Published on January 6, 2014
India is one of the leading manufacturers of Natural Rubber. India is the fourth largest producer and second largest consumer of rubber in the world. Major contributors to Indian rubber industry are Kerala, Maharashtra and Punjab. India has got huge variety in rubber products and rubber manufacturing units.
Rubber industry has got its own issues. Government is also looking for the new policies for this industry. In a recent move government dedicated first in its own SBR (Styrene Butadiene Rubber) plant to the nation. The plant has been installed at Panipat, Haryana. The project is designed to produce 120 KTA of high quality of Butadiene rubber. SBR has got wide variety of uses like tyres, conveyor belts, industrial goods, shoes, hose and many more.
India imports enough amount of Rubber. A separate board is appointed to look forward for the imports and internal consumption. Recently the rubber board and industry got into a verbal dispute. Industry was upset with board’s casual approach and inefficiency to provide exact data. According to industry, there have been imports of 2.38 lakhs tones in the month of April – November which is quite high figure compared to last year. On contrary board comes out worth figure of 2.45 lakh tones of availability stocks. Board further added that 94,000 tonnes of stock is with growers and board cannot claim on those stocks. So industry concerns were such that if these many stocks were available then why industry was deprived from this information.
On other side imports have affected the local growers and dealers. Later growers double up their prices as dealers have rundown their business. Due to this reason government has revised its import duty. However rubber prices have increased by 10 percent in the last few weeks and are expected to remain stable in the market. Many tyre manufacturing industries has now decided to buy out plantation in other countries like Indonesia so that they can have perennial availability of rubber at much reduced cost.
