Natural rubber leading consuming countries 2014-2019

This statistic shows the leading countries worldwide by consumption of natural rubber from 2014 to 2019. Japan ranked fifth in 2019, where around 714,000 metric tons of natural rubber were consumed that year. The United States is the world's third largest consumer of natural rubber.

Natural rubber consumption

Natural rubber comes from the Pará rubber tree, or the sharinga tree, commonly referred to as simply the rubber tree. It has many uses due to being highly waterproof, resilient, and stretchy. Accordingly, the global consumption of natural rubber is considerable. In 1990, natural rubber consumption amounted to 5.2 million metric tons, and in 2019, it reached 13.6 million metric tons, which is nearly tripled consumption in 28 years.

Chinese natural rubber consumption: the world's largest consumer

China is by far the largest consumer of natural rubber worldwide, consuming a peak of 5.5 million metric tons in 2019. China uses natural rubber for a variety of manufacturing uses, including automobile and tire manufacturing, in particular. While China consumes such a large quantity of natural rubber, their production only accounts for a portion of their consumption. China produced just 813,000 metric tons in 2019. This only accounts for less than one fifth of their consumption. China also invests considerably in research and development of rubber and plastics product manufacturing.