News: Tire Recycling & Pyrolysis

Ecopneus – an Italian end-of-life tire management authority – reports that the series of meetings will be held from May to October 2021 involvin Ecopneus itself, UISP with the collaboration of Fieracavalli together with important Italian universities to talk about the realities of excellence in the world of sustainable equitation thanks also to recycled rubber. Scientific research, sport, animal welfare and circular economy was presented online at Cavalli On Live, the online format dedicated to the well-being of horses and riders that will start on May 24, 2021 organized by Ecopneus and UISP - “Unione Italiana Sport Per tutti” in collaboration with Fieracavalli to illustrate the potential of recycled rubber in end-of-life tires for horse riding.

The Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries (ANRPC) releases Natural Rubber Trends for April 2021. According to ANRPC, the world production of natural rubber (NR) marked at 903,000 tons, while the world demand of NR recorded at 1.129 million tons during April 2021 on a year-to-year basis. Despite the favorable fundamental in NR industry, the price of futures and physical markets were relatively volatile compared to last month and posted a “V” trend. The alarming worries from the infectivity rates of Covid-19 around the world, several countries have imposed different level of lockdown to fight with the pandemic. This may result to delay in resuming the economic activities completely for full recovery due to health concerns. Moreover, other uncertainties may arise from geopolitical tensions, trade war and other pressing issues, as commodity market is relatively sensitive to the global development, ANRPC says.

Over 400 professionals from all over the world attended MARIS' product presentation "Evoluted Recycling Solutions for Rubber: Devulcanization Process" on May 19, 2021! The high participation shows that the tire recycling industry is interested in innovative technology solutions for end-of-life tire devulcanization.

Cabot Corp. – one of the global players on the virgin carbon black market – will increase prices on all carbon black products sold by its Reinforcement Materials segment in North America. Effective July 1, the 6 cents per pound price rise will address "the increasing costs to provide reliability and supply assurance to customers," Cabot said in a May 24 statement. In addition, Cabot said it is investing $200 million in nitrogen oxide (NOX) and sulphur dioxide (SO2) reduction projects to meet requirements set by the Environmental Protection Agency's emissions control initiative.

Tyre Stewardship Australia – an end-of-life-tire management authority in Australia – reports that it partnered with Puma Bitumen for crumb rubber ‘game changer’ for Australian roads sector. The equivalent of more than a million used car iyres can now be recycled to make high quality crumb rubber bitumen for Australian roads in a ‘game changing’ partnership between Puma Bitumen and Tyre Stewardship Australia (TSA). Through two significant equipment investments – partly funded by TSA – Puma Bitumen has dramatically expanded its manufacturing capacity and widened the range of crumb rubber technology for both sprayed seals and asphalt currently available in Australia.

In a recent press release by Birla Carbon – one of the leaders and innovators in the carbon black industry worldwide – the company announced a partnership for sustainability with Circtec – an end-of-life tire pyrolysis operator focused on production of renewable fuels and recovered carbon black. According to the press release: Circtec will become the largest producer of Sustainable Carbonaceous Materials Birla Carbon to deliver Sustainable Carbonaceous Materials to customers through its extensive product development capabilities Partnership to create the single largest source of Sustainable Carbonaceous Materials for the tire, mechanical rubber goods, and plastic industries

Now that Australia’s first crumb rubber bitumen blending plant opened, more end-of-life tires will be used to manufacture useful value-added products, like durable rubberized asphalt, rubberized bitumen blends, rubber coatings, etc. Tyre Stewardship Australia (TSA) reports that world-leading equipment specifically designed for blending crumbed rubber and bitumen has been installed and commissioned for the first time in Australia by construction giant Fulton Hogan in partnership with Tyre Stewardship Australia.

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.

CEMalta will be working on a number of projects and initiatives, including the beverage container refund scheme, end-of-life tires, construction waste, food waste, and textile waste. the country’s agency previously known as the Resource Recovery and Recycling Agency is being renamed to Circular Economy Malta (CEMalta) to promote the continual use of resources.