More than 80 million tons of wood chips, valued at almost ten billion US Dollars, are traded annually in the open market worldwide, and the shipment volumes are increasing.Finnish Foex and US-based WRI have agreed to partner in the launching of global wood chip price indices. As for all price benchmarks in Foex' PIX-index family, the indices will be based on a large number of actual trades, and the data will be collected from both sellers and buyers of wood chips.The combined efforts of Foex and WRI, and the PIX-index system, will ensure that the indices, whose launch is planned for early 2011, will be statistically reliable and thus well suited for numerous market participants. These include forest and energy companies, who can use price indices for benchmarking, as well as the financial community, which can use the indices as price risk management tools.