Malaysian Natural Rubber Industry in a Nutshell

The natural rubber industry in Malaysia has a decent start when 22 rubber seeds out of a batch of 70,000 that Sir Henry Wickham collected from the Amazon jungle in Brazil in 1876 were sent to the Singapore Botanic Garden for trial planting. Singapore and Malaysia, formally known as Malaya were British colonies.
The rubber trees quickly flourished in Malaya. Large areas of jungle were cleared and planted with this type of tree. Large scale planting by the Government was started in 1988 when Henry Hicholas Ridley was appointed the Director of the Singapore Botanic Garden. He encouraged the planting of this crop.
The planting gained its momentum shortly after Henry Ford of Ford Motor started making motorcar. Motorcar industry requires natural rubber tyre. This caused the demand for natural rubber rocketed.
Current position of Malaysia
Malaysia now is the fifth largest consumer of natural rubber after China, USA, India, Japan; the biggest consumer of latex, out of which the biggest producer of glove, catheter and thread and the third largest producer of natural rubber.
Back in 1980's, Malaysia is the largest exporter of the raw rubber (Standard Malaysia Rubber - SMR); now it is one of the biggest importer and consumer of the natural rubber and major exporter of the rubber products.
The natural rubber industry in Malaysia consists of 2 sectors i.e. (i) upstream sector - cultivation of rubber trees and (ii) downstream sector - latex products and furniture.
The manufacturing industry of natural rubber has achieved a remarkable progress with the launching of Industrial Master Plan (IMP 1985-2007). In the last 17 years, total natural rubber consumed by the industry increased by 209% from 187 592 tonnes to 579 248 tonnes. Export earnings of the industry increased by 438% from RM1.87 billion to RM10.09 billion in 2007.
Being an uprising sector, rubber wood has been successfully accepted as an alternative timber to the natural forest species for products like mouldings, furniture and carpentry. 80% of total wood furnitures exported from Malaysia comes from the rubber wood.
The popularity of the rubber furniture and demand for the rubber wood soared when its nearest compatible wood - ramin suffered short supply.
As the price of the rubber wood remains low, the rubber wood furnitures are very competitive in the market. Moreover, it has very high value added features.
The rubber wood output can be maximized by planting the tree based on 15 year cycle and regular annual replanting.
Factors inducing the growth of the industry
Research and Development
In the public sector, RRIM (Rubber Research Institute of Malaysia) and LGM (Lembaga Getah Malaysia) has been in place for 75 years conducting research and development.
The areas covered by RRIM are plant science, agronomy, plantation management, processing, rubber and rubber product technology, the wood furniture design and manufacturing.
Tun Abdul Razak Research Centre (TARRC) in the United Kingdom deals with research and development on the consumer end.
Besides, Malaysia Rubber Board (MRB) instills new technologies for adoption in private sector especially in rubber product manufacturing companies.
In private sector, large plantation agencies have their own in-house research & development facilities.