Latex and Natural Rubber

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Continental takes pioneering role in responsible sourcing of natural rubber

Continental pursues a holistic approach to make the complex and fragmented supply chains for natural rubber more sustainable: The latest digital technologies, local involvement in the cultivation of rubber, and close cooperation with strong partners are aimed at creating more transparency along the entire value chain. “We actively take responsibility in our supply chains. Only when natural rubber is responsibly sourced, we consider it a sustainable material,” says Claus Petschick, Head of Sustainability at Continental Tires. As of today, completely seamless traceability of natural rubber is technically impossible due to the high complexity of the supply chain. With its commitment, Continental is working at full speed on a blueprint for the sustainable and responsible structuring of supply chains.

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Project management: Beauty and the beast

The origins for modern project management stem from the late 1950s, where the methodology was applied in aerospace, defense and construction. With the advent of IT (information technology), a formalized system of project management was developed and has taken a foothold in nearly every business. With the recent initiative to onshore glove manufacturing to the U.S., project management has now become a central framework for the construction, equipment validation and manufacturing initiatives which underpin U.S. based glove manufacturing capabilities.

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Bridgestone to invest additional $42 million to establish commercial operations of guayule in North America

Bridgestone plans to invest an additional $42 million to establish commercial operations, with additional investment and expansion planned toward 2030. The company will collaborate and partner with local U.S. farmers and Native American tribes to increase capacity of up to 25,000 additional acres of farmland for planting and harvesting guayule at scale. Bridgestone is targeting sustainable commercial production of guayule-derived natural rubber by the end of the decade.

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Cariflex breaks ground on world’s largest polyisoprene latex plant in Singapore

Cariflex Pte. Ltd. (Cariflex), broke ground at a 6.1 hectares site in Jurong Island, Singapore. Cariflex will be constructing the world’s largest and Singapore’s first polyisoprene latex plant on this site. Driven by a strong commitment to better serve its global customers in medical and consumer products, this investment represents the largest capacity expansion in Cariflex’s existing accomplishments.

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Nitrile latex for gloves

The federal government, particularly the Defense Logistics Agency, recently indicated that its objective is to support the annual U.S. production of 50 billion nitrile gloves to satisfy the most critical U.S. medical PPE requirement. This quantity, while seemingly significant, represents about 11% of the examination gloves produced globally, and 30% of the gloves used in the U.S.
There are more than a handful of glove companies intending to contribute to the satisfaction of this government objective. The polymer designated for the gloves will be acrylonitrile butadiene latex, or nitrile latex. To produce 50 billion gloves, it will take approximately 1.1 billion pounds of nitrile latex. The U.S. presently has limited capability to manufacture nitrile latex. Most of this latex would be manufactured in Korea, Malaysia, Italy and Brazil

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Mechanism of oxidation in natural rubber compounds at lower (ambient) temperatures

The oxidation mechanism of natural rubber was studied using several techniques. In a prior article, it was found that the crosslink distribution (sulfur types including polysulfidic, disulfidic and monosulfidic) in a belt coat (conventional cured natural rubber compound) had a different crosslink distribution, depending on the aging temperature (ref. 1). The belt coat compound extracted from an oven aged (65°C) tire was compared to the belt coat compound extracted from a normal service tire (23°C, the average annual temperature in Phoenix, AZ)

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Homegrown bioelastomers: A sustainable opportunity

It has been estimated that there are 2,500 plants that can produce a natural latex: a bioelastomer. Of course, not all of them can produce a polymeric latex with a high molecular weight, readily processable and commercially viable. To date, three species account for the majority of interest associated and centered
around the discussion of natural latex: Hevea rubber trees (Hevea brasiliensis), guayule (“why-yule-ee,” Parthenium argentatum) and rubber dandelion (Taraxacum kok-saghyz). The rubber tree, typically found in tropical Southeast Asia, produces nearly 90% of the world’s natural latex. Guayule (a desert shrub) and rubber dandelion are plants found in more temperate regions in the U.S., and figure to be potential domestic sources of natural rubber and latex.

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