Before the conference, we caught up with Ms. Anansinee Thaboon, Chief Executive Officer at Greenergy One Company Limited, to discuss the key themes of her upcoming presentation.
Q1. Your talk at Recovered Carbon Black Asia 2026 will dive into "Carbon-Negative by Design: Conductive Composites from Waste Tyre Pyrolysis and Biogas-Derived Graphene for Energy Storage". Why do you think it is important for others in the industry to hear this message? Most of our industry’s sustainability conversation stops at the tyre - how much recovered carbon black can we put back into a new tyre. That is necessary work, but it caps our ambition at substitution, and substitution means competing on price against a commodity that fossil producers can make at enormous scale. What I want delegates to take away is that end-of-life tyres are not only a feedstock for the rubber industry. They are a source of engineered carbon for the clean energy economy. In our work, we combine rCB from ELT pyrolysis with synthesized few-layer graphene, and the resulting composite behaves as a genuinely functional conductive material - high electrical conductivity, an interconnected carbon network, and strong electrochemical performance. Two waste streams, one durable high-value solid.
Q2. Can you give us an update on what is happening in your local market? What are the latest trends over there? Thailand is an unusually good place to be having this conversation, because three things are happening at once. First, we are the world’s second-largest tyre production and export base after China, and investment keeps arriving - Continental’s further expansion in Rayong, and a steady build-out by Chinese manufacturers across the Eastern Economic Corridor. That means a large, concentrated pool of both industrial rubber demand and, over time, domestic arisings. Second, end-of-life tyre volumes are substantial - in the order of hundreds of thousands of tonnes a year - and the treatment mix is shifting. Historically much of it went to tyre-derived fuel in cement kilns or was exported. Pyrolysis is now taking a visible share, and international capital has noticed. Third, and most relevant to my talk, Thailand is building a battery and energy-storage manufacturing base under the 30@30 and EV 3.5 frameworks, with multi-billion-baht cell projects landing in the EEC. For the first time, a Thai carbon producer can have both its feedstock and its advanced-materials customer within a few hours’ drive.
Q3. Which challenges and opportunities do you see for the recovered carbon black industry in your local market? The honest challenge list starts with feedstock. Collection in Thailand is still largely informal and price-driven rather than contracted, so we compete for tires against cement kilns and export traders, and our input cost moves with someone else’s fuel economics. There is no extended producer responsibility scheme for tires, so there is no structural mechanism directing material to the highest-value use. The second challenge is credibility. A small number of poorly run, uncontrolled pyrolysis operations have shaped how regulators and communities see this technology, and everyone doing it properly pays for that in permitting time and public trust. The third is specification. Many potential buyers still evaluate rCB using virgin carbon black test methods that were never designed to predict in-rubber or in-cell performance, so good material gets rejected for the wrong reasons. The opportunities are the mirror image. We sit next to our feedstock, next to a tire industry that will face recycled-content expectations through its European and global customers, and now next to an emerging ASEAN battery and ESS cluster.
Q4. Looking ahead, what do you think will be some exciting developments in recovered carbon black or tyre pyrolysis soon? I expect the single biggest shift to be the end of "rCB" as one product. We are moving toward application-specific grades - material designed, post-processed and classified for a defined end use, rather than one output stream shopped around to whoever will take it. The standards work coming out – including the newer classification standard, gives producers and buyers a common language to do that with. Downstream of the reactor is where I think the value will concentrate: milling and deagglomeration, demineralisation, and surface functionalization. These steps decide whether the carbon is a filler or a functional material. Then there is hybridization, which is what we are working on - pairing rCB with graphene or other engineered carbons so the composite delivers properties neither component reaches alone. That opens conductive polymers, coatings, supercapacitors, and battery electrodes. Finally, I expect carbon accounting to become a traded product attribute rather than a marketing line. Continuous, better-instrumented reactors with proper digital measurement and verification will let producers sell a documented footprint alongside the tonne of carbon.
Q5. What hurdles does the rCB / tyre pyrolysis value chain need to tackle in the next few years? Until ELT supply is contracted, sorted and quality-graded rather than bought on the spot market, plants cannot guarantee output consistency, and inconsistent output is the root cause of most failed qualifications. Policy help, in the form of xtended producer responsibility (EPR) or landfill and open-burning enforcement, would change the economics of the whole chain. Specification and test methods - the industry needs performance-based evaluation that predicts behaviour in the actual application, plus classification everyone accepts. Without it, every commercial conversation restarts from zero. Verifiable carbon data, if our value proposition is a lower footprint, the number has to be produced by a harmonized, auditable methodology. Divergent life cycle assessment (LCA) boundaries between producers invite exactly the scepticism we cannot afford.
Q6. Are there any specific collaborations within or with the value chain that you are looking for? Yes, and quite specifically on the materials side, we are looking for battery and (ESS) cell manufacturers, electrode formulators and equipment partners, particularly in Thailand and the wider ASEAN region, willing to validate our rCB-graphene conductive composite in real cell formats. Laboratory conductivity data only takes an idea so far; what moves it forward is a formulation partner and a pilot line. On the tire and rubber side, we want compounders and manufacturers prepared to co-develop application-specific grades with us and share a joint qualification plan, rather than simply requesting a sample against a virgin-black specification. On feedstock, we are interested in biogas producers, agricultural digesters, landfill gas, and foodprocessing operators, who currently see their methane as an energy stream and have not considered it as a carbon feedstock. We also actively welcome academic and national research institutes for independent electrochemical characterization, and LCA and certification bodies to help us publish footprint figures that a sceptical buyer will accept. And frankly, capital partners who understand that this sector’s returns sit in advanced materials, not in commodity substitution.
Speaker biography Co-founder of Greenergy One, and founder of a waste tyre recycling business established over 10 years ago. Leads strategic planning to drive growth, profitability and efficiency while overseeing operations and quality. Drives R&D in recovered carbon black (rCB) and the expansion into advanced materials as a developer and distributor of graphene synthesis machines. Identifies and executes merger and acquisition opportunities, evaluates executive performance, and promotes the company across local, regional and international markets.
