COVID-19 Impact on Rubber in the Chemical and Materials Industry

INTRODUCTION
Rubber industry is one of those industries that are tremendously impacted due to breakout of COVID-19. Rubber is mainly cultivated in two forms: natural and synthetic, where natural accounts for maximum 25% share of the rubber used in the industry. Natural rubber is mainly produced in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand. Synthetic rubber is used as raw materials for almost all the rubber products that are used in our daily lives.
The worldwide consumption of rubber has shown a remarkable increase since decades. During 1993-2003, the growth was recorded somewhere between 3.5% to 4%, which has increased by more than 5% by 2018. But as the rubber industry is interconnected with many other industries such as FMCG, electronics, transportation and many others, the dip in the production and manufacturing of rubber based products has hit these industries as well. Additionally, the downfall of demand from the end-user industries has also led to decline in growth of rubber consumption in 2019 and the effects are more clearly visible in 2020.
As the non-tire application of rubber account for more than 50% of the share, a slowdown in demand from those applications has hit the rubber market severely. Also, the decline in imports by top two consumers of natural rubber is also a reason for severe impact of COVID-19 on rubber industry.
IMPACT ON RUBBER INDUSTRY
Though the outbreak of coronavirus has impacted the rubber industry in many ways, it has also brought several opportunities for the rubber manufacturers. At one side, the demand for natural and synthetic rubber has declined, the production has also declined with more than 5%, many production sites are running at 50% capacity and many end-user industries are struggling to receive their raw material (natural and synthetic rubber), on the other hand rubber associations are using it as an Continue...