The West Australian Newspaper reports that one of the mining industry's lesser known environmental issues has finally found a solution with the opening of a $20 million-plus recycling factory in Jandakot.

According to the family-owned Complete Tyre Solutions (CTS), the proposed facility will be the first in Western Australia (WA) to be able to recycle the massive tires from the haul trucks used in the mining industry.

Until recently, WA mining companies had to bury tens of thousands of tonnes of off-the-road (OTR) tires, each weighing up to 5 tonnes, usually on mine sites, due to the lack of sufficient recycling equipment.

“It’s an enormous problem, an environmental catastrophe,” CTS managing director Leigh Cometti said. The new plant being built by his company should be operational by July or August 2023.

A total of 30,000 tonnes of tires will be processed annually by CTS Tyre Recycling, including tires from trucks, cars, and haul trucks. These tires will be converted into crumb rubber for use in roads, flooring, and matting, as well as reusable textile and tensile steel wire.

The plant will deploy an Eldan shredder and a Salvadori MT-Rex tire cutter.The MT-Rex cuts the huge mining tires into manageable chunjks that can then be fed into the Eldan shredder designed specifically for handling largert OTR tire segments.

The business is supported by $3m of State and federal funding, as well as by new national regulations banning the export of whole-baled tires for disposal overseas.

CTS stated that it was also considering investing in a second plant in Port Hedland to shred OTR tires that were gathered from Pilbara mine sites for delivery to Jandakot.