India Spice Export Data by Country, 2024

Which spices does India export the most by value?

India exports spices across a wide range of product lines, and the calendar-2024 data we've verified for seven major lines gives a clear picture of where the value actually concentrates. This overview pulls together figures from our individual product pages into one comparison, so you can see the relative scale before drilling into any one spice. Every number below comes from WITS (World Bank) / UN Comtrade export records for 2024, listed under Sources.

*Guar gum is partly an industrial product (oil and gas drilling fluid applications) rather than purely a culinary spice — see our food vs. industrial grade guide.

Source: WITS (World Bank) / UN Comtrade, India exports by partner, calendar year 2024; one dataset per HS line, each linked under Sources. Retrieved: 2026-09-17.

How to use this data (and how not to)

Read these figures as a map of where India's spice trade goes, not as a price list. Three cautions keep the numbers honest:

• Shares measure destination, not price. A market's share is its slice of India's declared export value for that HS line. A high share tells you a market buys a lot; it says nothing about what any single buyer pays or what a quote for your grade should be.
• Unit values are averages across everything. Dividing a line's total value by its total weight blends whole and ground product, every grade and every contract across the year. It's useful for comparing how value-dense one spice is against another. It isn't a benchmark for negotiating one shipment.
• Calendars differ. These are calendar-year figures from WITS / UN Comtrade, so they won't line up exactly with the April–March fiscal-year export statistics published by India's Spices Board or the commerce ministry. Compare like with like.

For anything commercial, send your specification and destination port and ask for a current quote. The data tells you which lanes are deep; the quote tells you what your cargo costs.

Which HS code should a spice shipment be declared under?

The current split code for the form you are actually shipping, not the code in a trade-data table. WITS reports several lines under legacy six-digit codes: 0904.20 for dried chilli, 0909.30 for cumin, 0908.30 for cardamom and 0909.20 for coriander. Current nomenclature splits each into whole and crushed or ground: 0904.21 and 0904.22 for chilli, 0909.31 and 0909.32 for cumin, and so on.

Scenario: a buyer copies "0904.20" from a market report into the purchase order. The exporter's invoice says 0904.21 because the cargo is whole pods. The destination customs broker now has two documents that disagree, and the entry is held until someone explains it. The fix costs nothing: put the six-digit split code (whole or ground) on the contract, and make sure the invoice, packing list, phytosanitary certificate and certificate of origin all carry the same one.

Which country buys the most Indian spice?

If you asked most buyers to name India's top spice export destination, the Gulf would likely come up first. The data says otherwise for the two largest spice categories by value: China is the clear #1 market for both dried red chilli and cumin, importing more than triple the next-largest chilli market and more than 50% ahead of the next-largest cumin market. Any serious Indian spice sourcing strategy that ignores China is missing the single largest buyer relationship in the category.

China's pull is narrow, though. It takes about 35% of India's chilli export value and about 18% of cumin, but it doesn't appear in the 2024 top ten for turmeric, cardamom, coriander or black pepper. Its weight in the overall picture comes almost entirely from those two high-volume lines.

Why does the Gulf dominate India's cardamom exports?

Where the Gulf does dominate is cardamom — the UAE and Saudi Arabia alone account for roughly 61% of India's cardamom export value, rising above 70% with Kuwait, Iraq and Oman included, driven by cardamom's central role in Gulf culinary tradition, particularly qahwa (Arabic coffee). Turmeric shows a similar Gulf-and-South-Asia lean, with the UAE and Bangladesh essentially tied for the top spot.

Which markets buy every major Indian spice?

Across all six culinary spices in this overview, only the United States and the UAE appear in every 2024 top-ten list. The US ranks first for black pepper, third for chilli, turmeric, cardamom and coriander, and fourth for cumin. The UAE ranks first for turmeric and cardamom, second for coriander, third for cumin, fourth for black pepper and eighth for chilli. Bangladesh and Malaysia come close, each appearing in five of the six lists.

For a buyer, this matters in two ways. If you import into the US or the UAE, the lanes from India are established across the whole spice range, so consolidating several spices with one exporter is a realistic option. And if your market isn't on these lists, that doesn't rule it out; it means you should check documentation and residue requirements early rather than assume they're routine.

Put together, the 2024 data shows three different kinds of buyer market. China is a deep but narrow market: two high-volume lines, chilli and cumin, bought at near-average unit values. The Gulf is a concentrated, high-value market built on cardamom, where two countries take about 61% of the value. The US and the UAE are broad markets present across all six lines, which suits a buyer consolidating a mixed spice programme with one supplier. Knowing which kind your market is tells you whether to negotiate on volume, on grade, or on range.

Why does value per kilo change the freight maths?

Cardamom is worth a specific callout: at only about 9,033 MT of total 2024 volume, it's a tiny fraction of chilli's or cumin's tonnage, yet its roughly USD 22.5/kg average unit value makes it the highest-value spice per kilogram in this comparison by a wide margin. If you're evaluating spice categories by opportunity rather than raw export value, unit economics matter as much as total trade size.

Derived from the same WITS / UN Comtrade 2024 totals. Averages across every grade and form in each HS line — see "How to use this data" above before reading them as prices.

Chilli is the opposite case to cardamom: the largest line by both value and tonnage, at a modest average value per kilogram. Black pepper sits between them, with a tonnage close to cardamom's but a far lower value density.

Value density decides how much freight matters. Take the 20ft loadings quoted in our product guides and multiply by the 2024 average unit values above:

The same box rate on the same lane therefore takes about 7.5 times as large a share of goods value on a turmeric container as on a cardamom one. For cardamom, freight hardly moves the landed cost; the grade does. For turmeric, chilli and cumin, all bulky and volume-limited in a 20ft, the container choice is a real cost lever. A 40ft carries about 1.6-1.8 times a 20ft's tonnage for these spices (for example 24-26 MT of turmeric against 14-16 MT), so moving to full 40ft loads spreads the box cost over far more product. Coriander, with the lowest unit value in the table, is the most freight-sensitive of all.

How large are India's black pepper and coriander exports?

Whole black pepper exports were about USD 55.6 million in 2024, and the buyer list looks unlike any other spice here. The United States takes about 26% of value, followed by Sweden and Germany, with Japan, the Netherlands, the UK and Italy also in the top ten. It's a Western, quality-led buyer base rather than a volume one.

Coriander seed was about USD 78.0 million, led by Malaysia and the UAE, which together take about 36% of value. Its average unit value is the lowest in this comparison, which makes freight a bigger share of landed cost per kilogram than it is for cardamom or pepper.

Sourcing across the category

We supply every line in the tables above from India's established growing regions — Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka for chilli, Gujarat and Rajasthan for cumin, Tamil Nadu and Telangana for turmeric, Kerala for cardamom. See our spices category page for the full range, or the individual product posts linked below for country-specific detail. If you're buying more than one spice, tell us the combination and destination port and we'll quote them together.