebees and picked twice a week for most of the year. Open-field fresh crops are staked and picked by hand in repeated passes, often before they are fully ripe so they survive handling.

Fruit picked green is commonly ripened with ethylene before sale, which is one reason field and glasshouse tomatoes taste different even when the variety is similar.

## What are tomatoes used for?

Processing output becomes paste, and paste becomes ketchup, pizza and pasta sauce, soup, juice, and canned diced and whole tomatoes. Peeled and diced lines take different varieties from paste lines, because that fruit has to hold its shape. Fresh tomatoes are eaten raw and cooked, and the premium end of the market has moved to vine, cherry and cocktail types sold on flavor.

Pomace, the skin and seed left after processing, is fed to livestock, pressed for seed oil, or extracted for lycopene, the red pigment sold as a colorant and a supplement.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

Raw tomatoes are mostly water and bruise on the journey, so a factory's catchment is measured in an hour or two of driving. That fixes processing where the crop is: California's Central Valley, Xinjiang, the Po valley and Puglia, Extremadura and the Aegean. Paste is the storable, tradable form, and it is what leaves those regions.

Fresh chains are short and cold, with a few days of slack in the whole system between packing and shelf. Glasshouse production shortens them further by putting the crop next to the city that eats it.

The concentrations that matter are those processing regions, the small number of seed companies that breed the varieties, and the plant-raising nurseries that supply young plants to many growers at once. A seed-borne virus entering at that point reaches a whole industry rather than a single farm.

## Timeline

- 1950s: UC Davis starts work on a machine-harvestable tomato. Plant breeder Jack Hanna and engineer Coby Lorenzen set out to replace hand picking, which decided the shape of the processing industry that followed. (https://www.ucdavis.edu/research/discoveries/agricultural-discoveries/tomato-harvester)
- 1961: A commercial harvester and the VF-145 tomato are released together. A blocky, thick-skinned variety and a machine built for it turned processing tomatoes into an industrial crop within a decade. (https://www.thehenryford.org/collections/explore/articles/contradictory-impacts-mechanizing-californias-tomato-harvest)
- 1994-05: The Flavr Savr tomato is cleared by the FDA. The first genetically engineered whole food approved for sale was a tomato bred to soften slowly, aimed squarely at the shipping problem the fresh trade has always had. (https://www.genome.gov/25520336/online-education-kit-1994-flavr-savr-tomato)
- 2000s: Processing tomato output concentrates in a handful of countries. China's Xinjiang basin scaled up alongside California and southern Europe, so most of the world's paste came to be made in a few places and shipped from them. (https://www.wptc.to/)
- 2012-10: The European Union and Morocco set a tariff quota and entry price for tomatoes. Market access for the largest non-EU supplier of winter tomatoes was fixed by regulation rather than by the market, and the terms still shape European winter prices. (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A32012R0812)
- 2014: Tomato brown rugose fruit virus appears in Israel. A new tobamovirus broke the resistance gene the industry had relied on for decades, and it moves on seed, so it spread through the trade itself. (https://gd.eppo.int/reporting/article-6445)
- 2019: The virus is found across Europe, Asia and North America. Within five years the disease reached most major producing countries and became a regulated quarantine pest, changing how seed and young plants are traded. (https://www.eppo.int/ACTIVITIES/plant_quarantine/A2_list)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most tomatoes

China produced 61.6 million tonnes in 2024, 33% of the world's 188.3 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India was second with 11%. The total combines fresh salad tomatoes with processing tomatoes grown for paste, which are different varieties grown in different places. World output changed +7% over the ten years to 2024.

### what is the difference between processing tomatoes and salad tomatoes

Processing tomatoes are determinate plants that ripen all at once, with thick skins and high solids, and are harvested in a single machine pass for paste and canning. Salad tomatoes are indeterminate, grow all season, and are picked by hand or under glass for appearance and shelf life. The two rarely substitute.

### which country exports the most tomatoes

Mexico led exports of tomatoes (HS 0702) in 2024 with 29% of world export value, ahead of Netherlands (15%), on world trade of $12.1 billion (CEPII BACI). That covers fresh and chilled fruit only, which moves regionally. Tomato paste is traded under a different code.

### where does tomato paste come from

Mostly from a handful of dry, sunny processing regions: California's Central Valley, Xinjiang in China, southern Italy, Spain and Turkey. Paste is made by evaporating crushed tomatoes and filling the concentrate into sterile bags, so it ships at ambient temperature and keeps for a year or more.

### why do supermarket tomatoes have no flavor

Because the fresh trade selects for firmness, uniformity and shelf life, and much of the fruit is picked before it is ripe and gassed with ethylene to color up in transit. Flavor compounds develop on the plant, so fruit that ripens off the vine has less of them, whatever the variety.

### what is tomato brown rugose fruit virus

A tobamovirus first seen on tomatoes in Israel in 2014 that spreads on seed, hands, tools and by plant-to-plant contact. It overcomes the resistance gene bred into most commercial varieties and marks the fruit so it cannot be sold. Control relies on destroying infected plantings and on strict hygiene.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

---

# Where does uranium come from?

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

Uranium comes mainly from the United States, which produced 826 terawatt-hours in 2025, 29% of the world's 2,845 terawatt-hours (Energy Institute). China (17%), France (14%) and Russia (7.7%) follow; the top five together supply 74%. The biggest exporter of uranium ores and concentrates (HS 261210) is Namibia (68% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Uranium, U3O8, NUEXCO restricted spot, was $69.23/lb in July 2026, up 17% from a year earlier (IMF PCPS). Uranium is mined where oxidised groundwater met a chemical trap and dropped its dissolved uranium: the sandstone basins of Kazakhstan, the unconformity deposits of Canada's Athabasca and the calcrete and alaskite bodies of Namibia, none of which are where the reactors are.

*A heavy metal mined as ore, concentrated into yellowcake, then converted and enriched into fuel for nuclear reactors.* Also called: U3O8, yellowcake, uranium oxide, nuclear fuel, enriched uranium.

## Where does uranium come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (terawatt-hours) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 826 | 29% |
| 2 | China | 485 | 17% |
| 3 | France | 390 | 14% |
| 4 | Russia | 219 | 7.7% |
| 5 | South Korea | 185 | 6.5% |
| 6 | Japan | 94.1 | 3.3% |
| 7 | Canada | 84.8 | 3% |
| 8 | Spain | 54.2 | 1.9% |
| 9 | Ukraine | 54.1 | 1.9% |
| 10 | India | 53.8 | 1.9% |
| | Rest of world | 2.91 | 14% |
| | World | 2,845 | 100% |

Source: Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy, Statistical Review 2026.

This page needs an unusual caution before the first number, because the production figures shown here are **not** uranium mining. The United States Geological Survey does not cover uranium in its Mineral Commodity Summaries, so this page uses the Energy Institute's nuclear electricity generation by country as the demand-side picture. In 2025 United States generated 826 terawatt-hours, 29% of the world's 2,845 terawatt-hours (Energy Institute), followed by China (17%), France (14%), Russia (7.7%) and South Korea (6.5%). The top five account for 74% and 79 countries generated nuclear power at all.

Mine production by country is a different list entirely, and this site links rather than republishes it: Kazakhstan is by a wide margin the largest producer, followed by Canada, Namibia, Australia and Uzbekistan, with the World Nuclear Association maintaining the authoritative series. Almost none of those countries operate large reactor fleets, and almost none of the countries in the generation table above mine meaningful quantities of uranium. That mismatch is the whole geopolitical story of the fuel.

The geology divides into three types. Sandstone-hosted roll-front deposits, the Kazakh and much of the American resource, formed where oxygenated groundwater carrying dissolved uranium hit reducing conditions and precipitated; they are low grade but can be mined by in-situ leaching without a pit. Unconformity-related deposits in Canada's Athabasca Basin are extraordinarily high grade, orders of magnitude richer than anything else, and are mined conventionally at great expense because of radiation. Namibia's are large, low-grade, open-pittable bodies.

World nuclear generation changed +1% on the previous year, with new Chinese reactors offsetting closures elsewhere.

## Who exports and imports uranium?

Kazakhstan, Canada, Namibia and Australia mine most uranium; conversion and enrichment are concentrated in Russia, China, France and the United States, and that step is the real chokepoint.

### Exporters of uranium ores and concentrates (HS 261210), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Namibia | $1.1 billion | 68% |
| 2 | Australia | $431.9 million | 27% |
| 3 | Uzbekistan | $46.8 million | 3% |
| 4 | Canada | $20.8 million | 1.3% |
| 5 | Japan | $138,216 | <0.1% |
| 6 | Germany | $37,859 | <0.1% |
| 7 | Netherlands | $32,984 | <0.1% |
| 8 | Italy | $25,465 | <0.1% |
| 9 | United Kingdom | $24,614 | <0.1% |
| 10 | China | $19,504 | <0.1% |
| 11 | Poland | $9,642 | <0.1% |
| 12 | Saudi Arabia | $7,273 | <0.1% |
| 13 | United Arab Emirates | $7,016 | <0.1% |
| 14 | Portugal | $2,251 | <0.1% |
| 15 | South Africa | $2,014 | <0.1% |

### Importers of uranium ores and concentrates (HS 261210), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $803.2 million | 51% |
| 2 | United States | $527.2 million | 33% |
| 3 | France | $151.7 million | 9.6% |
| 4 | Canada | $50.3 million | 3.2% |
| 5 | India | $46.8 million | 3% |
| 6 | Israel | $37,000 | <0.1% |
| 7 | Spain | $31,526 | <0.1% |
| 8 | Saudi Arabia | $27,630 | <0.1% |
| 9 | Austria | $20,793 | <0.1% |
| 10 | Slovakia | $11,021 | <0.1% |
| 11 | Australia | $7,273 | <0.1% |
| 12 | Cyprus | $3,312 | <0.1% |
| 13 | Ireland | $1,182 | <0.1% |
| 14 | United Kingdom | $1,001 | <0.1% |
| 15 | Tanzania | $858 | <0.1% |

### Exporters of natural uranium and its compounds (HS 284410), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kazakhstan | $4.5 billion | 42% |
| 2 | Canada | $3.2 billion | 30% |
| 3 | United States | $964 million | 9% |
| 4 | Namibia | $749.3 million | 7% |
| 5 | Australia | $348.2 million | 3.3% |
| 6 | France | $306.5 million | 2.9% |
| 7 | Niger | $239.6 million | 2.2% |
| 8 | Uzbekistan | $122.4 million | 1.1% |
| 9 | South Africa | $89.3 million | 0.8% |
| 10 | Ukraine | $78.4 million | 0.7% |
| 11 | Russia | $45.3 million | 0.4% |
| 12 | Germany | $5.2 million | <0.1% |
| 13 | Netherlands | $2.2 million | <0.1% |
| 14 | United Arab Emirates | $918,420 | <0.1% |
| 15 | Japan | $889,546 | <0.1% |

### Importers of natural uranium and its compounds (HS 284410), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $2.5 billion | 23% |
| 2 | Russia | $1.9 billion | 17% |
| 3 | United States | $1.6 billion | 15% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $1.3 billion | 12% |
| 5 | France | $949.6 million | 8.9% |
| 6 | United Kingdom | $913.5 million | 8.5% |
| 7 | Canada | $710 million | 6.6% |
| 8 | Germany | $696.6 million | 6.5% |
| 9 | Romania | $153.3 million | 1.4% |
| 10 | South Korea | $50.2 million | 0.5% |
| 11 | Brazil | $35.7 million | 0.3% |
| 12 | Sweden | $4.4 million | <0.1% |
| 13 | South Africa | $2 million | <0.1% |
| 14 | Egypt | $1.7 million | <0.1% |
| 15 | Malaysia | $1.4 million | <0.1% |

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

Namibia was the largest exporter of uranium ores and concentrates (HS 261210) in 2024 with 68% of world export value, ahead of Australia (27%), on world trade of $1.6 billion (CEPII BACI). China was the largest importer with 51%.

That table covers ores and concentrates, which is only the first of four steps, and the later steps are where the real dependence lies. After mining comes conversion into uranium hexafluoride, then enrichment to raise the fissile uranium-235 content from its natural 0.7 percent to the three to five percent a power reactor needs, then fabrication into fuel assemblies. Conversion and enrichment capacity is concentrated in Russia, China, France and the United States, and Russia has historically held a large share of world enrichment services. A country can have uranium and reactors and still be dependent, because the middle of the chain is somewhere else.

## What does uranium cost?

- Uranium, U3O8, NUEXCO restricted spot: $69.23/lb in July 2026; 12-month change +17%; 10-year change +168%; all-time high $136.2/lb in June 2007; real high (2024 US$) $206.2/lb in June 2007 (IMF PCPS).

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

### How it is priced

The series shown is Uranium, U3O8, NUEXCO restricted spot, which was $69.23/lb in July 2026, up 17% from a year earlier (IMF PCPS). Its nominal high was $136.2/lb in June 2007, and in constant dollars the real peak was $206.2/lb in June 2007.

That is a spot price for uranium concentrate, and it describes a minority of the market. Most uranium moves under long-term contracts running three to ten years, signed between utilities and producers at prices that are usually above spot and often escalate with inflation or float within a collar. The spot market is where utilities top up and where traders and financial funds operate, and it is thin enough that a fund buying physical material can move the price meaningfully. Reading the spot price as the cost of nuclear fuel is therefore misleading in both directions.

Fuel cost is also a small share of nuclear generating cost, unlike gas or coal, because a reactor is overwhelmingly a capital expense. A doubling of the uranium price changes the cost of nuclear electricity by only a few percent, which means utilities are relatively insensitive to price and prioritize security of supply over cost. That asymmetry explains why the market can go years with prices below the cost of new mine development, and then move violently when utilities all decide to contract at once.

The other components of the fuel price, conversion, enrichment measured in separative work units, and fabrication, are assessed separately by private services. Enrichment pricing in particular became a major issue after supply from Russia came into question.

## What moves the price of uranium?

### Reactor construction and closures

Demand is set by how many reactors are operating, which changes slowly and politically. Chinese construction has been the main source of growth, while German closures and Japanese restarts after Fukushima moved demand in both directions. A reactor life extension adds twenty years of demand at a stroke.

### Utility contracting cycles

Utilities contract in waves, buying several years of cover at once when they perceive risk. Because most volume moves under long-term contracts, a wave of contracting tightens the market far more than the underlying consumption change would suggest, and the spot price responds sharply.

### Kazakh production decisions

One country produces a very large share of world uranium, largely by in-situ leaching, and its national producer has repeatedly adjusted output to manage the price. Announcements of production discipline or expansion move the market immediately.

### Enrichment and conversion capacity

The middle of the fuel chain is more concentrated than mining. Restrictions on Russian enrichment services forced Western utilities to seek alternatives, raised enrichment prices sharply and indirectly increased uranium demand, because running enrichment plants at lower tails assays consumes more natural uranium.

### Secondary supply

For decades the market was supplied partly from stockpiles, from re-enriched tails and from down-blended weapons material under the Megatons to Megawatts programme. Those sources have largely run out, which is why mine supply now has to cover a much larger share of demand than it did in the 2000s.

### Financial and fund buying

Vehicles that buy and hold physical uranium remove material from the market without consuming it. Because the spot market is thin, this buying has a disproportionate price effect and has become a genuine driver rather than a curiosity.

### Accidents and public policy

Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima each changed reactor construction plans for a generation. Nuclear demand is a political variable more than an economic one, and a single accident anywhere reprices the entire market's long-term outlook.

## How is uranium produced?

In-situ leaching, which now supplies most world production, does not involve a mine in the conventional sense. A solution of water with oxygen and either carbonate or acid is pumped through the ore-bearing sandstone via injection wells, dissolving uranium, and the pregnant solution is recovered through production wells. It is cheap, has a small surface footprint and works only where the geology is permeable and confined.

Conventional mining, used in Canada and Namibia, produces ore that is crushed, ground and leached with sulfuric acid or alkali. In both routes the uranium is recovered from solution by ion exchange or solvent extraction, precipitated, dried and packed as uranium oxide concentrate, the yellow-brown powder called yellowcake.

Yellowcake is then converted to uranium hexafluoride, a compound that becomes a gas at modest temperatures, which is the only practical form for enrichment. Enrichment uses thousands of gas centrifuges in cascade to separate the slightly lighter uranium-235 from uranium-238, raising the fissile content from 0.7 percent to typically three to five percent. The work is measured in separative work units, and the depleted residue, tails, still contains some uranium and is stored.

Enriched uranium hexafluoride is converted to uranium dioxide powder, pressed into pellets, sintered, ground to precise dimensions and loaded into zirconium alloy tubes that are assembled into fuel bundles. Those sit in a reactor for several years. Spent fuel is either stored, or reprocessed to recover uranium and plutonium, which only a few countries do.

