According to statistics from the Vietnam Pepper Association, Vietnam’s cinnamon exports in December 2024 reached 9,604 tons, with a total turnover of 25.3 million USD, a decrease of 10.7% compared to November.
Vietnam is a strong country in spices, with over 500,000 hectares of various plants and around 400 enterprises, along with hundreds of thousands of farmers participating in production and export activities. Notably, cinnamon is one of the spices that consistently brings in hundreds of millions of USD.
In the entire year of 2024, Vietnam exported 99,874 tons of cinnamon, with a total export value of 274.5 million USD. Compared to 2023, the export volume increased by 11.7%, and the export value increased by 5.2%. India was the largest market for Vietnam’s cinnamon exports in 2024, with 35,885 tons, accounting for 35.9% of total exports.
Vietnam is the third-largest cinnamon producer in the world.
Widely cultivated in many provinces in Vietnam with an area of hundreds of thousands of hectares, however, cinnamon is a precious tree of the world. Vietnam has up to 180,000 hectares in the northern mountainous provinces and the North Central. Specifically, the estimated cinnamon bark reserves in Vietnam are around 900,000 – 1,200,000 tons, with an average annual harvest of 70,000 – 80,000 tons.
Besides Vietnam, cinnamon is grown in China, Indonesia (Cassia variety), Madagascar, and Sri Lanka (Ceylon variety). There are about 300 species of cinnamon in the world.
According to data from Tridge, the cinnamon production of the four largest producers in the world is as follows: Indonesia with 89,000 tons, China with 82,000 tons, Vietnam with 41,000 tons, and Sri Lanka with 24,000 tons.
It can be seen that Vietnam only has a cinnamon production of about 41,000 tons per year, which is only half of that of China and Indonesia. However, Vietnam currently leads the world in cinnamon export value. The record was in 2022, when Vietnamese cinnamon accounted for 18.2% of the global production but 34.4% of the global cinnamon export market, with a turnover exceeding 292 million USD.
The cinnamon tree has many uses in production and life, such as being used as a spice, fragrance, or medicine; for food processing; or as fertilizer. Parts of the tree are utilized from the leaves, bark, branches, and wood.
It is expected that the total export value of Vietnam’s spice products could reach around two billion USD by 2025, with an export volume of about 500,000 tons. According to the assessment from the VPA, the cinnamon tree has a lot of potential because the demand from high-quality markets such as the US and Europe continues to increase. In addition, Vietnam also benefits from many new-generation FTAs, such as CPTPP and the VPA/FLEGT Agreement. Many types of tariffs on wood and wood products have been reduced or eliminated.