# Pepper & spices

Dried berries of a tropical vine, the classic spice of the old trade routes, now grown mainly in Vietnam, India and Brazil.

Source page: https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/spices/

Softs · No. 103

- Not on a critical list
- HHI 1,378 · unconcentrated
 Softs · Foundation · Matter

Pepper once enriched long-distance merchants; today Vietnam grows over a quarter of it, after planting vines at a furious pace.

Chart: Illustration: Pepper & spices

##### Where it comes from

Chart: Map of where it comes from

Black pepper is the berry of a tropical climbing vine, trained up poles or trees and picked by hand, mostly by smallholders. Output was 933,000 t in 2024.

##### Three things to know

1. World pepper output more than tripled between 1990 and 2024, from 288 to 933 thousand tonnes, mostly after 2010.
2. Spices made up 66% of the Comoros' exports in 2013-2017, a textbook single-commodity economy.
3. India leads pepper-code exports with 29.3% because the trade code lumps black pepper with dried chillies and paprika.

##### The journey

1. 1 **Vines**Trained up poles or living trees
2. 2 **Picking**Berry spikes picked by hand
3. 3 **Drying**Sun-dried black, or skinned for white
4. 4 **Cleaning**Cleaned, graded and steam sterilised
5. 5 **Grinding**Ground, blended and packed

##### Go deeper pick a tab to open it in full

## Other sections

- [Overview](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/spices/overview/index.md)
- [Correlation](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/spices/correlation/index.md)
- [Extraction](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/spices/extraction/index.md)
- [Production](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/spices/production/index.md)
- [Stocks](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/spices/stocks/index.md)
- [Cycles](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/spices/cycles/index.md)
- [Trading](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/spices/trading/index.md)
- [Movement](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/spices/movement/index.md)
- [Criticality](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/spices/criticality/index.md)
- [Characteristics](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/spices/characteristics/index.md)
- [Emissions](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/spices/emissions/index.md)
- [Relationships](https://www.materialinsights.org/commodities/spices/links/index.md)