Innovation

Founded in 1991, Dawn developed as a multi-industry group that covers “chemical & plastics distribution, high polymer new materials, titanium dioxide, warehouse & logistics, coal trading, financial service, construction materials, tourism & catering.” After listing on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange successfully in 2017, Dawn has become one of the top 500 Chinese private enterprises.

One of Dawn’s achievements in sustainable development is thermoplastic dynamic vulcanizates (TPV). TPV is a kind of Santoprene in the molten plastic phase, at the same time being cut into micron grade vulcanized rubber particles, thus forming a structure which has both the character of rubber and plastic. It means that TPV can be thermoplastic processed, and completely recycled with good resilience remaining. Therefore, it is regarded as a much more sustainable substitution of traditional synthetic rubbers like EPDM (ethylene propylene diene monomer) and SBR (styrene-butadiene rubber). Traditional synthetic rubbers are usually regarded to be hard to recycle since they lose a lot of their resilience during reprocessing. Further, producing each 1 kg new synthetic rubber takes about 3 kgs of petroleum. TPV can be applied to multiple industries to replace traditional rubber materials, like the tire industry as one of the major consumers of rubber.

With research and development on TPV material, Dawn made the first breakthrough in China in 2008, when Dawn won the second class of state science and technology prize of China. After establishing the first TPV production line with intellectual property in China, Dawn has successively developed 10 series of TPV materials with more than 200 types, like thermoplastic medical brominated butyl rubber, tire high-gas barrier new synthetic rubber, hydrogenated nitrile rubber, and other high-tech products. With applications in multiple industries, Dawn has definitely made a huge contribution to the promotion of TPV in China.

Inspiration

Compared to white pollution, black pollution—the pollution caused by synthetic rubber—might be not as familiar to many of us. However, according to the BBC’s report in 2017, “between 15% and 31% of plastic pollution came from primary micro-plastics, of which the biggest contributors (almost two-thirds) were abrasion of synthetic textiles, while washing, and abrasion of tires, while driving”, which means synthetic rubber pollution has become one of the major resources of plastic pollution.

After being involved in the world market as a result of economic reform, China has always been famous for ever-increasing productivity but also criticized for the accompanying pollution. Since China is currently the largest producer and consumer of synthetic rubber, this industry is no exception. However, with the idea of sustainable development going deeper into people's mind, both the Chinese government and many Chinese firms have started working on it, and Dawn is one of them.

By 2008, TPV had already been well established and was not new to the world’s synthetic rubber industry. However, research and development capabilities remained minimal for Chinese firms at that time. "God helps those who help themselves (天道酬勤)"--this is not only Xiaoning's favorite proverb but also the firm motto of Dawn. With such a belief, after realizing the opportunities for this material and the economic benefits that come with it, Xiaoning made up his mind to be the first to make a breakthrough in China. With a huge capital input, Dawn started its research of TPV with the corporation of Beijing University of Chemical Technology. It seems that the proverb is far from a speciosity: the efforts got rewarded in 2008.

Overall impact

Dawn’s achievement of TPV made it the first company that has research and development ability of this material in China; up to this day, together with Exxon Mobil and Teknor Apex in the U.S., Dawn has been one of the three major firms with the ability to mass produce TPV.

The biggest impact of this innovation is that it ended the condition of TPV technologies being monopolized by foreign countries. It not only gave companies that can use TPV—especially the ones in China—more choices but also decreased the cost of using this material by gradually replacing imports within the industry. Anyhow, it undoubtedly lowered the barriers of using TPV instead of traditional synthetic rubbers for Chinese companies; and due to the characteristics of TPV, the wider use of it can generally improve the sustainability of the Chinese economy.

Business benefit

Through the substitution of traditional rubbers, TPV provides a much lower cost of production. Vulcanization is not required for the production process of TPV, which makes it easy to be processed, and the leftover materials can be effectively reused as well. Compared with EPDM, the production process of TPV costs 25% less energy, and 5% less of leftover material is wasted. Although the R&D process of TPV cost Dawn a lot of capital, with the increase of economies of scale, the cost of TPV will become lower and lower in the long-term.

The versatility of TPV, and Dawn’s exclusive position on it in China, allows Dawn to establish strong business relationships with multiple firms in advance. One example is the Chinese motor industry. Firstly, the motor industry is one of the main consumers of TPV. In 2017, 70% of the TPV materials were used in this industry. On the other hand, more and more policies are being published by the Chinese government. For example, the recyclable rate of some certain types of vehicles will need to reach 90%, when the reusable rate should reach 80%. According to the high recyclable and reusable characters of TPV, a huge increase in the market of it in the Chinese motor industry is predicted.

The automobile industry is definitely not the only one that will consume more TPV in the future. By establishing symbiosis with some leading firms of these industries, the potential long-term benefit for Dawn will be immeasurable. I have no idea if there's any god helping Dawn, but Dawners definitely helped themselves--and even more people.

Social and environmental benefit

The use of TPV is able to protect the environment by reducing pollution and saving oil resources.

Currently, about one-third of petroleum resources have used the process of producing polymer materials like synthetic rubbers, which means that its development is severely limited by petroleum resources. In recent years, it is an indisputable fact that the price of polymer materials has been increasing with the rapid rise of petroleum resources. At the same time, waste polymer materials are also one of the main causes of pollution.

Rubber is one of the three major polymer synthetic materials, because of its unique high elasticity and strategic position in aerospace, transportation, and machinery manufacturing and other fields, such as various forms of sealing products (strip, ring, pad, etc.) and a variety of damping products including tires. 70% of raw materials for rubber production come from petroleum or natural gas, consuming a large number of non-renewable resources. It is estimated that the production of each kilogram of rubber costs 3 kgs of oil.

More importantly, in order to have value, rubber materials must be vulcanized, and vulcanized rubber can no longer go back to the original linear molecular state. Therefore, it is difficult to recycle and reprocess traditional synthetic rubbers. It takes 1470 kW/h of power to recycle a ton of traditional rubber, and 80 kgs of SO2 will be produced during the process, which leads to severe pollution and waste to the environment.

The application of TPV can reduce the use of petroleum, increase the recycling of products, and solve “white pollution” and “black pollution” to a great extent. It is an ideal substitute for traditional rubbers, which is significantly meaningful for saving resources and protecting the environment.

"I've never heard about that," answered Xinghua when I asked him about the UN sustainable development goals, "it seems that we Chinese companies still have a long way to go." He might be true; however, if all of them can perform as Dawn did in this case, I'd like to say that the way will itself lead to brightness.

Interviews

Yu Xiaoning, Board Chairman

Yan Xinghua, Secretary of Board Chairman