GT Rubber Company, in collaboration with KOLTIVA, maps 15,000 plots, identifies 4,500 farmers, creates a logging-free supply chain.
Thailand, one of the world’s leading natural rubber producers, is undergoing significant transformation as regulatory and market forces converge on traceability and sustainability. At the forefront of this shift is GT Rubber, a key industry player, which has partnered with agri-technology company Koltiva to implement a robust traceability and risk management system designed to comply with EU deforestation regulations. The aim is to implement a comprehensive traceability system that can capture, monitor, and track rubber production from smallholder plantations to export.
Dispersion, aggregation, and traceability challenges address
more than 90% of the world’s natural rubber produced by smallholder farmers in Southeast Asia, many of whom operate outside formal supply chains and have limited connections to processors or buyers (SPOTT, 2022). Thailand leads production at 34%, followed by Indonesia (26%), Vietnam (8%), China (7%), and India (7%). While the sector supports millions of livelihoods, its rapid expansion has fueled deforestation, biodiversity loss, and land tenure conflicts. Fragmented networks of intermediaries, such as traders and aggregators, increase opacity, making traceability and sustainability harder to enforce.
A 2023 study published in the journal Nature underscored the urgency: More than 4 million hectares of forest (an area the size of Switzerland) have been cleared for rubber plantations since 1993, half since 2000, largely in ecologically sensitive areas. The environmental impact of the sector is significant, yet rubber remains largely absent from global deforestation discourse.
The ability to trace the origin of supply, down to the farm level, will determine which exporters continue to have access to premium global markets.
Data-driven infrastructure at the farm level:
GT Rubber is advancing traceability and risk management by deploying a digital system from Indonesian agritech company Koltiva that verifies land legality, assesses deforestation risk, and links farm-level data to sourcing transactions. This granular dataset forms the backbone of GT Rubber’s compliance framework, enabling real-time monitoring and risk flagging. This system prepares the company for seamless integration with the upcoming European Union Information System (EUIS). This requires disclosure of detailed geographic location and verification of status.