## What is uranium used for?

Nuclear electricity generation is essentially the only use of any scale. A reactor converts the heat from fission into steam and then electricity, and a single large reactor produces around a gigawatt continuously, running at high capacity factors regardless of weather. That reliability is the argument for nuclear power in a decarbonising grid, and it is why several countries that had planned to phase out reactors have reversed course.

Naval propulsion is the second use: submarines and aircraft carriers use highly enriched fuel and can run for years without refuelling. Research reactors produce neutrons for materials science and, importantly, for medical isotopes; molybdenum-99, the parent of the technetium used in tens of millions of diagnostic scans a year, comes from a small number of research reactors, and shortages when they shut for maintenance are a recurring problem in nuclear medicine.

Depleted uranium, the tails left after enrichment, is extremely dense and is used for radiation shielding, aircraft counterweights and armour-piercing munitions. Uranium's historical use in ceramic glazes and glass is long discontinued.

The demand that is not yet real but shapes investment is small modular reactors. If they are deployed at scale they would raise uranium demand and, in some designs, require higher enrichment levels than today's fleet, which would require new enrichment capacity.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is mine, conversion, enrichment, fabrication, reactor, and its narrow point is not the ore. Uranium is reasonably abundant and reserves are held across many countries, but conversion and enrichment are concentrated in a handful of facilities worldwide. Russia has historically supplied a large share of world enrichment services and a meaningful share of conversion, and restrictions on that supply after 2022 forced Western utilities into a scramble for alternatives that has lasted years, because building centrifuge capacity is slow and subject to non-proliferation controls.

Non-proliferation is itself a structural feature rather than a regulatory overlay. Enrichment technology is dual-use, safeguarded by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and cannot simply be bought and built. That makes the enrichment bottleneck far more durable than an ordinary industrial one.

Physical logistics are specialized but not fragile: yellowcake moves in drums in ordinary containers, uranium hexafluoride in certified cylinders, and fresh fuel assemblies by road and sea under security escort. The shipments are small in tonnage compared with any other energy commodity, which is the point: a reactor's annual fuel is a few truckloads, against trainloads of coal every day.

The genuine vulnerability is the mismatch this page opened with. Countries that generate nuclear power mostly do not mine uranium, and countries that mine it mostly do not use it. Combined with a concentrated middle of the chain, that makes nuclear fuel supply a matter of diplomacy and long-term contracting rather than of spot markets.

## Key companies

- Kazatomprom: miner, Kazakhstan, listed (KAP)
- Cameco: miner, converter and fuel fabricator, Canada, listed (CCO)
- Orano: miner, converter and enricher, France
- Urenco: enricher, United Kingdom
- Rosatom: miner, enricher and reactor builder, Russia
- NAC Kazatomprom joint ventures with Uranium One: miner, Kazakhstan

## Timeline

- 1942-12: The first self-sustaining chain reaction. Demonstrating controlled fission created the demand for uranium as a fuel rather than a curiosity and began the state-directed procurement that shaped the industry for decades. (https://world-nuclear.org)
- 1954-06: The first reactor supplies electricity to a grid. Nuclear power moved from weapons programme to utility business, and civil uranium demand began to grow independently of military procurement. (https://world-nuclear.org)
- 1979-03: Three Mile Island halts American reactor orders. The accident ended new United States reactor construction for three decades and permanently changed how nuclear risk was priced politically. (https://world-nuclear.org)
- 1986-04: Chernobyl reshapes nuclear policy worldwide. The worst reactor accident on record led several countries to abandon or freeze nuclear programmes, and uranium demand growth stalled for a generation. (https://world-nuclear.org)
- 1993-02: The Megatons to Megawatts agreement begins. Down-blending Russian weapons-grade uranium into reactor fuel supplied a large share of world demand for two decades, suppressing prices and discouraging mine investment. (https://world-nuclear.org)
- 2007-06: Uranium spikes after the Cigar Lake flood. Flooding at a very high-grade Canadian mine, combined with fund buying in a thin market, took the spot price to its nominal record before it collapsed. (https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS)
- 2011-03: Fukushima shuts the Japanese fleet. Japan idled all its reactors and Germany accelerated its phase-out, removing a large block of demand and starting a decade of prices below the cost of new mine supply. (https://world-nuclear.org)
- 2013-12: Megatons to Megawatts ends. The exhaustion of down-blended weapons material removed a secondary supply source that had covered a substantial share of world demand, shifting the burden back to mines. (https://world-nuclear.org)
- 2021-08: Physical funds begin removing spot material. Vehicles buying and holding uranium took material out of a thin spot market without consuming it, marking the start of a sustained price recovery. (https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS)
- 2022-03: Russian enrichment supply comes into question. Sanctions and self-sanctioning after the invasion of Ukraine put a large share of world enrichment services at risk, raised enrichment prices sharply and indirectly increased demand for natural uranium. (https://world-nuclear.org)
- 2024-05: The United States bans Russian enriched uranium imports. Legislation phasing out imports forced utilities to secure alternative enrichment and conversion, tightening the most concentrated part of the fuel chain. (https://www.energy.gov/ne/nuclear-fuel-supply)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most uranium

Kazakhstan, by a wide margin, followed by Canada, Namibia, Australia and Uzbekistan. This site does not republish those figures because the United States Geological Survey does not cover uranium; the World Nuclear Association maintains the authoritative series and is linked from this page.

### which country generates the most nuclear electricity

United States generated 826 terawatt-hours in 2025, 29% of the world's 2,845 terawatt-hours (Energy Institute). China was second with 17%. Note that the countries generating nuclear power are largely not the countries mining uranium.

### why does the uranium price not affect electricity prices much

Because a nuclear plant is overwhelmingly a capital cost. Fuel is a small share of generating cost, so doubling the uranium price changes the cost of nuclear electricity by only a few percent. Utilities therefore prioritize security of supply over price, which shapes how the market behaves.

### what is enrichment and why does it matter

Natural uranium is 0.7 percent fissile uranium-235; a power reactor needs three to five percent, so the gas uranium hexafluoride is spun in centrifuge cascades to concentrate it. Enrichment capacity is far more concentrated than mining and is controlled for non-proliferation reasons, making it the real bottleneck in the fuel chain.

### is the uranium spot price what utilities pay

Usually not. Most uranium moves under long-term contracts of three to ten years, often above spot and with escalation or price collars. The spot market is thin, used for topping up and by financial funds, so it can move sharply without reflecting what reactors actually paid.

### how is uranium mined

Most now comes from in-situ leaching, where a solution is pumped through permeable sandstone to dissolve uranium and recovered through wells, with no pit at all. Conventional open-pit and underground mining is used in Canada and Namibia, and Canadian Athabasca ore is orders of magnitude higher grade than anything else.

### what is uranium used for besides power

Naval propulsion for submarines and carriers, research reactors that produce neutrons for science and for medical isotopes such as the molybdenum-99 used in diagnostic scans, and, as depleted uranium left over from enrichment, radiation shielding, aircraft counterweights and armour-piercing munitions.

## Sources

- Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy, Statistical Review 2026. License: Free to use with attribution (Energy Institute terms). https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review
- 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
- IMF Primary Commodity Price System (PCPS), 2026-08-06, fetched 6 September 2026. License: © International Monetary Fund. All rights reserved (IMF terms of use). https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS

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

---

# Where does urea come from?

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

The biggest exporter of urea (HS 310210) is Russia (16% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Urea, FOB Middle East, was $390/t in August 2026, down 23% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Urea is made from natural gas and air, so the plants sit wherever gas is cheap and hard to export any other way — the Persian Gulf, North Africa, Russia, Trinidad and Nigeria — and the finished granules travel the world instead of the gas.

*The main nitrogen fertilizer, made by combining ammonia with carbon dioxide; ammonia itself is made from natural gas.* Also called: nitrogen fertilizer, nitrogenous fertilizer, granular urea, prilled urea.

## Who exports and imports urea?

Urea plants sit where natural gas is cheap, so Russia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran dominate exports while India and Brazil dominate imports.

### Exporters of mineral or chemical fertilizers, nitrogenous (HS 3102), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Russia | $4.9 billion | 14% |
| 2 | China | $3.3 billion | 9.6% |
| 3 | Oman | $2.7 billion | 7.9% |
| 4 | Qatar | $1.8 billion | 5.2% |
| 5 | Egypt | $1.7 billion | 4.9% |
| 6 | Saudi Arabia | $1.7 billion | 4.8% |
| 7 | Netherlands | $1.6 billion | 4.6% |
| 8 | United States | $1.3 billion | 3.7% |
| 9 | Algeria | $1 billion | 3% |
| 10 | Nigeria | $1 billion | 2.9% |
| 11 | Germany | $959.1 million | 2.8% |
| 12 | Belgium | $929.5 million | 2.7% |
| 13 | United Arab Emirates | $840.3 million | 2.4% |
| 14 | Malaysia | $766.6 million | 2.2% |
| 15 | Poland | $710.9 million | 2.1% |

### Importers of mineral or chemical fertilizers, nitrogenous (HS 3102), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | $4.5 billion | 13% |
| 2 | United States | $3.2 billion | 9.3% |
| 3 | India | $2.4 billion | 7.1% |
| 4 | Australia | $1.8 billion | 5.1% |
| 5 | France | $1.5 billion | 4.3% |
| 6 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $1.1 billion | 3.1% |
| 7 | Thailand | $1 billion | 3% |
| 8 | Germany | $908.6 million | 2.6% |
| 9 | Canada | $845.1 million | 2.5% |
| 10 | Mexico | $816.3 million | 2.4% |
| 11 | United Kingdom | $743.8 million | 2.2% |
| 12 | Poland | $623 million | 1.8% |
| 13 | Argentina | $531.7 million | 1.5% |
| 14 | Spain | $510.2 million | 1.5% |
| 15 | Romania | $489.6 million | 1.4% |

### Exporters of urea, whether or not in aqueous solution (HS 310210), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Russia | $3.2 billion | 16% |
| 2 | Oman | $2.7 billion | 13% |
| 3 | Qatar | $1.8 billion | 8.8% |
| 4 | Saudi Arabia | $1.6 billion | 8% |
| 5 | Egypt | $1.5 billion | 7.5% |
| 6 | Algeria | $1 billion | 5% |
| 7 | Nigeria | $974.9 million | 4.8% |
| 8 | United Arab Emirates | $790.1 million | 3.9% |
| 9 | Malaysia | $756.5 million | 3.7% |
| 10 | Indonesia | $567.3 million | 2.8% |
| 11 | Germany | $489.8 million | 2.4% |
| 12 | United States | $468.4 million | 2.3% |
| 13 | Brunei | $395.3 million | 1.9% |
| 14 | Netherlands | $363.5 million | 1.8% |
| 15 | Poland | $332.9 million | 1.6% |

### Importers of urea, whether or not in aqueous solution (HS 310210), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brazil | $2.9 billion | 14% |
| 2 | India | $2.1 billion | 10% |
| 3 | United States | $1.9 billion | 9.2% |
| 4 | Australia | $1.4 billion | 7% |
| 5 | Thailand | $921.8 million | 4.5% |
| 6 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $880.7 million | 4.3% |
| 7 | France | $609.7 million | 3% |
| 8 | Mexico | $564.4 million | 2.8% |
| 9 | Canada | $531.5 million | 2.6% |
| 10 | Poland | $414.6 million | 2% |
| 11 | Argentina | $389.9 million | 1.9% |
| 12 | Italy | $357.5 million | 1.7% |
| 13 | Spain | $339.4 million | 1.7% |
| 14 | South Africa | $324 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | Philippines | $323.3 million | 1.6% |

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

In 2024 the largest exporter of urea (HS 310210) was Russia, with $3.2 billion, or 16% of the world's $20.5 billion of export value (CEPII BACI), ahead of Oman (13%), Qatar (8.8%), Saudi Arabia (8%) and Egypt (7.5%). Between them the Persian Gulf and North Africa supply most of what crosses a border. On the buying side Brazil took $2.9 billion, 14% of the world's $20.5 billion of imports, followed by India (10%), United States (9.2%) and Australia (7%).

Widening from urea to all nitrogenous fertilizers under HS 3102, which adds ammonium nitrate, ammonium sulfate, calcium ammonium nitrate and UAN solution, the trade was worth $34.5 billion in 2024. Russia led with 14%, then China (9.6%) and Oman (7.9%), while Brazil (13%) and United States (9.3%) were the largest importers. The wider heading brings in European producers who make nitrate fertilizers for their own continent, which is why the two tables rank differently. Note also that the import table counts finished urea only: India and the United States both import ammonia as well, which does not appear here at all.


## What does urea cost?

- Urea, FOB Middle East: $390/t in August 2026; 12-month change -23%; 10-year change +109%; all-time high $925/t in April 2022; real high (2024 US$) $1,916/t in January 1974 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

Urea is the most standardized and most liquid fertilizer in the world, and it comes closest to trading like a commodity rather than a specialty. It is one product, 46% nitrogen, made to the same specification everywhere, easy to store and cheap to handle, so cargoes are genuinely fungible between origins. Prices are published as weekly assessments by reporting agencies such as Argus, Profercy, CRU and Fertilizer Week, built from reported deals, bids and offers at each loading point, and a cash-settled swap market settled against those assessments gives producers, traders and distributors a way to hedge. Those swaps are the most active fertilizer derivatives there are, though they remain small next to the physical trade.

The series charted here is Urea, FOB Middle East. In August 2026 it stood at $390/t, down 23% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The record monthly average is $925/t, set in April 2022 as European gas prices and the invasion of Ukraine hit the market together; measured against US consumer prices the real high was much earlier, $1,916/t in January 1974, during the first oil shock. The lowest month in a series that begins in 1960 was $16/t in January 1971. FOB means the granules loaded onto the ship at the exporting berth; a CFR quote at Brazil, India or New Orleans is the same product with ocean freight, insurance and discharge added, and the difference between the two is a freight number rather than a fertilizer one.

Two more conventions matter when reading a quote. The first is physical form. Prilled urea is made by dropping molten urea down a tower so it solidifies into small beads, and granular urea is built up in layers in a drum into larger, harder particles that survive bulk blending and spread further from a mechanical spreader. They are priced separately, and India has traditionally bought prilled while the Americas buy granular. The second is that the single largest recurring event in the market is an Indian import tender: the state trading agencies announce a purchase, the offers are published, and the awarded price resets assessments worldwide within days. Contracts otherwise tend to be short, a cargo or a season, because the product is standard and buyers see little reason to lock in.


## What moves the price of urea?

### Natural gas prices and the marginal plant

Gas is the feedstock and the fuel, so the cost curve of the industry is a map of gas prices. Producers in the Persian Gulf, North Africa and Russia buy gas at regulated or netback prices far below European levels, while European plants pay the traded price at the Dutch hub. That makes Europe the marginal producer: when gas there rises far enough, European ammonia and urea plants cut runs or close, Europe imports more, and the world price is pulled up to the level that keeps enough of that expensive capacity running.

### Indian tenders and subsidy policy

India is among the largest importers and buys through periodic state tenders rather than continuous purchasing, so its demand arrives in blocks. Domestic urea is sold to farmers at a controlled price with the difference met by subsidy, which means the retail signal never reaches the farmer and Indian consumption is stable while Indian import timing is not. A large tender announced into a thin market lifts assessments worldwide, and a long absence of tenders lets them drift down just as quickly.

### Chinese export policy and the coal link

China makes most of its ammonia from coal rather than gas, so its production costs move with thermal coal and with power rationing rather than with the gas market. It is also a large swing exporter, and Beijing regulates that flow through export inspection requirements and seasonal windows in order to protect domestic supply and hold down farm costs. When Chinese tonnes are withheld, buyers in Australia, Southeast Asia and Latin America must bid for Middle Eastern product instead, and the whole curve moves.

### Application seasons in the northern hemisphere

Nitrogen is applied in a few short windows: spring top-dressing on European and Chinese cereals, pre-plant and side-dress on North American corn, and the Indian kharif and rabi seasons. Because urea cannot be stored indefinitely without caking and because storage costs money, buyers try to arrive just before the window opens, and freight and port capacity bind at the same moment everywhere. That seasonality gives the market a repeating rhythm on top of the underlying gas and crop signals.

### Crop prices and planted area

Nitrogen is the least deferrable nutrient, because most soils hold little of it in plant-available form and a skipped application costs yield in the same season. Demand is therefore steadier than for phosphate, but it is not immune. High corn prices raise both planted area and the rate applied per hectare, since corn is the most nitrogen-hungry major crop; low grain prices trim the rate. The ratio between the urea price and the corn price is the number farm agronomists actually watch.

### Sanctions, freight and chokepoints

Russia is among the largest exporters, so sanctions, payment friction and shipping restrictions redirect a large volume without destroying it, opening regional price gaps that would otherwise be arbitraged away. Physical geography compounds this: cargoes from the Persian Gulf pass Hormuz, and those bound for Europe and the Atlantic then pass Bab el-Mandeb and Suez. Diversions around southern Africa add weeks of freight to a low-value bulk cargo, which shows up directly in delivered prices in Brazil and Europe.

