BBC Future on the wonder material we are running out of

BBC Future's article on rubber remains the clearest statement of the problem for a general reader: this is a material almost nothing else can replace, and the world is running short of it.

The argument turns on what natural rubber does that synthetics do not. Its fatigue behaviour and heat build-up are why it stays in truck and aircraft tyres, in seals and in load-bearing components, decades after petrochemical alternatives arrived. Substitution is possible in some applications and expensive or impossible in the ones that matter most.

Set that against a supply base concentrated in a few tropical regions and the exposure is obvious. It is the sentence our own homepage borrows, and the reason the company exists.