THE RUBBER INDUSTRY

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4535, 11 February 1942, Page 8

THE RUBBER INDUSTRY

SERIOUS WAR EFFECT MALAYA AND EAST INDIES One of the most serious aspects of the war in the Far East, says the Dunlop Bulletin, is the future welfare of the world’s crude rubber industry, which is mainly centred in Malaya and the Dutch East Indies. When it is stated that those two countries in 1940 alone shipped to world’s markets 1.078,150 tons of crude rubber out of a grand total of 1,392,604 tons (representing the rubber output of the producing countries of the world in that year), it will be realised that the outcome of the hostilities in the Far East will be of tremendous importance to the Englishspeaking nations. FROM THE FAR EAST Official figures covering shipments of crude rubber in 1940 from the Far East were: British Malaya, 540,417 tons, Dutch East Indies, 537,733 tons; Ceylon and India, 102,586 tons; North Borneo, 17,623 tons; Sarawak, 35,166 tons; and the Philippines 2300 tons. French Indo-China and Thailand, now under Japanese control, respectively shipped 64,437 and 43,940 tons, so that Japan now has at her command the combined annual output of those countries, some 108,000 tons a year. Her annual consumption in 1938,1939, and 1940 was 46,300, 42,300, and 45,000 tons respectively. With her export trade gone, Japan’s rubber requirements are not likely to exceed her pre-war needs. AH told, the countries mentioned supplied 97 per cent, of the world’s crude rubber shipped to overseas markets in 1940. “SCORCHED EARTH” The United States and the British Empire secured most of the 1940 and 1941 crops of rubber from the Far East (988,526 tons were produced in the first eight months of 1941), but the future of the sources of this now vital necessity to progress and civilisation are at present in peril, particularly if the scorched earth policy is extended to the vast rubber plantations in the Far East. How huge that industry now is will be appreciated when it is stated that in Malaya alone there were, at the end of 1939, nearly 3,500,000 acres under rubber > cultivation. Rubber plantations in I the Dutch East Indies aggregate ■ 3,214,900 acres, so that these two 1 countries actually account for 77.7 per cent, of the world’s area under, cultivated rubber. Approximately 100 to 120 trees go to the. acre. That means that in Malaya and the Dutch East Indies alone, there are well over 665,000,000 rubber trees. These trees take from four to six years to reach

the tapping stage, but do not give their maximum quantity of latex until about 10 years old. CAPITAL INVOLVED British money, to the extent of many tens of millions of pounds, is involved in the rubber plantations of the Far East, while the marketing of practically the whole of that rubber output, valued in 1941 at over £165,000,000, has for years been controlled by the International Rubber Regulation Committee, London. The largest consumer of rubber is, of course, the United States, with her 32,500,000 automobiles and her vast industrial activities. In 1940 that nation absorbed 618,592 tons. The next largest consumer is the British Empire, which, in the same year, bought some 316,000 tons. From this it will be seen that American and British interests between them purchased more than 934,000 tons of crude rubber in 1940 out of a total world output of 1,392,604 tons, of which only 41,034 tons were the product of countries apart from the Far East. Stocks of crude rubber held by America and the British Empire probably amount to less than a year’s normal consumption.