### Waves of new capacity

Urea plants are built in a few very large units rather than many small ones, and each takes years from decision to first product. Investment decisions cluster after price spikes, so new capacity in Nigeria, Russia, the United States and the Gulf tends to arrive together several years later, often into a market that no longer needs it. That lag between the signal and the supply is why the series shows long flat stretches punctuated by violent spikes rather than a smooth cycle.

### Carbon policy and low-carbon ammonia

Ammonia production is one of the largest industrial sources of carbon dioxide, because the reformer releases a molecule of it for every batch of hydrogen. Border carbon adjustment in the European Union prices the emissions embodied in imported fertilizer, which changes the relative cost of a Russian, Egyptian or European tonne without changing anyone's plant. Projects that capture the reformer's carbon dioxide or make hydrogen by electrolysis are being built on the strength of those rules rather than on their own costs.

## How is urea produced?

The front end of a urea plant makes hydrogen. Natural gas is desulfurized and mixed with steam over a nickel catalyst at high temperature, which strips hydrogen from the methane and leaves carbon monoxide; a shift reactor converts that carbon monoxide with more steam into carbon dioxide and yet more hydrogen. The carbon dioxide is scrubbed out and set aside, because it will be needed again. Air is introduced to supply nitrogen, traces of remaining oxides are removed, and the cleaned mixture of nitrogen and hydrogen is compressed to a few hundred bar and circulated over an iron catalyst in the synthesis loop, where a fraction converts to ammonia on each pass and is condensed out as a liquid.

Urea synthesis then puts the reformer's two waste streams back together. Liquid ammonia and the recovered carbon dioxide are pumped into a reactor at high pressure, where they combine into ammonium carbamate, which dehydrates to urea and water. Unconverted carbamate is stripped out and recycled, and the urea solution is concentrated by evaporation. From there the plant chooses a shape: molten urea sprayed at the top of a tall prilling tower falls and solidifies into small beads, while a granulation plant sprays it onto seed particles tumbling in a drum or fluidized bed to build larger, harder granules. Granules survive long-distance bulk handling and blending better, which is why most new plants build them.

The finished product is screened, cooled, treated with an anti-caking agent and stored in large flat warehouses before being loaded to ship. Two chemical facts follow it into the field. Urea is hygroscopic, so it absorbs moisture and cakes if stored badly. And once spread, it is converted by the soil enzyme urease into ammonium, a step that releases ammonia gas at the surface and can lose a meaningful share of the nitrogen if the fertilizer is not incorporated or rained in; urease inhibitors and polymer coatings are sold to slow that loss. The same base chemistry supports the sister products: ammonia reacted with nitric acid gives ammonium nitrate, and a blend of urea and ammonium nitrate in water gives UAN, a liquid that can be sprayed.


## What is urea used for?

Most urea is spread on fields. It is the dominant solid nitrogen fertilizer worldwide because it carries more nitrogen per tonne than any alternative, which makes it the cheapest form to ship and to spread, and because it suits almost every crop and soil. Nitrogen is the nutrient applied in the largest volume of the three, and urea is the principal product carrying it. Cereals take the largest part, with rice, wheat and corn between them accounting for most world nitrogen use, and sugar cane, oil palm and cotton adding significantly in the tropics.

The industrial uses are small in tonnage but visible in daily life. The largest is diesel exhaust fluid, a solution of about a third urea in demineralized water that is injected into the exhaust of diesel engines so that ammonia can reduce nitrogen oxides to nitrogen and water; tightening vehicle emission rules have made this a fast-growing outlet. Urea is also the nitrogen half of urea-formaldehyde and melamine-formaldehyde resins, the glues that hold together particleboard, medium-density fiberboard and much interior [plywood](/commodities/plywood/). It is used as a protein substitute in ruminant feed, as a de-icer that does not corrode airport concrete, and as a humectant in skin creams and pharmaceuticals.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is short: gas in at one end of a single site, bagged or bulk granules out at the other, with a jetty attached. Because ammonia is toxic and expensive to move under refrigeration, the industry prefers to convert it to urea at the plant rather than ship it, which is why merchant ammonia trade is small next to urea trade. The consequence is that a handful of coastal complexes account for most exportable supply: Ruwais and Sohar on the Gulf of Oman, Ras Laffan and Mesaieed in Qatar, Jubail in Saudi Arabia, Damietta and Ain Sokhna in Egypt, Arzew in Algeria, Onne in Nigeria, Point Lisas in Trinidad and the Baltic and Black Sea terminals serving Russian plants.

Cargoes move in Handysize and Supramax bulk carriers to a small set of discharge markets. Brazil takes fertilizer through Paranaguá, Santos and São Francisco do Sul before a long inland haul; the United States discharges at New Orleans and distributes by barge up the Mississippi and Ohio to river terminals, so American nitrogen prices are quoted at NOLA and at the inland terminals separately; India spreads discharge across a dozen ports on both coasts; Australia and Southeast Asia buy directly from the Gulf. Bagging often happens at the destination rather than the origin, because bags take more space than bulk.

The vulnerabilities are gas supply, geography and law. A country that exports urea because its gas is cheap stops exporting the moment domestic power demand or a field decline takes that gas away, which has idled Egyptian and Trinidadian capacity in the past without any change in fertilizer demand. Every Gulf cargo passes Hormuz, and those bound for Europe and the Atlantic pass Bab el-Mandeb and Suez as well, so a Red Sea diversion adds weeks to the route at the season when European and American buyers need product. Sanctions on a large exporter do not remove tonnes from the world but do force them onto longer voyages to different buyers. And low water on the Mississippi can strand American nitrogen at the coast during the spring application window, when it is least replaceable.


## Key companies

- Yara International: ammonia and nitrogen fertilizer producer, Norway, listed (YAR)
- CF Industries Holdings: ammonia, urea and UAN producer, United States, listed (CF)
- Nutrien: nitrogen and potash producer and crop input retailer, Canada, listed (NTR)
- Qatar Fertiliser Company (QAFCO): ammonia and urea producer, Qatar
- EuroChem Group: nitrogen, phosphate and potash producer, Switzerland
- Dangote Fertiliser: granulated urea producer, Nigeria

## Timeline

- 1828-02: Wöhler makes urea from inorganic salts. The synthesis broke the idea that organic compounds needed a living source and began organic chemistry, though the fertilizer industry was still a century away. (https://www.sciencehistory.org/education/scientific-biographies/justus-von-liebig-and-friedrich-wohler/)
- 1913-09: BASF starts the first ammonia plant at Oppau. The world's first industrial-scale ammonia synthesis began operating on 9 September 1913, making nitrogen fertilizer possible at scale for the first time. (https://www.basf.com/global/en/who-we-are/history/Carl-Bosch)
- 1921-09: The Oppau silo explosion. A blast at the same site on 21 September 1921 killed more than 500 people and set the safety rules that still govern how nitrogen fertilizer is stored. (https://www.basf.com/global/en/who-we-are/history/Oppau1921)
- 2021-06: India begins commercial production of nano urea. IFFCO started selling a liquid nano formulation intended to displace part of India's conventional urea consumption and its import bill. (https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/business/iffco-begins-commercial-production-of-nano-urea-liquid-264372)
- 2021-09: Yara curtails European ammonia output. On 17 September 2021 the largest European producer cut about 40% of its ammonia capacity because gas prices had made production uneconomic, the first clear sign of the energy crisis reaching fertilizer. (https://www.yara.com/corporate-releases/yara-curtails-ammonia-production-due-to-increased-natural-gas-prices/)
- 2021-10: China imposes export inspection on urea. A customs measure effective 15 October 2021 required inspection of urea shipments, slowing exports from the largest supplier and tightening the world market into 2022. (https://globaltradealert.org/intervention/100224)
- 2022-03: Dangote commissions Africa's largest urea plant. A 3 million t per year granulated urea complex at Lekki was unveiled in March 2022, turning Nigeria into a significant exporter just as prices peaked. (https://fertiliser.dangote.com/about-us/)
- 2022-08: European ammonia curtailment deepens. On 25 August 2022 Yara cut European ammonia utilization to about 35% of capacity, idling millions of tonnes of finished product and forcing Europe to import nitrogen. (https://www.yara.com/corporate-releases/yara-implements-further-production-curtailments-in-europe/)
- 2024-06: Egyptian fertilizer plants halt on gas shortages. Government gas cuts during a heat wave stopped several Mediterranean urea exporters, showing that gas-linked supply is fragile outside Europe too. (https://egyptianstreets.com/2024/07/03/egypts-fertilizer-producers-halt-operations-amid-gas-crisis/)
- 2025-05: European Parliament approves tariffs on Russian and Belarusian fertilizer. Duties adopted in May 2025 begin at a modest rate and escalate over several years, gradually walling Russian urea out of the European market. (https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20250515IPR28464/parliament-approves-new-tariffs-on-russian-and-belarussian-agricultural-goods)
- 2026-05: Strait of Hormuz disruption lifts fertilizer prices. The World Bank reported that export disruptions in the Gulf pushed its fertilizer price index to its highest since 2022, with urea rising most because Gulf plants supply so much of the traded market. (https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/opendata/fertilizer-prices-surge-as-strait-of-hormuz-disruptions-tighten-)
- 2026-08: Groundbreaking on a large low-carbon ammonia plant. CF Industries and its partners broke ground on 26 August 2026 on a US Gulf Coast plant designed to capture most of its carbon dioxide, the first large test of whether carbon rules reshape where nitrogen is made. (https://www.cfindustries.com/newsroom/2026/blue-point-groundbreaking)

## Frequently asked questions

### Where does urea come from?

From natural gas and air. Gas is reformed to make hydrogen, which is combined with nitrogen from the air to make ammonia, and the ammonia is then reacted with carbon dioxide from the same plant to make urea. Plants sit where gas is cheap: in 2024 Russia led exports with 16%, ahead of Oman and Qatar (CEPII BACI).

### Which country produces the most urea?

No open dataset ranks countries by urea output, because the industry association that collects it publishes under license. Exports are the best public proxy: Russia shipped 16% of the world's $20.5 billion of urea export value in 2024 (CEPII BACI). China and India produce very large volumes that are consumed at home, so both rank far lower on exports than on production.

### Which country exports the most urea?

Russia was the largest exporter of urea (HS 310210) in 2024, with $3.2 billion, 16% of the world's $20.5 billion (CEPII BACI). Oman (13%), Qatar (8.8%) and Saudi Arabia (8%) follow. The exporters are gas producers rather than large farming countries, because urea is a way to monetize stranded natural gas.

### Who imports the most urea?

Brazil was the largest importer in 2024, taking $2.9 billion, or 14% of the world's $20.5 billion of imports (CEPII BACI), ahead of India (10%), United States (9.2%) and Australia (7%). Large arable areas with little cheap gas of their own dominate the buying side.

### Why is urea linked to the natural gas price?

Because gas is both the feedstock and the fuel for making ammonia, the intermediate from which urea is made, and it is the largest single element of cash cost. European plants pay traded gas prices and are the marginal producers, so when gas spikes they cut output and Europe imports instead. The urea benchmark hit $925/t in April 2022 for exactly that reason (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### What is the price of urea?

This site shows monthly averages, not live quotes. The Urea, FOB Middle East assessment was $390/t in August 2026, down 23% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The record monthly average was $925/t in April 2022, and the lowest in a series starting in 1960 was $16/t in January 1971. Prices are agency assessments, not exchange settlements.

### What is urea used for?

Mostly as fertilizer. Urea is 46% nitrogen, the highest of any solid fertilizer, which makes it the cheapest nitrogen to ship and to spread, and cereals take the largest part. Industrial uses are smaller but visible: diesel exhaust fluid for cutting vehicle emissions, urea-formaldehyde and melamine resins that glue wood panels together, protein supplement in ruminant feed, runway de-icer and skin creams.

### What is the Haber-Bosch process?

It is the industrial reaction that combines nitrogen from the air with hydrogen to make ammonia, run at high pressure and temperature over an iron catalyst. Almost all the hydrogen comes from steam reforming natural gas. Ammonia is then reacted with carbon dioxide to make urea. The process is why nitrogen fertilizer exists at all, and why its price tracks energy: urea averaged $390/t in August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

### What is the difference between prilled and granular urea?

Both are 46% nitrogen but they are shaped differently. Prilled urea is formed by dropping molten urea down a tower, giving small, softer beads. Granular urea is built up in layers in a drum, giving larger, harder particles that survive bulk handling and blending and spread further from a machine. They are assessed separately: the Urea, FOB Middle East series was $390/t in August 2026 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

## Sources

- 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 2026-09-06. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where does urea come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/urea/.

---

# Where does vanilla come from?

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

Vanilla comes mainly from Madagascar, which produced 3,090 tonnes in 2024, 43% of the world's 7,115 tonnes (FAOSTAT). Indonesia (21%), Mexico (7.2%) and Papua New Guinea (6.9%) follow; the top five together supply 85%. The biggest exporter of vanilla (HS 0905) is Madagascar (60% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Vanilla is a climbing orchid whose natural pollinators live only in the Americas, so everywhere else every flower must be pollinated by hand, and the crop settled in tropical islands where labor was abundant and colonial shipping routes already ran.

*The cured seed pod of a climbing orchid, hand-pollinated and cured over months; the second most expensive spice.* Also called: vanilla beans, vanilla pods, bourbon vanilla.

## Where does vanilla come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Madagascar | 3,090 | 43% |
| 2 | Indonesia | 1,526 | 21% |
| 3 | Mexico | 510 | 7.2% |
| 4 | Papua New Guinea | 493 | 6.9% |
| 5 | China | 435 | 6.1% |
| 6 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 407 | 5.7% |
| 7 | Comoros | 203 | 2.9% |
| 8 | Tonga | 195 | 2.7% |
| 9 | Uganda | 183 | 2.6% |
| 10 | French Polynesia | 24.4 | 0.3% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 0.7% |
| | World | 7,115 | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 Madagascar produced 3,090 tonnes, 43% of the world's 7,115 tonnes (FAOSTAT). Indonesia followed with 21%, then Mexico (7.2%), Papua New Guinea (6.9%) and China (6.1%). The top five account for 85%, 15 countries reported output and 0.7% came from outside the top ten. World production changed -3% over the ten years to 2024 and -1% on the previous year.

The world crop is measured in thousands of tonnes, not millions, which makes vanilla one of the smallest commodities on this site by weight and one of the largest by value per kilogram. Most vanilla flavor is not this crop at all: it is synthetic vanillin, made from wood lignin or petrochemical guaiacol.

Madagascar's crop is concentrated in the SAVA region on the northeast coast, around Sambava, Antalaha, Vohemar and Andapa. Indonesia grows a large crop cured to a different standard and sold mostly for extraction. Mexico is the plant's botanical home, and Uganda and Papua New Guinea have added supply. That concentration in a cyclone corridor is the market's basic fragility.


## Who exports and imports vanilla?

### Exporters of vanilla (HS 0905), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Madagascar | $278.5 million | 60% |
| 2 | France | $34.9 million | 7.6% |
| 3 | Uganda | $21.3 million | 4.6% |
| 4 | Germany | $17 million | 3.7% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $16.8 million | 3.6% |
| 6 | Indonesia | $14.3 million | 3.1% |
| 7 | Canada | $12.6 million | 2.7% |
| 8 | United States | $8.9 million | 1.9% |
| 9 | Papua New Guinea | $7.2 million | 1.6% |
| 10 | French Polynesia | $5.6 million | 1.2% |
| 11 | Poland | $4.7 million | 1% |
| 12 | United Kingdom | $3.4 million | 0.7% |
| 13 | Switzerland | $3.1 million | 0.7% |
| 14 | India | $2.6 million | 0.6% |
| 15 | Mauritius | $2.6 million | 0.6% |

### Importers of vanilla (HS 0905), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $138.9 million | 30% |
| 2 | France | $119.8 million | 26% |
| 3 | Germany | $38.1 million | 8.3% |
| 4 | Canada | $29.2 million | 6.3% |
| 5 | Netherlands | $21.5 million | 4.6% |
| 6 | Switzerland | $10.2 million | 2.2% |
| 7 | Italy | $9.3 million | 2% |
| 8 | Japan | $9.1 million | 2% |
| 9 | United Kingdom | $8.8 million | 1.9% |
| 10 | Denmark | $8 million | 1.7% |
| 11 | Poland | $5.5 million | 1.2% |
| 12 | Australia | $4.5 million | 1% |
| 13 | Belgium | $4.3 million | 0.9% |
| 14 | Austria | $3.9 million | 0.8% |
| 15 | South Korea | $3.2 million | 0.7% |

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

Madagascar was the largest exporter of vanilla (HS 0905) in 2024 with 60% of world export value, ahead of France (7.6%), on world trade of $461.8 million (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 30%.

Madagascar's share of export value runs well ahead of its share of production because it cures and sells nearly all of its beans as high-grade whole vanilla, while other origins sell into cheaper extraction channels or consume at home. The gap is a quality and grading gap, not a volume one.

