Continental pleased with dandelion rubber lab

HANOVER, Germany—One of Continental A.G.'s top research and development officials is pleased with the progress made thus far at its Taraxagum Lab Anklam research laboratory for dandelion rubber.

The 323,000-sq.-ft R&D center opened in December in Anklam, Germany, and represented a roughly $40 million investment, Conti said at the time of the opening.

"It's a dedicated facility and a new R&D location directly in the area where we have good conditions to do the agriculture," Andreas Topp, Conti vice president of material and process development and industrialization, said from Conti headquarters in Hanover. "It's a plant where we are now developing the process to extract the natural rubber from the roots of the plants. That's a big milestone for us."

After working about eight to nine years on the alternative natural rubber project, Topp is glad to see the Taraxagum plant in operation. "We are very optimistic that we are able to get our targets achieved, which is to be as productive as conventional Hevea production."

From the technical side, he said Conti has demonstrated with both a passenger car tire and a truck tire that the firm understands the material and that the Taraxagum can replace natural rubber in the applications.

"Technically it's a really good situation and we are really putting all the efforts into breeding the plants to a level where their productivity and whole plant agriculture is working," Topp said. "Also, for the industrial scale we are developing all the equipment to get the seeds in the ground and to harvest the plants to get the natural rubber out of the roots."

Conti also unveiled the first bicycle tire made with the dandelion rubber last year, and that will become a series production tire this year.

"It's very small quantities because of the limited amount of material, but we are very proud to have the first serial tire that a customer can buy with dandelion tread," he said. "It's not the whole tire, just the tread, but it's a very good step, we believe. And we will grow this over time as we have more material available."

Topp added one reason Conti chose to begin production of the bike tire using Taraxagum was because the new site was producing quantities of material the firm didn't feel comfortable putting to waste, so it put the material to a practical use.

While the lab still is in its early stages, the end goal of being able to produce alternative NR in production quantities is getting closer. "We have chosen the Anklam site because it offers a huge site where we have an option to build a plant in the future," Topp said. "So we have built our lab in an area which is designed in a way to grow as a production site also to do the first series production for regular tires. In five to 10 years we hope that we get there."

The Conti exec added that the Global Platform for Sustainable Rubber project the firm signed up for has strong potential. Conti and other major tire makers joined the independent platform that is designed to improve the socio-economic and environmental performance of the natural rubber chain.

Topp said that Conti also is cooperating with an NR producer on a joint project that would improve the ability of farmers to produce to a higher yield through good conditions, providing stability for the company and the farmers.

This effort is aimed as a backward integration of the supply chain, he said, and is something of a pilot project.

"It's not to be where this is the big sourcing for Continental," Topp said. "It's a pilot where we try to find out what is a way to do this backward integration to have a documented, transparent path for the natural rubber from the local farmer to our tire plant."

Today the whole supply chain is not transparent, and that's a major problem, he said. Conti's partner has experience in farming and giving support to agricultural conditions in other crops, such as cotton and coffee.

In the end, Topp said the project will go to the global platform and help the industry as a whole. "We have to do something as an industry because otherwise we don't think it will be sustainable," he said.