BRITISH RUBBER INDUSTRY

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 14639, 7 April 1948, Page 6

BRITISH RUBBER INDUSTRY

GREAT DOLLAR-EARNING ASSET EXPORTS REACH ALL-TIME RECORD One of the Empire’s greatest dollar-earning assets smashed export records in 1947, writes Leslie Randell in the Daily Mail. This big money-maker was rubber. • In a world plagued by shortages rubber is almost the only essential' commodity of which there is an abundant supply. Nearly all ot it from the British possession Malaya. Last* year exports from Malaya reached the huge total of 954,000 tons—an all-time record, and more than double the best pre-war figure. Cash value of this rubber was more than £100,000,000. Sales in the U.S.A. (consumer of half the world’s rubber) brought us in no less than £50,000,000 worth of dollars. Because there is so much rubber, Sir Stafford Cripps has set the British rubber manufacturers the highest percentage increase exports target dr any industry. By the end of the year industry as a whole must increase exports by 60 per cent of the pre-war figure, but the rubber manufacturers have been set the task of expanding their foreign sales to four and a quarter times pre-war. Our rubber plantations in Malaya were not ruined (as it was feared they would be) by the Jap occupation. In fact, the rubber trees actually improved by being rested. So Britain is selling rubber to all the world as never before. • , And the demand goes up and un. World consumption' of rubber was about 1,000,000 tons a year before the war. Last year it was 1,600,000 tons. I have been seeing the British rubber industry at work. As an example I took the Goodyear factory at Wolverhampton. 1nt0,.-one end cf the factory go bales of rubber straight from the jungle, and out of the other end come thousands of tyres and miles of conveyer belts for our mechanised mines. New uses are -being found continually for rubber. During the war a moisture-proof, transparent material, Pliofilm, was developed from rubber. It was used to protect from damp or heat aeroplane engines shipped anywhere overseas from the Tropics to the Arctic. Now it is to be used for packing perishable goods. A second great factory where it will be produced for the home market and export is going up at Wolverhampton. Rubber, the great dollar earner, will be the basic material for yet another British industry.