customcurb

>>>The crepe at 78 Baht is it smoked or sun dried and who is selling it to the factory. If rubberland is buying, some one must be making, Like to go and look at a small working crepe maker. Jim

Certainly not smoked, and not that brownish color of having baked in the sun either. Presumably hung on racks or poles to dry. Factory said they like dry, obviously. Yup, someone or more is making and I certainly would like to see the process too. Wife said the trucker came from RoiEt which is halfway between you and I. Not exactly close enough for a pop-in, but I'll ask her to ring the guy and see if he'd be OK with a visit. If so, I'll let you know.

Also hope to find somewhere closer to uppernowheresville in live production.

also, on the topic of crepe, today we spoke with a driver taking his load of crepe to the Rubberland factory, said came from RoiEt, took him six and a half hours to drive here. I suppose there has to be a bit of money in it to cover the transport costs.

well if you find any that aren't the huge honking mega-baht machines, or find some place that knows how to correctly fabricate one, let me know too.

ps. the local SriTrang Rubberland factory (very big) buys crepe. FYI Kee drc was 78.5 yesterday.

James, that may be the AHA! solution. There are a few fresh kee buyers around my area that I swear they must loose money - figure the percentages and there is NO WAY they cannot loose money. Crepe could be exactly right answer as the value added makes up for the slightly higher price paid.

There's what looks to be a 'being put together' processing just outside of Buengkan, has 4 very large crepe machines powered by a large diesel engine hooked to a distributed drive system. they had many racks of crepe hanging when we stopped by. Interesting they were well along the construction process for 5 very large smoking rooms so I figure they will be doing RSS at some point. Odd thing is that there was no processing going on when we were there, just a few lazy construction people.

In Buengkan, I've seen rain guards selling for 60 and 80b. Apparently the locals often make themselves. My workers said can make themselves, give them stainless wire and plastic, and they started making. They've not finished so I can't yet cost each guard, but is lower than 60b, thinking maybe 25-30b cost each. Now this is with very flimsy plastic which may not last long. Seems some sort of tree glue or goop is necessary to seal the plastic to the tree so that water doesn't leak down past and into the tapping cut and so wash out the latex. That's next on the list.

btw, if you're collecting latex daily rather than kee every few days, isn't it much harder for somechai to nick that ?

wife is still trying to do the middleman thing with kee-yang, and as it's now her money she's fronting, she's a tad more careful with the pricing, figures. She tells me there are kids that sometimes come by with just a small bag of kee so it's obvious they nicked it from somewhere. She says one kid said it's from his families farm and he's cheating.

Few other times Somchi brings in a couple hundred kg and asks wife to write a receipt for half that so that he doesn't have to give all the money to his wife! That's a regular ploy. Wife's young niece helps with the buying, she accidentally told some lady of the short receipt trick and turns out it was the wife of one of the shorters. I heard that didn't go over so well.

A couple months back when I dropped my workers at the local govt rubber school, we wandered into their sheet factory. moderate size, and they did have the concrete box with the rather thinly spaced dividers, and I didn't see a kneader machine. I figured the box would make 5-6cm thick sheets which would then be run through the multiple roller machine. The only attending person there was a lackey who didn't run things so no bother asking him. I recall someone telling me that large coag boxes don't always give an evenly gelled sheet and it took longer to gel. No idea if really true. Do tell if this works for you!

ps, wife still likes gambling so she will continue buying and selling kee, today was buying at 38 baht and was going to sell to a another small buyer for 43 baht. She might make 150b on her tiny buy today. #$%^& More Laotian whiskey please.

For the past month I'd been selling kee yang to Sri Trang Rubberland factory. They quote baht per kilogram of the dry rubber content, which has ranged between 100 to 73b over that time period. Kee seems to average around 55% drc after a day of sitting, ranging low of 50% to high of 72% depending on how long it sits and loses water. When selling by drc it seemed better to let the kee sit and loose as much water as possible as factory offered a very slight price advantage vs very wet. Factory checker would cut a few small pieces of the load, weigh them, put in some sort of press and squeeze all the water out, and then weight and figure the percentage. Other smaller buyers would buy by the kilogram regardless of the water content. In all cases we were told to not buy kee that was tapped the previous night, to decline sellers with very gooey kee, and be very careful that there were no stones, pieces of metal, or other stuff that could mess up the factory, and kee should be 6-8 meet (cutting sessions).

In short, learned a bit, decided that the only way to make reasonable money as middlemen would be to buy multiple 10 ton truck loads monthly, buy and sell on the same day lest the 1-2 baht per kg margin goes negative, and hope the price doesn't fluctuate (drop) by more than 1 or 2 baht if longer than same day. We don't have 10 ton trucks and my take away was that buying and selling kee as a middleman is a version of Thai gambling. We made about -500 baht for the month so I shit-canned that idea as I don't like gambling.

