KOCHI, India, Feb 21 (Reuters) – China’s rubber consumption this year is likely to rise by 6.5 percent to a record 8.3 million tonnes as an expansion in local auto industry boosts demand from tyre makers, said Sunny Song, director at China Rubber Industry Association.
The rise in the world’s biggest rubber consumer’s demand would lift its imports and provide crucial support to global rubber prices that are sitting not far off multi-year lows.
Consumption of natural rubber in China could grow by 6.7 to 3.95 million tonnes in 2014, while synthetic rubber demand is expected to rise by 6.35 percent to 4.35 million tonnes, Song said on Friday.
“The demand in China has been rising in recent years due to a rise in automobile industry,” she said in a presentation at the India Rubber Meet at the southern city of Kochi.
To cater to the higher demand, China will need to raise rubber imports, Song said.
China’s automobile market, the world’s biggest, could post double-digit growth for a second straight year, growing 8 to 10 percent in 2014, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers has forecast. The auto industry is the top user of rubber.
China’s natural rubber imports in 2014 could rise by 11 percent from last year to 4.26 million tonnes, Kamarul Baharain bin Basir, secretary general of the Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries (ANRPC), told Reuters on Thursday.
Inventory in warehouses monitored by the Shanghai Futures Exchange has risen to its highest since 2004, while closely-watched stocks in bonded warehouses in the port of Qingdao have jumped more than 11 percent in the past month to around 340,000 tonnes.
(SNR-TOTAL-DW)
(Reporting by Rajendra Jadhav; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier)
Reuters
