Cooper Tire and Rubber Company is just two years away from producing a tyre made of 100% guayule (why-YOU-lee), a shrub growing in the US Southwest.
Guayule is eyed as an alternative rubber resource that will decrease the demand for natural rubber produced by the hevea plant in Asia.
The company is based in Ohio, and guayule will save them the cost and hassle of importing rubber.
Bio-agriculture company PanAridus grows and manufactures the rubber for the Cooper Tire project. “In two years,” said Mike Fraley, chief executive of PanAridus to The New York Times, “we’ve traveled from test tubes to tyres.”
Currently the prototype tyres are under testing, which Fraley says are going extremely well.
Aside from the latex needed to make rubber, guayule also produces the resin needed to make products like adhesives, fragrances, flavors, and biofuel.
The Coopertire project is part of a $6.9 million Biomass Research and Development Initiative grant from the US Energy and Agriculture Departments.
Currently guayule is planted in 1,000 acres of Arizona land. PanAridus has enough seeds to plant guayule in 100,000 acres. Fraley hopes to expand the market to large-scale production.
“If you are not yielding enough per plant and per acre, you are not competing in a commodity market,” he says to the Arizona Times.