BRITAIN’S RUBBER MONOPOLY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19365, 23 July 1925, Page 11

BRITAIN’S RUBBER MONOPOLY

U.S. TO COMPETE NEW YORK, July 21. With prices of rubber going skyward, the Government officials, urged by motor-car manufacturers, are investigating the possibility of taking the world's rubber monopoly from the British. The Department of Commerce has completed the survey of three million acres suitable for rubber culture in the Philippines.

The high price of rubber has had a marked influence on rubber shares, which during the past week have advanced by leaps and bounds. There are two New Zealand rubber companies—the Dominion Rubber Coy., registered in Dunedin, and the Now Zealand Malay Rubber Coy., with its registered office in Oamaru. Both these companies experienced the adverse markets of the past four years, when rubber was sold at under fid per lb., a price that was less than Ihe actual producing costs. The present price if rubber will give a wide margin of profit, and, in fact, it places the rubber industry on a remunerative basis, eclipsing any previous experience for a number of years. It is estimated that two-thirds of the world’s rubber is produced in the British Empire, and the importance of the industry to the British nation might be gauged from a statement appearing in a recent London cable, that the present profits from rubber-grow-ing were sufficient to pay the interest on Britain’s debt to America. America is the greatest purchaser of rubbed. A few years ago, when the Stevenson restriction scheme was inaugurated, the Americans entered a strong protest to the British authorities, who, however, declined to interfere, and for some time the Yanks retaliated by curtailing their purchases. The world wide demand for rubber has nearly absorbed the enormous accumulations in London, so that requirements must now be met by current production. Apparently a shortage is feared, hence the rapid rise in price.