Tyrecycle takes on offroad tyre processing

Jun 12, 2023

Tyrecycle takes on Australia's offroad tyres with a new multi million-dollar processing plant

Australia's first processing facility to recycle offroad tyres (OTR) will be operational by August 2023.

The Tyrecycle facility in Port Hedland, Western Australia, will start to tackle the 91 per cent of OTR tyres that are not currently being collected and recycled within Australia.

It's one of three new plants scheduled to be launched this year by the global resource recovery leader and is part of a multi-million-dollar commitment to increase processing capacity and capability.

Jim Fairweather, Chief Executive Officer at Tyrecycle, says the expansion demonstrates the company's preparedness to get on and solve problems for the market.

"One of the key planks of the national waste policy action plan is diversion from landfill," Jim says. "Nine out of 10 passenger and truck tyres in Australia are already being collected but when it comes to OTR it's more like nine per cent. That's where the issue lies."

About 30,000, or 25 per cent, of Australia's mining tyres are in the Pilbara. Jim says Tyrecycle is entering a multi-year agreement with a mining company to take on its OTR waste within the region.

The $10m Port Hedland plant, is expected to arrive in Australia in March 2023 for installation mid-year.

A new $12 milliion plant in Perth, which received $5.2 million from the Federal Government's Recycling Modernisation Fund, is expected to be operational by November 2023. It will give Tyrecycle a third crumbing plant in Australia and will be the company's most flexible in terms of end-products.

The company is also building a new plant at an existing Adelaide site.

Jim says all of the plants are aimed at increasing the sophistication of the product output so Tyrecycle can attack different markets.

"Perth and Adelaide facilities will be capable of making a smaller tyre-derived fuel (TDF), specifically for Japan, which is a sophisticated market with very particular customers," he says.

"It means we have greater outlets that give us a greater offtake channels and hence guarantee of services to our collection customers.

"We need to continue to develop our production capability to meet the requirements and demand for the market."

Jim says that until Australia has a larger domestic market for tyre-derived products, offshore alternative fuel markets will continue to be used to manage tyre waste.

"We have high levels of landfill diversion, but the big question is do we also have circularity?" he says. "We don't have that in Australia. "We need to create markets. That's the key fundamental for every waste stream. Unless you have all parts of the supply chain lined up, including the demand piece, we will not get circularity."

He says government procurement is at the crux of providing circularity, but describes the current process as cumbersome, with a disconnect between senior bureaucrats and politicians setting the policy.

He says many don't have a "recycled first" mentality, are risk adverse, or say the cost of recycled products is prohibitive.

"We’ve got a frustrating situation at the moment where we have huge market potential and we’re not delivering on market growth at all," Jim says.

"That's because of a lack of government procurement. When it comes to heavy lifting for roads, it has to be done by government. Nobody else buys roads but government."

While some niche uses of crumb rubber, such as permeable pavements, are exciting, Jim says they’re not going to move the dial in terms of dealing with the overall waste problem.

He believes over time there will be tyre-derived products used as high value inputs into more complex industrial environments. Tyrecycle is currently working on a few of those opportunities, including in varied manufacturing environments and even as a nut coke replacement in the smelting process.

Jim says the ability to adapt drives success.

"That's where Tyrecycle and ResourceCo are so different to many other recycling organisations," he says. "We look at markets first and then what we need to do to supply those markets.

"We consider ourselves as a manufacturer as opposed to taking a waste stream, doing something with it, then trying to reverse engineer an outlet for that product."

For more information, visit: www.resourceco.com.au

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