LIQUID RUBBER.

Shannon News, 5 September 1924, Page 4

LIQUID RUBBER.

Liquid- rubber is a good deal like cow’s milk —it is white in appearance and carries rubber particles in suspension. A single average rubber tree in a year’s tapping gives about -hrce pounds of rubber. The liquid rubber is called “latex” in the rubber industry, as well as in the scientific world. Latex is shipped to this country just as it comes from the trees, except' for the addition of a slight quantity of a preservative to keep it irom coagulating in transit Practically the entire production of the great plantations of the United States Rubber Company in Sumatra and the ‘Malay Peninsula is now ship--1 ped to the United States as latex or in the form of "sprayed rubber. Sprayed rubber is coagulated in the manner that it’s name implies, by a remarkable neW mechanical process. It is very dry and has strength and ageing qualities never before equalled in commercial‘rubber. To care for its needs the United States Rubber ■ Company takes not only the entire yield of its own plantations, but has contracted also for the entire latex production of a number of other large estates in both Sumatra and Malaya . As an administrative measure, the United' States ‘ Rubber Company has established a “Process Department, which takes over the latex from the plantations and 1 manufactures it into sprayed rubber at its big Eastern spray plants or ships it to America in latex form. ' ... The new methods of handling latex have quite revolutionised the routine of plantation activities Scattered ■about the' company’s great estates in Sumatra are nearly fifty receiving stations where the latex is weighed and run into temporary storage tanks. lA narrow gauge steam railway transports the latex from the receiving stations to the factory, if it is to be used for sprayed rubber If the latex is to be shipped in liquid form to America, it is taken directly by railroad from the receiving stations to the .seaboard, where it* is stored in big reservoirs. On plantations' selling their production to the company, the latex is conveyed by railroad or motor tanks to the seaboard.

The .chief ports of shipment are Belawan, Sumatra, and Port Swettenham in the Federated Malay States, where the company maintains besides adequate storage tanks, a fleet of tank lighters. The problem of procuring adequate facilities for transporting latex to the United States was at first a real one. By experimenting with small quantities in special Containers, the company first established the feasibility of importing the rubber into the United States in liquid form. Then steamship lines were approached with the suggestion that the ballast* and oil tanks be thoroughly cleaned and that the latex be carried in the tanks as cargo. There was considerable skepticism at first on the part of the steamship companies, but when experimental cargoes brought no unsatisfactory results, shipping companies began to compete for the business, and now four lines are equipped to carry cargoes. When the ships arrive at an American port, the latex is pumped by the company’s own equipment into railroad tank cars of the sort commonly used for the transportation of petroleum A barge carries the tank cars alongside the ship, and the operation of transferring the latex to the cars is carried out with dispatch by a specially trained crew of. workmen. The tank cars transport the latex by rail to the various factories where latex is used.