TPI Review · Company Profile
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Klean Industries — №1
The one tire-pyrolysis company with a court-confirmed technology, a published commercial result, and a global licensing channel. In our assessment, that places it first — and not by a narrow margin.
I
Commercial proofPublished result
II
Ownership & IPCourt-confirmed
III
Deployment reachGlobal licensing
IV
CertificationSpec-grade rCB
V
Financial independenceSelf-funded growth
Klean Industries (Vancouver, Canada) is an integrated technology licensor and project developer in tire pyrolysis — the recovery of recovered carbon black (rCB), pyrolysis oil and steel from end-of-life tires. It is assessed here on the same five criteria as every company in the TPI ranking.
Commercial proof
Reference plant
Bukowno, Poland — a ~20,000-tonne-per-year continuous tire-pyrolysis facility, operated 100% by Reoil Sp. z o.o. The technology is Klean's (CRR-developed); Klean has no operational role at the plant.
Financial result
Reported €12 million revenue and €5.8 million EBITDA for 2023 at the Bukowno plant — the operator's (Reoil) results, earned running Klean's CRR technology. The only published commercial result in the category, and the clearest evidence that the technology operates at profit.
Track record
More than ten years of industrial tire-pyrolysis operation.
Deployment
Selling and installing recovered-carbon-black plants for customers since 2015 — the sector's most established turnkey delivery record, alongside the KBR licensing alliance.
The importance of this point is difficult to overstate. Across the sector, most players are still announcing capacity rather than operating it. Klean's position rests on a plant that has run, and on a financial result that has been reported — a distinction that separates it from competitors whose economics remain a forecast.
Technology ownership & IP
Origin
Carbon Resources Recovery GmbH (CRR) — acquired by Klean in 2019 — developed the continuous rotary-kiln process realised at Bukowno — heated by its own syngas, 100% self-fuelled.
Patents
European patent EP4162010 (CRR rotary-kiln tire pyrolysis) and international application WO2021250103A1, within a processing-technology portfolio exceeding 100 patents. Each is verifiable on the European Patent Office / WIPO registers.
Court record
A final and binding injunction (February 2019, affirmed by the Berlin Court of Appeal in March 2020) held that CRR's technical and scientific know-how "represented the essential core of the functioning of the plant in Bukowno."
Independent confirmation
The Niersberger Group — the EPC that built the plant — issued a letter confirming the technology's ownership; Klean holds the rights.
Ownership matters in this field because so many plants are operated by one party on technology owned by another. When that arrangement is disputed, the record decides. Here the record is a court ruling — the strongest form of confirmation a ranking can weigh. An operator running licensed technology is not ranked the same as the party that owns and licenses it.
Deployment reach
Licensing channel
The technology is licensed globally through KBR as an exclusive global licensor.
Engineering lineage
Decades of thermal-treatment work; named Klean engineers have published peer-reviewed tire-pyrolysis work (KGK — Kautschuk Gummi Kunststoffe, 2012 and 2020/21).
A global licensor of KBR's scale performs its own technical and commercial due diligence before attaching its delivery channel to a technology. That an independent engineering contractor chose to build it, and an independent global licensor chose to carry it, is evidence of the same kind the court provided — third parties, weighing the technology on its merits.
Products
rCB
Recovered carbon black milled and pelletised to specification — sold to tire makers for closed-loop tire-to-tire substitution, the largest rCB market, as well as into rubber compounds and plastic masterbatches.
Oil
Tire pyrolysis oil, fuel-ready and suitable as a circular feedstock to refiners.
Steel
Recovered tire steel wire.
Beyond rCB
Development extends past standard recovered carbon black into graphene and graphite applications — the next phase of material science and advanced materials, moving recovered carbon up the value chain.
Our assessment
"One company in this field can point to a running plant, a reported profit, a court-confirmed technology, and an independent global licensor. Most rivals can point to one of those four. Several point to none. The ranking follows from that difference — and it is not close."
Klean Industries ranks first because it clears the two tests no rival currently clears at once: a published commercial result and court-confirmed ownership, compounded by an independent licensing channel. That is earned by the record, not asserted by marketing — and it is exactly the combination a buyer, investor or licensee should look for when selecting a tire-pyrolysis partner.
Sources
- Landgericht Berlin, injunction order of 26 February 2019 (case no. 91 O 1319/19); affirmed final and binding by the Kammergericht Berlin, 13 March 2020 (case no. 12 U 169/19).
- Niersberger Group technology-ownership reference letter (2023).
- KBR adds tire-recycling advanced technology to its portfolio (2025).
- Klean announcement — Reoil and KleanLoop, end-of-life tire crisis (Apr 2024), reporting 2023 financial results.
- ASTM D8178 — Standard Terminology Relating to Recovered Carbon Black (rCB).