Carbon Black Capacity Expansion: India Scales Up Tyre Feedstock
Carbon Black Capacity Expansion
Balkrishna Industries has completed the expansion of its carbon black plant at Bhuj in Gujarat, lifting annual capacity from 265,000 tonnes to 360,000 tonnes in a Rs 800 crore project funded entirely from internal accruals.
The commissioning marks the second phase of a programme approved to deepen raw material integration between the carbon black operations and the tyre plants. BKT took the capacity in two steps, first commissioning a new line to reach 265,000 tonnes and then completing the balance.
Alongside the furnace capacity, BKT raised captive co-generation power at Bhuj from 40 MW to 64 MW. That additional generation is designed to run on tail gas from the carbon black process, so the energy needed by the new lines is recovered from the plant’s own off-gas rather than bought in.
Why Vertical Integration Matters
Carbon black is the primary reinforcing filler in a tyre and one of the largest single cost lines in the compound. By producing its own, BKT reduces exposure to the merchant market, where price and availability swing with feedstock oil and regional supply disruptions.
The economics already show up in the accounts. Carbon black contributes roughly a tenth of group revenue, and the company has set out an ambition for third-party carbon black sales to hold around that share of a much larger revenue base by 2030. The in-house capacity also includes a tranche of advanced carbon materials aimed at higher-value applications.
That matters because BKT is no longer only an off-highway tyre maker. It has approved further capital expenditure covering commercial vehicle radial and premium passenger car radial projects for India, both drawing on the same captive filler supply.
BKT sells into more than 160 countries, so securing filler supply inside India also removes a currency and freight exposure that sits on every imported tonne.
The Feedstock Question
Every tonne of virgin carbon black produced this way starts as heavy petroleum feedstock and ends as a furnace-black product with a significant carbon footprint. As Indian tyre makers build integration upstream, the same logic that justifies captive production also applies to recovered carbon black made from end-of-life tyres: it is a domestically sourced filler that is insulated from imported feedstock pricing.
India generates a very large volume of scrap tyres annually, and the regulatory direction of travel, including emission monitoring on pyrolysis operators, is pushing that stream towards engineered recovery rather than informal processing. For manufacturers already committed to making their own filler, rCB is the logical adjacent capacity.
Build a Captive Filler Supply from Scrap Tyres
If the case for captive carbon black is security of supply and cost control, recovered carbon black makes the same case with a waste feedstock. Klean Industries delivers rCB and tyre pyrolysis plants on a KBR turnkey basis: performance-guaranteed, 100% bankable, and structured so the technical and schedule risk sits with us, not with your balance sheet.
The proof is commercial, not conceptual. Our references include a commercial-scale recovered carbon black plant operating in Poland, together with tyre pyrolysis and resource recovery facilities delivered across Asia, Europe and North America. That is the evidence a board needs before approving an integration project.
Two routes are open to you. License the technology and build it with your own engineering organisation, or have Klean and KBR deliver the whole plant turnkey against a guaranteed performance envelope. Tell us which fits your capital plan and we will scope it.
Contact Klean Industries » GO.
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