Rubber Board is aiming at a four-fold increase in the export of rubber goods from India in the next 25 years from the current earnings of ₹25,000 crore, K.N.Raghavan, the Board’s Executive Director has said.

“It is the duty of the Board to help the exporters especially in the MSME sector in every possible manner”, he said while commissioning the Advanced Analysis Laboratory for Rubber Products at the Rubber Research Institute of India.

The facility is equipped to test hazardous chemicals in line with the stringent norms of the European Union and other developed countries.

He pointed out that exporting rubber products to European markets is a challenging task because of the stringent regulatory standards under the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation, and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) such as plasticisers, extenders, accelerators, cross-linking agents, resins, antioxidants, colouring agents, reclaimed rubber etc which come under the preview of the REACH regulations.

The new advanced laboratory facility will enable the exporters to conduct independent third party testing of rubber products for REACH compliance and also for manufacturers in the MSME sector to design REACH complaint product formulations.

“Recent years have seen the western world upgrading the parameters for presence of materials hazardous/toxic to human body and environment on a continuous basis, which the exporters are required to keep pace with”, he said.

International standards

The objective of the Board is to develop the entire rubber value chain to international standards. This included sustainable cultivation of natural rubber and promoting India as rubber products manufacturing hub for the world.World over more than 40,000 products are manufactured from natural rubber but only 10,000 such products are now manufactured in India, the Executive Director said.

Though the Board is focused mainly at increasing the production and productivity, it addresses the concerns of the manufacturing industry particularly the non-tyre sector which presently accounts for less than 30 per cent of rubber consumption but it has an equal percentage of the amount earned from the export of rubber-based goods from the country.

REACH restricts and control the use of polycyclic aromatics (PCA) and substances of very high concern (SVHC) in rubber products to the minimum limits.