Goodyear Tyre & Rubber Co., the world’s largest tyre maker, claims to have developed several new synthetic rubber products that could cut its cost of using natural rubber by 15% within three years.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
“We’ve been working on these polymers for some time,” Joseph Gingo, executive vice president for quality systems and chief technical officer at the Akron, Ohio-based firm, said in a statement cited by Reuters.
“Recent natural rubber price volatility that has shown no signs of subsiding soon created a sense of urgency for our research and development people,” Gingo reportedly added.
Reuters noted that the last two years have seen world natural rubber prices climb steadily as demand has increased, led by growth in China’s vehicle industry and burgeoning economy. Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia are the top producers of natural rubber.
Goodyear, with other tyre makers like Michelin and Bridgestone, has been creating synthetic rubber for years, Reuters added.
“While our newly developed synthetic rubber products do not totally solve raw material cost concerns, we have gained for ourselves greater flexibility,” Gary Miller, Goodyear’s chief procurement officer, reportedly said, adding: “That flexibility not only will help cushion us against future natural rubber price volatility but also provides us with a competitive advantage.”
Goodyear spokesman Ron Maulsby told Reuters the company hoped to meet the 15% savings target on rubber costs through the new synthetic products “within two or three years.”
According to the news agency, he said the first applications of the new products were already in production though he could not provide estimates of Goodyear’s current rubber costs or physical tonnage used.
