Companies

At full stretch: Garware Bestretch sees rubber tape sales for masks at ₹100 cr this year

Our Bureau Mumbai | Updated on May 15, 2020 Published on May 15, 2020

A representative image

Demand for disposable medical apparel up after Covid-19 outbreak

Garware Bestretch, which supplies rubber tapes used in face masks and disposable medical apparel, expects sales to touch ₹100 crore by the end of the year, with strong demand in India and abroad.

Since March, the company has seen a 40 per cent jump in sale of rubber tapes and generated additional income of ₹10 crore.

The Pune-based Garware Bestretch is one of the largest makers of latex and latex-free elastic rubber products.

Rubber tape exports

The demand for face masks has increased after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, not only from doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers but also from the general public.

The company has produced and dispatched over 35 tonnes of rubber tapes in the last 10 days, which has contributed to make 67 lakh face masks and over one tonne of rubber tape to produce over 5 lakh disposable apparel for medical use.

Garware Bestretch makes almost 500 tonnes of rubber tapes per month and exports a major chunk to various mask manufacturers across the world.

In the last 3-4 weeks, about three crore masks have been made and almost 50 per cent of them use Garware Bestretch’s rubber tapes. In the last six weeks GBL has supplied rubber tapes sufficient to make 2 crore masks, said the company.

Apart from in India, the company is also selling it in the US and other countries in Asia and Europe.

Published on May 15, 2020

A letter from the Editor

Dear Readers,

The coronavirus crisis has changed the world completely in the last few months. All of us have been locked into our homes, economic activity has come to a near standstill. Everyone has been impacted.

Including your favourite business and financial newspaper. Our printing and distribution chains have been severely disrupted across the country, leaving readers without access to newspapers. Newspaper delivery agents have also been unable to service their customers because of multiple restrictions.

In these difficult times, we, at BusinessLine have been working continuously every day so that you are informed about all the developments – whether on the pandemic, on policy responses, or the impact on the world of business and finance. Our team has been working round the clock to keep track of developments so that you – the reader – gets accurate information and actionable insights so that you can protect your jobs, businesses, finances and investments.

We are trying our best to ensure the newspaper reaches your hands every day. We have also ensured that even if your paper is not delivered, you can access BusinessLine in the e-paper format – just as it appears in print. Our website and apps too, are updated every minute, so that you can access the information you want anywhere, anytime.

But all this comes at a heavy cost. As you are aware, the lockdowns have wiped out almost all our entire revenue stream. Sustaining our quality journalism has become extremely challenging. That we have managed so far is thanks to your support. I thank all our subscribers – print and digital – for your support.

I appeal to all or readers to help us navigate these challenging times and help sustain one of the truly independent and credible voices in the world of Indian journalism. Doing so is easy. You can help us enormously simply by subscribing to our digital or e-paper editions. We offer several affordable subscription plans for our website, which includes Portfolio, our investment advisory section that offers rich investment advice from our highly qualified, in-house Research Bureau, the only such team in the Indian newspaper industry.

A little help from you can make a huge difference to the cause of quality journalism!

Support Quality Journalism
healthcare industry
  1. Comments will be moderated by The Hindu Business Line editorial team.
  2. Comments that are abusive, personal, incendiary or irrelevant cannot be published.
  3. Please write complete sentences. Do not type comments in all capital letters, or in all lower case letters, or using abbreviated text. (example: u cannot substitute for you, d is not 'the', n is not 'and').
  4. We may remove hyperlinks within comments.
  5. Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name, to avoid rejection.
FDA probes accuracy issue with Abbott’s rapid virus test
You have read 1 out of 3 free articles for this week. For full access, please subscribe and get unlimited access to all sections.