Continental turning race tyres into forklift tyres

Tyre makers often refer to the ‘race to road’ technology transfer when talking about motorsport engagements, but ‘race to loading bay’ is something that perhaps only Continental can claim bragging rights for. The tyre maker is using carbon black from recycled racing tyres in its production of solid tyres.

Continental sent a total of 300 CrossContact Extreme E racing tyres to end-of-life tyre recycler Pyrum Innovations, which extracted carbon black using a pyrolysis process. In September 2023, Continental began using this to make solid tyres for forklifts and other applications at its Korbach plant in Germany. It also utilises recovered carbon black made from old car and truck tyres.

“By recycling our Extreme E racing tyres, we are raising awareness of the significant potential of tyre pyrolysis,” says Matthias Haufe, head of Material Development and Industrialisation at Continental Tires. “We are in no doubt that cutting-edge and highly efficient pyrolysis processes will make an important contribution to increasing sustainability in the tyre industry,

“We already use circular raw materials in our tyre production,” Haufe continues. “By 2050 at the latest, we are aiming to have 60 per cent tyre-to-tyre circularity. Our goal is to use fossil raw materials ever more sparingly and at the same time further reduce our CO2 emissions.”

Expanding use of recovered raw materials

This isn’t the first time that Continental has recycled Extreme E tyres. Materials from Extreme E tyres used in the 2021 season went into 400 square metres of rubber paving stones, which Continental donated and are now part of a community basketball court in its headquarters town of Hannover, Germany.

Together with partner Pyrum Innovations, Continental is presently developing processes to further optimise and expand the recycling of end-of-life tyres through pyrolysis. It reports that the partners are currently jointly developing processes that will “continue to improve and expand the recycling of end-of-life tyres through pyrolysis.” For instance, the tyre maker intends to employ recovered industrial carbon black in an increasing number of rubber compounds.

Closed-loop system

Continental is the exclusive tyre partner of the all-electric race series Extreme E. When developing the second generation of its CrossContact Extreme E racing tyres, the company increased the proportion of sustainable materials used. The tyres contain approximately 43 per cent recycled and renewable raw materials, including silica from the ash of rice husks and polyester fibres made from recycled PET bottles.

“As well as using sustainable materials, it was also important to us to recycle our racing tyres. As part of a closed-loop system, these will now become the starting material for new tyres,” comments Nels von Schnakenburg, Continental’s technical manager for Extreme E.