The Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries (ANRPC) has once again revised its forecasts for the natural rubber (NR) industry – ANRPC now has scaled down its estimates for NR production by another 303,000 metric tonnes, expecting the total figure to fall by 4.7% to 13.1 million tonnes for 2020.In January, ANRPC forecast 3.8% annual growth in NR production to 14.3 million tonnes while demand was expected to grow 2.7% to 14.0 million tonnes.
It is revealed that global demand has also been lowered, largely based on revisions made by big players India and Indonesia. The world consumption in 2020 is expected to fall by at least 6.0% to 12.9 million tonnes, down from 13.0 million tonnes projected in April, in the revised outlook.
According to ANRPC Secretary General R.B. Premadasa, market recovery is nevertheless expected to continue “albeit at a slow pace and subject to a set of risk factors.” This includes the COVID-19 pandemic, which has put the global rubber industry into “one of the worst crises in the past few decades” and pushed stakeholders into “chaos and hopelessness.”
However, the COVID-19 pandemic has simultaneously generated additional demand for NR in the manufacturing of gloves and other rubber-based health care products, especially in Malaysia and Thailand. It is helping to partially offset the fall in demand from the automotive and tyre segments.