CONTINENTAL

Company is the first tire manufacturer to mass-produce tires made from recycled plastic

The polyester yarn obtained from recycled PET plastic bottles is the material Continental is using to produce today's innovative tires derived from recycled plastic. It is the first car tire manufacturer to use this technology for series production, through a new technological process.

The new high-performance material will initially be used in selected sizes for the PremiumContact 6 and EcoContact 6 summer tires and Continental's AllSeasonContact tire. In particular, it is a material that completely replaces the polyester normally used in the construction of the tire carcass. A set of standard car tires contains polyester made from approximately 40 recycled PET bottles.

Last year in September Continental presented ContiRe.Tex technology for the first time, which uses polyester yarn made from plastic (PET) bottles without intermediate chemical steps, bottles that would not be recycled in any other way. This makes Continental's process much more efficient than standard methods capable of turning PET bottles into high-performance polyester yarns.

The bottles that are used by Continental come from regions that do not have a closed-loop recycling system. They are sorted under a special recycling process and then mechanically cleaned, after removing the caps. We then move on to mechanical shredding, and the PET is transformed into granulated polyester and, finally, into yarn.

Ferdinand Hoyos, Continental's business replacement manager in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, explains: “We only use high-performance materials in our premium tires. From now on, these will include polyester yarns made from PET bottles and made with a particularly efficient recycling process. We brought our innovative ContiRe.Tex technology to the production stage in just 8 months. I am proud of the team for this extraordinary result. We are expanding the share of renewable and recycled materials in our tires. By 2050, the goal is to use only sustainable materials in our production ".

Now available the first tires with recycled PET bottles ... All tires "of the future" (like others presented in the past) equipped with ContiRe.Tex technology now on the market are produced at the Continental plant in Lousado, Portugal and carry a logo special on the side bearing the words “Contains Recycled Material”.

PET polyester yarn has been used for a long time in the assembly of tires for light trucks and cars. To make tires even more energy efficient and environmentally friendly in production, use and recyclability, Continental is looking for alternative materials to use.

The Group presented the Conti GreenConcept at last year's IAA Mobility in September, which uses polyester from recycled plastic bottles in its carcass. For the second season of the Extreme E offroad series with electric SUVs, inaugurated in February 2022, Continental has developed a tire that uses ContiRe.Tex technology. Even the official cars of this year's Tour de France will only be equipped with tires fitted with ContiRe.Tex.

Initially, the new technology (among those already presented by the manufacturer) is available in PremiumContact 6, EcoContact 6 and AllSeasonContact tires, each in five different sizes.

Autonews