BANGKOK: Thailand has sold 104,000 tonnes of natural rubber from state inventories in a local tender, the country’s rubber agency said on Thursday. Thailand, the world’s biggest producer and exporter of natural rubber, sold the “old inventories” including ribbed smoked sheets and Standard Thai Rubber 20 (STR20) and other grades, said Nakorn Tangavirapat, governor of the Rubber Authority of Thailand.

Selling the batch, which was nine years old and no longer fit for normal use, was to save maintenance costs and would not weigh on rubber prices in the market, Nakorn said.