So what’s so special about butadiene and solution styrene-butadiene rubbers – and why are they now indispensable to modern tire production? And why is LANXESS convinced that such elastomeric compounds offer high growth potential?

Part of all this has to do with the fact that the two elastomer types in question belong to the category of synthetic rubbers. While natural rubber can only be harvested in the “rubber belt” near the equator, synthetic rubber can be produced anywhere – and therefore, near to the customer. In addition, this affords chemists the opportunity to make substantial alterations. With synthetic rubbers, it’s possible, for example, to freely choose the individual substances the artificial material is to be made of. Chemists can also manipulate the architectures of the molecules they create from these substances. Overall, this makes synthetic rubber much more flexible than its natural counterpart, which is why it now accounts for more than half of the rubber raw materials produced around the world each year, with global production of synthetic rubber totaling more eight million tons annually.