The buyers are flavor houses and extractors rather than food companies, which is why France sits so high in the import table and why France appears as an exporter. They import cured beans, extract them, and export flavor rather than pods.


## What does vanilla cost?

### How it is priced

There is no futures market for vanilla and no free public benchmark price, so this site quotes none. Beans are sold per kilogram under negotiated contracts between Malagasy exporters and importers or flavor houses, priced on grade: bean length, moisture, appearance, flexibility and vanillin content. Private trade circulars and importers' market letters are the only visible references.

Madagascar's government has intervened directly, setting minimum export prices by decree, licensing exporters and requiring proceeds to be repatriated, then loosening those rules when unsold stocks built up. Grade dispersion is extreme: a long, supple, high-vanillin gourmet bean and a short, split, early-picked bean are the same crop at very different prices.


## What moves the price of vanilla?

### Cyclones in Madagascar

The SAVA region sits in the southwest Indian Ocean cyclone track. A landfall during flowering or bean fill destroys the season and damages the vines and shade trees that carry the next several seasons, so one storm affects years of supply rather than one harvest.

### Synthetic vanillin

Most vanilla flavor is synthetic, made from lignin or guaiacol at a small fraction of the cost of cured beans. When bean prices rise, manufacturers reformulate toward synthetic or fermentation-derived vanillin, and they do not always switch back, which caps how far and how long bean prices can hold.

### Theft and early picking

Beans are valuable enough per kilogram to be stolen off the vine, so growers guard plots at night and often pick before maturity. Immature beans cure poorly and yield less vanillin, so a security problem shows up months later as a quality problem across a whole season's crop.

### The planting lag

A vanilla vine takes about three years from cutting to first flowering. Vines planted in response to a high price bear only after that price has passed, so supply arrives late and in waves, and gluts follow shortages with a lag no grower can trade around.

### Export rules and licensing

Madagascar has used minimum export prices, export licensing and currency repatriation requirements to manage the trade. Those rules decide who can ship and when beans move, so a policy change can hold a crop in the country or release it, independently of what the harvest was.

## How is vanilla produced?

Vanilla planifolia is a climbing orchid grown on living support trees under partial shade, propagated from cuttings rather than seed and flowering from about its third year. Each flower opens for less than a day, and outside the Americas no insect pollinates it, so a worker must lift the flap between anther and stigma by hand and press them together.

Green pods develop on the vine for eight to nine months. They are picked one at a time as the tip begins to yellow, which means walking the plot repeatedly rather than harvesting in one pass, and the picking decision is where quality is won or lost.

Curing then takes months. Beans are killed in hot water or by sun or oven heat, sweated in insulated boxes overnight and sunned by day for weeks, slow-dried, and finally conditioned in closed boxes while the aroma develops. Vanillin is released from a glucoside during curing, and roughly five parts of green bean give one part cured. Beans are graded last, by length, moisture and appearance.


## What is vanilla used for?

Cured beans are sold whole to bakers and premium manufacturers, or extracted with ethanol and water into extract, paste and powder for ice cream, bakery, confectionery, dairy, beverages and perfumery. In the United States a legal standard of identity sets a minimum bean content per gallon and a minimum alcohol content for anything labeled vanilla extract, which is why "vanilla flavor" and "vanilla extract" are different products.

By-products matter at these prices. Spent beans left after extraction are dried and ground into vanilla powder or sold as decorative exhausted pods, and the seeds are recovered separately to give the visible specks that premium products are sold on.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The farm end is smallholder. Growers with small shaded plots pollinate by hand, pick bean by bean and usually sell green beans to collectors. Curing is done by collectors and exporters in the SAVA towns, so the step that creates most of the value sits above the grower rather than with him.

Cured beans leave through Antalaha, Sambava and Toamasina in ordinary containers, because once cured they are stable and need no cold chain. The buying side is concentrated in a small number of flavor houses and extractors in France, the United States and Germany, which hold both the contracts and the extraction plants.

The chokepoints are the cyclone exposure of one region, the security of stored beans, and a cheap industrial substitute for the entire product. None is a logistics problem, and none responds quickly to price.


## Timeline

- 1836: A vanilla flower is artificially pollinated for the first time on record. Deliberate pollination in a European botanical garden showed that the orchid could set pods away from its native pollinators, which made cultivation outside the Americas conceivable. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11598392/)
- 1841: Hand pollination is made practical on Réunion. A simple, teachable technique turned pollination into routine plantation labor and spread cultivation across the Indian Ocean to the Comoros, Seychelles and Madagascar. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11598392/)
- 1874: Vanillin is synthesized from coniferin. The first industrial synthetic aroma chemical gave food manufacturers a cheap substitute for cured beans, and it has capped the bean market ever since. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12131681/)
- 2017-03: Cyclone Enawo strikes the SAVA vanilla region. A category-four landfall between Sambava and Antalaha hit the heart of the growing area, damaging vines and shade trees and cutting supply for several seasons. (https://floodlist.com/africa/madagascar-cyclone-enawo-landfall-march-2017)
- 2020-07: Madagascar sets a minimum export price for cured vanilla. A price floor enforced through export licensing tried to hold up returns after a boom, and instead left beans unsold in the country as buyers waited. (https://www.mintecglobal.com/top-stories/madagascar-lifts-minimum-export-price-on-vanilla)
- 2023: Madagascar lifts the minimum export price. With stocks accumulated at farmer and collector level, the floor was replaced by a looser cost-price rule, showing how far policy rather than harvest can govern when vanilla moves. (https://www.mintecglobal.com/top-stories/madagascar-lifts-minimum-export-price-on-vanilla)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most vanilla

Madagascar produced 3,090 tonnes in 2024, 43% of the world's 7,115 tonnes (FAOSTAT). Indonesia was second with 21%. Madagascar's lead is larger still in export value, where it took 60% of world trade in 2024 (CEPII BACI), because it cures and sells nearly all of its beans as high-grade whole vanilla rather than as extraction stock.

### why is vanilla so expensive

Because every flower is pollinated by hand, opens for less than a day, and produces a pod that takes eight to nine months to mature and months more to cure. Roughly five parts of green bean give one part cured. The labor cannot be mechanized, and the crop is concentrated in a cyclone-prone region.

### why does vanilla have to be pollinated by hand

Because the bees that pollinate Vanilla planifolia are native to tropical America and absent from Africa and Asia. Outside that range the orchid flowers but sets almost no pods on its own, so a worker lifts the flap separating the flower's parts and presses them together, flower by flower.

### what is the difference between vanilla extract and vanillin

Vanilla extract is made by soaking cured beans in ethanol and water; in the United States a standard of identity sets a minimum bean content per gallon and a minimum alcohol content. Vanillin is a single molecule, usually synthesized from wood lignin or guaiacol, and it costs a small fraction of extract.

### how long does it take to cure vanilla beans

Months. Green pods are killed with heat, sweated in insulated boxes overnight and sunned by day for weeks, slow-dried, then conditioned in closed boxes while the aroma develops. Curing is what releases vanillin from its glucoside, and beans picked too early never develop full flavor however carefully they are cured.

### why do vanilla prices swing so much

Because supply is concentrated in one cyclone-exposed region, vines take about three years to bear, and a cheap synthetic substitute limits how long high prices last. Madagascar's export licensing and minimum-price rules add a further swing, holding beans in the country or releasing them regardless of harvest size.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

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# Where does wheat come from?

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

Wheat comes mainly from China, which produced 140.1 million tonnes in 2024, 18% of the world's 798.5 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India (14%), Russia (10%) and United States (6.7%) follow; the top five together supply 53%. The biggest exporter of wheat grain (HS 1001) is Russia (16% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, US hard red winter, Gulf export, was $330/t in August 2026, up 43% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Wheat is a cool-season grass from the Fertile Crescent that does best on temperate plains and steppes, and China, India, Russia and the United States simply have more of that land under the plow than anyone else.

*A cereal grass whose grain is milled into flour for bread, pasta and noodles, and fed to livestock.* Also called: wheat grain, bread wheat, durum, durum wheat, hard red winter wheat, soft red winter wheat.

## Where does wheat come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 140.1 million | 18% |
| 2 | India | 113.3 million | 14% |
| 3 | Russia | 82.6 million | 10% |
| 4 | United States | 53.7 million | 6.7% |
| 5 | Canada | 35.9 million | 4.5% |
| 6 | Australia | 34.1 million | 4.3% |
| 7 | Pakistan | 31.8 million | 4% |
| 8 | France | 26.6 million | 3.3% |
| 9 | Ukraine | 22.4 million | 2.8% |
| 10 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 20.8 million | 2.6% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 30% |
| | World | 798.5 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

Wheat is a temperate crop. It was domesticated in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, and it still does best where winters are cool, summers are warm and dry at harvest, and the land is flat enough to plow and combine. That describes the North China Plain, the Indo-Gangetic Plain, the chernozem steppes of Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, the Great Plains of North America, the Paris Basin, the Murray-Darling and the Argentine pampas. Wheat is the most widely planted of the major cereals, but it is not a tropical one.

In 2024 China produced 140.1 million tonnes of wheat, 18% of the world's 798.5 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India (14%), Russia (10%) and United States (6.7%) follow, and the top five grew 53% of the total. World output was +9% compared with ten years earlier. 123 countries reported a harvest, and 30% of production came from outside the top ten, because wheat is grown for local bread and noodles across North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and the Andes as well as on the big exporting plains.

The crop divides by season and by kind. Winter wheat is sown in autumn, sits through the cold and is harvested in early summer; it gives most of the crop in China, Europe, Russia, Ukraine and the southern US Plains. Spring wheat is sown after the thaw in places where winters kill autumn plantings, such as the Canadian Prairies, the Dakotas, Kazakhstan and Siberia. Hard red wheats with high protein make bread; soft wheats make biscuits and cakes; durum, grown around the Mediterranean and in North Dakota and Canada, makes pasta and couscous; white wheats go into noodles and flatbreads.

History shaped the map too. The Green Revolution's semi-dwarf varieties, developed in Mexico and introduced to India and Pakistan in the 1960s, turned South Asia from an importer into a self-sufficient producer, and the Soviet Union's collapse eventually turned the Black Sea region from a grain importer into the largest exporting bloc.


## Who exports and imports wheat?

Turkey is the world's biggest flour exporter, milling imported Russian wheat; grain and flour rankings differ.

### Exporters of wheat and meslin (HS 1001), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Russia | $9.1 billion | 16% |
| 2 | Canada | $7.8 billion | 14% |
| 3 | United States | $6.7 billion | 12% |
| 4 | Australia | $5.7 billion | 9.9% |
| 5 | Ukraine | $4.8 billion | 8.3% |
| 6 | France | $4.2 billion | 7.3% |
| 7 | Romania | $2.4 billion | 4.3% |
| 8 | Argentina | $1.9 billion | 3.4% |
| 9 | Germany | $1.8 billion | 3.1% |
| 10 | Poland | $1.6 billion | 2.8% |
| 11 | Bulgaria | $1.4 billion | 2.4% |
| 12 | Lithuania | $1.2 billion | 2.1% |
| 13 | Kazakhstan | $1.2 billion | 2% |
| 14 | Czechia | $902.1 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | Latvia | $812.5 million | 1.4% |

### Importers of wheat and meslin (HS 1001), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Egypt | $5.2 billion | 9% |
| 2 | Indonesia | $3.2 billion | 5.5% |
| 3 | China | $2.9 billion | 5% |
| 4 | Italy | $2.5 billion | 4.4% |
| 5 | Nigeria | $2.1 billion | 3.7% |
| 6 | Philippines | $1.9 billion | 3.3% |
| 7 | Spain | $1.8 billion | 3.2% |
| 8 | Algeria | $1.8 billion | 3.1% |
| 9 | Brazil | $1.7 billion | 3% |
| 10 | Morocco | $1.7 billion | 2.9% |
| 11 | Japan | $1.6 billion | 2.8% |
| 12 | Germany | $1.6 billion | 2.7% |
| 13 | South Korea | $1.3 billion | 2.3% |
| 14 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $1.3 billion | 2.3% |
| 15 | Saudi Arabia | $1.3 billion | 2.2% |

### Exporters of wheat or meslin flour (HS 1101), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $1.2 billion | 20% |
| 2 | Germany | $521.1 million | 8.8% |
| 3 | Kazakhstan | $507.5 million | 8.6% |
| 4 | Egypt | $460.9 million | 7.8% |
| 5 | Uzbekistan | $321.8 million | 5.4% |
| 6 | Italy | $306.4 million | 5.2% |
| 7 | Canada | $186.5 million | 3.1% |
| 8 | Argentina | $172.1 million | 2.9% |
| 9 | Belgium | $152.3 million | 2.6% |
| 10 | United States | $148.4 million | 2.5% |
| 11 | France | $135.7 million | 2.3% |
| 12 | United Kingdom | $126.6 million | 2.1% |
| 13 | Japan | $101.4 million | 1.7% |
| 14 | Vietnam | $98.4 million | 1.7% |
| 15 | India | $90.1 million | 1.5% |

### Importers of wheat or meslin flour (HS 1101), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Afghanistan | $640.5 million | 11% |
| 2 | Iraq | $456.2 million | 7.7% |
| 3 | United States | $311.4 million | 5.2% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $311.3 million | 5.2% |
| 5 | Sudan | $252.2 million | 4.3% |
| 6 | France | $250 million | 4.2% |
| 7 | Ireland | $164.6 million | 2.8% |
| 8 | Uzbekistan | $155.1 million | 2.6% |
| 9 | Brazil | $133.2 million | 2.2% |
| 10 | Somalia | $119.3 million | 2% |
| 11 | Syria | $103.9 million | 1.8% |
| 12 | Hong Kong | $98.4 million | 1.7% |
| 13 | Spain | $89.6 million | 1.5% |
| 14 | Belgium | $88.6 million | 1.5% |
| 15 | Germany | $86.7 million | 1.5% |

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

Production and export rankings differ more for wheat than for almost any commodity. China and India, the two largest growers, eat nearly everything they harvest and export little, while Russia, Australia, Canada and Argentina grow far more than they consume. In 2024 the largest exporter of wheat grain (HS 1001) was Russia with 16% of world export value (CEPII BACI), followed by Canada and United States. The largest importer was Egypt (9% of world import value), ahead of Indonesia and China; the biggest buyers are the bread economies of North Africa and the Middle East plus Southeast Asian noodle and feed markets.

Flour is a separate trade. The top exporter of wheat flour (HS 1101) in 2024 was Turkey (Türkiye) with 20% of world flour export value: Turkey mills imported Russian wheat under an inward-processing regime and ships flour to Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Africa. Grain and flour rankings therefore say different things, and this page uses the grain ranking.


## What does wheat cost?

- US hard red winter, Gulf export: $330/t in August 2026; 12-month change +43%; 10-year change +121%; all-time high $522.3/t in May 2022; real high (2024 US$) $1,462/t in February 1974 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- US soft red winter, Gulf export: $263.2/t in August 2026; 12-month change +31%; 10-year change +65%; all-time high $446.7/t in March 2022; real high (2024 US$) $723.2/t in July 1979 (World Bank Pink Sheet).

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

### How it is priced

Wheat has more benchmark contracts than any other grain because it has more kinds. CBOT (CME Group) lists Chicago SRW Wheat (ticker ZW), the most traded contract in the world, and KC HRW Wheat (ticker KE) for the hard red winter wheat of the Plains; both are 5,000 bushels per lot and quoted in US cents per bushel, where a bushel of wheat weighs 60 lb (27.2 kg). Euronext lists Milling Wheat (ticker EBM), 50 tonnes per lot, quoted in euros per tonne, the reference for European and often Black Sea cargoes. Minneapolis spring wheat, Black Sea FOB assessments and Australian and Argentine FOB quotes complete the set.

The series on this page, US hard red winter, Gulf export, is an export quote for hard red winter wheat loaded at the US Gulf: it was $330/t in August 2026, up 43% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The companion series for soft red winter wheat, US soft red winter, Gulf export, was $263.2/t in August 2026. The HRW series' highest month on record was $522.3/t in May 2022, and its lowest $52.2/t in October 1969.

A physical wheat quote has three parts: the futures price, the basis (the premium or discount at a given location that covers freight, elevation and local supply) and quality premiums for protein, test weight and falling number. FOB Gulf means loaded on the ship at New Orleans; CIF Egypt or CFR Southeast Asia adds ocean freight. Russian 12.5% protein wheat FOB Novorossiysk is the price most importers compare against. Ambiguities: wheat here means grain including durum and meslin (wheat-rye mixtures), the US Gulf quote is one origin's export price rather than a world price, and Chicago futures track soft red winter wheat, which is a small part of world trade.


