The story of Karex: how a rubber company in conservative Malaysia became the world’s largest condom maker
- The Goh family started a rubber processing company in the 1920s, and changed to making condoms in the 1980s
- They won over conservative Malaysians by producing condoms with fun flavours such as durian, nasi lemak and rendang
Established in 1988, Karex is the world’s biggest condom manufacturer, producing prophylactics for some of the largest brands in the world, including Durex.
It may come as a surprise to some that a maker of condoms is based in Malaysia, given its conservative, mainly Muslim society, but the company has made its products easier to talk about by making them fun and accessible.
The Karex story began when the first generation of the Goh family landed in Malaysia (then Malaya) from China in the 1920s. They found themselves amid rubber plantations in the southern state of Johor, where they ran a small shop, and instead of cash they accepted rubber as payment, which led to the opening of the family’s own rubber processing factory.
As Goh Miah Kiat, the chief executive officer of Karex and a member of the fourth generation of the family to be involved in the business, recalls: “My grandfather, Goh Huang Chiat, and my father industrialised the process with a smoke house that dried the rubber efficiently at a much faster pace.
“When I was a kid I actually lived in this rubber processing factory where everything stank of rubber. When I complained to my grandfather, he asked me to open the window and just breathe in because, according to him, the air smelled like money.”
