The New Wood competition 2025: To replace fossil-based carbon black, tyre industry develops an alternative from lignin
Uusi puu – The New Wood Project shows what wood can do. The project promotes wood-based innovations and provides information about them.
UPM and Nokian Tyres have developed a tyre using a wood-based filler made of lignin.
For long, the standard solution in the tyre industry has been to use fossil-based carbon black as a filler to reinforce the tyres. Now, a renewable alternative has been developed, derived from wood-based lignin.
Nokian Tyres and UPM have introduced the first tyre in which fossil carbon black has been completely replaced by a renewable raw material in the tyre sidewall.
This is the Nokian Tyres Green Step Ligna concept tyre, manufactured using the lignin-based UPM BioMotion™ RFF filler developed by UPM. Lignin, a natural compound found in wood, is available as a sidestream of pulp manufacturing, among other sources.
Nokian Tyres has registered a patent for using the material in tyre applications and has granted a licence to UPM, who produce the biochemicals for the material in their biorefinery in Leuna, Germany.
Fillers play an important part in tyre manufacturing: they form about 30% of the tyre mass and are a central factor for the strength, flexibility and durability of the tyre. Preliminary test show that the lignin-based RFF not only replaces carbon black, but can also improve tyre performance in some respects.
UPM and Nokian Tyres underline the potential of the material as part of a broader effort to reduce the carbon footprint of tyre manufacturing. So far, what is at hand is a concept product, and taking it into full-scale production will still require further testing and safety assessments. However, the adoption of this material can have a wider impact on the entire sector.
’With the use of this renewable material in our tyres, we aim at setting new standards of environmental responsibility,’ says Teemu Soini, VP, Innovations & Development at Nokian Tyres.
’A successful demonstration of the material’s application value helps us to lay the groundwork for scaling our biorefinery business so that we can make a significant contribution to the sustainable transformation of the mobility sector and beyond,’ says Michael Duetsch, VP Biochemicals at UPM.
Forest.fi and New Wood are initiatives of the Finnish Forest Association.