Malaysian Rubber Glove Manufacturers Association (Margma) expects to see a growth in demand for the country’s rubber gloves and does not foresee a price war among local rubber glove players as there is a pricing mechanism fixed by the industry players.
Margma president Lim Kee Shyan said the industry, however, cannot hope to keep high margins as they have to remain competitive with the global market and hence, the industry will adjust itself to challenges such as the increasing or decreasing cost of raw materials and production.
“We believe, over time, prices will adjust to levels where there will be a reasonable margin in this very flexible business. We don’t see a price war,” he told reporters at the International Rubber Glove Conference and Exhibition (IRGCE) 2014.
Last year, Malaysia’s exports of rubber products stood at RM14.5 billion with RM10.5 billion of the exports involving rubber gloves.
Local rubber glovemakers like Supermax Corp Bhd and Top Glove Corp Bhd are among the largest producers in the world now.
Lim said Malaysia will maintain its dominance over the world’s rubber glove production with exports of 112.5 billion pieces of gloves this year, or a 63% market share.
Malaysia’s current global market share for rubber glove exports is 54%.
Margma is optimistic Malaysia’s rubber glove exports in 2014 will top last year’s exports of RM10.5 billion.
Lim said the association expects demand for rubber gloves to grow 8% this year to 178.6 billion pieces driven by increasing awareness of healthcare requirements in the emerging market. He said the exports for the first-half of the year had already hit RM6 billion.
“At this rate, we hope demand for gloves will exceed 300 billion pieces in less than 10 years, or before 2020, giving vast opportunity to all glove industry players, be it natural or synthetic rubber gloves.
“At the same time, related and supporting industries will benefit as well. Thus, innovations to sustain this industry require strong research and development support,” Lim said.
Margma said the world healthcare industry is expected to value at RM9 trillion by 2015, due to the improvement in healthcare awareness, healthcare reforms with more stringent regulations following
H1N1 scare and the outbreak of diseases over the years.