©️2024 Wolfersdorff Consulting Berlin / Martin von Wolfersdorff, image shows OMV Schwechat refinery
Dear colleagues & friends of recovered Carbon Black,
We have not spoken for some time . . . 😉
Here is your May dose of recovered Carbon Black news! We now have 6,601 subscribers and counting!
I have not published rCB News for some while due to a fast succession of fairs, events and conferences (and I also had some client work to do). Now we definitely have some news accumulated about our industry and about recovered carbon black.
In fact, I am pondering about how I better can manage the ever increasing number of events, content creation on Linkedin and Youtube and consultancy projects that pay my bread. Maybe I will look for assistance or contractors later this year.
In this newsletter I will review a number of events starting with industry news and the upcoming BlackCycle Workshop and then go back to the Tire Technology Expo in Hannover.
Novo Holdings and AP Moller Holding invest into Circtec
The biggest news is from Circtec who have received €150m investment funds from Novo Holdings and A.P. Moller Holding for the construction of their mega rCB & TPO plant in Delfzijl, Netherlands. This comes shortly after the press release with bp who will take off Circtec's tire pyrolysis oil for marine renewable fuels and naphtha feedstock. Circtec's rCB is already contracted to Birla Carbon who sell these sustainable carbonaceous materials under the Continua brand.
This is incredibly positive news for the rCB industry! While most companies might be years behind the development of Circtec, I believe that investors will start to feel a kind of Eldorado market with rCB and TPO. I hope other institutional investors follow the example of Novo & AP Moller. Mind you, the opportunity window might close pretty fast over the next 5 years. In some markets the availability of ELT feedstock is already tight now.
Orion places investment into Alpha Carbone
Alpha Carbone is the only French rCB & TPO operator and the company is integrated into ELT collection through its parent company ALPHA RECYCLAGE FRANCHE COMTE.
Alpha Carbone has not been operating 24/7 yet. The carbon black producer Orion S.A. changes that with an undisclosed equity investment into Alpha Carbone, which might enable the company to invest into rCB refining and to operate continuously.
I have always said that big tire, big carbon or big petro are the best investors for the circular economy. In my opinion, it is now great to see Orion making first steps. However, I would soon like to see continued investments from the carbon black industry into the supply chain structure rather than into equity. This requires billions of € instead of just millions of €.
Final Black Cycle Workshop
I am writing the news sitting in an ICE train bringing me to Aachen. On Monday I will travel to Saarbrücken for the final BLACKCYCLE workshop on May 28th - 29th.
BlackCycle is a Michelin lead cross industry initiative. It is the first ecosystem approach to tire recycling and one of the successful results is a circular furnace carbon black produced by Orion S.A. from Pyrum Innovations AG TPO.
The collaboration partners have set a quite ambitious objective of recycling every second ELT in Europe only 6 years after project closure (i.e. recycle 1.8 million tons of ELT by 2030).
The BlackCycle system now has a Michelin lead WhiteCycle sibling for plastics recycling and a Korean BlackCycle ecosystem copy clone.
I am curious about the continuation and implementation of the BlackCycle ecosystem. My questions will be:
What is the continuation pathway to accomplish the ambitious objective to recycle very second ELT in Europe?
How do the CAPEX, OPEX and profitability number look like for such a system?
What will be done with the estimated ~620 ktpa of recovered carbon black coming from this kind of ecosystem (about ~31% of total European carbon black demand and 113% of European carcass carbon black demand)?
#blackcycle
Carbon Black World
The Smithers Carbon Black World 2024 was held last week in Vienna and attracted some 210 industry colleagues. There were 45 colleagues in my "Pathways to net zero" pre-conference workshop.
I chaired the first day of the conference and I presented about "Sustainable Carbon Blacks in 2024" in the second day of the conference.
A trending topic is methane pyrolysis. In this conference, there were Monolith, Levidian, H&H Iron, Hycamite and HiiROC present. Their processes produce a range of carbon materials from char over carbon black to graphene and nanotubes. I find the "DaaS = Decarbonisation as a Service" business model of my client Levidian very interesting for carbon black and rubber producers. Methane pyrolysis will surely be a growing topic for the next Carbon Black World Conference.
#carbonblackworld
TOP CARBON
The interest for recovered carbon black is growing, but there are road-blocks which are slowing down its commercialisation. Due to differences in the process-chain, every rCB is different. Testing takes significant time. rCB is only supplied from single sources. Often there are no alternative rCB suppliers. rCB is not a commodity. TOP CARBON will change that.
TOP CARBON is a collaboration programme which brings together top rCB producers and top rCB users to jointly work on rCB commoditization with the help of the ASTM D36 classification system for rCB.
Interested? Ask me for the TOP CARBON flyer! We are starting in June!
#topcarbon
New CEO at Ecolomondo
Gary Economo is succeeding Eliot Sorella (founder and chairman of Ecolomondo Corporation) as CEO and will lead the company into the next growth phase including the US operations in Shamrock, Texas. Welcome to the industry Gary!
Thank you!
Thank you for reading the rCB News!
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