Tatneft increases the environmental friendliness of car tires

At the moment, tire manufacturers around the world are working to make their products more environmentally friendly, and this trend is supported by the Russian group "Tatneft", which includes three tire manufacturing enterprises. Thus, in the winter season 2025/2026, a new friction tire Autograph Snow 5 was released on the market, which became the "greenest" in the Ikon Tyres line, since the rubber mixture EcoTwist increased the volume of renewable raw materials, such as oils, resins, and natural rubber, by 21%, notes RBC+.

For another novelty - the studded Ikon Autograph Ice 10 - an environmentally friendly rubber mixture with the name Green Core Mix (GC Mix) was also developed, with a 5.5% increased proportion of materials from renewable sources.

As part of the "Green Tire" project, the company is also working to close the recycling loop and make used tires raw materials for new tire products. Implementing this initiative, "Tatneft" has created a network of 130 used tire collection points in 17 cities, and since 2022, 70,000 tons of tires have been collected, of which 60,000 tons have been recycled.

According to "Neftyanie Vesti", at the first stage, after removing metal parts, the rubber is crushed into large chips and then into fine crumb. From the resulting mixture of rubber and textiles, pyrolysis produces pyrolysis gas, which is directed to heat the reactor; solid carbon residue, used to produce silica and zinc oxide; as well as pyrocondensate, from which isobutane is extracted at the TANECO facilities after several stages of processing. At the next stage, isoprene rubber is obtained from isobutane at the Tolyattikauchuk plant, and this is already raw material for the production of new tires. Thus, a recyclable tire is obtained, and it is reported that thanks to pyrolysis, the depth of processing of old car tires exceeds 95%.

The raw materials obtained by this method are currently used in the production of "green" summer tires Viatti Strada 2, which are produced by the Nizhnekamsk complex Kama Tyres (formerly also part of "Tatneft"), and thanks to eco-materials, as well as reduced rolling resistance of the tires themselves, their carbon footprint has been reduced by 49%, and the reduction in emissions of harmful substances is up to 30%.

In Russia, from 800,000 to 1 million tons of used tires are generated annually, half of which end up in unauthorized landfills. "Tatneft" sets an ambitious goal to completely rid the country of old tire dumps, and the company expresses its willingness to become a center for their processing, creating a closed cycle of production.

The Tatneft group, in addition to Ikon Tyres, includes the BRZ plant (Uzbekistan) and Tengri Tyres (Kazakhstan).