HANOVER, Germany—Continental A.G. has completed 10-year deal with Pyrum Innovations to purchase high-quality recovered carbon black (rCB) to be used in the production of new passenger car tires.
Continental said it views the rising importance of recycled raw materials as an opportunity, and this agreement furthers its pursuit of using 100 percent sustainable materials in all of its tires by 2050—a closed-loop end-of-life tire system.
"To further increase the circularity of our products, we need to think differently," Jorge Almeida, head of sustainability at Continental, said. "We need to move from an 'end-of-life' to an 'end-of-use' tire concept. This means that the end of a tire's intended use phase must become the beginning of a new opportunity."
Continental's near-term goal is to use more than 40 percent renewable and recycled materials in its tires by 2030. Continental tires already contain recycled materials, such as recycled rubber (from mechanically processed end-of-life tires), polyester (from PET bottles) and steel.
The company said the use of carbon black in rubber compounds is key to increase stability, strength and durability of tires, and rCB helps reduce the use of fossil raw materials and CO2 emissions.
Continental said safety is its top priority in this pursuit, because tire recycling demands many advancements of technology to efficiently separate, clean and recycle materials, and quality must not suffer.
Pyrum is a specialist in the thermolysis technology of end-of-life tires that Continental originally started working with in 2022 under a development agreement.
"The expansion of our cooperation with Continental is a very important step for us," Pascal Klein, CEO Pyrum Innovations, said. "To ensure that Continental can also use our recovered carbon black in the series production of passenger tires in the future, we are continuously working on its further development as part of a development partnership."
Klein noted that, because of the partnership, all new forklift tires built at Continental's tire plant in Korbach, Hesse, Germany, contain Pyrum's carbon black.
