Continental Tire technology tracks NR origins for transparent sustainability

HANOVER, Germany—For tire makers seeking to create more sustainable tires, transparency matters.

Because rolling out a 100-percent sustainable tire also means being able to prove just how sustainable they are, not just in performance characteristics or manufacturing, but also with the materials that make up the products. And that makes transparent value chains a critical component to sustainability aims.

Continental A.G. believes it can take that effort further with new technology it says can identify sources of the natural rubber used in its tires. The innovation, developed in partnership with Australian brand protection company Security Matters Ltd. (SMX), involves an "invisible marker" that could help track the origins of natural rubber in tires.

And, so far, it seems to be working.

The partners have successfully collaborated to create "unalterable chemical-based barcodes" and resiliency testing of the chemical barcodes has led to verifying "beyond doubt" the potential of the technology.

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For the test, Continental and SMX taught small holders how to add the marker substance to responsibly grown latex at the point of harvesting. The substance, Continental said, was able to withstand the grueling impacts of natural rubber production and tire manufacturing. With the help of purpose-built software and a reader, the tire maker was able to retrieve, read and correctly interpret the substance's data, identifying the origin of the NR in the bicycle tire.

Moreover, Continental said the look and performance of the bicycle tire tested with the new technology remained unchanged.

“We see huge potential in marker technology," Claus Petschick, head of sustainability at Continental Tires, said in a statement. "In the future, it will help us to ensure that the natural rubber we use in our tires is grown and sourced entirely responsibly. Over the long term, we believe that marker technology could help to make the sometimes highly complex processes in our supply chains more transparent and verifiable.”

So what's next?

Well, according to Continental, plenty. But the first step is determining how to effectively scale the technology for use in the manufacturing of tires and other rubber products. Because the German rubber products maker has big sustainability goals in its sights, targeting 2050 as the deadline for using 100-percent sustainably produced materials in its tires and achieving climate-neutrality along its entire value chain.