Kal Tire – international OTR and mining tire manufacturer was recently nominated for the Recircle Awards in the category “Best Retreading Industry Innovation” for its Carbon Calculator / Maple Program launched in 2020.

Kal Tire’s Carbon Calculator quantifies environmental savings when retreading OTR and mining tires reaching their end-of-life stage. The Maple Program uses data from Kal Tire’s new carbon calculator to award customers with one to five stars according to the percentage of their fleet running retreads rather than new tires. The program is first launching in Chile and the UK, with plans to roll out in other regions Kal Tire operates.

Besides its active involvement in OTR tire repair programs and cost-saving programs for mining tire users, Kal Tire is a pioneer in OTR tire retreading worldwide and will soon be opening one of the world’s first mining and OTR tire pyrolysis facilities in Chile.

Photos of Kal Tire's upcoming OTR and mining tire pyrolysis plant in Chile. | Photos by Kal Tire.

The construction of Kal Tire’s OTR and mining tire pyrolysis facility in Chile began in May 2019. As a project location, Industrial Quarter of La Negra, Antofagasta, Chile was chosen. The size of the area is 60,000 m2.

Kal Tire says that the new OTR tire pyrolyris plant will help generate greater employment, give the area environmental benefits and reduce carbon footprint. The plant was designed and manufactured in Europe, and recycles end-of-life OTR and mining tires through the process of thermal conversion (pyrolysis / thermolysis). Reportedly, the plant will be capable of recycling tires of 4 meters in diameter and more than 4 tons of weight. The project will process 7,300 tons of end-of-life tires per year and envisages expanding its capacity to 25,000 tons in the future.

According to Kal Tire’s 2020 press release, the facility will operate using two reactors, each about 6.2 meters long and about 3.5 meters in diameter. As the construction is currently in its first of three stages, yet four reactors are expected to arrive at the facility.

Back in 2018, Paul Moore, the editor of an online magazine International Mining, recently conducted an interview with Darren Flint – Regional Vice President UK, West Africa and Vice President Tire Lifetime Services at Kal Tire’s Mining Tire Group.

Mining Tyre Management – an interview with Darren Flint, Vice President Tyre Lifetime Services, Kal Tire Mining Tire Group. | Interview by Paul Moore, International Mining magazine.

Paul Moore’s interview with Darren Flint shows that Kal Tire aims at helping mining industry get more out of their large mining and OTR tires in operation at mines all over the world. Kal Tire is currently running initiatives such as Ultra Repair™ where tires with large injuries are identified and repaired through inserting unique patches to give the tires robustness that restores their original strength, integrity and performance at a fraction of the cost of new tires. “Being able to send 63-inch dump truck tires back into production with maximum performance instead of sending it to a scrap pile saves customers thousands of dollars per tire,” Paul Moore stresses.

If you would like to recognize Kal Tire’s contribution to sustainability in the OTR tire manufacturing, retreading and recycling industries, proceed to the official website of Recircle Awards.