Rubber Manufacturing in Malaysia

Book excerpt: Malaysia's rubber manufacturing sector is a prime example of an industry based on a locally produced agricultural resource. In Rubber Manufacturing in Malaysia, C.C. Goldthorpe draws on industrial policy theory along with many years of practical experience to examine the growth of rubber manufacturing in Malaysia. Over the past century, a series of technological discoveries resulted in the worldwide rise of a rubber production industry that manufactures tyres for motor vehicles, engineering components, household gloves and medical products. Goldthorpe argues that the production of rubber goods has played a significant part in the transformation of the country from primary commodity producer to newly industrialized economy, a position he supports by tracing the historical development of rubber-based industrial production and the effects of government policies promoting industrialization. Taken as a whole, the rubber industry is vertically integrated, with locally produced natural and synthetic rubbers used by the rubber manufacturing sector to produce latex products and general rubber goods for export markets.