## What moves the price of wheat?

### Black Sea weather and politics

Russia and Ukraine supply a large share of world exports from a single climate zone. A dry autumn hurts winter wheat establishment, a snowless cold snap kills it, and a hot June shrinks the grain. Politics matters as much: Russia's 2010 export ban, its export taxes and quotas, the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the blockade of Odesa each moved prices worldwide within days. Traders watch Novorossiysk FOB quotes and Russian policy announcements as closely as the US weather map.

### Stocks-to-use

The ratio of ending stocks to consumption measures the cushion before a bad harvest becomes a shortage. USDA puts world wheat stocks-to-use at 37% for 2026/27, compared with 37% in 2025/26 (USDA PSD). The headline hides a distortion: a large part of world stocks sits in China and is never exported, so analysts also compute the ratio for the major exporters, which is far tighter and explains why prices can spike while the global number looks comfortable.

### Weather in the other exporters

Wheat is harvested somewhere every month, so weather risk rotates: drought in the US southern Plains in spring, heat in France and Germany in June, drought or frost in Australia in September and October, and dryness in Argentina in November. El Niño tends to dry eastern Australia and India; La Niña tends to dry the US Plains and Argentina. A problem in one exporter is usually absorbed; problems in two at once are not.

### Export restrictions

Governments treat bread as a political good. Russia banned exports in 2010 and has since used floating export taxes and quotas; India banned exports in 2022 after a heat wave; Argentina has used export taxes and registration limits for decades. Each restriction removes supply from the world market just when it is scarce, which is why prices overshoot in bad years. Importers respond by building state reserves and buying earlier.

### Energy and fertilizer

Wheat is a nitrogen-hungry crop, and nitrogen fertilizer is made from natural gas. When gas prices rise, as in Europe in 2022, farmers cut application rates and yields fall the following season; when diesel is expensive, planting and harvesting cost more. Energy also sets the price of the alternative use, since feed wheat competes with corn and corn with ethanol.

### Corn and the feed spread

A large part of the world's wheat is fed to animals, and feed buyers switch between wheat and corn on price. When wheat trades close to corn, feed mills use more wheat and draw down stocks; when wheat is expensive they switch back. The wheat-corn spread therefore caps how far wheat can fall in a glut and links the two markets during shocks.

### Currency and freight

Wheat is quoted in dollars but grown in rubles, euros, Australian and Canadian dollars and pesos. A weaker ruble lets Russian exporters undercut everyone else in dollar terms and still profit, which has been the single biggest reason Russia took market share. Ocean freight matters too: Panamax rates, Turkish Straits transit and war-risk insurance in the Black Sea add to or subtract from the landed price in Egypt or Indonesia.

## How is wheat produced?

Wheat is an annual grass. Winter wheat is sown in September or October, needs a period of cold (vernalization) to flower, and is harvested from June to August in the northern hemisphere; spring wheat is sown in April or May and harvested in August and September. Australia and Argentina sow in autumn and harvest from November to January, which is why there is always a new crop coming to market somewhere. Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) is hexaploid and accounts for most of the crop; durum (Triticum durum) is tetraploid, harder and higher in protein.

Quality is measured at the elevator. Test weight, moisture, damaged and shrunken kernels, foreign material and protein content set the grade; falling number tests for sprouting damage that ruins baking quality. Grain is dried if necessary, stored in silos and moved by truck, rail and barge to mills or export terminals. Modern varieties are semi-dwarf, which lets the plant carry a heavy head on a short stem without falling over, the trait that drove the Green Revolution's yield gains.

Milling separates the kernel. Grain is cleaned, tempered with water to toughen the bran, then passed through a series of break rolls and reduction rolls with sifting between each pass. The endosperm becomes flour of various grades; the bran and germ become millfeed for livestock, wheat germ oil and bran for cereals. Other processing streams produce vital wheat gluten and wheat starch, which in turn feed bioethanol plants in Europe. Straw is baled for bedding and feed or left to protect the soil. Yields range from very high on irrigated, fertilized European and Chinese fields to low on the dryland farms of Australia and Kazakhstan, which make up for it with scale.


### Harvest calendar

- China (Winter wheat): harvest May, Jun
- India (Rabi wheat): harvest Mar, Apr
- Russia (Winter wheat): harvest Jul, Aug. Spring wheat harvested August–September.
- United States (Winter wheat): harvest Jun, Jul. Spring wheat harvested August–September.
- France: harvest Jul, Aug
- Canada (Spring wheat): harvest Aug, Sep
- Pakistan: harvest Apr, May
- Ukraine (Winter wheat): harvest Jul, Aug
- Australia: harvest Oct, Nov, Dec
- Argentina: harvest Jan, Nov, Dec

## What is wheat used for?

Most wheat is eaten. Flour becomes bread, flatbreads, noodles, pasta (from durum), biscuits, cakes and breakfast cereals, and wheat provides a large share of the calories and protein in North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and Europe. Feed is the second use: lower grades, sprout-damaged grain and surplus in years when wheat is cheap relative to corn go to pigs, poultry and cattle, mainly in the European Union, Russia and China.

Seed retention and industrial uses take the rest: starch and gluten manufacturing, bioethanol in the European Union and small amounts of malted wheat for brewing. The International Grains Council's supply and demand tables break world use into food, feed and industrial categories, and food is consistently the largest.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Wheat moves as bulk grain. Farmers deliver to country elevators, which consolidate by rail or truck to export terminals: New Orleans and the Pacific Northwest for the United States; Vancouver and Thunder Bay for Canada; Novorossiysk and the Azov ports for Russia; Odesa and Chornomorsk for Ukraine; Constanța for Romania; Rouen for France; Kwinana, Port Adelaide and Newcastle for Australia; Bahía Blanca and Rosario for Argentina. Cargoes ship in Panamax and Supramax bulk carriers to importing ports, where state buyers or private millers take delivery.

Milling concentrates near consumption rather than production, because flour keeps less well than grain. The exceptions are Turkey and, to a lesser extent, Egypt and the Gulf states, which import grain and re-export flour and pasta. The trading layer is thin: ADM, Bunge, Cargill, Louis Dreyfus, COFCO and a set of Russian exporters handle most cross-border grain, while state agencies such as Egypt's supply authority, Algeria's OAIC and Saudi Arabia's grain agency dominate the buying side through tenders.

Chokepoints follow the map. The Turkish Straits carry every Black Sea cargo; the Suez Canal and Red Sea carry Black Sea and European wheat to Asia and East Africa; low water on the Mississippi slows US Gulf exports; and Black Sea war-risk insurance can price ships out of Ukrainian ports altogether. Exports are concentrated in a handful of countries, so a single ban or blockade can remove a large share of tradable supply, and many importers depend on one or two origins for most of their bread.


## Key companies

- ADM (Archer-Daniels-Midland): grain trader and miller, United States, listed (ADM)
- Bunge Global: grain trader and miller, United States, listed (BG)
- Ardent Mills: flour miller, United States
- GrainCorp: grain handler and exporter, Australia, listed (GNC)
- Grupo Bimbo: baker, Mexico, listed (BIMBOA)

## Timeline

- 1846-06: Repeal of the Corn Laws. Britain removed tariffs on imported grain, the first step toward free trade in food and the start of a world wheat market supplied by the Americas, Russia and later Australia. (https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/british-parliament-repeals-corn-laws/)
- 1935-04: Black Sunday, the Dust Bowl. A dust storm 800 miles long crossed the plowed-up wheat lands of the Great Plains during a decade of drought, driving farm abandonment, migration and the US soil-conservation programs that followed. (https://www.weather.gov/ddc/BlackSunday1935)
- 1954-07: Public Law 480 (Food for Peace). The United States began disposing of surplus wheat abroad through concessional sales and donations, which shaped importing habits in Asia, the Middle East and Africa for decades. (https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/eisenhower-begins-food-peace-program)
- 1970-10: Norman Borlaug wins the Nobel Peace Prize. The prize recognized the semi-dwarf wheat varieties bred in Mexico and introduced to India and Pakistan in the 1960s, which made South Asia self-sufficient in wheat. (https://www.nobelpeaceprize.org/laureates/1970)
- 1972-07: Soviet grain purchases. After a drought, the Soviet Union quietly bought a large share of US grain stocks; within a year some commodity prices had doubled or tripled and USDA built new crop-weather monitoring to avoid another surprise. (https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/general-information/staff-offices/office-chief-economist/newsroom/podcast-usda-now-you-know/podcast-great-grain-robbery)
- 1980-01: US grain embargo on the Soviet Union. President Carter cancelled 17 million tonnes of wheat, corn and soybean sales after the invasion of Afghanistan; competitors filled the gap and US exporters lost market share for years. (https://uswheat.org/wheatletter/effects-of-1980-grain-embargo-echo-through-the-years/)
- 2008-04: Food price crisis. FAO reported wheat prices far above the previous year as low stocks and a tight supply and demand balance drove the 2007-08 food price crisis and export bans across producing countries. (https://www.fao.org/4/ai465e/ai465e06.htm)
- 2010-08: Russia bans grain exports. After drought and a record heat wave ruined about a quarter of its crops, Russia halted grain exports and world wheat prices jumped to two-year highs. (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2010/8/15/russia-imposes-ban-on-grain-exports)
- 2022-03: Chicago wheat sets a record. CBOT wheat futures hit a record US$13.635 per bushel on 8 March after Russia's invasion of Ukraine cut off shipments from a region supplying about a quarter of world grain exports. (https://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2022/03/chicago-wheat-sets-record-high-as-markets-sort-out-supply-concerns/)
- 2022-05: India bans wheat exports. A heat wave cut India's harvest and domestic prices hit records, so the government banned exports just as buyers were counting on Indian wheat to replace Black Sea supply. (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/14/india-bans-wheat-exports-cites-food-security-and-soaring-prices)
- 2022-07: Black Sea Grain Initiative signed. Russia, Türkiye, Ukraine and the United Nations agreed in Istanbul to let grain ships sail from three Ukrainian ports under inspection, reopening a blocked export route. (https://www.un.org/en/black-sea-grain-initiative)
- 2023-07: Russia ends the Black Sea Grain Initiative. Russia withdrew after more than 30 million tonnes of Ukrainian grain had shipped under the deal, closing the corridor and returning Ukrainian exports to river, rail and coastal routes. (https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/07/1138752)

## Frequently asked questions

### Which country produces the most wheat?

China produced 140.1 million tonnes of wheat in 2024, 18% of the world's 798.5 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India was second with 14% and Russia third with 10%. The largest producers are not the largest exporters: China and India consume nearly all the wheat they grow.

### Where does most wheat come from?

From the temperate plains of the northern hemisphere. In 2024 the top five producers were China, India, Russia, United States and Canada, together growing 53% of the world's 798.5 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Exports come mainly from Russia, the European Union, Canada, the United States, Australia, Ukraine and Argentina.

### Which country exports the most wheat?

Russia was the largest exporter of wheat grain in 2024, with 16% of world export value (CEPII BACI), followed by Canada and United States. Russia's rise rests on the black-earth steppes, a weak ruble and short shipping routes to Egypt and Turkey. World wheat exports were worth $57.5 billion that year.

### Who imports the most wheat?

Egypt was the largest importer of wheat in 2024, taking 9% of world import value (CEPII BACI), followed by Indonesia and China. The biggest buyers are bread-dependent countries in North Africa and the Middle East and feed and noodle markets in Southeast Asia; world imports were worth $57.5 billion.

### Is wheat grown in Africa?

Yes, but far less than the continent eats. Egypt, Morocco, Ethiopia, Algeria and South Africa grow wheat on irrigated or highland land, and 123 countries worldwide reported a harvest in 2024 (FAOSTAT). Most of Africa is too hot and wet for wheat, so North African countries are among the world's largest importers, buying mainly from Russia, the European Union and Ukraine.

### Why is wheat so expensive?

Wheat prices move on weather in the big exporters, the size of stocks and government export rules. The benchmark US hard red winter, Gulf export price was $330/t in August 2026, up 43% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). World stocks-to-use was 37% in 2026/27 (USDA PSD), and the record month for the series was $522.3/t in May 2022.

### What is wheat used for?

Mostly food: bread, flatbreads, noodles, pasta, biscuits and cereals. Feed for pigs, poultry and cattle is the second use, taking lower grades and surplus grain. Seed, starch, gluten and bioethanol take the rest. The world grew 798.5 million tonnes in 2024 (FAOSTAT), and the International Grains Council's balance sheets consistently show food as the largest category of use.

### What is the difference between hard and soft wheat?

Hard wheats have more protein and stronger gluten, so they make bread; soft wheats have less and make biscuits, cakes and crackers. The markets price them separately: US hard red winter wheat was $330/t in August 2026, while soft red winter wheat was $263.2/t (World Bank Pink Sheet). Durum, the hardest, is a separate species used for pasta.

### What is the price of wheat?

The reference on this page is US hard red winter, Gulf export, which was $330/t in August 2026, up 43% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Futures are quoted in US cents per bushel on CBOT and euros per tonne on Euronext; a bushel of wheat weighs 60 lb, so 36.7 bushels make a tonne. Physical cargoes add a basis and quality premiums.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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
- USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, Production, Supply and Distribution (PSD), 2026-09-06. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://apps.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/
- Harvest calendars (curated from USDA FAS IPAD crop calendars and FAO GIEWS country briefs), curated 2026-09. License: Public domain (USDA) with FAO GIEWS cross-reference (attribution). https://ipad.fas.usda.gov/ogamaps/cropcalendar.aspx

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

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# Where does wool come from?

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

Wool comes mainly from China, which produced 364,481 tonnes in 2024, 21% of the world's 1.7 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Australia (17%), New Zealand (7.4%) and Turkey (Türkiye) (5%) follow; the top five together supply 54%. The biggest exporter of greasy and scoured wool (HS 5101) is Australia (62% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, Wool, fine 19 micron, Australian Wool Exchange spot, was 1,601¢/kg in July 2026, up 63% from a year earlier (IMF PCPS). Fine wool comes from merino sheep bred for centuries to thrive on dry, sparse rangeland, which is why Australia's inland pastoral zone dominates a fiber that requires land too poor for cropping and a climate too dry for the fleece to rot.

*Fleece shorn from sheep, sold greasy by micron thickness and scoured before spinning.* Also called: greasy wool, merino, sheep wool, fine wool, crossbred wool.

## Where does wool come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 364,481 | 21% |
| 2 | Australia | 281,000 | 17% |
| 3 | New Zealand | 124,951 | 7.4% |
| 4 | Turkey (Türkiye) | 84,270 | 5% |
| 5 | United Kingdom | 68,520 | 4% |
| 6 | Morocco | 62,899 | 3.7% |
| 7 | Turkmenistan | 49,361 | 2.9% |
| 8 | Iran | 48,168 | 2.8% |
| 9 | Russia | 43,564 | 2.6% |
| 10 | South Africa | 43,355 | 2.6% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 31% |
| | World | 1.7 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 China produced 364,481 tonnes of greasy wool, 21% of the world's 1.7 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Australia followed with 17%, then New Zealand (7.4%), Turkey (Türkiye) (5%) and United Kingdom (4%). The top five account for 54% and 69 countries reported a clip.

Volume is a misleading measure here, and this is the key to reading the table. Wool is priced overwhelmingly by fiber diameter, measured in microns, and the difference between grades is enormous. Fine merino wool of seventeen to nineteen microns goes into next-to-skin apparel and sells for several times the price of coarse thirty-micron wool, which goes into carpets and felt. A country producing a large tonnage of coarse wool earns far less than one producing a smaller tonnage of fine merino, so the production ranking and the revenue ranking are different lists.

Australia dominates the fine apparel wool that the price series on this page tracks, from merino flocks on the inland pastoral zone of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. New Zealand's clip is mostly stronger crossbred wool destined for carpets, a market badly damaged by synthetic flooring. China and the Central Asian republics produce large tonnages across a range of grades, and Britain, South Africa, Uruguay and Argentina supply distinctive types.

World output changed -16% over the ten years to 2024. The long trend is downward: wool has lost share to synthetics and to cotton for decades, and sheep flocks in most producing countries are now kept as much for meat as for fiber.

## Who exports and imports wool?

Australia grows the fine merino clip and China buys most of it to scour, comb and spin, so the import table is far more concentrated than the export table.

