World's biggest rubber glove maker aims to boost market share with more output

The company, which produces gloves for medical, household and other uses, plans to increase its annual glove output to 31 billion pieces for this financial year compared to the previous year's 23 billion,

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia

Malaysia's Top Glove Corp., the world's biggest maker of rubber gloves, plans to widen its product range and increase capacity to boost its market share, a senior company executive said.

Top Glove has a 20 percent share of the global rubber glove market and aims to raise that to 25 percent during the current financial year ending Aug. 31, 2007, Lee Kim Meow, the company's executive director, told Dow Jones Newswires in a recent interview.

The company, which produces gloves for medical, household and other uses, plans to increase its annual glove output to 31 billion pieces for this financial year compared to the previous year's 23 billion, Lee said.

Top Glove, which has 14 facilities in China, Malaysia and Thailand, is also adding two more plants by the end of August next year -one to produce polyvinyl chloride gloves in China and a latex processing factory in Thailand.

Lee said he expects the current stability in rubber prices to continue in 2007.

He was also confident about Top Glove's performance even if rubber prices rise sharply, noting that up to 80 percent of increased rubber prices is passed on to customers through higher product prices.

In addition, the two latex processing factories Top Glove owns would ensure steady supply of the raw material, Lee added.

As part of Top Glove's expansion strategy, it offered earlier this year to buy a 60 percent stake in one of its smaller rivals, Singapore-listed Medi-Flex Ltd., and is looking for ways to turn the loss-making company around, Lee said.

Medi-Flex has facilities to produce gloves used in the chip making business, which is fast growing and more lucrative than many other glove products.

Offering such gloves would make Top Glove's product range more complete, which would ''allow customers to buy all they require under the same roof and thus allow us to retain (customers) longer,'' Lee said.