Resumo. The objective of this study was to evaluate different thinning regimes in forest plantations of eucalypt (Eucalyptus grandis x Eucalyptus urophylla) clones to produce timber for cellulose and charcoal to verify whether this effect could affect the proportion of the chemical components of wood. The average initial spacing between plants was 3x3 m and the treatments were: T1= control, T2, T3and T4 with thinning 20%, 35% and 50% of the basal area, respectively. The results were analyzed by Tukey test at 5% probability. According to the results found the lignin content from treatment T4 was higher than that of the others; the groups of uronic acids of the T1 was similar to all other treatments, but the levels of T2 and T4 differed between them. The extractives content of T1was similar to the T2 and T3 and lower than that of theT4; the carbohydrates of T1 were similar to that of T3 and higher than the others. It was concluded that thinning increases the quality of the wood to be used as energy purposes, such as charcoal production, but it did not increase productivity for wood pulp and paper production.