Drivers

Almost all natural rubber is harvested from the rubber tree Hevea brasiliensis, which is currently able to supply the market. However, the rubber tree suffers from a number of threats and drawbacks: clear drivers for the development of alternative sources of natural rubber.

• The rubber tree plantations have very limited genetic variability, which results in threats by pests and disease, most notably South American Leaf Blight (SALB. Rubber production is geographically limited to tropical zones mainly in South-Asian countries (80% of which in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand). For now, SALB has been kept out of Asia by a strict quarantine. However, SALB and other plant diseases are threats to a strategically important material: Europe should develop alternative sources "just in case". Therefore, the EU-PEARLS consortium has responded to the public consultation on the EC Raw Materials Initiative, which is currently focused on rare minerals and metals.
  

• Proteins in Hevea latex cause life-threatening, IgE-mediated, latex allergy; protein removal from Hevea latex is cumbersome and expensive. This results in a market for hypoallergenic latex from guayule and Russian dandelion, as currently developed by the US company Yulex for guayule.
  

• Rapid increases in rubber demand, especially in rapidly growing large economies such as China and India, have caused volatile prices. Moreover, existing rubber tree plantations are being replaced by palm oil plantations. In the long term, production from the rubber tree may be not be sufficient to supply the market. Development of rubber crops for Europe also strengthens the goal of a sustainable industry, because both crops contain by-products that can also be used for the production of energy or chemicals.
  

• Climate change threatens agriculture worldwide. However, Southeast Asia is one region predicted to be especially vulnerable, as detailed in a report by the EEPSEA (Economy and Environment Program for Southeast Asia). The present record prices for natural rubber (April 2010) are due to exceptional drought in Southern China and Northern Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, while rains disrupted tapping in Indonesia. These events may or may not be early manifestations of climate change, affecting natural rubber production, but illustrate possible future events.

• Rubber tapping depends on cheap manual labor, leading to increasing production costs and difficulties to hire workers as the producing countries develop their economies. In contrast, cultivation and processing of guayule and Russian dandelion will be fully automated, which is necessary because of high labor costs in Europe. In the case of Russian dandelion, processes similar to the sugar beet industry may be envisaged.
  

 

Print this page