Raw Materials
On October 3, the Thailand factory of Jiangsu Xingda Steel Tyre Cord Co and Rojana Industrial Park Public Co held a land signing ceremony. It is reported that after seven months of planning, site selection and communication, the steel tyre cord factory finally decided to place Phase II in the Bowin Industrial Park in Chonburi Province, managed by Rojana.
In September 2022 Asahi Kasei Europe joined a joint project on blockchain technology relating to ISCC PLUS certification. Led by the Dutch software provider Circularise and the Japanese trading company Marubeni, this project aims at enhancing the efficiency of the certification process and the integrity of the certified data.
Using a range of sustainable materials in the tyre tread compound, The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company has developed the Eagle GO. This concept tyre is fitted to Citroën’s new concept car, oli. The Eagle GO is the third Goodyear concept tyre developed with Citroën.
The goal at Continental is to exclusively obtain natural rubber for its tyres from responsible sources as of 2030. Confirmation of responsible sourcing is essential to natural rubber’s status as a sustainable raw material, and gaining this confirmation requires traceability within the supply chain. Although completely seamless traceability is currently technically impossible, Continental says it is “working at full speed” on a blueprint for the sustainable and responsible structuring of natural rubber supply chains.
The Chinese tyre industry is not optimistic about the future following the first half of 2022, which itself was something of a continuation of the problematic situation experienced in the country in 2021. In short, the overall Chinese tyre industry has experienced severe decline in profits. Shen Jinrong, chairman of ZC Rubber, China’s largest domestic tyre manufacturer and number nine in the world, made the comments during a recent speech at the China Rubber Conference 2022.
The International Rubber Study Group (IRSG) believes there are “no sustainable alternatives” to natural rubber. In order to gain a greater understanding of how climate change economically and socially impacts this industry, IRSG has enhanced its collaboration with the Singapore Agri-Food Lab (SAIL) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). This collaboration may expand in future to focus on sustainability in the supply chain beyond the plantation.
Discarded tyres will soon find a new home within the latest Mercedes-Benz models. Pyrum Innovations AG, which produces pyrolysis oil from end-of-life tyres (ELT), is supplying oil to its cooperation partner BASF SE, which in turn is combining the oil with biomethane as a raw material in the production of virgin plastics for vehicle components. Door handles will be the first products to have their fossil raw materials replaced by biomethane and pyrolysis oil from ELT. These will appear on Mercedes-Benz EQE and S-Class models later in 2022.
The Firestone Polymer Engineering Pilot Center (PEPC) in Akron, Ohio has become the first Bridgestone facility in North America to gain International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) Plus recognition for sustainable raw material transparency and traceability. PEPC is part of the Bridgestone Americas Technology Center, which serves as a hub for Bridgestone’s entire innovation, research and product development within the Americas region.
Maxion Wheels has joined non-profit bodies the Aluminium Stewardship Initiative (ASI) and ResponsibleSteel, and claims as such to be the first wheel manufacturer to become a member of these organisations committed to the responsible sourcing, production and use of aluminium and steel.
South Korean waste treatment and raw material recycling company LC Carbon announced on Tuesday that it had gained US$15 million of Series A investment, which it will use to build a pyrolysis, crushing, and recovered carbon black (rCB) facility within the country.
Bridgestone Corporation owns almost 24,000 hectares of natural rubber plantations in Indonesia and has approved plans to increase yields there to ensure a sustainable supply of natural rubber for its tyre production. The company will invest US$26.7 million by 2030. The aim of these investments is to enhance the plantations’ productivity, with Bridgestone setting a goal of doubling harvest volumes (compared with 2022 projections) in a given area in 2035.
Today is a big day for the Bridgestone team tasked with developing tyres containing natural rubber derived from the guayule desert shrub. An all-new Firestone race tyre with a sidewall made with this rubber makes its competition debut at this weekend’s IndyCar Series racing in Nashville, USA.
On 20 July 2022, the launch ceremony of the Advanced Polymer and Metal Materials Industrial Park in Qingdao City, Shandong Province was held. Tyrepress noted that among the seven projects that started construction, the Functional New Material Industrial Park belonging to the National Engineering Research Center for Rubber and Tire (NECRAT) was included.
At its recent Annual General Meeting, the first held since the company’s IPO in Oslo and its secondary listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, Pyrum Innovations AG shared details of the special purpose vehicles (SPV) that it intends to establish with joint venture partners. It has already announced one of these, a 20,000-tonne pyrolysis plant in Germany, but a further six SPV projects are on the cards – including a facility in the UK.
Anyone wanting to learn more about carbon black and its many applications can now do so at the new Birla Carbon virtual showroom. Claimed as an industry first, the site offers a virtual reality experience that takes viewers through the intricate uses of each part of a car and employs an immersive experience to showcase how carbon black can make a difference to the solutions it is part of. Birla Carbon aims for the virtual showroom to be a “one-stop shop experience for the entire value chain of carbon black solutions.”
If you would like the latest news from the Chinese tyre industry in Chinese, visit our partner site TyrepressChina.com. Or click below to continue on Tyrepress.
Xingda Steel Tyre Cord
Circularise; Asahi Kasei Europe
China Rubber Conference 2022
Screenshot from local media coverage