My rule of thumb is to figure kee is about 55% dry rubber so multiply the factory price by that. YMMV. Prices quoted on the two known websites were always higher than the factory price. I also learned that palatable Laotian 80 proof whiskey is 33 baht a bottle, which helps make loosing 500 baht on 12 tons of kee-yang not so stinky.

woomp! biggest price drop I've seen this year. http://www.rubberthai.com/rubberthai/ ouch !

The dynamics all smell soooo familiar; banks making a lot of money available, govt promoting pushing spend borrow spend, people buying on credit what they should have saved and waited until tomorrow to buy. If it goes on the debt slaves will be just that, at least they may be 'motivated' to work more, but at worst, the devil may care lender may get stiffed when too many cannot or will not pay back. I've always believed that those 'with' the money need to dish it out wisely with caution as to whether it can be paid back fairly.

sit it out and watch if possible.

Could anyone here who is actually RUNNING A BUSINESS and KNOWS if a business can use "independent contractors" rather than hire traditional employees?

Thx

US citizen married to Thai wife, living Thailand with retirement visa. OK.

Thinking of starting a real estate brokerage business, small.

No intention of working the business hands-on but as I will self-finance and make the business plan,

I want to retain as much ownership as possible and will want to have 'indirect control'. Do not want nor cannot get involved in work permits, personal income taxes on my visa anyways.

Can wife/others own 51% and I be 49% share holder and not require a WP ?

Can real estate business hire the equivalent of 'self-employed contractors' or 1099 workers as we'd say in the US where contractors invoice company for their services/commissions ?

Will find out first but asking anyways, if there are licenses and/or realty exams/tests a broker/brokerage must apply for and pass?

I find the 'village socieo-dynamics' amusing in that it resembles the western world a bit, but they are so cut off from the 1st world. The keeping up with the Smiths is saving face here, and, shit rolls downhill here to.

Having come from the ussa, where the banks and gov together have run the grand financial ponzi scheme probably to its near end, and leading edge of the mess was the housing bubble collapse, I'd say it's 'game on' in Thailand.

It seem banks are pushing car/truck loans like crazy and real estate prices have gotten totally silly, allowed, fueled, and encourage by banks. In the little shit-hole town I'm in, some raw land is going for millions. There's a 6 rai lot in town next to a car repair shop, the lot is mostly just a pond from water drainage but it's on the main drag. Car shop guy says the owner has declined 45 mil and expects higher offers. Frik'n nuts is what I call it for an undeveloped plot in a 2nd world dirty dusty muddy town populated with bumpkins mostly but one generation from being 3rd world peasants. I am of the opinion that when the next 1st world financial mess hits it will mess up Thailand's export economy and then down goes real estate because it will stop rising. And for the bumpkins with baht signs in their eyes trying to sell farm land for orders of magnitude higher prices that but five years ago, greedy little suckers will get stuck when the tide turns.

There's going to be a very big sum-num-na one of these days.

I did some googling on tapping systems and methods recently. I think it was the Malaysian gov site that promoted tapping every third day and said the output was only slightly less than more frequent tapping but of course the labor cost was significantly less. I haven't been doing it long enough to validate or know from experience yet. Anyone else know?

a friend around me (who does not have rubber) says he remembers seeing a sealed bag puncture tapping system, I may have queried about that before. the person who invents a way to cut labor costs/bodies needed will be the real rich one.

I've got a fairly new Kubota 140+ motor we're considering mounting on an iron buffalo frame, one guy said that's quite big for a tractor. Don't know if that meant TOO big or just bigger than usual. Thoughts?

Mosha,

gratus!

62b each !?!??? <deleted> they're 100 and 110b for 2 different thicknesses in Buengkan, and that's shopping around and wife not letting falang price be quoted

if you do, post pictures please. we have one that had a messed up transmission and no reverse. I thought there was a balance of leverage from the long handles as well as steering leverage when run sans a trailer. If you shortened the handles wouldn't it tip forward due to engine weight?

picture looks like a pair of machines, you said A machine. 24k is way high for a hand operated machine, seems a tad high for a pair of hand machines too. You need a kneeder also btw. see anek http://www.an-anek.com/ and maybe FlyingStar http://www.sti-inter.com on the web for further info. Proly have local rubber shops that sell some version of same also.

regards

customcurb

about how many days/weeks/months after opening trees for the first time, have you waited until you can change from doing kee to doing mat ?

yes cinder block is rather soviet in style, but NO, I am not staying there, it's for the worker, his wife and kids. There's also the old version wooden hut behind the blockhouse, wood came from I know not where as it was built when we were in the states. I just couldn't see putting the worker's 1yr old and 4yr old kid in an open air wood hut as their 'home'. even most of the hovels in the village have walls.

ps, tried to put in a couple pics that didnt show up,