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Bridgestone Looks To Patch Rubber Supply With Scrappy Desert Plant

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Semiconductor chips don't grow on trees but the raw material for rubber does and that's in short supply too, adding another headache for automakers and tire producers. But one major tire company is working with an alternative plant to bounce back from the growing rubber shortage.

At its rubber research processing center in Mesa, Ariz. and a farm in tiny Eloy, Ariz., Bridgestone is developing natural rubber from a woody shrub called guayule, pronounced “why-YULE-ee.”

Bridgestone's guayule experience actually began in 2012 with the first tires produced from its rubber in 2015. There's still work to be done, according to Dave Dierig, Bridgestone agro operation manager based in Arizona.

“We're still in the testing phase. We've a done a number of tire builds and looking at all kinds of tire formulations. We would use it from light truck tires to larger tires,” Dierig explained in an interview.

While most tires for passenger vehicles are actually made mainly from synthetic rubber derived from petrochemicals, that's not the case for tires rolling under large, heavy work trucks and agricultural equipment which are almost 100% natural rubber made from latex extracted from the hevea tree, according to Dierig.

He sees guayule rubber eventually accounting for about 20% of the rubber used in North America but it can't happen immediately.

“It's going to take some time, likely within the 2020's that we'll have a commercial facility open,” Dierig said. “The idea is we would have a number of these processing plants open in different areas of the southwest. We don't want to be transporting what we grow long distances. We'd like to have these processing plants in the region.”

Time is not on the industry's side, however. In Southeast Asia, a key hevea growing region, widespread instances of leaf rot have ravaged crops, squeezing latex supply. You can't simply replace a diseased hevea tree with a healthy one and immediately start extracting latex.

According to the Alliance Rubber Company trees are six years old before latex can be extracted.

Bridgestone's use of guayule rubber is not meant to be a substitute, but rather to complement the supply of hevea-based natural rubber, Diereg explained.

Extremely drought resistant with deep taproots to better absorb water below ground, Guayule is especially suited to the mostly desert regions of the U.S. Southwest and Mexico. Getting farmers to grow it is likely to be a challenge.

“It's always tough to get growers to take on something new. They like to grow what they grow,” said Dierig. “Guayule is a two-year maturity crop. In the ground two years before it's harvested, cut it, allow it to regrow and do it three times. It's like a perennial crop where it's in the ground for up to six years. Growers have to get used to something like that.”

The wait is worth it, Dierig insists, because guayule is a potential cash crop that contains a termite-resistant resin that's produced along with natural rubber which can be used as a natural pesticide, Dierig explained. It could also be used to make adhesives for building material, plus it makes a hyper allergenic latex. “Those latex products are high-value,” he said.

To win over farmer, Bridgestone invites them over to its Arizona farm for “grower days” to learn the advantages of growing guayule as well as its profit potentials. Dierig says the response is always positive, but farmers need to turn that positivism into action to survive.

“In the coming years water is going to becoming more scarce,” he warned. “Either farmers are going to go out of business or find crops like guayule that are more sustainable.”

Indeed, cultivating the use of guayule is a key element of Bridgestone's overall sustainability commitment.

“It's really a good fit for our company,” Dierig said. “Part of it is making this material more biologically diverse so it's not all coming from one region, one single species of plant. We see diversification as adding to sustainability.”

The most immediate sustainability need, however, is sustaining a reliable and ready supply of the raw materials from which rubber is produced in the face of a natural threat. Guayule may be an eventual supplement to hevea, but Dierig is firm in advising it will not be a substitute.

“It's really a concern to Bridgestone and other solid rubber users,” said Dierig. “We consume a lot of natural rubber.”

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