ZC Rubber's 'integrated tire platform' wins top China science award 

Hangzhou, China — ZC Rubber has received the ‘second prize’ of China's State Science and Technology Progress Award for a project combining high-performance tire development with "green intelligent manufacturing."

The award, jointly received with Harbin Institute of Technology, recognises ZC’s project "key technologies and green intelligent manufacturing of high-performance tires", which the company said has moved beyond laboratory research into industrial production.

The award highlights the company's proprietary "X-Tech System" for truck and bus radial tires and "Phecda Tech System" for passenger car tires, said ZC Rubber 13 July.

The technology platforms, it noted, “integrate compound formulation, tire structure design, process engineering, simulation, testing and intelligent manufacturing within a unified development framework.”

Rather than adapting existing products, the systems use what the company describes as a "forward-development approach."

This involves defining performance targets according to vehicle applications, operating conditions and customer requirements before developing the tire architecture and manufacturing process.

"Our objective is not simply to develop an individual material, tread pattern or manufacturing process," said Henry Shen, senior vice president of ZC Rubber.

"X-Tech and Phecda are complete development systems that connect user requirements with simulation, materials, tire engineering, manufacturing and validation."

The platforms are designed to enable “market-specific” tire development, allowing products to be tailored to different climates, road conditions and operating requirements.

"International markets do not have identical requirements," Shen added.

"A tire developed for European highway fleets, Southeast Asian transport operations or passenger vehicles in the Americas must respond to different vehicles, roads, climates and customer priorities."

The technology platforms, he added, allow ZC Rubber to address those differences through "a consistent and systematic development process."

According to the company, X-Tech underpins products including the X-Elite truck tire range for Asia and the Westlake Gen II commercial tire line for Europe.

Phecda supports passenger car products including the Westlake ZuperAce Z-007 and Goodride Solmax 1.

Both platforms have also been applied across Arisun truck and passenger tires for the Americas.

Beyond product development, the award also recognises manufacturing technologies aimed at improving production consistency, manufacturing efficiency and energy performance, ZC Rubber said.

ZC Rubber said it invested RMB1.54 billion (€200 million) in research and development in 2025, equivalent to 3.43% of annual revenue.