Roman Rubber Industries

We run things from Hemu Kalani X Road, inside the Shantiniketan building, unit A 63. If you’ve ever worked with rubber, you know the smell—it stays with you all day long. Our shop is full of molds, sheets of raw material, and finished gaskets and seals. It’s a bit messy because the cutting process leaves little bits of rubber everywhere. We spend a lot of time at the presses and making sure the temperature is right so the parts come out solid. It’s not a clean job. Our hands are usually stained black by the time we finish a shift. We make all sorts of bits and pieces that go into machines or plumbing. Most people don’t think about rubber washers or seals until one of them breaks and starts leaking. That’s when they come looking for us. We have some old machines that make a lot of thumping noises, but they’ve never let us down. We don't have a fancy front office for meetings. Usually, we just talk to people right there on the shop floor while the machines are running. It gets pretty warm in here during the summer months, but we’re used to it. We just focus on getting the dimensions right so the parts actually fit where they are supposed to. We’ve been at this a long time and we know our way around a piece of vulcanized rubber better than most people in the neighborhood.