ShandongBoxing: Green tires are refined from straw

Do the rubber used for car tires and shoe soles come from corn stalks? In Boxing County, a "green" rubber project is using a national pilot platform to bring this magical "magic" out of the laboratory, onto the production line, and all the way to the consumer end.

At present, our non-grainbio-basedrubber is moving from industrialization to commercialization, and some products have already been used in the production of shoe materials and tires, "said Liu Chao, General Manager of Jingbo Zhongju Special Rubber Branch. In 2024, Jingbo Zhongju successfully connected the entire industry chain and established a non grain bio based rubber route. After being approved to build a 10000 ton/year non grain bio based rubber production line by the end of 2024, Jingbo Zhongju completed the process package design in 2025, marking the world's first non grain bio based rubber product entering the 10000 ton industrialization stage.

From the 2-liter pilot test to the 200 liter pilot test, and then to the 1000 ton demonstration device, the pilot platform played a key role in the process of maturing and industrializing this technology, "said Liu Chao.

The "pilot platform" mentioned by Liu Chao refers to the green chemical and new material pilot platform jointly built by Shandong Jingbo Petrochemical Co., Ltd. and 11 universities and enterprises. In December 2025, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the first batch of 21 national level manufacturing pilot platforms, making it the only platform selected in Shandong Province and the only platform in the petrochemical industry led by private enterprises.

Pilot testing is a crucial link that closely connects the innovation chain, technology chain, and industry chain, and serves as an intermediate station for facilitating the smooth application of technological innovation in the market. As the main enterprise of the petrochemical industry chain in our province, Jingbo Petrochemical has formed a cooperation model driven by leading enterprises and coordinated participation of small and medium-sized enterprises around the common needs of the industry chain, jointly building a pilot service ecosystem of resource sharing and complementary advantages. This ecosystem has effectively promoted the transformation of technologies such as non grain bio based rubber.

At present, the platform has built a testing site of about 380,000square meters and modularized the construction of 7 pilot lines, including polyolefin alloy, carbonyl synthesis, and bio based itaconic acid ester rubber. By creating an asset sharing digital platform, more than 3,000sets of instruments and mature pilot lines worth over 400 million yuan have been shared, reducing the starting cost of pilot projects in the industry from tens of millions of yuan to tens of thousands of yuan, reducing the innovation burden on universities and small and medium-sized enterprises, and stimulating industrial innovation vitality.

In addition, the platform integrates more than 100 engineering transformation experts and pilot operation experts from industrial clusters, and gathers more than 400 expert resources,including academicians, forming a talent pool that supports the full chain engineering transformation and provides professional support for the application of achievements.

Wu Wenlei, the person in charge of the operation of the Green Chemical and New Materials Pilot Platform, said that as of now, the platform has achieved the industrialization of more than 50 scientific research achievements and is currently developing more than 70 research and development projects. Thirteen new products, including bio based rubber, polypropylene, aramid nanofibers, polybutylene alloys, and polyketones, have driven an additional output value of over 2 billion yuan and cultivated four specialized, refined, and innovative enterprises.

The raw materials for non grain bio based rubber are agricultural and forestry waste such as straw, which are controllable and environmentally friendly. The anti-skid properties and stability of each batch of the product are superior to natural rubber products. With the advantage of the pilot platform, we have recently optimized the odor, color, abrasion resistance and other characteristics of non grain bio based rubber, laying a foundation for the expansion of its application scenarios in the next step, said Liu Chao.