Forest products trade globe
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Flows on the globe for the selected product, given the layers, by value
Key points
World exports of forest products in 2024 totaled about $404 bn: paper and paperboard — $190 bn, wood and wood products — $153 bn, pulp — $61 bn. About half of wood and paper trade goes overland between neighboring countries: the largest flow in the world is wood from Canada to the United States ($11 bn). Pulp, by contrast, travels almost entirely by sea and is highly concentrated: Brazil, the United States and Canada account for 42% of world exports, and China buys 34% of world imports.
Seaborne shipments total about $150 bn a year. The key maritime chokepoints are the English Channel (~$29 bn across the three groups), the Strait of Malacca (~$26 bn), the Suez Canal (~$25 bn) and Gibraltar (~$25 bn). For pulp the Cape of Good Hope is especially important: 48% of Brazil’s exports and 42% of Uruguay’s pass through it. Half of Finland’s pulp exports and a third of its wood exports pass through the Danish Straits.
Importance of straits
Click “Close strait” in the list below or select a strait on the globe. The model shows how much trade passes through it and which countries depend on it most: importers are highlighted in red, exporters in orange. The more saturated the color, the larger the share of the country’s trade that passes through the strait.
Straits and canals
Estimated value of seaborne shipments through each strait in the selected layer. The “Close strait” button shows whose trade depends on it.
Click a flow, country, strait or hub on the globe
About the data
Data. Source: BACI (CEPII), a reconciled database of bilateral trade based on UN Comtrade, 2024 (accessed via OEC). Layers: “Wood” — HS chapter 44 (roundwood, sawn timber, plywood, panels, pellets, wood products); “Pulp” — chapter 47 (wood pulp, cellulose, recovered paper); “Paper and paperboard” — chapter 48 (paper, paperboard and articles thereof). Furniture is not included in this globe.
What is shown. The globe shows the 70 largest sea flows and the 25 largest overland flows. Strait estimates cover all flows from $15 m — 83–91% of world trade in each layer. When a strait is closed, country lists include countries with trade in the layer of at least 0.1% of the world total (and at least $50 m).
Mode of transport. Trade between neighboring countries (within Europe and North America, China with its neighbors including Russia and Central Asia, within Southeast Asia, etc.) is treated as overland. For other flows, the sea share is taken from Eurostat statistics on EU trade with distant countries for 2024: wood 97%, pulp virtually 100%, paper and paperboard 94%.
Routes and importance of straits. A route is the shortest path between the countries’ main ports over the network of sea lanes. A strait’s importance for a country is the share of its shipments through the strait in its total imports or exports of the product group. When a strait is closed, the model looks for a detour and estimates how much longer it is (at an average vessel speed of 14 knots); if there is no detour, the shipment is considered cut off.
Limitations. This is a computational model, not vessel-tracking data. Routes run between the countries’ main ports, not between specific terminals. Russian timber shipments to China are counted as overland, although some of them go by sea through Far East ports.
WhiteIndex. Forest Products Trade Globe (October 2026). Data: BACI (CEPII) based on UN Comtrade, 2024; Eurostat.
All sources
BACI (CEPII) based on UN Comtrade, 2024
This text was translated automatically from Russian. Figures, years, names and sources are as in the original.
Exports of wood, pulp, paper and paperboard in 2024: sea routes and the role of straits in world trade