Tire Factory to Cut Production

The sales of rubber products, including vehicle tires, are slowing down. The industry faces many debilitating problems; one of them is the availability of the rubber. The limited supply of raw rubber forces the tire producers joining in the Indonesian Tire Producers Association (APBI) to lower the factory utilization from 84 percent at the end of last year to around 50 percent.

The decrease of factory performance happened after several rubber plantations dropped their production level since a lot of rubber plants suffered from fungal outbreak. The disease caused the plants to shed a significant amount of leaves and have infected around 381.9 thousand hectares or about 10 percent of total rubber plantation in Indonesia.