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GERMANY
Continental to Establish Integrated Hot Retreading and Rubber Recycling Plant
Continental has announced that its new mould cure retreading facility, plans for which were revealed in the last issue of Retreading Business, will be located at the company’s headquarters in Hannover- Stöcken, Germany. Furthermore, the plant will be combined with a facility to recycle used tyres, thereby creating the first integrated retreading and recycling plant of its kind worldwide.
With an investment of more than ten million Euros, the plant will create 100 new jobs and forms part of Continental’s plan to strengthen its position
in Western European markets, whilst further developing the company’s ContiLifeCycle approach in production.
“In the face of limited raw materials, we see it as our obligation to come up with sustainable solutions in tyre production and retreading. We are now able to process used tread buffings and ground end- of-life tyres in such a steered and controlled way, that it can be reused in the production of new and retreaded tyres,” commented Dr. Andreas Esser, Head of the Business Unit Commercial Vehicle Tires at Continental. By doing this,
Continental is pursuing a novel approach with regard to the processing of used tread buffings. Today, 41 percent of end-of-life tyres (ELT) in the EU are used for incineration in the cement industry. Another 35 percent are being “downcycled” and subsequently used in low stress technical rubber goods, such as moulded rubber products. Continental has developed a new
opportunity to recycle the rubber from their own tyres, allowing the company to better control what rubber compounds are recycled. The recycling facility will use a devulcanisation process claimed to be specific to Continental. The new retreading plant will start production together with the recycling factory in 2013 and will have a projected annual capacity of 180,000 retreads per annum. These will be mainly manufactured using the mould cure process and with this in mind Continental is now in the process of scaling down its activities with its existing mould cure retreading partners, Bandvulc and Reifen Ihle. However, according to Christian
recycling process that allows high shares of recycled rubber in compounds for new and retreaded tyres. By implementing Continental’s new approach, the amount of recycled rubber in a tyre can be doubled.
“This marks the next step in optimising the utilisation of raw materials in tyre production” remarked Dr. Boris Mergell, Vice President Material and Process Development and Industrialisation. “Considering the planned recycling volume of approximately 4,000 tons annually, this results in the conservation of approximately 2,400 tons of rubber and 1,600 tons of carbon black and silica.” The plant will also allow Continental the
Sass, Director Retread Business at Continental, the plant will also incorporate a small pre-cure facility, which will serve as a competence centre. Tread buffings from Continental’s new ContiLifeCyle retreading factory will be completely used in the recycling facility.
According to Sass, the new retreading plant is expected to be operational by the end of Q2, 2013.
Conti is to use a closed loop system to reintroduce trimmings and buffing to its tyre manufacturing
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