Linglong making dandelion rubber progress

Linglong Tire intends to have 35 per cent sustainable and renewable resources in its tyres by 2025 and 40 per cent by 2030. One source of such materials will be dandelions. The tyre maker established the Dandelion Rubber Industry Technology Innovation Strategic Alliance in 2015, partnering with more than 20 universities, research institutes and rubber companies.

The alliance is, says Linglong, the third dandelion rubber organisation in the world after PENRA in the United States and EU-PEARL in the European Union. It has established many acres of planting bases in a number of locations, including Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Shandong, Hainan, Gansu. It has built a ‘ton-level solvent extraction device’ in Beijing, successfully producing concept tyres containing dandelion rubber. The preliminary plan is to plant 667 hectares (10,000 mu) before 2025, to form a tyre product scale with commercial value before 2030, and to form a healthy and sustainable development of the dandelion rubber industry chain.

Linglong considers its exploration and development of dandelion rubber to be “significant for protecting tropical rainforests and biodiversity, expanding natural rubber supply channels, and reducing production costs and carbon emissions.” It also foresees that the “excellent cultivation characteristics” of dandelion rubber plants will also improve the hundreds of thousands of acres of desertified saline-alkali land in northern China, with significant ecological benefits.