Recovered Carbon Black Use On The Rise

Soucy Techno signs long-term supply agreement with Bolder Industries signaling a major achievement in the recovered carbon black industry

Bolder Industries, Inc. and Soucy Techno announced  the  signing of a formal multi-year supply agreement for BolderBlack®, the premier sustainable carbon black alternative. This is an extension of a previous agreement made between Bolder and Soucy and a result of Bolder’s ability to deliver product quality and consistency over many years—signaling a major achievement in the recovered carbon black industry.

The partnership between Bolder and Soucy began in 2016 with a co-development of plastic masterbatch at Soucy’s Sherbrooke-based lab. Since then, Soucy has continued to expand the use of BolderBlack in their plastics components for agricultural and industrial vehicle sectors with a 1,000 percent increase in volume offtake of BolderBlack over the last 5 years.

“As is typical, we started small with Soucy to demonstrate our ability to deliver quality product at an exceptional value,” Tony Wibbeler, CEO & Founder of Bolder Industries said “Every year since, Soucy has doubled down on their support of Bolder and their commitment to sustainability by increasing their volume of BolderBlack. We’re exceptionally proud of our ability to deliver consistency to Soucy order after order, month after month and we look forward to doing so for years to come.”

Bolder and Soucy have worked collaboratively on product development and the logistics required to deliver true sustainability to Soucy end customers. As a result, Soucy’s use of BolderBlack has resulted in over 1.5 million end-of-life tires being diverted from incineration or landfills, cutting 39,000 tons of CO2 emissions, and saving over 117.5 million gallons of water and 13 million kWh of electricity since the inception of their work with Bolder.

“Continuing to use BolderBlack has been an easy choice for Soucy Techno. Beyond the sustainability, cost savings and the ease of working with Bolder Industries, we have enjoyed the consistent performance of the material month after month. We don’t have to worry about changes in carbon content, bulk density or particle size, which are key to our process and product performance”, François Bédard, Directeur General of Soucy Techno, said.

This demonstrated quality and consistency has been a hallmark of the company and the force driving Bolder’s significant volume increase year over year, Michael Murray, Bolder’s Vice President of Global Sales said. Coupled with Bolder’s approach of going to the market first—finding out what customers need and want and working back to what we need to do to help a customer adopt a product—is the Bolder culture, he said.

Early on Bolder’s focus on having a full understanding of its products–what they could and couldn’t do–found that performance, while important, was not the key to customer adoption. “What industry wanted to see was consistency of product and consistency of supply,” Murray said.

To assure that consistency, Bolder built its own in-house compounding lab and working with mechanical rubber goods (MRG) compounders saw demand for Bolder Black increase in MRG markets.

On the tire side, in  2021 Bridgestone Corporation and Michelin Group outlined a path aimed at promoting and increasing the utilization of recovered carbon black in new tires and other rubber products, marking a turning point for recovered carbon black, Murray said.

“The market has recognized, it works,” he said

Currently, Bolder supplies Soucy and other customers from their first site in Maryville, which processes nearly 2 million end-of-life tires (ELTs) annually. In 2023, Bolder will begin development of their second facility in Terre Haute, Indiana which will process 6.6 million ELTs per year once fully operational.

© Scrap Tire News, August 2023