Tire labeling jamming Euro test labs

By Patrick Raleigh, Crain News Service

COLOGNE, Germany (Feb. 18, 2015) — Tire labeling is placing increasing strain on the capacity of test laboratories within the tire manufacturing sector, according to Christian Leger, senior vice president and global business director of Solvay Silica.

Along with an increasing flow of product-development work, the need to test for compliance with Europe's tire labeling scheme for rolling resistance, wet grip and tire noise “is jamming customer laboratories,” Mr. Leger told European Rubber Journal, at Tire Technology Expo (TTE).

Mr. Leger was explaining the four-year development program behind Solvay Silica's new Efficium highly dispersible silica (HDS). The product was launched during the TTE show, staged Feb. 10-12 in Cologne.

With the number of new technologies increasing rapidly, Mr. Leger said “our customers have so many options to consider, making it more difficult to pick the right one. They have to decide where to prioritize.”

In developing Efficium, therefore, Solvay became more involved in more of the test stages than it had done before.  This, Mr. Leger said, included compounding work with mixer maker HF and having tires built and then tested at the TARCC research center in the United Kingdom.

According to Mr. Leger, the new HDS product responds to productivity issues around compounding with silica, which can be significantly more difficult to mix than carbon black.

“In the past, [tire] performance was the main priority. Now the focus is also on productivity, particularly at the mixing unit, which can be very expensive [to run] and cause bottlenecks,” the Solvay Silica executive said.

The new HDS is designed to allow higher productivity and greater flexibility in producing green passenger car and truck tire compounds due to improved mixing and extrusion throughput.

Flexibility, a Solvay Silica statement added, stems from “silanization control and reformulation opportunities without compromising on rolling resistance, wear and grip.”

This report appeared on the website of European Rubber Journal, a UK-based sister publication of Tire Business.