Data guide
Free-trade zones in Uruguay's exports
A significant share of Uruguay's exports has a free zone inside the country as its recorded destination: wood to the UPM and Montes del Plata pulp mills, grain to the Nueva Palmira terminals. This guide explains what those records mean.
Example: on the dashboard, destinations like “ZF Nueva Palmira” or “ZF Fray Bentos (UPM)” show in amber; the “include free zones” filter shows or hides them.
Why a free zone counts as a destination
Free zones sit outside Uruguay's customs territory. Under the special trade system DUA data follows, moving goods from national territory into a free zone is an export, with the zone as recorded destination. The later shipment from the zone to the buying country does not generate a DUA, so it does not appear in this data.
The main zones in the data
ZF Nueva Palmira: grain — soybeans, wheat, malt, canola — staged at the terminals before ocean loading. ZF Punta Pereira: the Montes del Plata mill, receiving wood, chemical inputs and energy. ZF Fray Bentos: the UPM 1 mill. ZF Paso de los Toros: the UPM 2 mill, active since 2020. On the import side the main sources are Zonamerica, Parque de las Ciencias, ZF Florida, ZF Libertad and ZF Colonia, where warehoused goods are cleared into the country.
How official statistics treat this
The BCU and Uruguay XXI reallocate free-zone exports to their final destinations using the zones' own reports. That is why official per-country figures differ from the DUA basis: pulp sold to China from a free zone counts as an export to China in those series, while DUA data records the wood entering the zone.