Association of Indonesian Rubber

Bengkulu, The Association of Indonesian Rubber Companies Bengkulu is encouraging the government to build downstream rubber industries such as asphalt and biofuel raw materials.

"We encourage the government to establish a rubber management downstream industry in Bengkulu," the national rubber production in the last five years was quite large, namely above 3.3 million tons, while the price of rubber in the last five years continued to decline to Rp. 7 thousand per kilogram (kg) and rubber absorption for the tire industry was only 70 percent.

To realize the rubber-based industry, the government must be consistent with the policy of downstreaming rubber plantation products into value-added products, such as the development of rubber-based biofuels and their use in the country as a competitive energy mix.

For support from the government so that there is a policy of downstreaming the results of rubber plantations into biofuel, because this rubber belongs to the category of multipurpose bioenergy plants," The use of rubber into biofuel is done because this commodity is a plantation crop whose production is already surplus but not all of it is absorbed by the market. Biodiesel can be applied either in the form of 100 percent (B100) or a mixture with diesel oil at certain concentration levels such as B20 and B30. Likewise with the use of rubber seeds which are very wide open to become a fuel mixture because the oil content in the rubber seeds meat reaches 45.63 percent.