NR producers discuss weak market, to meet in October

Kuala Lumpur – The Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries (ANRPC) held a special ministerial-level meeting on 8 May where they decided to come up with a “concrete” strategy in the next general assembly due in October.

According to a press release by ANRPC, the meeting also agreed to explore the possibility of establishing a common trading platform for NR linking the existing systems in the ANRPC member states.

“This is aimed at providing a more reflective price for NR based on supply and demand fundamentals,” it added.

The ministers also agreed to launch “collective efforts” towards long term stability in NR prices, which are compatible with the emerging trends in the world NR market and characteristics of rubber industry.

The participants also agreed that the role of ANRPC has to be strengthened as an “authoritative source of NR related statistics and information”.

Ministers from Cambodia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam and senior officials from India, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Philippines attended the meeting.

The meeting came in the wake of a decision, in April, by the major NR exports, who tried to take the matter in their own hands and push up the prices.

Producers, mainly from Thailand and Indonesia, announced that they would raise their prices and scrap a system of pegging them to the benchmark set by the SICOM (Singapore Commodity Exchange) in Singapore from the second half of 2015.

Singapore-based Halcyon Agri Corp. said in a statement that it would “reserve” long-term contracts exclusively for its consumers, and substantially increase the premiums relative to the SICOM price for consumer long-term contracts.

In addition to Halcyon Agri, major producer Sri Trang Agro-Industry, and a number of other leading producers have made a similar decision, aiming to increase the prices in the weak market.