HO CHI MINH CITY - With over 130 years of heritage, Michelin is reaffirming its leadership by transforming innovation into a powerful engine for sustainable growth and creating recognized social and environmental value for its customers. Innovation is woven into the Group's DNA, serving both its growth ambitions and its environmental goals.
More than 6,000 researchers across nine global R&D centers are advancing three strategic priorities: designing an All-Sustainable tire by 2050, harnessing the potential of materials science and data analytics, and developing new services. This work draws on Michelin's deep customer insights and unmatched expertise in materials and complex industrial processes.
With over 12,000 active patents worldwide and nearly €1.2 billion invested annually in innovation (out of a total R&D budget of €2.2 billion in 2024), Michelin is leveraging its tire technology leadership to deliver disruptive solutions in adjacent markets. Today, the Group is recognized among the world's Top 100 Global Innovators.
Driving faster progress with open innovation
Michelin has chosen to innovate in collaboration with a broad array of partners worldwide, in ventures with an aggregate annual budget of more than €55 million. These partners, which include academic and industrial consortia, universities, research institutes, technical centers and companies ranging from start-ups to large corporations, enable us to pool our expertise to create breakthrough innovations and quickly bring them to market.
They address a multitude of markets, from mobility and construction to aerospace, low-carbon energies and healthcare. These consortia are also supporting the emergence of new industrial value chains, in particular to enable the shift away from fossil-sourced materials. In 2024, for example, Michelin joined with Swedish company Enviro and private equity fund Antin to build, in Uddevalla, Sweden, the first recycling plant capable of extracting raw materials from end-of-life tires. These include recycled carbon black, which can be reused in new tires, and pyrolysis oil, which serves as a chemical feedstock to produce new raw materials.
Michelin's legacy is built on a foundation of groundbreaking innovation that has consistently redefined mobility and sustainability. This journey of pioneering achievements began as early as 1937 with the development of an innovative rubber-steel composite, leading to the game-changing patent for the radial tire in 1946 - a revolution in robustness and performance. The Group's commitment to environmental responsibility was solidified in 1992 with the introduction of the first silica-based tire, which significantly reduced rolling resistance to save fuel and lower CO₂ emissions.
As technology evolved, we pioneered connected mobility in 2012 by embedding RFID chips into tires and transformed the market in 2015 with the all-season Cross Climate tire. Our forward-looking approach was showcased with the VISION Concept in 2017 and further advanced with the development of bio-based resins in 2022. Most recently, 2024 has been a landmark year, highlighting the breadth of Michelin's innovative spirit: from developing a specialized lunar wheel for NASA to launching a global living wage and social protection initiative, underscoring our deep commitment to both technological excellence and human progress.
Through this journey, it is clear that Michelin is pursuing its commitment to designing tires made entirely from renewable or recycled materials by 2050. To fulfill it, the Group is rethinking its manufacturing process to address the fact that bio-based materials do not have the same properties and mechanical characteristics as conventional materials. The challenge lies in harmoniously blending process development and an All-Sustainable approach in ways that reduce the environmental impact of the Group's operations.