### Exporters of wool, not carded or combed (HS 5101), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Australia | $1.8 billion | 62% |
| 2 | New Zealand | $287.8 million | 10% |
| 3 | South Africa | $281.6 million | 10% |
| 4 | Uruguay | $80 million | 2.8% |
| 5 | United Kingdom | $66.8 million | 2.4% |
| 6 | Lesotho | $61.1 million | 2.2% |
| 7 | China | $38.4 million | 1.4% |
| 8 | Argentina | $29.5 million | 1% |
| 9 | United States | $19.2 million | 0.7% |
| 10 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $18.3 million | 0.6% |
| 11 | Germany | $15.3 million | 0.5% |
| 12 | France | $14.6 million | 0.5% |
| 13 | Syria | $13.2 million | 0.5% |
| 14 | Spain | $12.5 million | 0.4% |
| 15 | Chile | $11.4 million | 0.4% |

### Importers of wool, not carded or combed (HS 5101), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $2 billion | 71% |
| 2 | India | $202.8 million | 7.2% |
| 3 | Italy | $116.8 million | 4.1% |
| 4 | Czechia | $80.1 million | 2.8% |
| 5 | Germany | $47.9 million | 1.7% |
| 6 | United Kingdom | $40.9 million | 1.4% |
| 7 | South Africa | $40.1 million | 1.4% |
| 8 | Lithuania | $35.6 million | 1.3% |
| 9 | South Korea | $29.7 million | 1.1% |
| 10 | Bulgaria | $23.2 million | 0.8% |
| 11 | Egypt | $21.9 million | 0.8% |
| 12 | Thailand | $21 million | 0.7% |
| 13 | Uruguay | $14.5 million | 0.5% |
| 14 | Nepal | $11.5 million | 0.4% |
| 15 | Japan | $10.5 million | 0.4% |

### Exporters of wool, carded or combed (including tops) (HS 5105), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $488 million | 38% |
| 2 | Czechia | $130.4 million | 10% |
| 3 | Peru | $105.6 million | 8.1% |
| 4 | Germany | $104.5 million | 8% |
| 5 | Italy | $98.2 million | 7.6% |
| 6 | Argentina | $92.3 million | 7.1% |
| 7 | Uruguay | $63.3 million | 4.9% |
| 8 | South Africa | $63.2 million | 4.9% |
| 9 | Egypt | $35.1 million | 2.7% |
| 10 | Bulgaria | $29.3 million | 2.3% |
| 11 | United Kingdom | $18.6 million | 1.4% |
| 12 | Other Asia, nes | $10.2 million | 0.8% |
| 13 | Mongolia | $9.6 million | 0.7% |
| 14 | India | $6.9 million | 0.5% |
| 15 | New Zealand | $6.1 million | 0.5% |

### Importers of wool, carded or combed (including tops) (HS 5105), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Italy | $301.4 million | 23% |
| 2 | Germany | $116.3 million | 8.9% |
| 3 | China | $115.6 million | 8.9% |
| 4 | Romania | $76.6 million | 5.9% |
| 5 | Poland | $74.6 million | 5.7% |
| 6 | Czechia | $73.9 million | 5.7% |
| 7 | Vietnam | $67.5 million | 5.2% |
| 8 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $63.8 million | 4.9% |
| 9 | South Korea | $59.1 million | 4.5% |
| 10 | Bulgaria | $51.8 million | 4% |
| 11 | Japan | $51.5 million | 4% |
| 12 | Peru | $26.4 million | 2% |
| 13 | India | $22.5 million | 1.7% |
| 14 | United Kingdom | $20 million | 1.5% |
| 15 | Other Asia, nes | $19.5 million | 1.5% |

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

Australia was the largest exporter of greasy and scoured wool (HS 5101) in 2024 with 62% of world export value, ahead of New Zealand (10%), on world trade of $2.8 billion (CEPII BACI). China was the largest importer with 71%.

Wool has one of the most lopsided trade patterns of any commodity on this site. Australia sells raw greasy wool; China buys the majority of it to scour, comb, spin and weave. That single relationship dominates the market, and it means the world wool price is effectively set by the buying appetite of Chinese topmakers and by their access to finance, rather than by retail demand in the countries where the garments are eventually sold.

Italy remains important as a buyer of the finest grades for luxury weaving, and India, the Czech Republic and Turkey take significant volumes. But the concentration of early-stage processing in one country is the structural feature of this trade, and it makes Australian growers unusually exposed to Chinese credit conditions and trade policy.

## What does wool cost?

- Wool, fine 19 micron, Australian Wool Exchange spot: 1,601¢/kg in July 2026; 12-month change +63%; 10-year change +41%; all-time high 1,865¢/kg in June 2011; real high (2024 US$) 2,603¢/kg in June 2011 (IMF PCPS).
- Wool, coarse 23 micron, Australian Wool Exchange spot: 1,484¢/kg in July 2026; 12-month change +56%; 10-year change +36%; all-time high 1,690¢/kg in June 2018; real high (2024 US$) 2,112¢/kg in June 2018 (IMF PCPS).

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

### How it is priced

The series shown is Wool, fine 19 micron, Australian Wool Exchange spot, which was 1,601¢/kg in July 2026, up 63% from a year earlier (IMF PCPS). The coarse counterpart, Wool, coarse 23 micron, Australian Wool Exchange spot, was 1,484¢/kg in July 2026. Note the unit is US cents per kilogram, and these are clean-basis quotes for specific micron categories at Australian auction. The fine series nominal high was 1,865¢/kg in June 2011.

Two conventions matter. First, wool is sold greasy but priced clean. A greasy fleece contains lanolin, suint, dust and vegetable matter, and the yield after scouring is typically sixty to seventy-five percent. A clean-basis price must therefore be multiplied by the yield to get what a grower actually receives per kilogram of greasy wool, and yield varies by region and season.

Second, micron is everything. Prices are quoted separately for each micron category, and the premium for finer wool widens and narrows with fashion and with the supply of fine fleece. The Australian Wool Exchange publishes an Eastern Market Indicator as a broad average alongside the micron-specific quotes, and most Australian wool is sold by open-cry auction after being objectively tested for micron, yield, strength and vegetable matter.

There is no futures market of consequence. Growers manage price risk through forward contracts with exporters and through the timing of sales, and a large clip can be withheld from auction if reserve prices are not met.

## What moves the price of wool?

### Chinese processing demand

China scours, combs and spins the large majority of world apparel wool, so Chinese topmaker buying determines the price. Their access to credit, their order books from garment makers and Chinese trade policy therefore matter more to an Australian grower than retail demand in Europe or America.

### Competition from synthetics and cotton

Polyester and acrylic are cheaper, machine-washable and available in unlimited quantity, and they have taken the bulk apparel and carpet markets from wool over decades. Wool now competes on properties, warmth, odour resistance, moisture handling, rather than on price, which caps how much it can sell.

### Micron mix and the fine wool premium

Because prices are quoted by micron, a shift in the supply of fine fleece, driven by breeding decisions and by seasonal conditions that affect fiber diameter, changes the average price without any change in tonnage. Drought produces finer but weaker wool, which cuts both ways.

### Sheep meat prices

Most sheep now earn more from meat than from fiber, so flock decisions follow lamb prices rather than wool prices. When lamb is profitable, growers shift toward meat breeds and shorter wool, reducing the fine wool clip regardless of what wool is worth.

### Drought and pasture

Australian rangeland flocks depend on rainfall. Drought reduces both the number of sheep and the weight and strength of each fleece, and the recovery takes years because ewes must be retained rather than sold. Australian seasonal conditions therefore drive world fine wool supply.

### Fashion cycles and luxury demand

Fine merino's largest end market is knitwear and tailoring, which are fashion-sensitive and concentrated in a few luxury and premium brands. A shift toward casual clothing or away from tailoring reduces demand for the finest grades disproportionately.

### Shearing labor

Shearing is skilled, physically demanding seasonal work, and shortages of shearers have delayed clips and raised costs in Australia and New Zealand. Because a sheep must be shorn whether or not the wool is profitable, labor cost is a floor under production cost that does not fall with the price.

## How is wool produced?

Sheep are shorn once a year, usually with mechanical handpieces, and the fleece is removed in one piece. On the shed floor it is skirted, removing the stained and short edges, and classed into lines by micron, length, strength and vegetable matter content. Classing is a skilled job that materially affects the price achieved, because buyers pay for consistency within a bale.

Bales are objectively tested by an independent authority for mean fiber diameter, yield, staple length and strength before sale, which is why Australian wool can be bought at auction on measurement rather than on inspection. Most is sold at open-cry auction in Sydney, Melbourne and Fremantle.

Scouring is the first processing step: greasy wool is washed in a series of hot detergent bowls to remove lanolin, suint and dirt, and the lanolin is recovered and refined for cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. Scoured wool is then carded to disentangle the fibers and, for worsted processing, combed into a continuous sliver called top, which removes short fibers and aligns the rest.

Top is drawn and spun into worsted yarn for suiting and fine knitwear, or, for woollen processing, carded wool is spun directly into a bulkier, hairier yarn for tweeds, blankets and carpets. Dyeing can happen at fiber, top, yarn or fabric stage. Fabric is then woven or knitted, and finishing treatments give machine-washability by removing or coating the scales that cause felting.

All production figures on this page are greasy weight. Multiply by yield, typically sixty to seventy-five percent, to get clean fiber.

## What is wool used for?

Apparel takes most fine wool: knitwear, suiting, base layers and increasingly performance and outdoor clothing, where merino's ability to manage moisture and resist odour has opened a market that did not exist thirty years ago. That technical positioning has been the industry's most successful marketing shift in decades.

Interior textiles take most coarse wool: carpets, rugs, upholstery, blankets and felt. This market has shrunk substantially as synthetic carpet took over, and it is the reason strong crossbred wool prices have been depressed for years, in some seasons below the cost of shearing.

Industrial and technical uses are small but persistent: insulation, where wool's moisture buffering and fire resistance are useful; acoustic panels; oil spill absorbents; and felts for machinery. Wool's natural flame resistance makes it valuable in aircraft and transport upholstery.

Lanolin recovered during scouring is a genuine co-product, refined into ointments, cosmetics and pharmaceutical bases. Coarse and waste wool is also used as a soil amendment and slow-release fertilizer, a small market that has grown with interest in circular materials.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is unusually long and unusually concentrated at one point. Wool goes from grower to classer to auction to exporter to scourer to topmaker to spinner to weaver to garment maker, and it can cross several borders on the way. The concentration is at the early processing stages: scouring and combing capacity sits overwhelmingly in China, with smaller amounts in Europe, and once wool leaves Australia in greasy form the value added happens elsewhere.

That concentration is the industry's main vulnerability. Australian growers depend on a small number of exporters selling into a single dominant processing destination, and trade friction, credit conditions or a change in Chinese industrial policy transmits directly to auction prices. Attempts to rebuild early-stage processing in Australia have repeatedly foundered on scale and cost.

Physically the trade is straightforward: pressed bales in containers, with no perishability and no phytosanitary problem beyond standard treatment. Storage is cheap and wool keeps indefinitely, which means both growers and buyers can hold stock, and large stockpiles have periodically hung over the market.

The historical lesson the industry still refers to is the reserve price scheme, under which a floor price was defended by buying wool into a stockpile until the accumulated holding became unsellable and the scheme collapsed. It took more than a decade to clear, depressed prices throughout and remains the standard example of what happens when a producer body tries to set a price rather than discover one.

## Key companies

- Australian Wool Innovation: industry research and marketing body, Australia
- Techwool Trading: exporter, Australia
- Chargeurs Luxury Materials: wool combing and topmaking, France, listed (CRI)
- Ningbo Consinee Group: spinner, China
- The Woolmark Company: certification and marketing, Australia
- Südwolle Group: topmaker and spinner, Germany

## Timeline

- 1797: Merino sheep arrive in Australia. Spanish merino bloodlines introduced to New South Wales founded the flock that would dominate world fine wool production for two centuries. (https://iwto.org)
- 1888: Mechanical shearing is introduced. Powered handpieces replaced blade shearing, cutting labor requirements and increasing the wool recovered from each sheep by shearing closer to the skin. (https://iwto.org)
- 1951-03: The Korean War wool boom. Military demand for wool uniforms sent prices to a real peak never since approached, an episode still used as the benchmark for what wool was once worth. (https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS)
- 1970-11: Australia introduces a reserve price scheme. A floor price defended by buying wool into a stockpile stabilized returns for two decades before accumulating an unsellable holding. (https://iwto.org)
- 1991-02: The reserve price scheme collapses. An unsold stockpile of more than four million bales forced the scheme's abandonment, prices fell sharply and the overhang took over a decade to clear. (https://iwto.org)
- 2001: Merino is repositioned as a performance fiber. Marketing of fine merino for outdoor and next-to-skin performance clothing opened a technical market that partly offset losses to synthetics in traditional apparel. (https://iwto.org)
- 2011-05: Wool prices reach a modern high. A small Australian clip after years of drought met strong Chinese buying, and fine wool prices rose to levels not seen since the reserve price era. (https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS)
- 2019-08: Drought cuts the Australian flock to a century low. Prolonged dry conditions reduced sheep numbers to their smallest since the early twentieth century, cutting the fine wool clip and lengthening the recovery. (https://iwto.org)
- 2020-04: Auction disruption and collapsing apparel demand. Pandemic closures halted Chinese processing and Australian auctions simultaneously, and prices fell sharply as the garment supply chain stopped. (https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS)
- 2023-06: Crossbred wool falls below shearing cost. Synthetic carpet and weak interior textile demand pushed strong wool prices to levels where the fiber did not cover the cost of removing it, accelerating the shift to meat breeds. (https://iwto.org)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most wool

China produced 364,481 tonnes of greasy wool in 2024, 21% of the world's 1.7 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Australia was second with 17%. Tonnage is misleading, because fine merino wool sells for several times the price of coarse wool.

### why is wool priced by micron

Because fiber diameter determines what the wool can be made into. Fine merino of seventeen to nineteen microns goes into next-to-skin apparel; coarse thirty-micron wool goes into carpets and felt. Prices are quoted separately by micron category, and the premium for fine wool varies with fashion and supply.

### what does clean basis mean

Wool is sold greasy but priced clean. A fleece contains lanolin, suint, dust and vegetable matter, and yield after scouring is typically sixty to seventy-five percent. A clean-basis price must be multiplied by yield to give what a grower receives per kilogram of greasy wool.

### which country buys the most wool

China, with 71% of world import value in 2024 (CEPII BACI). It scours, combs and spins the large majority of world apparel wool, so its topmakers' buying appetite sets the world price more than retail demand in the countries where garments are sold.

### why has wool declined

Synthetics and cotton took the bulk apparel and carpet markets on price, machine-washability and unlimited supply. Wool now competes on properties rather than cost, and most sheep earn more from meat than fiber, so flocks are managed for lamb and the wool clip is a by-product.

### what was the wool reserve price scheme

An Australian floor price defended from 1970 by buying wool into a stockpile. It stabilized returns for two decades, then accumulated an unsellable holding of more than four million bales and collapsed in 1991, depressing prices for over a decade while the overhang cleared.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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
- IMF Primary Commodity Price System (PCPS), 2026-08-06, fetched 6 September 2026. License: © International Monetary Fund. All rights reserved (IMF terms of use). https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS

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

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# Where do yams come from?

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

Yams come mainly from Nigeria, which produced 65.3 million tonnes in 2024, 71% of the world's 92.4 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Ghana (11%), Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) (8.3%) and Benin (3.6%) follow; the top five together supply 95%. The biggest exporter of yams (HS 071430) is Ghana (25% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Yams need a long single rainy season, deep friable soil and a great deal of hand labor, and the belt running from Ivory Coast through Ghana, Togo and Benin into Nigeria is where that combination meets a food culture built around pounded yam.

*A large tropical tuber, grown overwhelmingly in the west African yam belt and eaten pounded.* Also called: yam, white yam, puna yam.

## Where do yams come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nigeria | 65.3 million | 71% |
| 2 | Ghana | 10.1 million | 11% |
| 3 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | 7.7 million | 8.3% |
| 4 | Benin | 3.4 million | 3.6% |
| 5 | Togo | 982,384 | 1.1% |
| 6 | India | 977,000 | 1.1% |
| 7 | Cameroon | 541,648 | 0.6% |
| 8 | Colombia | 408,944 | 0.4% |
| 9 | Papua New Guinea | 385,041 | 0.4% |
| 10 | Guinea | 326,092 | 0.4% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 2.6% |
| | World | 92.4 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 Nigeria produced 65.3 million tonnes, 71% of the world's 92.4 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Ghana followed with 11%, then Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) (8.3%), Benin (3.6%) and Togo (1.1%). The top five account for 95%, 60 countries reported a crop and 2.6% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +42% over the ten years to 2024 and +3% on the previous year.

That is the tightest concentration of any major food crop on this site, and the reason is as much cultural as agronomic. Yam is the prestige food of west Africa, the center of harvest festivals and marriage gifts, and it earns a price that repays the labor it takes. Elsewhere [cassava](/commodities/cassava/) fills the same niche far more cheaply.

The crop wants a long wet season, deep soil a tuber can push into and no waterlogging, which places it in the forest-savanna transition rather than the wet forest or the dry north. It is also grown from its own harvest: roughly a quarter to a third of the tubers lifted are held back as seed, so area is capped by last season's crop.


