Summer sightseeing, rCB style . . .
Dear colleagues & friends of recovered Carbon Black,
It has been a busy summer for recovered Carbon Black. After a short newsletter break, here is my selection of the developments that matter.
rCB sightseeing
The above selfie was taken during our 4,700 km summer road trip holiday this year, posing in front of the Continua™ 8000 SCM processing site in Trecate, Italy.
Tyre industry takes further steps towards rCB
In our current update interviews for the Prospects for recovered Carbon Black report, we have heard concerns that rCB adoption in the tyre industry is progressing more slowly than expected. However there have also been very encouraging signals from the tyre industry:
Arranged by rCB expert Frank Cremer , both Pirelli North America Inc and Pirelli Europe have announced collaborations with the rCB industry. Pirelli North America is working with Bolder Industries on the recycling of industrial factory waste tyres into TPO and rCB. Pirelli Europe is creating a new circular ecosystem for consumer waste tyres, which are converted by Pyrum Innovations AG into TPO and rCB. The rCB goes directly back into Pirelli tyres, while BASF uses the TPO as circular feedstock for chemicals such as butadiene and styrene, which are then converted into SBR rubber at Synthos and that material also returns to Pirelli. Other than in the Bridgestone EMEA / Eni ecosystem, these are established industrial partners using existing commercial assets. This is raising hopes that we can expect new sustainable Pirelli tyres very soon.
Unrelated to, but after the corruption scandal around LD Carbon (LDC) in South Korea earlier this year, the South Korean government has created a KRW48bn (~ €30m) fund to support higher-value ELT recycling. It explicitly targets tyre technologies capable of incorporating at least 15% rCB, versus the government’s assessment that durability currently makes incorporation above roughly 5% difficult. This is shifting from “can we put rCB into a tyre?” to “how much rCB can we put in?”.
TPO has become a strong part of the rCB story
France and England have improved regulatory pathways for TPO at exactly the same time that Orion S.A. and Longxing Chemical Industry Co., Ltd. demonstrate that TPO can become a serious carbon black feedstock.
While the French decree TECP2528362A favours the cracker route for material recycling, the English (not UK!) "Tyre Pyrolysis Oil Resource Framework" favours the refinery route for renewable fuel applications. Both frameworks apply the four End-of-Waste principles originating from Article 6 of the EU Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC.
Following Orion's commercial scale circular carbon black production in Jasło, Poland, the company's Qingdao plant now started producing ECORAX Circular 200 (N326), 210 (N330) and 215 from TPO feedstock. These hard blacks are complementary to rCB which typically is positioned against the soft blacks N660 and N772.
The Chinese carbon black producer Longxing shipped 10,000 tons of TPO based carbon black to an undisclosed European tyre maker, with other approvals underway.
Could low cost, ASTM-compliant circular furnace blacks become a new competitor to European rCB?
Scale-up is separating winners from projects
Europe's largest rCB production site, Circtec Farmsum, has started operation and currently is stabilising and ramping up production output. The company says all four primary production lines are operating and that the plant is currently processing around 40ktpa of ELTs per year on an annualised basis, broadly corresponding to its modelled Phase I throughput.
Bolder Industries received the final permits for the processing of 120 ktpa ELTs at its future facility in the "NextGen District" of the Port of Antwerp-Bruges. The €70 million Antwerp investment is well supported financially with €32.3 million from the N2TR EU Innovation Fund, €2 million from the Flemish Government and additional private growth capital from Tiger Infrastructure Partners.
ECO Infinic Co., Ltd. is expanding its existing facility in Si Racha, Chonburi, Thailand, with a THB1.375bn (~€36m) investment for tripling its current capacity of 30 ktpa ELTs to 100 ktpa ELTs. The facility will have a capacity to produce 30 ktpa of rCB and 35 ktpa of TPO. A further expansion to 200 ktpa is already scheduled for early 2028.
Infiniteria says it remains committed to completing its Uddevalla rCB & TPO plant, with the physical plant largely completed and automation and control systems representing the principal remaining work. Infiniteria has appointed EPC company Proman as well as a number of in-house engineers for the final construction phase.
The rCB industry is now entering its commercial selection phase. Tyre customers, specifications, offtake, feedstock control and industrial project execution are now becoming more important than announcing another pilot reactor.
rCB is when it works
Maybe that Rubber News article by Andrew Schunk had good intentions to report good news about Bolder Industries ' collaboration with Pirelli North America Inc, but it went on saying "rCB hurdles remain".
This article inspired me to a whole new approach to rCB, stating "If there are hurdles, it is not rCB". For decades we have been misled by a recycling minded definition of rCB. And guess what, that does not work!
Do you know any furnace carbon black company that introduced a new carbon black and then realised it does not work? No, of course not. Why should rCB get a free pass? Anything not selling to a rubber or plastics company is char, not rCB.
In consequence, I have suggested a revised definition for rCB as an engineered material rather than a recycled material. Because recycling makes something from everything, but this will not likely be rCB.
I will present about this topic soon at the Tire & Rubber Conferences rCB Asia in Bangkok on Sept 3-4, collocated with the Sustainability in Tires conference. I hope to see you there. Go here to book your ticket.
The Frank & Martin Show
After a number of high profile collaborations for the traditional rCB Europe pre-conference Workshop, I am super stoked to run the 2026 rCB Europe Workshop with my friend and colleague Frank Cremer from Pyrum Innovations AG.
We will have 3 sessions in the workshop:
An introduction to rCB
Industrialisation of rCB “From recovered material to a reliable industrial raw material”
The future of rCB & new applications for rCB
Go here to book your ticket and see you in Amsterdam on November 3rd 2026!
We currently have 7,825 subscribers, 1,314 members in the LinkedIn rCB group Martin & friends: recovered Carbon Black "rCB" and tyre pyrolysis and we have a community of more than 500 colleagues in the Tire & Rubber Conferences rCB Europe and rCB Asia Conferences.
Thank you for reading the Summer 2026 rCB News!
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Thank you and best wishes from Berlin,
Martin von Wolfersdorff
