Japanese tire companies join forces to develop new materials
In 2025, in order to better meet the market's requirements for sustainable development, tire companies will once again break through the limits of raw material research - not only carbon black should be more environmentally friendly, but synthetic rubber should also be more environmentally friendly!
Recently, Yokohama and Zeon Corporation, a well-known synthetic rubber supplier, have cooperated to jointly establish a "test bench facility" to demonstrate the technology of "efficiently" producing butadiene in sustainable ethanol.
01 Do not expand production capacity, expand R&D
From 2022 to 2024, Yokohama successively acquired the off-road tire business of two major tire manufacturers-Trelleborg Wheel Systems and Goodyear's off-road tire business. Yokohama, which is now large enough, has begun to pay more attention to the layout of the cutting-edge technology in the industry.
The official announcement of cooperation with Zeon is to enter the leading ranks in the field of sustainability. It is reported that the "test bench facility" jointly built by Yokohama and Zeon is located at the Tokuyama plant in Shunan City, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan, and is scheduled to start operation in 2026.
The facility includes a large device that can collect the necessary data for "a certain amount of butadiene" produced from ethanol, which can be reasonably applied to different plants, and ultimately help Yokohama to commercialize the technology of "efficiently" producing butadiene from ethanol on a large scale.
According to reports, the production of this more environmentally friendly butadiene is to use "efficient" catalysts to convert sustainable ethanol into butadiene.
It is worth noting that the use of ethanol production is not the ultimate goal. Yokohama plans to mass-produce synthetic rubber from plant-based and other sustainable raw materials after the process matures.
However, the current cooperation goal of the two companies is: Zeon will use laboratory-produced butadiene to develop a prototype polybutadiene rubber, and Yokohama will use this material to develop tires.
02 2030 Yokohama is more environmentally friendly
Yokohama said that after successfully developing "environmentally friendly tires" using butadiene rubber, it will conduct driving tests on these tires to collect data required for larger-scale technology demonstrations.
And its partner Zeon aims to complete this technology by 2030 and commercialize rubber production by 2034.
The initiative is aligned with selected R&D themes of Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) and is supported by Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology.
In addition to the greener prototype polybutadiene rubber, Zeon and Yokohama are also working on a second NEDO project with support from the Tokyo Institute of Science and RIKEN.
This project will involve developing a “biotechnology” to produce butadiene and isoprene directly from plant-based materials, also targeted for commercialization in 2034.
