©2025 Wolfersdorff Consulting
Dear colleagues & friends of recovered Carbon Black,
Welcome to your December 2025 dose of curated recovered Carbon Black and related news. The views and opinions in this newsletter are my own.
We currently have7.566 subscribers and we also currently have 1.201 members in the LinkedIn rCB group Martin & friends: recovered Carbon Black "rCB" and tyre pyrolysis.
Industry reference report for the recovered Carbon Black industry.
Overview
Today's holiday edition is short:
Finest carbon materials moments in 2025
2026 mega themes for rCB
Late addition: Rubber Review Interview with Martin
Finest carbon materials moments in 2025
Watch this YouTube video clip with 10 of the finest carbon materials moments in 2025.
Did I miss some important moments? Let me know!
2026 mega themes for rCB
What could be the key themes for recovered Carbon Black in 2026?
I will use my special crystal ball tuned for predicting rCB themes. You will comment whether you agree or disagree with me. Or maybe whether you see other themes evolving for rCB. Deal?
Production growth = capacity growth x utilisation growth. Some mega rCB production facilities will be commissioned in 2026. More growth is coming, as you can read in our updated industry reference report Prospects for rCB 2025 - November edition. The big question will be how much these facilities will increase rCB supply availability. It is not a straight forward math adding up capacities. The capacity utilisation of an rCB production is less than the typical 80% utilisation of a carbon black plant. Over time, these production sites will stabilise to an optimised utilisation. Where will it be?
Economy first, then ecology. What has already been the norm in Asia now also represents our European commercial reality. In the absence of strict EU policies or strong consumer pull for sustainable products, ecology needs to follow economy. Or simply said: We need to make our sustainable products affordable to our customers. And to the customers of our customers.
rCB Pricing. The moneymaker, right? I see two pricing strategies for rCB in 2026. Collared pricing agreements were mentioned by Circtec's CEO Robert Harper in the CEO panel of the rCB Europe Conference 2025. These apply to monthly, quarterly or yearly tracker rCB pricing linked to an index such as the monthly price of a benchmark carbon black product (e.g. N660). rCB Pricing is capped when the index runs beyond lower or upper pricing thresholds. To me this appears to be a good strategy for profit optimisation with high quality rCB in a dynamic market environment. The other pricing strategy of static pricing could apply to rCBs in a lower quality tier. Here it will be important to choose a static yearly rCB price at an appropriate but not too large discount to incumbent carbon black products. Good to know: Your friends Martin & Paul Ita have your back. We will issue a monthly rCB pricing report soon.
Commodity markets. I see commodity markets such as tyre & rubber as the key market segment for the general rCB industry due to their accessibility and their predictable, large scale volumes. Yes, this might not apply to certain rCB producers with existing approvals and volume commitments, but to all the others it will be the key market segment. And yes again, commodity markets will command commodity pricing (see theme 2. & 3.).
Beyond 10 µm. A particle size distribution (PSD) with a 10 µm top cut has been widely accepted as ideal for rCB. But why? Anything finer might not be needed for general purpose application dispersibility. It could also be quite cost prohibitive (see theme 2.). But for some applications including coatings, much finer milling, even below 1 µm top cut, is required. Don't engineer your milling capacity too tight. Some milling overcapacity will be useful later on, for greater flexibility in application development.
Diversification in rCB target customers. By 2026, many large European rubber companies have pre-approved at least 2-3 rCBs products. In consequence, these companies are less interested in testing even more rCBs from new and potential suppliers. New approvals would incur analysis costs without providing commercial advantages. I recommend fine-tuning rCB customer scouting in 2026 to local small & medium size rCB customers.
Diversification in application development. When I ran the webinar "rCB in plastic masterbatches" (now free on Youtube), there were 5 masterbatch companies developing black masterbatches with rCB. In the last years, there were no industrial developments with rCB in non-rubber applications, but rather a number of academic and lab-scale developments including T-phite synthetic graphite from rCB feedstock. I think that both customer and application diversification will be a key theme in 2026.
Other carbons. Methane splitting carbons, lignin carbons and plastic pyrolysis residues are contenders in the sustainable materials portfolio of the rubber industry. Their producers already attend the rCB Conferences because they are in the same market as rCB. Will there be synergies or competition?
Mindset, purpose, structure and strategy. When rCB companies partner with large corporations, there is always a big gap in culture & systems that can only be bridged by the strong relationship of individuals. Even some rCB leaders have a surprising lack of structure and systems, although this is one of the key success factors in a start-up.
ASTM classification. We are grateful to finally have foundations of an rCB classification with the new ASTM D8632 standard. But as I have blogged in a separate post, toluene transmission and ash content are required but not sufficient to characterise rCB fully. In my personal advisory practice, I will add an ASTM D8491 descriptor to the suggested grade name. How will you use the classification?
A.I. in rCB. There will be solid applications for A.I. in the rCB industry in several areas including research, reporting, production, systems control and marketing. I do not think that A.I. will make inroads where human relationships are key (I made a YouTube video 3 years ago, pondering about whether A.I. will replace my consultancy. Spoiler: It will not).
Remember our deal? Comment your view and additions now! 😉
Late addition: Rubber Review Interview with Martin
Honoured to be interviewed by Peram Prasada Rao from TechnoBiz Rubber Network. Thanks for the inspiring questions, Peram & team!
#rubberreview #technobiz #rcb | TechnoBiz Rubber Network
Happy holidays and see you again in 2026!
Thanks for reading and happy holidays from Berlin!
