London based footwear manufacturer Hugs & Co. has developed a hybrid production process that turns defective and end of life automotive tyres into durable shoe soles, combining traditional leather die stamps with CNC laser cutting and cold bonding adhesives.
Each pair of shoes diverts around 300g of vulcanised rubber that would otherwise head to landfill or incineration, offering a practical example of circular materials processing within light manufacturing.
The Machining Problem With Vulcanised Rubber
Conventional leather and synthetic soles are prepared for assembly using mechanical grooving tools, which cut the stitching channels that assembly machinery follows. Tyre rubber does not cooperate with that approach. Its high tensile strength, elasticity and heat resistance cause rapid tool wear, and blades tend to tear or deform the material rather than score a clean channel.
To get around this, Hugs & Co. has built a multistage process that blends established footwear techniques with digital cutting technology.
From Tyre to Sole Blank
Raw material comes from two streams. The first is factory seconds from Michelin facilities, tyres rejected under strict quality controls before ever reaching the road. The second is post consumer tyres graded by recycling agencies.
The steel reinforced sidewalls are removed, and the remaining tread sections are run through industrial planing machinery. This produces uniform, stackable rubber plates that are easier to store and transport. The planed sheets are then stamped using traditional footwear press tools to create the initial sole blanks.
Laser Channelling in Place of Blades
Rather than relying on mechanical blades, Hugs & Co. uses CNC controlled laser cutting equipment to etch a guide channel more than 1mm deep around the perimeter of each vulcanised sole, with alignment accuracy below a millimetre. The result is a precise track for hand guided stitching machines, achieved without the material fatigue or tearing associated with conventional cutting.
Cold Bonding and Hybrid Stitching
The prepared sole is bonded to the leather upper using specialist cold process industrial adhesives formulated for bonding rubber to leather. A hand guided mechanical stitch then follows the laser etched path, giving a joint that combines adhesive strength with mechanical fixing.
A Scalable Circular Model
By reusing existing vulcanised compounds instead of compounding and moulding virgin synthetic rubber, the company says the process delivers significant energy savings in manufacture. With 300g of scrap tread rubber reengineered into every pair, Hugs & Co. presents the method as a scalable model for circular manufacturing that other light manufacturers could learn from.
For more information, contact benjie@hugsandco.com or visit hugsandco.com.
