From racing to forklift trucks with Continental

Continental has launched a new programme recovering carbon black from its racing tyres and using it for its super elastic solid tyres for forklift trucks. So far, 300 CrossContact Extreme E racing tyres have been processed using a special pyrolysis method to extract raw materials such as oil, gas and carbon black.

Matthias Haufe, head of material development and industrialisation at Continental Tires, said: “By recycling our Extreme E racing tyres, we are raising awareness of the significant potential of tyre pyrolysis. We are in no doubt that cutting-edge and highly efficient pyrolysis processes will make an important contribution to increasing sustainability in the tyre industry. We already use circular raw materials in our tyre production. By 2050 at the latest, we are aiming to have 60% tyre to tyre circularity. Our goal is to use fossil raw materials ever more sparingly and at the same time further reduce our CO2 emissions.”

As the tyre partner of Extreme E Continental’s racing tyres for this series contain around 43% recycled and renewable raw materials from new. Materials used in this product include silica from the ash of rice husks and ContiRe.Tex technology. This recycles PET bottles and creates polyester fibres to reinforce the tyre casing. 

Technical manager for Extreme E at Continental, Nels von Schnakenburg, said: “As well as using sustainable materials, it was also important to us to recycle our racing tyres. As part of a closed-loop system, these will now become the starting material for new tyres.” 

Before Continental launched its solid tyres in September 2023, tyres from the 2021 Extreme E season were turned into 400sq m of rubber paving stones for a local basketball court in Hanover. The new solid tyres are made at Continental’s tyre plant in Korbach where it also uses recycled car and truck tyres.