Thai gloves manufacturer, Sri Trang Gloves (STGT) sees global demand for nitrile and rubber gloves to continue to increase by 20% in 2021, driven by an impetus on health and hygiene.
Amid the rollout of vaccines, gloves will continue to be in demand by the medical sector as well as other industries and new users, according to Jarinya Jirojkul, CEO of STGT.
The Bangkok-headquartered rubber products manufacturer targets a sales volume growth to 32 billion pieces or 14% in 2021. It said that it has currently received advance orders for latex gloves for 13 months and for nitrile gloves for 30 months.
Meanwhile, STGT is pushing through its plan to start production at its new plants, with new capacity commencing in the first quarter of this year. The expansion plan will see production capacity increase from the current 33,000 million pieces to 50,000 million pieces by the end of 2023.
On a related development, STGT assures that the recent fire that broke out at a new extension (SR2) of its Surat Thani plant on 21 February, 2021 did not damage the existing production plant. The incident, according to STGT would result in reduction of production capacity at 200 million pieces from the installed capacity at 35,800 million pieces in 2021. Total damage is under assessment. The production is expected to resume in the next 2-3 months.
The fire incident does not affect STGT’s capacity expansion projects at any other locations.