The current world consumption of rubber, totalling around 18 million tonnes per year, consists of 48% natural rubber (NR), 20% solid SBR, 14% latex SB, 12% polybutadiene, 5% EPDM, 2% polychloroprene, 2% nitrile and 7% other synthetics. Thus, in terms of quantity by type, NR is still the largest.
Demand for elastomers, both for synthetic rubber (SR) as well as NR, is well secured and is continuously increasing at a rate of 3-4% per year, in line with improvements in living standards around the world. Synthetic rubber is purely an industrial raw material. The producing and consuming industries are in general closely related and dominated by large and global enterprises. Being a petroleum derived product and manufactured by polymerisation process in chemical plants, the management of supply against demand is relatively straightforward. To a certain extent, the prices of its basic ingredients namely the monomers are more or less influenced by the price of petroleum.
Natural rubber, on the other hand, is also consumed as an industrial raw material. In rubber articles, the two kinds of elastomers are never distinguished by us as users. It could be natural, synthetic or blends of various rubbers in different proportions. The manufacturer of these articles are basically choosing the kinds of rubbers to be used on the grounds of technological merit and economic availability. 70% of NR and 60% of SR have been manufactured into automotive tyres.
However, natural rubber is unique in the sense that it is consumed as an industrial raw material but produced as an agricultural commodity, and now over 80% being sourced from independent smallholders. Consequently, it becomes a social commodity where more than 30 million small farmers are at stake worldwide.
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