As of 1 December, Bridgestone Corporation has completed selling all shares in its Bridgestone (Huizhou) Synthetic Rubber Co., Ltd. subsidiary. The new owner of the business, which manufactures synthetic rubber for passenger car tyres, is Taiwan’s LCY Chemical Corporation. Bridgestone announced the planned sale on 15 June 2021.
Tyre makers have committed themselves to ambitious sustainability goals, and can only achieve these through the use of sustainable raw materials. We’re currently seeing a spate of new plans and projects in this sector, the latest being an agreement that Japan’s Asahi Kasei Corporation concluded with Shell Eastern Petroleum Ltd. yesterday for the supply of butadiene derived from plastic waste and biomass.
Taif Group, the world’s largest producer of isoprene and the Russian Federation’s largest rubber producer, has entered into an agreement with Russian integrated petrochemical company Sibur that finalises the creation of a combined entity that will leverage the facilities of Sibur Holding and create the largest petrochemical company in Russia and one of the biggest in the world.
Agricultural tyres generally appear quite similar irrespective of brand, making it difficult to spot at a glance the difference between discount tyres and higher-priced premium products. Bridgestone observes that price thus “wrongly becomes a differentiating element” with these products. The tyre maker is concerned that some may gain the impression they’re paying extra for the brand rather than the tyre, and wishes to set the record straight.
Bridgestone Corporation has announced that it will sell Bridgestone (Huizhou) Synthetic Rubber Co., Ltd., its China-based subsidiary for manufacturing synthetic car tyre rubber, to Taiwan’s LCY Chemical Corp. The company has not disclosed financial aspects of the transaction.
The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd. has announced a global first, the development of a technology for efficiently producing butadiene from a biomass. It achieved this breakthrough via the ‘Bio-monomer Production Laboratory’, which the company established jointly with Riken and Zeon Corporation.
Synthetic rubber and plastics manufacturer Trinseo has reached definitive agreements with Swiss sustainable tyre recycling specialist Tyre Recycling Solutions (TRS) on a commercial collaboration and an equity investment in TRS. The transaction is expected to close later this quarter, subject to ordinary closing conditions.
Growers, suppliers and manufacturers of both natural and synthetic rubbers are feeling the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, with demand for both commodities decreasing significantly in the first quarter of 2020.
We haven’t heard a great deal from Lanxess since it spun off its Tire & Specialty Rubbers (TSR) and the High Performance Elastomers (HPE) business units into the Arlanxeo joint venture in 2016. But the company, which sold its 50 per cent share in Arlanxeo a year and a half ago, is still very much active as a supplier to the tyre industry. Later this month, Lanxess will showcase its tyre manufacturing solutions at Tire Technology Expo.
Working together with a Japanese university, Sumitomo Rubber Industries, Ltd. (SRI) has established a new technique for observing materials contained within tyre rubber. This process differs from existing methods as it enables an evaluation of the actual rubber used in mass-produced tyres rather than relying upon processed test samples. The company behind the Falken tyre brand foresees the technique facilitating the development of tyres with superior performance characteristics.
Tatneft’s acquisition of Sibur’s petrochemical plant in Togliatti, Russia has been completed. This concludes the process initiated by the signing of an agreement of intent between the two parties at the end of August 2019.`
Arlanxeo reports that it has successfully ramped-up sales of EPDM (Ethylene Propylene Diene Monomer) rubber produced in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and marketed under the Keltan KSA brand name. Marketing and sales of the new EPDM grades are based on an agreement concluded between Arlanxeo and Saudi Aramco in 2018, while collaboration has been further enhanced by the take-over of full ownership of Arlanxeo by Saudi Aramco beginning of 2019.
Anyone who’s racked up a few miles in the tyre industry will be familiar with what some call the ‘magic triangle’ of performance – the relationship between wet traction and braking, rolling resistance and wear, and the role compounding plays in helping the protagonists live in harmony. But Trinseo considers this three-pointed model a relic. We recently spoke with Samer Al Jabi, global business director of Trinseo’s Synthetic Rubber business segment, to find out why.
On 1 August 2019 synthetic rubber manufacturer Asahi Kasei began operating Asahi Kasei Asia Pacific Co., Ltd. (AKAP), a new regional headquarters for business in the ASEAN region based in Thailand.
