What public data exists on lumber and log trade?

Public data on lumber and log trade comes in three kinds. Customs data records imports and exports by product code, partner and month, in value and usually in quantity. Trade price indices, such as a monthly export price index for logs and lumber, track the change in prices for traded wood. UN Comtrade gathers it from national customs offices, and each country publishes its own. And FAO's forest product statistics give annual production and trade for logs, sawnwood, panels, pulp and paper, many back to 1961. Between them, they show where wood moves, how much and at what declared value. The catch is that the two sides of any flow rarely agree, and the annual global series fills gaps with estimates.

What the usual answer says

Lists of sources name UN Comtrade, FAOSTAT, national customs and statistics agencies, trade associations and price indices, all of them real. They seldom say what the publishers themselves warn about, which is what decides whether a series built from them can be trusted.

The annual view

FAO's forest product statistics come from an annual questionnaire that countries complete, run with three partner bodies. FAO is open about gaps. Where a country has not reported, "FAO estimates annual production and trade based on trade journal reports, statistical yearbooks or other sources". And "where such estimates are not possible, FAO repeats historical figures until new information is found". A flat line in the data can be a stable market, or a country that stopped reporting.

The annual series is slow. FAO published its figures for 2024 on 24 December 2025. They showed global exports of wood and paper products up 1.4 percent to $486 billion, after a 14 percent drop in 2023. Global trade in industrial roundwood fell 1 percent to 96 million cubic metres. Trade in sawnwood recorded no overall change. These figures suit market context and long-run trends. They arrive about a year after the year they describe.

The customs view

Customs data is monthly and detailed, by product code and partner. Wood and articles of wood have their own chapter, 44, in the international product code system, with separate headings for logs and sawn wood. It is the closest public view of actual flows.

It has two known weak points. First, partners disagree. The UN Comtrade help centre states that bilateral asymmetries "are a well-known phenomenon in official statistics". Imports are valued including insurance and freight, and exports without. Goods shipped in December may arrive in January. Goods pass through third countries, sit in customs warehouses, or are classified differently at each end. The World Bank's trade tool, in help notes dating from 2010, put the valuation gap alone at "a 10% to 20% difference". It also noted that imports "are usually recorded with more accuracy than exports because imports generally generate tariff revenues while exports don't".

Second, quantities are weaker than values. Comtrade's guidance on quantity data says null and zero quantities mean the same thing in practice: they come "from the non-reported data (null) or the estimation method (zero)", and this "does not happen for the value measure". Its advice is to "avoid summing when any data point is zero or null", and to make sure units match before adding. For lumber, in our reading, that can mean one partner reporting cubic metres and another tonnes.

The price view

The monthly export price index for logs and lumber is set at 2000=100, not seasonally adjusted, and stood at 115.2 in August 2026. Like the producer index covered in our piece on reading it, it tracks change, not a price in dollars, and it covers one country's exports. It is quicker than the annual series and says more about price than customs values do, since a customs value per cubic metre mixes grades.

Building a usable series

For a given flow, use the importer's figures or the exporter's, and keep that choice for every year. The World Bank's help notes make the point: switching reporter part way through makes changes in the series reflect "a shift" in reporter, not in trade. Does the choice change a decision? For a large, direct flow, both sides usually move together and either gives the same trend. It matters most for small flows and those routed through third countries, where the two sides can diverge in direction as well as in level.

Use values for trend, and quantities with care: check units by partner and year, and flag periods where quantity is missing. In the annual series, mark years where a figure is FAO's estimate or a repeat. And treat the most recent customs months as provisional until the publisher's revision window has passed.

What it can and can't tell a timber business

Trade data shows the direction and scale of flows, which markets are growing, and the average declared value per unit. It does not show prices on individual contracts, buyers or sellers, or grades within a product code. Average declared value per cubic metre is a useful signal of mix and market, but not a price to quote.

AI can pull monthly releases, match product codes across revisions of the code system and convert units. It can also flag when the two sides of a flow drift further apart than usual.

When it doesn't apply

Businesses that buy and sell only within one country gain context from trade data, not decisions. Specialty products hidden inside broad product codes are invisible in it. And where duties apply, the declared value is, in our reading, what customs recorded rather than the full landed cost.

Quarri for sawmills is built around how a sawmill runs, from log intake to shipped order.

Quarri is an AI-native data platform for the timber supply chain. It connects buying, production, sales and inventory for forest management, sawmill, wood products and pulp, paper and packaging operators.