Rubber Tree Plantation,,cosy And Yield

[WilliamCave]

Just dropping a line to ask people about an offer I was made about a rubber tree plantation.

There is 45 rai in Raong about 2 hours from Chumphon. they want 3million bath,,they say in 3 years it wil be ready for harvesting,,,

Looking for some general opinions and thoughts ,,Dont need to get to tecinical

Thanks

[donx]

Just dropping a line to ask people about an offer I was made about a rubber tree plantation.

There is 45 rai in Raong about 2 hours from Chumphon. they want 3million bath,,they say in 3 years it wil be ready for harvesting,,,

Looking for some general opinions and thoughts ,,Dont need to get to tecinical

Thanks

I wouldn't pay more than 50,000 baht/rai for rubber tree land. Offer them 2 million and see what they say. Don't give any more than 2.25 million.

[dominique355]

When considering to buy a rubber tree plantation, bear in mind that once the trees can be harvested, you need people to do that. They have to go out every night and cut the trees, collect the rubber, process it (rather smelly) and then you can sell them. The price for rubber (Latex) is quite high now, but so is the price for the worker who harvest, (50% of your profit).

[gregb]

Just dropping a line to ask people about an offer I was made about a rubber tree plantation.

There is 45 rai in Raong about 2 hours from Chumphon. they want 3million bath,,they say in 3 years it wil be ready for harvesting,,,

Looking for some general opinions and thoughts ,,Dont need to get to tecinical

Thanks

Way too expensive. It's even too expensive if the trees are mature, let alone 3 years from now. Price of latex is quite high right now, but no guarantees in 3 years. And the people who harvest are very organized and getting large sums. A friend down in Chonburi just bargained them down to "only" 45% of the sales.

So unless you plan on harvesting yourself at 2 am every day, my personal feeling is palm oil is a better deal at the moment...as long as you have land with enough water.

General thought....run, don't walk away from this one.

[donx]

Way too expensive. It's even too expensive if the trees are mature, let alone 3 years from now. Price of latex is quite high right now, but no guarantees in 3 years. And the people who harvest are very organized and getting large sums. A friend down in Chonburi just bargained them down to "only" 45% of the sales.

So unless you plan on harvesting yourself at 2 am every day, my personal feeling is palm oil is a better deal at the moment...as long as you have land with enough water.

General thought....run, don't walk away from this one.

gregb,

Who got 45% of the sales? The land owner or the laborers? The reason I ask is because my wife was getting only 40% of the sales for land that she ended up selling last year. In our case, the reason she didn't receive the normal 50% was because the land was in the mountains which made it difficult to access and difficult to cut and the people doing the cutting were relatives of my wife. She sold it because the trees were mature but - for whatever reason - weren't producing enough rubber to keep anyone happy.

[gregb]

gregb,

Who got 45% of the sales? The land owner or the laborers? The reason I ask is because my wife was getting only 40% of the sales for land that she ended up selling last year. In our case, the reason she didn't receive the normal 50% was because the land was in the mountains which made it difficult to access and difficult to cut and the people doing the cutting were relatives of my wife. She sold it because the trees were mature but - for whatever reason - weren't producing enough rubber to keep anyone happy.

The laborers took 45% in this case. The land was flat and near Rayong town so low transport costs, and the family had a long term relationship with the workers. But I can believe that your wife had a hard time with this. Rubber tappers are becoming almost militant. It's getting really ugly. Most of us would think that when the price goes up, the profits would increase for the land owner, but that isn't entirely what is happening in practice. The laborers aren't necessarily wrong...you wouldn't see me getting out there at 2 am to tap the trees, but it does make rubber a very challenging investment unless you have your own workforce. The laborers really are in a position to pick and choose to work only the highest yielding estates. If you have something less desirable, you are going to pay for it.

My advice to the OP is just do your homework on this. If you are buying the land for speculative purchases, that is one thing. But if you're trying to do this as business, you need to keep your capital investment as low as possible, and really understand what you are getting into. There are other possible commodities which might give a better ROI after factoring in the costs.

The terms the OP presented wouldn't interest me.

[AmericanGuy1066]

Just dropping a line to ask people about an offer I was made about a rubber tree plantation.

There is 45 rai in Raong about 2 hours from Chumphon. they want 3million bath,,they say in 3 years it wil be ready for harvesting,,,

Looking for some general opinions and thoughts ,,Dont need to get to tecinical

Thanks

Seems you don't really have much knowledge of what you're buying. Otherwise you'd be able to make your own call on when it would be ready for harvesting etc plus if you had experience you'd be throwing in some numbers as benchmarks for comparison.

With that in mind, unless you're prepared to invest some time in getting technical and understanding what's involved, then you're unlikely to be able to maximise revenue fromthe deal. That's going to come from either being able to oversee it being properly harvested, or selling it on to someone else and skimming a profit. To sell t someone you'd need to be able to provide more details than the original info on your post, eg what they've told you about land, soil, trees, location etc.

You've also got to ask, why was the offer made to you? Who by?

BTW Price is about 67k / rai. How does that compare to general land prices in the area?

Edited August 3, 2007 by AmericanGuy1066

[Thaddeus]

Golden Rule number one..... stick to what you know.

Bankers can't run fish farms.

IT consultants can't breed pigs successfully.

And civil servants can't run a bar.

It's fairly simple really.

[RueFang]

3 mil is overpriced for rubber tree land, especially if it's not on a main road, if it has good access and a main road the price would be a little higher. You wouldn't have any problem getting people to work for you though, you would take the bigger share ie 55%-60%. The price of rubber is actually quite sh1t now, last year was around 90b/kilo and now is under 70 b/kg..the prices tend to fluctuate quite a bit though..goes up in rainy season due to less production, goes down again when everyone's making it. For that amount of productive land you would get decent earnings.

[kavita]

Just dropping a line to ask people about an offer I was made about a rubber tree plantation.

There is 45 rai in Raong about 2 hours from Chumphon. they want 3million bath,,they say in 3 years it wil be ready for harvesting,,,

Looking for some general opinions and thoughts ,,Dont need to get to tecinical

Thanks

hi william cave,

our company has one exclusive product called "VITEX". Now we are trying to market this product in Thailand. you can visit www.vitex.com for more details. You can use our product to get more yield from your rubber trees.

Please advise to whom (distributors or importers) we have to contact in thailand plantation area..

regards

kavita

[pkrv]

Silly question but has carbon off-setting (AKA polution bonds/emmission bonds) crept into this kind of green stuff?

USS did run a competion that eliceted a response on timber, but may have been more?

http://www.epfif.com/seminar.htm

[jstumbo]

If you buy it, then you could get an FSC Forestry certificate. You could then sell the rubberwood at higher price when you take the trees down. I know several factories that would buy it.