## Who exports and imports yams?

### Exporters of yams, fresh, chilled, frozen or dried (HS 071430), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ghana | $63.3 million | 25% |
| 2 | Jamaica | $52.8 million | 21% |
| 3 | China | $27.3 million | 11% |
| 4 | Japan | $20.6 million | 8.2% |
| 5 | Costa Rica | $18.3 million | 7.2% |
| 6 | United States | $18 million | 7.1% |
| 7 | Colombia | $11.4 million | 4.5% |
| 8 | Brazil | $10.8 million | 4.3% |
| 9 | India | $6.6 million | 2.6% |
| 10 | Vietnam | $4.1 million | 1.6% |
| 11 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $3 million | 1.2% |
| 12 | Italy | $2 million | 0.8% |
| 13 | France | $1.6 million | 0.6% |
| 14 | Netherlands | $1.5 million | 0.6% |
| 15 | Thailand | $1.1 million | 0.4% |

### Importers of yams, fresh, chilled, frozen or dried (HS 071430), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $121.3 million | 48% |
| 2 | Canada | $33.7 million | 13% |
| 3 | United Kingdom | $20.6 million | 8.1% |
| 4 | Other Asia, nes | $12.1 million | 4.8% |
| 5 | France | $12 million | 4.7% |
| 6 | Japan | $7.8 million | 3.1% |
| 7 | Netherlands | $7.5 million | 3% |
| 8 | Malaysia | $5.5 million | 2.2% |
| 9 | Singapore | $5.2 million | 2% |
| 10 | United Arab Emirates | $3.9 million | 1.5% |
| 11 | Mali | $2.9 million | 1.2% |
| 12 | South Africa | $2.2 million | 0.9% |
| 13 | Italy | $1.5 million | 0.6% |
| 14 | Germany | $1.3 million | 0.5% |
| 15 | Australia | $1.2 million | 0.5% |

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

Ghana was the largest exporter of yams (HS 071430) in 2024 with 25% of world export value, ahead of Jamaica (21%), on world trade of $252.3 million (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 48%.

Set that against production and the crop is almost entirely non-traded. Nigeria grows most of the world's yams and exports very little; Ghana leads the export table on a fraction of the tonnage because it built the grading, packing and phytosanitary systems the trade requires.

Two different products share this heading. Most of the value is white Guinea yam moving to west African, Caribbean and Latin American communities in North America and Europe. The Chinese and Japanese entries are a separate species, the slender Chinese yam eaten in east Asia and traded within its own region.


## What do yams cost?

### How they are priced

There is no futures market for yams and no free public benchmark price, so this site quotes none. In most rural markets yams are sold by the tuber rather than by weight, in heaps or hundreds, and size, shape and variety matter as much as mass. Wholesale markets in Lagos, Accra and Abidjan set the reference traders work back from.

The price follows a sharp annual cycle. Barns fill at harvest and prices fall; through the dry season stored tubers sprout, lose weight and rot, supply thins and prices climb until the new crop arrives. Traders who store well earn that spread. Export sales are priced by the carton against a size and grade specification agreed with the importer.


## What moves the price of yams?

### The cost of seed tubers

Yams are planted from tubers, and what goes into the ground cannot be eaten or sold. A large share of every harvest is held back as seed, so a bad year cuts the next season's area directly, and a tuber good enough to plant is worth more than one sold as food.

### Hand labor and staking

Mounding, planting, staking the vine, weeding and lifting are all done by hand, and stakes have grown scarce as woodland is cleared. Where labor is short or wages rise, yam area gives way to cassava, which asks far less of a farmer.

### Losses in barn storage

Tubers are cured and stacked in ventilated barns, where they respire, sprout and rot through the dry season. The rate of loss decides how much of the harvest survives to the hungry months, and a hot store or a beetle infestation turns a good crop into a thin one.

### Rainfall timing

The tuber bulks late in the season, so rain that stops early cuts weight even where the crop looked healthy. Because the cycle runs most of a year and smallholder irrigation is uneconomic, a badly timed dry spell also shrinks the seed tubers that plant the next crop.

### Disease in farm-saved planting material

Yams are propagated vegetatively, so anthracnose, nematodes and yam mosaic viruses build up in farm-saved setts and degrade yields over successive cycles. Clean seed schemes reach few growers, and a farmer buying cheap setts in a rural market may be buying next season's disease with them.

## How are yams produced?

Yam is a climbing vine that stores starch in an underground tuber. Setts, small whole tubers or pieces cut from larger ones, go into mounds as the rains begin, the vine is trained up a stake, and the tuber bulks over roughly seven to eleven months before the leaves die back.

Harvest is careful work. Tubers are dug out and lifted whole, because a bruise becomes a rot in storage. Some systems take an early first harvest from the top of the tuber and leave the plant to form a second, smaller tuber used as seed. Lifted tubers are cured in shade to seal wounds.

Storage rather than processing is the norm. Tubers go into a barn of vertical poles, shaded and ventilated, and are inspected through the season. Where processing happens it is drying and milling into yam flour, plus a smaller trade in instant pounded yam flour.


## What are yams used for?

Almost all of it is eaten. Tubers are boiled and pounded into a smooth elastic dough eaten with soup, or fried, roasted or cooked into pottage. Yam flour keeps far longer than the tuber and is the main processed form, and instant pounded yam flour has taken a share of urban kitchens and the diaspora trade.

By-products are modest and local. Peels and spoiled tubers go to livestock, small tubers become next season's seed, and vines are left as mulch. Wild Dioscorea species were once the industrial source of diosgenin for steroid synthesis, a use since served by other routes.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The domestic chain is short. Tubers move from field to barn, then by head-load or small truck to a rural assembly market, and by lorry to city wholesale markets where they are sold in heaps. Damage in transit is the main loss, because tubers travel loose.

The export chain is a different operation. Tubers are selected for size and shape, cured, sometimes waxed, packed in cartons and moved in refrigerated containers or by air to North America and Europe. It demands cold storage, phytosanitary certification and consistent grading, which is where Nigeria's attempts have repeatedly stumbled and Ghana's investment has paid.

The structural weaknesses are seed and storage. Because planting material comes off the farm, disease accumulates and any shock to the harvest carries into the next year's area. Because the crop is stored rather than processed, much of it is lost to respiration and rot before it is eaten.


## Timeline

- 1967: IITA is founded at Ibadan. The institute built the germplasm collection and breeding program that most later work on yam varieties and clean planting material has drawn on. (https://www.croptrust.org/knowledge-hub/partners/genebank/international-institute-for-tropical-agriculture-iita/)
- 2011: A seed yam program starts in Nigeria and Ghana. Funded research targeted the crop's central constraint, the cost and disease load of farm-saved planting material, rather than the plant itself. (http://blogs.iita.org/yiifswa-holds-annual-progress-review-and-work-planning-and-tac-meetings/)
- 2017: Nigeria launches a formal yam export program. The attempt exposed the gap between growing yams and exporting them: cold chain, curing and grading, not tonnage, are what the export trade requires. (https://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/10/negative-reports-affect-nigerias-yams-export/)
- 2019: Genomics places yam domestication in west Africa. Sequencing showed the cultivated white Guinea yam descends from a forest species domesticated in the Niger basin, confirming the yam belt as the crop's cradle. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6527260/)
- 2022: Ghana is confirmed as the largest exporter. A country with a fraction of Nigeria's production took the top of the export table by meeting importer standards, overtaking Jamaica in the diaspora markets. (https://shippers.org.gh/index.php/ntes-2021-report-ghana-leads-yam-export-globally/)
- 2022: Review quantifies barn storage losses. Documenting how much of the Ghanaian crop is lost to weight loss, rot and insects between harvest and sale put storage ahead of yield as the binding problem. (https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/83160)
- 2024: Gene editing targets the staking problem. A project to breed bushy yam plants aims to remove the stakes and hand labor that make the crop expensive, and to open the way to mechanized production. (https://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/ged/article/default.asp?ID=21040)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most yams

Nigeria produced 65.3 million tonnes in 2024, 71% of the world's 92.4 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Ghana was second with 11%, and the top five together accounted for 95%. Almost all of that crop is eaten in west Africa rather than exported, because yams are heavy, labor-intensive and stored rather than processed.

### what is the difference between a yam and a sweet potato

They are unrelated plants. True yams are Dioscorea species with rough, bark-like skin and starchy white or yellow flesh, grown mainly in west Africa. Sweet potatoes are in the morning glory family, usually orange-fleshed and sweet. In American supermarkets orange sweet potatoes are often labeled yams, which is a marketing habit, not botany.

### why does ghana export more yams than nigeria

Because exporting yams needs curing, grading, cold storage and phytosanitary certification rather than volume. Ghana built that capacity for the diaspora markets in the United States, Canada and Britain and led the world export table by 2024, while Nigeria grows far more and eats nearly all of it.

### why are yams so expensive

Because the crop is labor-intensive at every step and partly eats itself. Mounding, staking, weeding and lifting are done by hand, roughly a quarter to a third of the harvest is held back as seed tubers, and more is lost to rot and sprouting in barn storage before it reaches a market.

### how are yams stored

In barns built of vertical poles, where tubers are tied in the shade with air moving around them and inspected through the dry season. Tubers are cured for a few days after lifting to seal wounds. Even so, respiration, sprouting, rot and insects consume a large share of the crop before it is eaten.

### how are yams priced

By the tuber rather than the kilogram in most west African markets, in heaps or hundreds, with size and shape driving the price. There is no futures contract and no published world benchmark. Prices fall at harvest as barns fill and climb through the dry season as stored tubers sprout and rot.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- 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

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

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# Where does zinc come from?

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

Zinc comes mainly from China, which produced 4.1 million tonnes in 2025, 32% of the world's 13 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Peru (12%), Australia (8.5%) and India (6.7%) follow; the top five together supply 64%. The biggest exporter of unwrought zinc (HS 7901) is Spain (9.8% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). The benchmark price, LME cash, special high grade, was $3,875/t in August 2026, up 39% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Most zinc sits in sulfide beds laid down on ancient sea floors, where hot metal-bearing brines vented into stagnant basins, which is why Australia's Mount Isa and McArthur River, Alaska's Red Dog and the Peruvian Andes hold the largest deposits.

*A metal used mainly to galvanize steel against rust, plus die-casting alloys and brass.* Also called: Zn, zinc ore, zinc concentrate, galvanizing, slab zinc.

## Where does zinc come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2025 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 4.1 million | 32% |
| 2 | Peru | 1.5 million | 12% |
| 3 | Australia | 1.1 million | 8.5% |
| 4 | India | 870,000 | 6.7% |
| 5 | Mexico | 780,000 | 6% |
| 6 | United States | 670,000 | 5.2% |
| 7 | Bolivia | 500,000 | 3.8% |
| 8 | Russia | 430,000 | 3.3% |
| 9 | Kazakhstan | 360,000 | 2.8% |
| 10 | Sweden | 230,000 | 1.8% |
| | Rest of world | 2 million | 19% |
| | World | 13 million | 100% |

Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026.

Zinc is mined as sulfide ore, concentrated at the mine and smelted somewhere else, so the mine map and the metal map differ. On this page zinc production means mined zinc measured by its metal content, unless refined or slab zinc is named. In 2025 China mined 4.1 million tonnes, 32% of the world's 13 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Peru followed at 12%, then Australia at 8.5%, India at 6.7% and Mexico at 6%. Countries outside the 10 listed separately produced 19% of the total, and world mine output changed +9% from the previous year.

The geology is mostly sedimentary. The largest deposits are sediment-hosted, formed where hot brines carrying zinc and lead vented onto an oxygen-poor sea floor and precipitated layer upon layer of sphalerite and galena, which were then folded and buried. Australia's Mount Isa, McArthur River and Century, Alaska's Red Dog and the Broken Hill orebody in New South Wales are of this kind, and so are many Chinese and Irish deposits. A second family, Mississippi Valley type, sits in limestone where cooler brines replaced carbonate rock, giving the smaller, higher-grade mines of the American midcontinent and Tennessee. A third comes from volcanogenic massive sulfide lenses, the source of much of the zinc in Peru, Canada, Sweden and Spain. In all three, zinc travels with lead, silver and often copper, so few mines produce zinc alone and the by-product credits shape which ones stay open.

Reserves, meaning the part of identified deposits that could be mined economically at the time of the estimate, were 240 million tonnes in 2025. Australia held 27%, China 25% and Russia 12% (USGS MCS). Zinc reserves have a habit of being replaced faster than they are consumed, because deep extensions of known orebodies are cheaper to prove than new discoveries; the constraint on supply is usually the cost of building a mine rather than the absence of ore.


## Who exports and imports zinc?

Australia and Peru ship concentrate; China, South Korea and Canada run the smelters that turn it into slab zinc.

### Exporters of zinc ores and concentrates (HS 2608), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Peru | $1.9 billion | 16% |
| 2 | Australia | $1.5 billion | 12% |
| 3 | United States | $1.4 billion | 12% |
| 4 | Mexico | $1.1 billion | 8.8% |
| 5 | Bolivia | $1.1 billion | 8.6% |
| 6 | Sweden | $468.4 million | 3.8% |
| 7 | Russia | $448.2 million | 3.7% |
| 8 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $417.8 million | 3.4% |
| 9 | Kazakhstan | $336.5 million | 2.7% |
| 10 | South Africa | $293.3 million | 2.4% |
| 11 | Eritrea | $277.5 million | 2.3% |
| 12 | Belgium | $268.1 million | 2.2% |
| 13 | Brazil | $193.5 million | 1.6% |
| 14 | Portugal | $190.8 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | Chile | $171 million | 1.4% |

### Importers of zinc ores and concentrates (HS 2608), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | $4.3 billion | 35% |
| 2 | South Korea | $1.5 billion | 12% |
| 3 | Spain | $981.5 million | 8% |
| 4 | Canada | $770.7 million | 6.3% |
| 5 | Japan | $663.8 million | 5.4% |
| 6 | Belgium | $632.4 million | 5.2% |
| 7 | Finland | $588.9 million | 4.8% |
| 8 | Sweden | $324.3 million | 2.6% |
| 9 | France | $299.2 million | 2.4% |
| 10 | Netherlands | $285 million | 2.3% |
| 11 | Norway | $281.9 million | 2.3% |
| 12 | Australia | $263.7 million | 2.1% |
| 13 | Germany | $257.9 million | 2.1% |
| 14 | Kazakhstan | $225.8 million | 1.8% |
| 15 | Brazil | $132.5 million | 1.1% |

### Exporters of unwrought zinc (HS 7901), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Spain | $1.4 billion | 9.8% |
| 2 | South Korea | $1.4 billion | 9.2% |
| 3 | Australia | $1.2 billion | 8.2% |
| 4 | Canada | $1.2 billion | 7.9% |
| 5 | Belgium | $972.3 million | 6.6% |
| 6 | Peru | $859.7 million | 5.9% |
| 7 | Netherlands | $854.3 million | 5.8% |
| 8 | Finland | $766 million | 5.2% |
| 9 | India | $723.1 million | 4.9% |
| 10 | Kazakhstan | $715.5 million | 4.9% |
| 11 | Mexico | $553.3 million | 3.8% |
| 12 | Norway | $524.6 million | 3.6% |
| 13 | Japan | $455.2 million | 3.1% |
| 14 | Germany | $351.1 million | 2.4% |
| 15 | Iran | $336.3 million | 2.3% |

### Importers of unwrought zinc (HS 7901), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $1.7 billion | 12% |
| 2 | China | $1.2 billion | 8.4% |
| 3 | Netherlands | $990.4 million | 6.8% |
| 4 | Germany | $949.8 million | 6.5% |
| 5 | Turkey (Türkiye) | $844.1 million | 5.8% |
| 6 | Vietnam | $753.8 million | 5.1% |
| 7 | Belgium | $565.7 million | 3.9% |
| 8 | India | $554.8 million | 3.8% |
| 9 | Other Asia, nes | $553.1 million | 3.8% |
| 10 | Singapore | $533.9 million | 3.6% |
| 11 | Italy | $502.9 million | 3.4% |
| 12 | Thailand | $436 million | 3% |
| 13 | Indonesia | $356.9 million | 2.4% |
| 14 | France | $348.4 million | 2.4% |
| 15 | Brazil | $329.6 million | 2.2% |

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

Zinc crosses borders twice. Concentrate (HS 2608) is a grey powder of roughly half zinc by weight, shipped in bulk from mines to smelters; in 2024 Peru was the largest exporter with 16% of a trade worth $12.3 billion, ahead of Australia and United States, and China took 35% of imports (CEPII BACI). Slab zinc (HS 7901) is the refined metal, cast into ingots and jumbo blocks. In 2024 Spain led exports of unwrought zinc (HS 7901) with 9.8% of the world's $14.7 billion, followed by South Korea and Australia, while United States was the largest importer at 12%.

The two tables name different industries. Concentrate exporters are mining countries in the Andes, Australia and North America. Slab exporters are smelting countries: Spain, South Korea, Canada, Belgium, Japan, Kazakhstan and Finland, several of which mine little or no zinc and run on imported concentrate. The largest concentrate importer is also the largest miner, which is what happens when smelting capacity is built faster than mines. Importers of slab zinc are galvanizing economies, with steel mills and coating lines rather than furnaces.


