Rubber products are used in different industrial
applications. Infact, all major industries make use of rubber and rubber
products. Rubber products industry is considered as an important
resource-based industry sector. The rubber industry globally has witnessed a
steady and strong growth. When we talk about the rubber industry, it means
an industry manufacturing synthetic rubber and a wide range of rubber
products ranging from doormats to rubber bands to industrial rubber
products. There are certain unique features of rubber which makes it an
important product which finds use in diverse fields as transportation,
material handling, health care, and sport and leisure activities. Due to the
diversity of rubber products manufactured, the rubber industry services a
range of downstream industries including manufacturing, construction, and
agriculture.
We give below an analysis of the various industries in which industrial
rubber products are used:
Late Ralph Wolf, chemist and author, in an article in the October
1964 edition of "Rubber World had rightly quoted
''Civilization as we know it today is wholly dependent upon rubber. It is a
material of myriad uses, totally unlike anything the world had previously
known. It enters in a thousand ways into the fabric of our daily lives. It
is indispensable in transportation, in communication, in furnishing us with
light and power, in cushioning our bodies and protecting our senses from the
jars and jolts, the noise and tumult of modern life. Foe of corrosion,
abrasion and vibration it aids industry in avoiding the payment of hundreds
of millions of dollars which these looters annually attempt to exact. Even
in helping us to spend our leisure, rubber is essential, for there are few
action games in which a rubber ball has no part. It is a servant that
follows us, literally, from the cradle to the grave. We are ushered into the
world by the rubber-covered hands of a doctor in surroundings made sterile
and quiet by this ubiquitous substance, and we make our exit in a
rubber-gasketed coffin hauled by a rubber-tired hearse.''