Carbios and Michelin take a major step towards developing 100% sustainable tires

Clermont-Ferrand – April 23, 2021 – (7:45 AM CEST)- CARBIOS (Euronext Growth Paris: ALCRB), a company pioneering new bio-industrial solutions to reinvent the lifecycle of plastic and textile polymers, and MICHELIN, a leader in sustainable mobility, have taken a major step towards developing 100% sustainable tires. Michelin has successfully tested and applied Carbios’ enzymatic recycling process for PET plastic waste, in order to create a high tenacity tire fibre that meets the tire-giant’s technical requirements.

The application of PET enzymatic recycling in car tires: a world first

Conventional thermomechanical recycling processes for complex plastics do not achieve the PET high-performance grade required for pneumatic applications. However, the monomers resulting from Carbios’ process, which used colored and opaque plastic waste such as bottles, once repolymerized in PET, made it possible to obtain a high tenacity fibre meeting Michelin’s tire requirements.

Source: Michelin