First Buna Plant

The Army & Navy Munitions Board would have one less strategic material to worry about if U. S. industry could manufacture a cheap and reliable substitute for rubber. For 97% of the U. S.'s crude rubber (1939 imports 497,212 long tons) comes over 10,000 miles of sea from the Middle East, where commerce raiders might romp in wartime.

For such specialty products as gaskets, fuel hoses, heavy-duty wire insulation, U. S. industry is already making synthetic rubbers. They cost more than natural rubber, but surpass it in resistance to oil, oxidation, sunlight, acids. Notable among them are Thiokol and Du Pont's neoprene. But none of them has been turned successfully into the finished product that uses 77% of U. S. rubber consumption--tires.

Outstanding ersatz tire rubber is Germany's Buna, which now shoes virtually all the Reich's motorcars and trucks, won combat spurs on cavalry cars and artillery prime movers in Austria, Czecho-Slovakia, Poland.

Last week Buna took out its final U. S. naturalization papers. Its sponsor was its godfather, gargantuan Standard Oil Co. (N. J.), which has research relationships with Germany's I. G. Farbenindustrie, had a laboratory seat in the development of Buna from German coal gases and limestone. Its first residence will be Baton Rouge, where, Standard announced last week, a plant will be built to turn out Buna beginning late this year (capacity 10,000 Ib. a day), under the management of two subsidiaries--sales-minded Standard of Louisiana, research-minded Standard Oil Development Co.

To U. S. tire manufacturers and military men, Standard's new plant held no hope of Buna tires by Christmas. Its first product will be Buna-N (also known as Perbunan), a rugged synthetic to compete with neoprene. etc. in the specialty trade and to replace German imports of Buna-N (some 340.000 Ib. in 1938), now cut off by war. But Standard Oil Co. (N. J.) also has U. S. rights for the manufacture of tire-Buna (Buna-S) and U. S. rubbermen hope for eventual independence from a tree-grown, seaborne, cartel-priced raw material.

Buna-S, 20-30% longer wearing than natural rubber, is still four times as expensive. But U. S. technology may well bring it down to a competitive position.

To get it down. Standard has a real ace up its sleeve: both Buna-N and Buna-S can be made more cheaply from petroleum gases, a resource that Germany lacks. Last week the rubber industry was still rustling with rumors that the newly naturalized Buna family would shortly put Cousin "S" to work.

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