## What does zinc cost?

- LME cash, special high grade: $3,875/t in August 2026; 12-month change +39%; 10-year change +70%; all-time high $4,405/t in December 2006; real high (2024 US$) $11,502/t in May 1974 (World Bank Pink Sheet).
- Zinc, high grade 98% pure (IMF): $3,594/t in July 2026; 12-month change +30%; 10-year change +65%; all-time high $4,381/t in December 2006; real high (2024 US$) $6,800/t in November 2006 (IMF PCPS).

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

### How it is priced

The benchmark is the London Metal Exchange zinc contract, ticker ZS, traded in 25 t lots quoted in US$/t and settled by delivery of special high grade zinc, which is at least 99.995% zinc, into an LME warehouse. The exchange quotes a cash price for delivery in two days and a three-month price, and the spread between them reveals whether nearby metal is tight or abundant. The Shanghai Futures Exchange lists a yuan contract for the Chinese market. Physical buyers pay the exchange price plus a regional premium covering freight, financing, credit and local scarcity, and those premiums for Europe, the United States and Asia are quoted separately and can move independently of the exchange.

The series charted here is LME cash, special high grade. In August 2026 it averaged $3,875/t, up 39% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The highest monthly average was $4,405/t in December 2006; adjusted for US inflation the real high was $11,502/t in May 1974, and the lowest monthly average since the series began in 1960 was $177/t in September 1962. The gap between the nominal and real records is a reminder that zinc's true peak came in the inflationary 1970s, not in the commodity boom of the 2000s.

Mines do not receive the exchange price. A smelter buys concentrate at the zinc value of the contained metal minus a treatment charge, quoted in dollars per dry metric tonne of concentrate and negotiated annually between large miners and smelters, with spot charges for the rest. The treatment charge is the smelter's gross margin, and it moves inversely with concentrate availability: when mines expand faster than smelters, charges rise and smelting is profitable; when smelting capacity outgrows mine supply, charges fall toward zero and smelters cut runs, which tightens the metal market a few months later. Concentrate contracts also carry deductions for the unpaid portion of the contained zinc, credits for silver and gold, and penalties for iron, silica, arsenic and other impurities.


## What moves the price of zinc?

### Steel output and construction

Galvanized steel is the reason zinc has a market, and galvanizing serves construction above all: roofing, cladding, framing, guardrails, transmission towers, rebar and structural sections. Zinc demand therefore tracks steel production and, within it, the share of steel that gets coated. Chinese property completions, infrastructure spending, European and North American non-residential building and the pace of transmission-grid construction are the visible drivers. Automotive body panels are the second galvanizing market and follow vehicle production.

### Treatment charges and smelter economics

The treatment charge that smelters earn for converting concentrate into metal is the clearest signal in the zinc market. It is negotiated annually between the largest miners and smelters and traded on a spot basis alongside. When mine supply grows faster than smelting capacity, charges rise; when smelters outbid each other for scarce concentrate, charges fall toward zero and smelters lose money on every tonne. Sustained low charges lead to production cuts, which show up as tighter refined metal months later.

### Mine closures and depletion

Zinc mines are unusually short-lived because sediment-hosted orebodies are mined out rather than deepened indefinitely. A cluster of large mines reaching the end of their reserves within a few years, as happened in the middle of the 2010s, removes a measurable share of world concentrate supply and lifts prices until replacements are built. New mines take the better part of a decade to permit and construct, so the industry runs in long cycles of depletion and rebuilding rather than responding smoothly to price.

### Energy prices and smelting capacity

Electrolytic zinc smelting is one of the most power-hungry metallurgical processes in use, so power prices set the marginal cost of refined metal in Europe in particular. When wholesale electricity prices rise faster than the metal price, smelters curtail or idle, and the metal market tightens even while mines keep producing concentrate. The reverse also holds: cheap captive power, whether hydroelectric or coal-fired, is why smelting has migrated toward Asia.

### Exchange stocks and financing deals

Zinc is stored cheaply and financed easily, so a large share of visible metal can sit in warehouses under financing arrangements rather than being available to consumers. Falling exchange stocks and a backwardated forward curve, where the cash price exceeds the three-month price, signal genuine scarcity; rising stocks with a wide contango signal the opposite. Because a few holders can control much of the deliverable metal, the exchange applies lending rules that limit how far a dominant position can squeeze the spreads.

### Substitution and thrifting

High zinc prices push buyers toward thinner coatings, toward aluminum-zinc alloy coatings that use less zinc per square meter, and toward aluminum or plastic in die-cast parts and plumbing. None of these substitutions is fast, and all of them are hard to reverse. The other side of the ledger is that galvanizing is cheap insurance against rust, so demand is fairly insensitive to the metal price in the short run: zinc is a small fraction of the cost of a coated steel structure.

### By-product economics of lead and silver

Most zinc comes from mines that also produce lead and silver, so a mine's decision to run at full rate depends on all three prices. A strong silver price can keep a low-grade zinc mine open, and a weak one can close it, which decouples zinc supply from the zinc price. The same linkage means that a shock to lead or silver, from a smelter closure or a policy change, can show up as a change in zinc concentrate availability.

## How is zinc produced?

Zinc ore is almost always sphalerite, a zinc sulfide, mined underground or in large open pits and usually accompanied by galena, the lead sulfide, and by silver. The ore is crushed, ground and separated by froth flotation, which is run in stages so that a lead concentrate is floated first and a zinc concentrate second. The zinc concentrate holds roughly half its weight in zinc, along with iron, sulfur and traces of cadmium, germanium, indium and gallium that are recovered later as by-products; those minor metals come almost entirely from zinc smelting rather than from mines of their own.

Nearly all refined zinc is now made by the roast-leach-electrowin route. Concentrate is roasted in a fluid bed at high temperature, which converts the sulfide to zinc oxide, called calcine, and drives off sulfur dioxide that is captured and turned into sulfuric acid; a large smelter is also a large acid plant, and acid sales matter to its economics. The calcine is leached in dilute sulfuric acid, the solution is purified with zinc dust to drop out copper, cadmium and cobalt, and the purified solution is electrowon: zinc plates onto aluminum cathodes over a day or two, is stripped, melted and cast into special high grade ingots. A smaller share of output still comes from the older pyrometallurgical route, in which calcine is reduced with coke in an imperial smelting furnace that produces lead and zinc together.

Secondary zinc is recovered from the dust that electric arc furnaces generate when they melt galvanized scrap steel. That dust is treated in Waelz kilns to make a crude zinc oxide, which is then refined into metal. As the share of steel made from scrap rises, so does the volume of zinc circulating through this route, and it now supplies a meaningful part of refined production without any mining at all.


## What is zinc used for?

Galvanizing is the dominant use. Zinc protects steel in two ways at once: it forms a durable barrier, and because it is more reactive than iron it corrodes preferentially, so a scratch in the coating does not start rust underneath. The International Lead and Zinc Study Group put galvanizing at 60% of world zinc use in 2023, far ahead of zinc alloys at 15%, zinc compounds at 11%, brass and bronze at 9% and semi-manufactured products at 4% (ILZSG, World Zinc Factbook 2024). Read by end use rather than by first use, construction takes half of all zinc, transport a fifth and infrastructure most of the rest. Hot-dip galvanizing, in which steel is dipped in a molten zinc bath, coats structural steel, sheet and wire; continuous galvanizing lines coat coil for car bodies and appliances; electrogalvanizing gives a thinner, smoother finish for visible panels.

The remainder splits between brass and bronze, which are copper-zinc and copper-tin alloys used for fittings, valves and instruments; zinc die-casting alloys, which melt at low temperature and reproduce fine detail, used for locks, hardware and automotive components; rolled zinc for roofing and gutters, especially in Europe; and zinc oxide, which goes into rubber compounding, ceramics, paints, sunscreens and animal feed. Zinc is also an essential dietary micronutrient, and zinc-based batteries remain the standard alkaline cell.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

Mining is spread across the Andes, Australia, China, India, Mexico and central Asia; smelting is concentrated in China, South Korea, India, Japan, Canada and a shrinking European cluster. Concentrate therefore moves in bulk carriers from Callao and Antofagasta, from Townsville, Karumba and Darwin, and from the seasonal Arctic shipping window at Red Dog, to smelters in Asia and Europe. China imported 35% of world zinc concentrate in 2024 (CEPII BACI), which is why Chinese smelter margins are the single most watched variable in the concentrate market.

Refined metal flows the other way. Spain, South Korea and Australia led exports of slab zinc in 2024 (CEPII BACI), and United States was the largest importer at 12%, feeding galvanizing lines rather than furnaces. LME warehouses in Singapore, Malaysia, the Netherlands and the United States hold the stocks that settle the contract, and the pattern of deliveries into and out of them is a market signal in its own right.

The fragile links are smelters, not mines. A zinc smelter cannot be throttled cheaply: the electrolysis cells must stay warm, so operators either run or shut down properly, and restarting takes months. That makes the fleet vulnerable to power price spikes, to environmental enforcement and to sudden losses of concentrate supply. Europe's smelters have proved the most exposed, curtailing repeatedly when wholesale power prices rose. On the mine side, single large operations carry an outsized share of concentrate: the Alaskan Arctic mine that ships only in the ice-free months, and the largest Australian and Peruvian operations, each move world balances when they stumble.


## Key companies

- Glencore: trader, Switzerland, listed (GLEN)
- Teck Resources: miner, Canada, listed (TECK)
- Hindustan Zinc: miner, India, listed (500188)
- Nexa Resources: miner, Luxembourg, listed (NEXA)
- Boliden: smelter, Sweden, listed (BOL)
- Korea Zinc: refiner, South Korea, listed (010130)
- Nyrstar: smelter, Netherlands

## Timeline

- 1836-01: Hot-dip galvanizing patented in France. A patent for coating iron by dipping it in molten zinc created the end use that still takes the majority of world zinc supply. (https://www.ilzsg.org/wp-content/uploads/SitePDFs/The%20World%20Zinc%20Factbook%202024.pdf)
- 1916-01: Electrolytic zinc reaches commercial scale. Plants at Trail in British Columbia and Risdon in Tasmania proved the roast-leach-electrowin route that now makes almost all the world's zinc and replaced retort smelting. (https://portal.engineersaustralia.org.au/system/files/engineering-heritage-australia/nomination-title/Electrolytic%20Zinc%20Works.Nomination.V5.pdf)
- 1923-02: The Mount Isa orebody is found. A prospector's discovery in February 1923 in northwest Queensland opened one of the richest zinc-lead districts in the world and anchored Australia's position in the trade. (https://www.glencore.com.au/operations-and-projects/qld-metals/who-we-are/our-history)
- 1959-01: International Lead and Zinc Study Group established. The United Nations created the intergovernmental body whose supply, demand and stock statistics remain the reference data for both metals. (https://www.ilzsg.org/the-study-group/)
- 1989-01: Red Dog begins production in Alaska. Production started in 1989 at what became the largest single zinc mine in the world, shipping concentrate only during the ice-free months. (https://dnr.alaska.gov/mlw/mining/large-mines/red-dog/)
- 1999-01: Century mine starts up in Queensland. A very large, low-grade sediment-hosted mine came on stream in 1999 and supplied concentrate for sixteen years before its reserves ran out. (https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/projects/century-zinc-mine-australia/)
- 2006-11: Zinc price spikes as stocks empty. A third consecutive year of deficit lifted the LME cash average for 2006 by well over double, while exchange stocks fell from about 394,000 t in January to 85,000 t by late November. (https://d9-wret.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/production/mineral-pubs/zinc/myb1-2006-zinc.pdf)
- 2015-10: Glencore cuts 500,000 t of annual zinc mine output. The largest single supply cut in the modern zinc market, announced on 9 October 2015, removed roughly a twentieth of world mine supply. (https://www.glencore.com/media-and-insights/news/Glencore-to-reduce-mine-production-by-500-000-tonnes-of-zinc-metal-per-annum)
- 2016-01: Lisheen ships its final concentrate. The Irish mine closed on schedule after seventeen years, part of a cluster of depletions that removed a large block of concentrate from the market within a year. (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vedanta-marks-final-shipment-from-lisheen-mine-in-ireland-300208923.html)
- 2018-08: Century restarts as a tailings retreatment operation. Reprocessing the tailings dam of a closed mine proved that old waste could be an economic zinc source, adding supply without new mining. (https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/news/new-century-resources-starts-zinc-concentrate-production-at-century-mine/)
- 2019-03: Gamsberg opens in South Africa. The first major new African zinc mine in decades started up in the Northern Cape, one of the few large greenfield additions after the mid-decade closures. (https://www.mining-technology.com/news/vedanta-zinc-gamsberg-mine-south-africa/)
- 2021-10: European smelters curtail on power prices. Cuts of up to half of output at three European zinc smelters on 13 October 2021 began the energy-crisis curtailments that reshaped European smelting economics. (https://www.nyrstar.com/resource-center/press-releases/nyrstar-curtails-production-at-its-european-smelters)
- 2023-07: LME adds jumbo blocks to the zinc contract. Recognizing that jumbos had become about half of the special high grade market, the exchange widened the deliverable shapes for its zinc contract. (https://www.lme.com/-/media/Files/News/Notices/2023/07/RULEBOOK-23-133-SPECIAL-CONTRACTS-RULES--ADDITION-OF-ZINC-JUMBOS-AND-OTHER-ADMINISTRATIVE-AMENDMENTS.pdf)
- 2024-12: Treatment charges collapse to record lows. Annual benchmark charges fell from $274/dmt in 2023 to $165/dmt in 2024 and spot charges into China from $85/t to $25/t across the year, wiping out smelter margins. (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1713930/000129281425001097/nexaform20f_2024.htm)
- 2024-12: Italy's only primary zinc smelter shuts permanently. The Portovesme zinc line stopped on 23 December 2024 on power costs, another step in the retreat of European smelting. (https://www.unionesarda.it/en/sardinia/portovesme-early-shutdown-of-zinc-line-at-glencore-plant-begins-lw2kntf4)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most zinc

China mines the most zinc. In 2025 it produced 4.1 million tonnes of zinc content in ore, 32% of the world's 13 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Peru was second at 12% and Australia third at 8.5%. Mined zinc is measured as metal content, not as the tonnage of ore or concentrate that leaves the mine.

### where does zinc come from

Zinc comes from sphalerite, a zinc sulfide mined with lead and silver. The largest deposits formed on ancient sea floors where hot brines vented into oxygen-poor basins, which is why Australia, Peru, China, Alaska and Mexico dominate. In 2025 mines produced 13 million tonnes of zinc content (USGS MCS), which smelters then turned into slab metal, mostly in Asia.

### what is zinc used for

Galvanizing is the main use: zinc coats steel to stop it rusting, both as a physical barrier and by corroding in the steel's place. The International Lead and Zinc Study Group put galvanizing at 60% of world zinc use in 2023. The rest goes into brass and bronze, zinc die-cast parts for hardware and vehicles, rolled zinc roofing, and zinc oxide for rubber, ceramics and sunscreen.

### what is the price of zinc today

This site shows monthly averages, not live quotes. The LME cash, special high grade price averaged $3,875/t in August 2026, up 39% from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). The highest monthly average was $4,405/t in December 2006, though in inflation-adjusted terms the real peak was $11,502/t in May 1974. Live quotes come from the London Metal Exchange.

### what is a zinc treatment charge

It is the fee a smelter earns for turning concentrate into metal, quoted in dollars per dry metric tonne of concentrate and deducted from the zinc value the miner is paid. Benchmarks are negotiated annually between large miners and smelters, with spot deals alongside. High charges mean concentrate is plentiful; charges near zero mean smelters are competing for scarce feed and will eventually cut output.

### which country has the most zinc reserves

Australia holds the largest zinc reserves, 27% of the world's 240 million tonnes in 2025, ahead of China at 25% and Russia at 12% (USGS MCS). Reserves are the portion of identified deposits that could be mined at a profit under conditions at the time of the estimate, so the figure changes with prices and mining costs.

### which country exports the most zinc

It depends on the form. For refined slab zinc (HS 7901), Spain led in 2024 with 9.8% of world export value (CEPII BACI), followed by South Korea. For zinc ores and concentrates (HS 2608) the largest exporter was Peru at 16%, and the largest importer was China, which runs the biggest smelting fleet.

### what is special high grade zinc

Special high grade, or SHG, is refined zinc of at least 99.995% purity, the grade the London Metal Exchange accepts for delivery against its 25 t contract. Almost all zinc made by the electrolytic roast-leach-electrowin route meets it. Lower grades exist for die-casting alloys and for the older imperial smelting route, and they trade at a discount to the exchange price.

## Sources

- USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, MCS 2026, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Public domain (US Government work). https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries
- 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
- IMF Primary Commodity Price System (PCPS), 2026-08-06, fetched 6 September 2026. License: © International Monetary Fund. All rights reserved (IMF terms of use). https://data.imf.org/en/datasets/IMF.RES:PCPS

Text last reviewed 2026-09-06. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where does zinc come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/zinc/.

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