European Rubber Journal

To mark almost 20 years in this business, I thought I would re-visit why we are here. Rubber is a peculiar material. It offers some great properties, each of which can be reproduced in other materials, but the key thing about rubber is that it offers a range of properties which are, in combination, unique.

Clearly flexibility, and the ability to recover from deformation are key properties, as are heat resistance oil resistance and softness.

More critically, these properties can be tuned and tailored in many different ways by sensitive compounding and through the curing cycle.

What some of us forget in the industry is that our knowledge of how to achieve a certain combination of those valuable properties is far from easy to duplicate.

I was talking to another veteran of this industry a while back. We were talking about hose. I blithely said, ‘anyone cane make a hose’ and he looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘No!’ They can’t. “That is why we try to use our knowledge of rubber and our skill at developing recipes and processing techniques to addvalue to the elastomeric elements in a component.”

It is not difficult or time-consuming to learn how to make a metal coupling, or a solid aluminium suspension mount.

The challenge in these products is to use our hardwon knowledge of rubber and its properties to deliver the interface between the well-understood components, to deliver the right performance in service.

There has been a trend over the last 20 years, since I joined this industry to eliminate rubber from many components. I think we all understand the drivers for that. Today where rubber components remain in any system, that rubber is there because it is essential to correct functioning of the system.

The whole functionality of that system depends on the performance of the rubber component.

Put those two strands together, and it is the rubber component which adds value to the system.

I might have said glibly that ‘anyone can make a hose.” But the reality is that anyone can make a coupling; anyone can bend a metal pipe to shape. Very few people can develop an elastomeric component which turns that coupling and metal pipe into a system which helps a truck to move quietly and economically. 

Mission-critical technologies
There is no doubt that the industry has been adopting all kinds of new technologies in the last decade or two. Thermoplastic elastomers have been used in many applications where rubber was once the material of choice. But now we see that the key added-value applications are those in which rubber and TPE are used together to make high-value components which offer the elastic performance, but also the heat resistance and flexibility that only rubber has to offer. 

As each new technology comes along, those in the rubber industry who see it and find ways to use it in their products and systems add yet another weapon to their arsenal. Even in the last 20 years, the number of products which use rubber alongside metals, plastics, fibres and other materials and technologies has grown disproportionately, meanwhile the number of products which are made solely from one simple rubber compound has declined.

I cannot see that trend changing. Only accelerating.

But the leaders in this industry have long recognised that added value can only come when we bring the performance of rubber together with the functionality of other materials and systems.

If we can use those developing technologies to reduce the amount of rubber, cut weight, and use the existing materials more efficiently, then we have a route to a sustainable future.

Perhaps the final hurdle to overcome for the rubber industry, is to use its own waste in new products. Today in consumer goods, being able to claim that the goods contain recycled material, or reduce their environmental footprint is a positive.

Industry still focusses hard on the absolute performance criteria and the price. Perhaps soon we will see the industry adopting technological solutions which allow the use of recycled scrap to be re-used in the production process.