A “Tire-to-Tire”-Project for Europe
The project partners BASF, Pirelli, Pyrum and Synthos have started a “tire-to-tire” circular economy initiative in Europe, “driving the development of an industrial ecosystem designed to increase the use of recycled materials derived from end-of-life and scrap tires”. One of the objectives is to reduce reliance on virgin raw materials. Pirelli coordinates the project.
As reported, the process draws on end‑of‑life tires collected across Germany, from some driver retail outlets and motorsport activities, as well as scrap tires collected from Pirelli’s Breuberg plant. “They are processed through an industrial chain designed to maximize their inner value, converting them into secondary raw materials – including synthetic rubber – certified under the ISCC PLUS scheme. This ensures traceability along the value chain and enables the circular materials’ reintroduction into the manufacturing of new Pirelli tires, maintaining their highest standards of quality and performance,” the four partners emphasized in July this year. “Within this process, Pyrum converts end‑of‑life and scrap tires through a pyrolysis process – a high-temperature thermal decomposition of materials in the absence of oxygen – into two valuable secondary raw materials: recovered carbon black (rCB) and tire pyrolysis oil (TPO). The recovered carbon black is upgraded in quality and directly reintroduced into Pirelli’s European production, partially replacing virgin carbon black.”
The TPO is delivered to BASF, where it is co-fed with fossil-based feedstock into the production process of chemical products such as butadiene and styrene. “A mass balance approach enables attributing the recycled content to the ISCC PLUS-certified Ccycled products. These circular materials are then used by Synthos to produce ISCC PLUS‑certified synthetic rubber for high-performance tire applications, which Pirelli reintroduces into its production processes, closing the loop.”
According to the European companies, the project would perfectly reflect that a single company acting alone could not achieve genuine product circularity. “It requires creating industrial ecosystems involving players with complementary expertise, each contributing to different phases of the transformation process around a shared material loop. Through collaboration and the combination of technological innovation, material science, and certified processes, the partners, driven by Pirelli, build a coordinated system in which materials are recovered, transformed and reused by maximizing their inner value.” The European “tire‑to‑tire” project would represent “the most comprehensive application of this approach to date, demonstrating how end‑of‑life tires can become a valuable resource within a structured and traceable industrial loop”.
basf.com, pirelli.com, pyrum.net, synthosgroup.com
(Published in GLOBAL RECYCLING Magazine 3/2026, Page 6, Photo: MSV-Archive)
