The Rubber Board's 45th edition of the Annual publication 'Indian Rubber Statistics' (IRS) highlights a steady growth in India's natural rubber (NR) production and consumption. NR production increased 2.1 percent to 8,57,000 tonnes in FY 2023-24, while consumption rose 4.9 percent to 14,16,000 tonnes. The Rubber Board has shared key statistics up to August 2024, projecting NR production for FY 2024-25 at 8,75,000 tonnes.

The Rubber Board conducts monthly and quarterly reviews involving stakeholders to ensure data accuracy. The board said the key figures published are credible and reflect the contributions of various segments within the sector.

 The Rubber Board emphasizes the importance of timely returns from dealers and manufacturers. This responsibility is crucial to facilitate the timely publication of statistics, which in turn, aids in informed decision-making and planning.

The recent decline in rubber prices from an all-time high of INR 247 on 9 August 2024, to INR 200 is partly attributed to a 0.7 percent decrease in Thailand's production from April to July of FY 2024-25. Despite this, the Rubber Board is closely monitoring the market situation and providing policy inputs to the Government of India. This proactive approach aims to stabilize the natural rubber market, providing a sense of security to all stakeholders.

GRP Limited has commenced commercial crumb rubber production at its new manufacturing unit in Solapur, Maharashtra.

The company invested approximately INR 250 million in the new facility, with funding sourced from borrowings ( INR 180 million ) and internal accruals ( INR 70 million ). The new unit has an annual production capacity of 31,875 metric tonnes of crumb rubber.

According to the filing to the BSE, the new manufacturing facility is strategically positioned to meet growing demand across various sectors, including reclaim rubber, tyre pyrolysis, tyre manufacturing, road surfacing and rubber goods production.

Located in the MIDC Industrial Area in Chincholi, Solapur, the unit began commercial production on  24 March  2025. The facility represents a significant expansion for GRP Limited, with the company noting that it is a new manufacturing location with no existing production capacity.

Covestro, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of high-quality polymer materials and their components, has announced that it will open an automated laboratory for optimising coating and adhesive formulations to provide better support to its customers.

Formulations for coatings and adhesives including Covestro binders and crosslinkers will be tested in the new facility. Properties like hardness, adhesion, opacity, gloss or durability are guaranteed by their astute selection. The qualities of the finished product are determined by the mix of these formulas, which usually include seven to 15 components. Standard formulas are typically employed due to the large number of conceivable combinations that arise. The computer-aided design of test series and automation have also made it possible for the new laboratory to conduct longer test series.

The new facility can operate 24/7 with a goal to conduct tens of thousands of tests annually. In terms of quantity, diversity, accuracy and testing speed, this establishes a new benchmark. A significant quantity of structured data is produced by the automated laboratory. As a result, the body of information regarding formulation options and contributing factors will expand quickly. To further enhance formulations, the gathered data is assessed using specialised machine learning algorithms in conjunction with measurement data from previous experiments. In order to create a self-learning system, artificial intelligence is also employed to forecast future experiments based on property goals and concurrently validate them in the automated laboratory.

Apart from creating 1K and 2K systems based on water and solvent, the automated laboratory also conducts a variety of material tests on the applied films, formulations and raw materials. To replicate product use under application settings, application can even be conducted in a lab setting with varying climates. The quick transfer of created samples to more specialised testing labs is another benefit of Covestro's ongoing laboratory digitisation. This facilitates the addition of market-specific test findings to the datasets and speeds up the identification of pertinent relationships.

Thomas Büsgen, head of the laboratory, said, "With our automated laboratory, we can work together with our customers on the future of coatings and adhesives. Because it operates almost completely autonomously and learns from our existing knowledge and data lake as well as newly generated data, it makes the process of optimising and developing formulations many times more efficient and precise. This allows us to optimise existing formulations faster or even develop completely new formulations for and together with our customers. We can say: we are reaching a new level of modern research.”

Martin Merkens, Head of Sales & Market Development EMLA in Covestro's Coatings and Adhesives business entity, said, "Our new automated laboratory gives us more possibilities for testing formulations. It relieves our specialised laboratories of their standard tasks and can analyse samples more systematically. This allows us to focus our expertise and experience even more on customer-specific topics or try approaches we couldn't have implemented otherwise. This will particularly help us in the area of circular economy: Alternative raw materials, for example bio-based or recycled materials, can be tested faster and evaluated for their properties in the final product.”

Covestro has successfully completed the modernisation of its TDI (Toluene Diisocyanate) plant in Dormagen, Germany. The facility was formally commissioned by Covestro as it unveiled its new goal of boosting production energy efficiency during an event attended by over 60 visitors from the commercial, political and personnel sectors, including Oliver Krischer, North Rhine-Westphalia Environmental Minister.

By using 80 percent less energy than traditional methods, the modernised plant reduces CO2 emissions by 22,000 tonnes annually. This is made possible by a new reactor that is over 20 metres high and weighs more than 150 tonnes. It produces steam using the reaction energy that is created. Covestro began the modernisation process in the summer of 2023. Over 3.5 kilometres of new pipes, over 14 kilometres of cables and hundreds of new pieces of equipment, valves and monitoring devices were placed throughout the facility. Through its federal subsidy programme for energy and resource efficiency, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) has provided assistance for this modernisation.

The company targets a 20 percent reduction in CO2 emissions from energy use per tonne of product by 2030 compared to 2020, underlining energy efficiency as a key component in reaching operational climate neutrality by 2035. With a 300,000-tonne-per-year capacity, the Dormagen TDI facility stands as a shining example of how to successfully convert current manufacturing facilities to be more energy-efficient.

Dr Philip Bahke, Head of the North Rhine-Westphalia Site Network, said, "The successful completion of this project shows that climate protection and competitiveness can go hand in hand. The modernised plant sets new standards in energy efficiency and underlines our path toward climate-neutral production. In light of persistently high energy costs, the project significantly strengthens the competitiveness of TDI production in Europe. My special thanks go to the entire project team, who professionally implemented this complex modernisation during ongoing operations."

Dr Christine Mendoza-Frohn, Head of Sales Performance Materials for the EMEA and LATAM regions, said, "In Dormagen, we operate Europe's largest TDI production plant. With the successful modernisation, we can now offer our customers TDI with an even better carbon footprint. This supports our customers in achieving their own sustainability goals and strengthens our position as a reliable partner for climate-neutral and circular solutions."

The Infiniteria joint venture between Scandinavian Enviro Systems (Enviro), Antin Infrastructure Partners' NextGen Fund and Michelin has made progress on its end-of-life tyre (ELT) pyrolysis factory in Uddevalla, Sweden, according to Enviro's most recent update. The joint venture, which was established in March 2023, intends to build ELT recycling facilities with a combined processing capacity of one million tonnes around Europe by 2030.

The most recent report from Enviro, which is also in charge of project management and coordination, states that the buildings and civil construction are going well and that the production equipment is prepared for installation. The commercial-scale plant's development got underway in February, with an emphasis on pipe rack installation and outside construction. It is anticipated that crane installation would start around the beginning of March or early April in order to raise production equipment, including the reactor.

The plant can recycle 34.5 kilotonnes of waste tyres annually, which is equivalent to 40 percent of Sweden's annual ELT arisings. According to Enviro, it has already inked legally binding contracts worth EUR 170 million for the delivery of recovered carbon black and oil from the facility.