Nov. 1906.] 



367 



Saps cmd Exudations- 



Rubber in London. 



Two Lectures delivered at the Ceylon Rubber Exhibition, Royal Botanic Gardens, 



Peradeniya, on September 20th. 



RELATIVE QUALITIES OP DIFFERENT GRADES. I. 

 By Spencer Brett. 

 London has for many years been a very important centre of distribution for 

 rubber. Its position has lately been improved in this respect, and the headquarters 

 of most of the important buyers and firms handling the product are now centred 

 there. In greater or less volume, it may be said that all grades of wild and 

 cultivated rubber are to be seen on our market, and as the number of the different 

 kinds runs into hundreds, it will be seen that London offers an excellent opportunity 

 for comparing the various grades. The actual commercial value of crude rubber 

 varies from a few pence per pouud to nearly 6 shillings, according to the amount 

 of caoutchouc contained in the grade, the nature of the foreign substances, and 

 for other reasons. The exports of Para grades have in the past amounted roughly 

 to one-half of the world's total production, and until the Eastern plantation 

 product came into the field the finer qualities of Para always realised higher prices 

 than anything else. It may be said that Para, i.e., South American rubber, was 

 the foundation on which the industry was built, and the standard methods of 

 compounding and manufacture that have been carried out were based on the 

 character of these grades. The different processes in use have largely been arrived 

 at after many years of experiment, 



THE BEHAVIOUR OP DIFFERENT KINDS OF RUBBER 



in manufacture being so varied and complicated, that, as new grades have from 

 time to time come on the market, a considerable period has elapsed before manu- 

 facturers have worked out the best treatment for them and thus been able to 

 decide their standard value. Under these circumstances it is only natural that, 

 until your Eastern cultivated product has been freely experimented with by the 

 bulk of manufacturers, its intrinsic value is unlikely Co be fully understood. In 

 face of this we have the astonishing fact that even from the days when only one 

 or two consignments of a few pounds each in weight came on the market per month, 

 say five years ago, a premium was paid over the prices of the then fine standard 

 American Para grade. Supplies have been short and prices have appreciated very 

 considerably, roughly 50 per cent, in this period, and we still find that the premium 

 for Eastern plantation grades is readily obtained. 



The obvious explanation is that the buyer of fine plantation rubber receives 

 from, say, 10 to 40 per cent, more caoutchouc for his money than the buyer of other 

 grades ; but unless your cultivated product were well suited to the manufacture of 

 expensive goods, it stands to reason that its use in the factory would not be 

 profitable, and not only is it found worth while to handle the new grade at a 

 much higher initial cost — at a time when prices are cut to the last degree — but 

 actually you have a number of manufacturers who consider it advisable to spend 

 large sums of money experimenting with it, when they can procure at a less cost a 

 rubber for the preparation of which all their mills and machinery have been 

 designed, and furthermore a substance which has from the beginning of the 

 industry supplied all the finest grades of goods for which rubber has been used. 

 Under these circumstances is it to be wondered at, that the manufacturer should 

 hesitate before deciding that he is justified in expending large sums of money in 



