Incentives to boost rubber productivity
KOTA KINABALU: The United Sabah Smallholders Association (Usaha) is offering incentives totalling RM100,000 for its members who purchase puncture tapping tools that will significantly increase their productivity in rubber tapping.
Usaha and CPOplus Innovation Sdn Bhd inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Tuesday to introduce the company’s puncture tapping method to smallholders.
Usaha president Chua Men Nam said rubber production had not been fully exploited.
He cited Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Datuk Zuraida Kamaruddin who recently stated that 400,000 hectares of rubber plantation were found to be not consistently producing rubber, which resulted in around RM3 billion loss in income.
Among the factors were lack of rubber tappers, badly tapped rubber trees and limited number of trees that could be tapped, he said.
Hence, he hoped that smallholders could adopt puncture tapping to increase their productivity.
Chua explained that vertical puncture tapping was created by Dr Leong Tat Thim at Guthrie Group’s Chemara Research Centre in 1977 but the method was not widely utilized by smallholders.
He said CPOplus had improved on the system by introducing angular puncture tapping and zinc plates as latex guide.
With the method developed by CPOplus, Chua said smallholders would be able to puncture 1,000 rubber trees in 4.5 hours.
He said puncture tapping would address the issue of up to 50 per cent of rubber trees not being exploited could also be overcome.
“We feel that this method will increase the productivity of smallholders.”
In addition, he said puncture tapping required trees to take two days of rest in between harvest, thus allowing smallholders to explore other sources of income during their downtime.
He said Usaha would be organizing dialogues with smallholders throughout Sabah to promote puncture tapping.
He said CPOplus was offering Usaha members a special package of RM440 for the materials for 300 rubber trees, including four bottles of CPOplus solution or stimulant and 900 pieces of zinc plates. The package is worth RM660 at normal price.
“Members who purchase the package will be entitled to receive an incentive of RM100 from Usaha.
“So smallholders only need to pay RM340 for the products.”
He said the incentive would be given to 1,000 members on a firstcome-first-serve basis.
Meanwhile, CPOplus Innovation Sdn Bhd director Chik Chan Chee @ Cheok Chan Chee said the MoU signing was an important milestone that would allow the company to produce the devices at competitive price with the volume Usaha delivered.
“Moving forward, we hope to maintain or lower the price because we would have the volume.
“With lower price, we would be able to help the target groups who very much rely on affordable equipment and accessories.”
Chik continued to say that the problem faced by the rubber industry in Malaysia was low yield – below 500 kilogrammes (kg) per hectare.
He said Vietnam produced around 1.2 million tonnes of rubber annually despite less rubber plantation acreage.
In comparison, he said Malaysia had one million hectares of rubber plantation yet the output had dipped below 500,000 tonnes last year, which was less than 500kg per hectare.
Hence, Chik hoped that the MoU signing would bring winwin solutions to tackle the issues faced by the rubber industry.
“We hope that change in Malaysia will begin from the east.”