Transforming end-of-life and scrap tires into recycled materials

Pirelli, Pyrum, Synthos and BASF are jointly advancing 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.

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.

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.

At the same time, the TPO is supplied to BASF, where it is co-fed with fossil-based feedstock into the production process of chemical products such as butadiene and stirene. 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.

The project perfectly reflects that genuine product circularity cannot be achieved by a single company acting alone. 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 represents 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.