A new industrial partnership between Carbios, Indorama Ventures, and Michelin is set to bring enzymatically recycled PET (r-PET) into tyre manufacturing at scale. The agreement marks a significant step towards circularity in the tyre sector, unlocking a new application for recycled PET in reinforcement materials.
Under the deal, French biotech firm Carbios will supply biorecycled PET monomers from its upcoming facility in Longlaville, France. These will be processed by Indorama Ventures into technical-grade r-PET filaments, which Michelin plans to use in tyre reinforcement.
The move represents Carbios’s first industrial-scale entry into the textile-grade r-PET market—an expansion beyond its previous applications in packaging.
Carbios’s Longlaville site, co-located with an Indorama PET plant, will use proprietary enzymatic technology to break down complex and coloured PET waste into high-purity monomers. This method, unlike conventional mechanical recycling, enables full depolymerisation of PET, regardless of quality or appearance.
Indorama will then repolymerise these monomers and produce r-PET filaments tailored for tyre applications.
This partnership introduces a novel closed-loop material stream into the tyre industry. It allows Michelin to further reduce dependence on virgin fossil-based polymers while maintaining high material performance.
The enzymatic process also broadens the PET waste streams that can be effectively recycled, including coloured bottles and multilayer packaging, which are typically excluded from mechanical recycling processes.
The three-way partnership sets a blueprint for integrating bio-recycled polymers into technically demanding manufacturing sectors. It aligns with Michelin’s ambition to produce tyres made entirely from sustainable materials by 2050 and positions Indorama Ventures as a key player in industrial-scale r-PET for non-packaging applications.
Further expansion of this model to additional Indorama sites remains a possibility, depending on the performance of the Longlaville plant.
Tagged with: Carbios, Indorama Ventures, Michelin, r-PET, enzymatic recycling, PET recycling, tyre reinforcements, circular economy, sustainable materials
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