Natural rubber is in your car tires, medical gloves, shoe soles, and thousands of industrial products. Starting December 30, 2025, every rubber product entering the EU needs deforestation-free proof. For an industry that’s been quietly expanding into biodiversity hotspots, EUDR is a wake-up call.

Rubber’s Under-the-Radar Deforestation

While everyone watches palm oil and soy, rubber has been silently driving deforestation in:

• Southeast Asian rainforests (Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia).
• Amazon regions (Brazil).
• African forests (Liberia, Cameroon).

The Rubber Reality

• 85% comes from 6 million smallholder farmers.
• Average farm size: 1-3 hectares.
• Tapping lifespan: 25-30 years (long-term land use).
• Processing: Multiple steps from farm to finished product.

Why Rubber Traceability Is Uniquely Difficult

• Daily Collection: Smallholders tap trees daily, selling to local collectors.
• Aggregation Points: Village collectors sell to larger aggregators.
• Processing Mills: Raw latex processed into various rubber forms.
• Manufacturing: Rubber compounds blended with synthetic materials.

One tire might contain rubber from 100+ different farms.

Rubber’s Hidden Complexities

• Tree Age Matters: Old plantations might predate the 2020 cutoff, but expansion doesn’t.
• Intercropping: Rubber often grown with other crops, complicating land use verification.
• Processing Locations: Mills and factories need compliance proof too.
• Synthetic Blending: Mixed natural/synthetic products need segregation.
• Smallholder Logistics: Collecting daily GPS data from millions of scattered farmers is a massive technological and logistical challenge.

What Tire Companies Get Wrong

• Assuming rubber plantations are automatically low-risk (expansion is common).
• Ignoring collector and aggregator compliance.
• Not differentiating between plantation and smallholder rubber.
• Overlooking processing facility compliance.
• Underestimating the need for multi-point verification. Satellite data alone isn’t enough; you need to combine it with ground-level logistics data to prove compliance.

The Automotive Impact

EU tire market: €40+ billion annually.

Compliance costs: 5-10% supply chain premium.

Risk: Complete supply disruption for non-compliant sources.

Rubber might be flexible, but EUDR isn’t.

You need to verify every plot of land, but aggregators are mixing sources and smallholders have limited access to technology.

n’entropy lets you track daily collections, verify plantation boundaries, and work directly with local collection networks across Southeast Asia. We maintain identity through aggregator hubs and provide real-time satellite monitoring, giving you full confidence in your supply chain and protecting you from fines.