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Black Bear Carbon (“BBC”), the Dutch technology provider for recycling end-of-life tire rubber into recovered Carbon Black (rCB) and renewable petrochemicals, has announced that is had successfully completed a first closing of €7.5M , this is the first step in a fundraising campaign of €78M for its new BBC flagship plant at Chemelot Industrial Park, the Netherlands. The investment round was led by Capricorn Partners from the Capricorn Sustainable Chemistry Fund, with support from Invest-NL, joined by current investors; Brightlands Venture Partners, Siam Cement Chemicals and others.

Globally, over one billion tires become unusable yearly, presenting a valuable resource for the circular economy. Efforts to manage end-of-life tires (ELTs) are underway, with various stakeholders collaborating to improve recycling rates and reduce tire dumping. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) Tire Industry Project (TIP) has facilitated workshops to foster cooperation among stakeholders in regions such as the US, Europe, and China. While progress has been made in ELT recycling rates, challenges remain, including policy inconsistencies and inadequate market reporting.

On December 10, 2021, New Energy was the only commercially active company worldwide that was certified by ISCC PLUS as a "Point of Origin" and greenhouse gas savings for chemical recycling of both tire and plastics.

Regardless of meandering political environmental protection trends, most Western companies today are embracing Corporate Environmental Responsibility (CER) as a mandate that is integral to their corporate strategy and forms part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program. The automobile industry and its subset, the tire industry, is no exception. Consumer awareness represents pressure on corporate governance to continuously improve the environmental footprint throughout the life cycle of their products. Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) are one way of objectively quantifying and qualifying the effect that material and energy flows of a given product have on our environment, our health, our economies, and the way we live. LCAs also help design the products we and our customers manufacture, compare them to competitive solutions, and enhance their perception in the market. If performed properly, the investments that LCAs require can therefore ultimately translate into improved profit margins. This article examines the difficulties we encounter and gains we can realize when performing an LCA on an End Of Life Tire (ELT) derived product.

By passing the Green Deal in 2019, the European Union (EU) set the course for more sustainable investments, for example in areas like renewable energy, biodiversity, or circular economy. The goal is to reach a climate-neutral economy in the EU by 2050, with a reduction goal of 55% by in 2030. To achieve these climate goals, the Green Deal includes an investment plan of 1 trillion euros over the next 10 years. Despite this huge investment, the EU depends also on the support of the private sector to achieve the Paris climate agreement.

Belgian company RISORCE (Renewable, Innovative Solutions towards Recycling & Circular Economy) has closed a €12.5M round of financing from GREEN.er (Recytyre), Noshaq, Wallonie Entreprendre and various players in the financial sector in order to build a new end-of-life tire recycling plant in the province of Liège. Using a pyrolysis process, this plant will enable the equivalent of half of Belgium’s car tires to be processed locally.

Sharing the same vision of implementing circularity within the rubber and tire manufacturing industry, Tyre Recycling Solutions (TRS) announced a partnership with Contec, promoting their products and technologies as well as joint research and development activities.

Supply of pyrolysis oil from end-of-life tires is an important step in the commercialization of BASF’s ChemCyclingTM project. Moreover, BASF sees pyrolysis oil from end-of-life tires is an additional raw material source next to oil from mixed plastic waste. The new agreement stipulates that partners will conduct a joint feasibility study that targets the adaption of New Energy’s proprietary pyrolysis technology to the conversion of other plastic waste streams.

State-of-the-art pyrolysis processes are an efficient, viable and sustainable approach for the valorisation of end-of-life tires (ELT) into oil, gas and recovered Carbon Black (rCB). They are thus an important step towards the transition to a low carbon, more sustainable, resource efficient, circular economy in line with the EU Green Deal and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.