Liberia’s first 100% locally-owned rubber plant, located in Blagai, Bomi Highway, was recently inaugurated in the country. The Cooper Rubber Processing Plant (CRPP) will manufacture retreaded tyres, roofing materials, electrical insulators, fixtures PVC pipes, fittings, and rubber gloves. The plant is owned by James E. Cooper who is the Vice President of the Rubber Planters Association of Liberia (RPAL). Cooper is also CEO of Cooper Farm, one of the largest privately owned rubber plantation in the country.
Although it exports its rubber, Liberia had yet to get a feel of how this raw material was being transformed into finished products, but with the new plant it will open up opportunities for the country.
The inauguration of the plant, the CEO said, comes with many benefits, the expansion of employees from 156 to 300, expanded revenue base for government through tax payment, increase in the price for raw rubber to the local farmers and knowledge transfer specific to rubber manufacturing from foreign rubber manufacturer to Liberians.
At its farm, CRPP purchases rubber from local farmers across the country; processes these into crepe technically specified rubber(TSR) 10, which is then exported for sale to automobile tyre manufacturers in Asia and the US. The plant also has the capacity to produce Ribbed Smoked Sheets also for export.
Cooper noted that the crepe TSR is the highest quantities of commodities is made on the farm and exported. “We want to do all this here and this is why we have built this plant,” he is quoted to having said.
The investment is also intended to impact the community within which the plant is located.
The farm was originally established by Cooper’s late father in 1956 and in 1962 it started selling rubber to Firestone, which operates in Liberia.