The Sri Lanka Rubber Cluster was formed in year 2000 with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) sponsored "The Competitiveness Initiative", in order to promote economic growth. The Rubber Cluster consists of natural rubber producing plantation companies, value added product manufacturers, related and supporting industries and other stakeholders, and have come together to evolve globally competitive strategies. Apart from the project to bring an additional extent of 40,000 hectares under new planting, the Rubber Cluster has identified the need to re-position Latex Crepe rubber in the global market. For several decades Sri Lanka had remained the sole producer of premium quality water white Latex Crepe. However, as this rubber has been marketed as a visually graded polymer, buyers have remained in the dark in respect of its excellent properties. The Rubber Cluster has evolved a strategy to position this rubber in the global market as a premium branded product, supported by a Technical Data Sheet to reflect the unique features. The "New Polymer" is being offered under the brand name LANKAPRENB.

In the manufacture of Lankaprene, fresh field latex is carefully bulked and strained and diluted with filtered water and a fraction is separated to remove most of the non rubber ingredients in order to bestow several unique properties, such as high purity, superior colour and a pleasant odour. The rubber also has a very low ash content indicative of a very low metal ion content and this in turn is reflected by an excellent Plasticity Retention Index. The removal of most of the non rubber ingredients by fractionation, followed by extensive washing of the coagulum results in a polymer of uniform cure characteristics. Further, the leachable proteinaceous material in tibe rubber is extremely low. The excellent white colour, high purity, very low ash content and very low non rubber content provides a set of unique properties that make the polymer an excellent material to manufacture a range of sophisticated products. Many an existing user will find Lankaprene as the ideal substitute for the more costly synthetic polyisoprene.

Over the past two decades Sri Lanka's value added rubber based products manufacturing industry has grown considerably and the ready availability of Lankaprene should attract more Foreign Investment to set up finished goods manufacturing factories in Sri Lanka. The plantation companies with high capability to produce a superior elastomer would offer ideal opportunities for joint ventures.