Ivory Coast's July rubber exports surge 34% to 110,000 tonnes: Production heading to 1.35 mil. tonnes in 2022.

• Ivory Coast (Cote d’Ivoire) surprised the rubber world once again by making a 33.7% year-on-year (y/y) jump in natural rubber (NR) exports during July 2022. The country exported 110,000 tonnes of NR in July 2022 taking the total exports in the first seven months of the year (Jan-Jul) to 724,000 tonnes, up 17.1% y/y. Please refer to the following table for more details.
• Cote d’Ivoire Customs sometimes mistakably accounts wet cup-lump under HS 400110. As the country does not produce or export centrifuged latex, the figures reported by the Customs under HS400110 are presumably cup-lump which should belong to HS 400129.?

• The quantity of cup-lump, which is accounted in wet weight, is adjusted for its dry rubber content. Accounting the estimated dry weight of cup-lump, the total exports during Jan-Jul 2022 come to 674,000 tonnes.
• It is learnt that Ivory Coast domestically consumes only a negligible quantity of NR as downstream manufacturing industry is not yet developed in the country. As such, the gross exports could be taken as a proxy of the domestic production of NR.
• In Ivory Coast, NR production exhibits seasonal variations. There are a few months having extremely low production and a few other months having peak production. The following chart shows the seasonal variations in the monthly production from January to December every year (The chart represents percentage share of each month in the annual production).

• The seasonal pattern reveals that 51% of the annual production takes place during the seven months from January to July. The remaining 5 months (Aug-Dec) accounts for 49% of the annual production. Based on this seasonal pattern, Ivory Coast is expected to produce 647,000 tonnes of NR during the five months from August to December, making the total production during year 2022 at 1.32 million tonnes, or around 9% of the world production during the year. In that case, Ivory Coast will surpass Vietnam in 2022 itself to become the world’s third largest producer of NR.
• Malaysia accounted for 22.0% of the total NR exports from Ivory Coast during Jan-Jul 2022, followed by China (19.8%), India (8.7%) and the U.S. (8.3%).

• Strikingly, exports to India and China surged during the period from January to July 2022 compared with the same period in the previous year. While exports to India jumped 89.7% during this period, the exports to China jumped 48.4% on an annualized basis.
• Cup-lump (Including other primary forms of NR) accounted for 85.5% of the total exports of 159,000 tonnes of NR exported by Ivory Coast to Malaysia during Jan-July.

• NR exported from Ivory Coast to China, India and the U.S. during the first 7 months of this year was 100% in the form of TSR.
• Unit FOB values of TSR and cup-lump (including other primary forms of NR) exported in July 2022 from Ivory Coast to the key destination countries are shown below. In the case of TSR, exports to China were made at a lower price compared to that in the case of exports to India and the U.S. (China: $138.9, India: 147.5, U.S: 156.2 per 100 kg)
• The unit FOB value of cup-lump (including other primary forms of NR) exported from Ivory Coast to Malaysia in June 2022 was US$78.2 per 100 kg.

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Thank you.

Jom Jacob (Independent analyst in global natural rubber industry)