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Brenntag held a celebration to mark its 150-year anniversary in Essen, Germany, where the DAX40 company is headquartered. The ceremony included many guests from the chemical industry, customers, suppliers and other business partners as well as honored guests like Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

In his speech and in his conversation with Brenntag CEO Christian Kohlpaintner, the Chancellor emphasized the importance and the needs of the chemical industry and highlighted the success story of Brenntag. As a distributor, the company connects its more than 1,000 suppliers with around 180,000 customers worldwide.

The Rubber Division, ACS annually honors the best of the best with the most prestigious awards in our industry the Science & Technology Awards. The 2025 winners will accept these awards and be celebrated at a banquet hosted by Rubber Division, ACS and sponsored by Alpha Technologies on March 5, 2025 during the Rubber Division, ACS Spring Technical Meeting in Lake Buena Vista, FL. Each Science & Technology Award Winner will also give a presentation in the technical session following the banquet. Join us to honor and celebrate these individuals.

ridgestone and Geotab, a global leader in connected vehicle solutions, announced a strategic collaboration using data to enhance fleet optimization. Working together will empower Bridgestone and Geotab to further develop a fleet mobility ecosystem focused on fleet optimization. The ecosystem involves the integration of each companies’ solutions and data into services customers use today.

During a ceremony held at Pirelli Headquarters in Milan, Italy, the prestigious award for process innovation was presented to VMI. The award recognizes the excellent collaboration between VMI and Pirelli in developing new processes that address current challenges in tire manufacturing.

The application of VMI’s groundbreaking UNIXX technology delivers a high degree of flexibility whilst enhancing the quality of high performance tires. In addition, refined process control supports Pirelli’s sustainability goals by reducing the weight of compound in a tire, which combined with lower waste levels improves the sustainability and cost of both the production process as well as the tire itself.

ETH Zurich materials researchers have now developed a material that combines these supposedly incompatible properties. Ioanna Tsimouri achieved this feat in her doctoral thesis with the assistance of Andrei Gusev and Walter Caseri, both professors at the Department of Materials. Her work has given rise to the creation of materials that comprise layers of stiff materials connected by ultra-thin rubber-like layers formed by crosslinking a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) mixture.

Bridgestone celebrated International Day of the Girl by announcing $200,000 in new donations to support the nationwide growth of girls flag football. These contributions include $40,000 for local programs through the Cleveland Browns, Dallas Cowboys, Los Angeles Rams, New England Patriots, and Tennessee Titans.
Teams are utilizing the funds to meet the unique needs associated with creating or expanding girls flag football programs in their local communities. Common examples include equipment, training, transportation, and technology.

Denka Performance Elastomer LLC (DPE), a U.S. subsidiary of Denka Company Limited, applied for a two-year extension of the grace period from the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ). This extension was approved on June 27, 2024. Subsequently, DPE sought legal confirmation of this extension from the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and filed an emergency motion to prevent the EPA from enforcing the new regulations during the review process.

On April 9, 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) introduced new regulations aimed at reducing chemical air emissions from chloroprene rubber manufacturing facilities. These regulations, which include significant measures to cut emissions of chloroprene monomer, were published in the Federal Register on May 16, 2024, and took effect on July 15, 2024. A 90-day grace period was provided, ending on October 15, 2024, for facilities to comply with these new standards.

From October 8 – 15, 2025, the global plastics and rubber industry will come together for its internationally most relevant trade fair in Düsseldorf, Germany. Like no other trade fair of this sector, K 2025 will provide the complete overview of this industry’s global ranges – once again guaranteed by the internationality of the exhibitors. Companies from all continents have registered to offer trade visitors innovations at the highest level. “Next year the Who’s Who of the plastics and rubber industries will be back again in Düsseldorf. We are very pleased that even companies who had suspended their participation in 2022 as a consequence of the pandemic, are now back on board again,” said Thomas Franken, Director K, Portfolio Plastics & Rubber at Messe Düsseldorf. Space allocation talks are currently underway before the K 2025 exhibitor database will go online in January 2025.

The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., announced that it is supplying its BluEarth-GT AE51 tires as original equipment (OE) to Toyota Motor Corporation for use on the automaker’s new hybrid sedan, the Camry, sales of which were launched gradually in Europe, Middle East, Asia, and Australia. The OE tire size is the 215/55R17 94V.