Top Glove sees glove demand up 8-10pc

Malaysia’s Top Glove Corp Bhd expects global demand for rubber gloves to grow by about 8-10 per cent this year as the H1N1 flu pandemic triggers a new health awareness, a top executive said on Monday.

“The H1N1 impact has been more widespread, affecting developed and developing countries, and as a result, we saw a lot of new glove users,” Lim Cheong Guan, Top Glove’s executive director, said in an interview. “We expect those new users to continue using gloves even after the pandemic ceases,” he said.

Malaysia is the largest exporter and producer of medical rubber gloves, supplying 65 per cent of the world’s natural rubber and half of the world’s nitrile gloves. -- Reuters