Japan’s largest trading house Marubeni Corporation has invested in Green Rubber Energy Company Limited (GRE), which is developing an end-of-life tyre (ELT) pyrolysis recycling business in Thailand.
With almost 30 million tonnes of tyres discarded annually around the world, a significant number of ELTs are disposed of via landfilling or incineration, which places a high burden on the environment. As a countermeasure, various countries are introducing and strengthening regulations regarding ELT disposal.
In addition, tyre manufacturers are aiming to increase the ratio of renewable raw materials in order to realise tyre manufacturing is more considerate of the global environment. Given this background, there is growing attention on recycling technologies that reuse ELTs as tyre raw materials to reduce the environmental burden.
GRE has been working for over ten years on developing technology to extract recovered carbon black (rCB) and tire pyrolysis oil (TPO) through the thermal decomposition of ELTs.
Until now, it was considered technically difficult to use rCB as a tyre raw material due to its unstable quality caused by the inclusion of impurities, but GRE has achieved stable production of rCB that can be used for tyres.
By investing in the GRE, Marubeni says it aims to establish a tyre recycling supply chain in Thailand, covering the collection of ELTs to the production and sale of recycled materials like rCB and TPO.
Marubeni’s subsidiary B-Quik Co., Thailand’s largest car maintenance company, will supply collected ELTs to GRE. The company will also expand the use of rCB by purifying it using German technology from RCB Nanotechnologies GmbH, a company in which Marubeni has invested. Additionally, Marubeni plans to utilise its subsidiary, Marubeni Techno Rubber Co., to boost sales of rCB and TPO and to expand this tire recycling model across Japan, Southeast Asia, and globally.
Marubeni adds it has positioned the green strategy as a basic policy for increasing corporate value in its Mid-term Management Strategy GC2024. For the tyre and rubber material business, Marubeni aims to build a sustainable value chain from the supply of rubber raw materials to the sale of tyres and rubber products.