IISRP PRESIDENT: SYNTHETIC RUBBER INDUSTRY NEEDS TO DEVELOP STRATEGY TO REDUCE OVERSUPPLY

NAPLES, ITALY–15 May 2002 —“With the synthetic rubber industry throughout the world suffering from an acute case of oversupply, producers desperately need to develop a strategy to reduce production capacity,“ Roberto Paiella, the outgoing president of the International Institute of Synthetic Rubber Producers (IISRP), told delegates here tonight at the conclusion of the Institute’s 43rd annual general meeting.

Mr. Paiella, who was named Director of the Elastomers and Styrenics Division of EniChem (now Polimeri Europa) in Milan, Italy, last year after years of service in the plastics business, compared the synthetic rubber industry’s current overcapacity to the plastics world’s “hysterical rush to capacity increases” in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

“Now, looking back to the last 10 years or so of the rubber business, it looks very much like it’s been following the same dire route,” he said.

Pointing out that the future of the elastomers business cannot be in capacity over capacity, he added that “This cannot be a winning strategy and—very likely—can’t even be a surviving strategy for the elastomers business.”

“Technology, quality, service improvement, and cost reduction,” he said, “will necessarily be the front line where our business will cross the threshold between survival and advancement.”

Mr. Paiella, who now becomes the Institute’s Past International President, also warned against a rush to the worldwide web, which he admitted has been successful for CDs, books, and gadgets, as the latest frontier of commerce in the rubber business.

Referring to the still-fuming ruins of the rush to e-commerce in the late 1990s, he said the industry must avoid burdening its customers with those kind of disasters. “I believe that e-commerce will not be THE way, but ONE of the ways of doing our future business,” he said.

The IISRP is an international not-for-profit association with 49 corporate members domiciled in 21 countries who produce 95 percent of the world’s supply of synthetic rubber.