First Car Tyres With Taraxagum Dandelion-Rubber Tread
• Performance of the WinterContact TS 850 P will be tested on the company’s own test sites, the Contidrom, north of Hanover, and in Arvidsjaur, Sweden
• Continental has pulled together all the information about the milestones of this pioneering research project at www.taraxagum.de
PORT ELIZABETH, South Africa, 16 October 2014 – Continental, the world’s leading international tyre manufacturer, has reached an important milestone in its research project for the industrialisation of dandelion rubber in tyre production.
As part of its recent ContiWinterRoadshow 2014, Continental presented the first test tyres made from the innovative material that the company is calling Taraxagum™, derived from the botanical name for the dandelion (taraxacum).
Manufacture of the first WinterContact TS 850 P with natural rubber from dandelion roots has taken Continental an important step closer to reaching its long-term goal of making tyre production more sustainable and less dependent on traditional raw materials.
“After several years of intensive development work in conjunction with the Fraunhofer Institute, we are excited to be taking the first dandelion tyres onto the road,” said Nikolai Setzer, Member of the Executive Board of Continental responsible for the Tires Division.
“To get the most meaningful test results from the crop yield produced by our research project to date, we decided to build winter tyres, as they contain a particularly high proportion of natural rubber. Our goal remains to develop tyres based on dandelion rubber to readiness for series production within the next five to 10 years.”
Continental has the Contidrom proving grounds north of Hanover at its disposal for extensive tests under summer conditions. However, the characteristics of these first winter tyres with dandelion rubber tread will be tested at Continental’s test site in Arvidsjaur, Sweden, where the company traditionally tests its future products under winter conditions from December to April.
“So far, the development process of Taraxagum has been very promising and we are currently continuing the industrialisation process together with our partners. We are very confident that the results achieved with the test tyres to date will be confirmed, and that we will meet our performance targets,” added Dr Andreas Topp, Head of Material and Process Development and Industrialisation for Tires at Continental.
An extremely robust, very high-yield Russian dandelion has been cultivated as a result of extensive research carried out over recent years together with the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology (IME), the Julius Kühn Institute, and the plant breeding company Aeskulap.
The research project’s long-term goal is to find an ecologically, economically and socially viable solution for the increasing demand for natural rubber. This would ease the pressure on the traditional rubber tree plantations in the tropics.
Additionally, the aim is to reduce dependency on natural rubber, which can be subject to severe price fluctuations on the commodities exchanges. Moreover, cultivating dandelion crops on previously unused land in temperate regions throughout Europe, which are therefore also close to Continental’s European tyre plants, should reduce the outlay for logistics and the burden on the environment.
The Taraxagum development project also includes projects funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research, Nutrition and Agriculture.
In May 2014, the dandelion rubber project was honoured with the prestigious European “GreenTec Award”, an environmental and business prize, in the “Automobility” category.
Continental recently presented the case study “We develop sustainability” on current goals, trends and successes in tyre development. This study, as well as all the information on the topic of dandelion rubber published so far, can be found at www.taraxagum.de
