Sumitomo Rubber's Tread Tech & Limestone Innovation
With its "active tread" technology, Sumitomo Rubber won the "Annual R&D Breakthrough" award in the 2025 Tire Technology Awards. On May 28, 2025, Sumitomo Rubber announced a new technological breakthrough - Sumitomo Rubber used artificial limestone recycled from carbon dioxide to develop rubber rollers for office automation (OA) equipment.
Although this product, developed in cooperation with Sumitomo Osaka Cement Co., Ltd., is currently mainly used in printers and copiers for transmitting paper and transmitting images and text.
However, it is crucial to the development of tire formulations because it is achieved by using synthetic rubber compounds using its breakthrough technology to help replace traditional limestone fillers with artificial limestone.
Artificial limestone captures and stores carbon dioxide emitted during cement manufacturing by "mineralizing" with calcium sources in waste. At the same time, this technological breakthrough also ensures that the product performance remains excellent, and the "fixing" effect of artificial limestone can capture and store 420 grams of carbon dioxide per kilogram, which means that products using this rubber roller can reduce emissions by about 36 tons per year.
The product will also solve the problem of severe shortage of landfill space in Japan by reusing calcium-containing waste. At present, the product is about to enter the commercial production stage.
As the product technology gradually matures, artificial limestone may also be used in the formulation of tires to achieve another breakthrough in the sustainable development of tire products.
Although people have paid more attention to Sumitomo Rubber's production capacity layout in recent years (closing factories in the United States, withdrawing from the competition for Chinese truck tires, and reducing production at the Hunan factory), it is more noteworthy that it has made efforts in sustainable development.
In recent years, Sumitomo Rubber has achieved a number of sustainable development breakthroughs from tire manufacturing to tire formulation, and has become a frequent visitor to the list of tire technology awards.
In 2024, Sumitomo Rubber won the 2024 Manufacturing Environmental Achievement Award for its use of hydrogen energy at its Shirakawa plant.
As for its reduced production in Hunan Changsha Plant (from 21 million to 8.4 million), in addition to building production, it also applied for technical upgrades of the plant in the fourth quarter.
The second phase of the project has been terminated, but Sumitomo Rubber will apply more energy to product structure optimization and adjustment, improve the collection efficiency of exhaust gas through the transformation and upgrading of facilities, and ensure that all collected exhaust gas can be properly treated and discharged in compliance - currently its Changsha factory's production line is mainly used to produce high-end silent tires.
With the advancement of environmental protection upgrades, Sumitomo Rubber's Changsha factory is expected to significantly reduce volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emissions in the future, and the reduction can even reach nearly 75% - from 49.65 tons per year to only 13.18 tons per year.
However, what is more concerned by peers at present is its "active tread" technology. This technology of Sumitomo Rubber can help tires adjust the tread conditions according to changes in road conditions in any road conditions.
As early as 2017, Sumitomo Rubber mentioned that "active tread" technology will become the key technology behind its smart tire concept, that is, the "sensing core" technology that converts tires into sensors by installing professional algorithms in the vehicle braking system.
