News: Tire Recycling & Pyrolysis

Logan City Council in Queensland, Australia, reports that is has teamed with Tyre Stewardship Australia (TSA) to conduct trials of a new eco-friendly road surface. According to Logan City Council, the surface is a combination of recycled end-of-life tyres and reclaimed asphalt. Installation of the new surface on Lagoon Road, Carbrook is scheduled for this April. TSA has committed $150,000 to the trial and additional laboratory testing, which aims to prove that the new surface will be as good as, or better than, standard road sealing. Logan City Council Director of Road Water Infrastructure Daryl Ross pinpoints Council is always looking at innovative ways to deliver better roads.

In April 2020, Weibold is hosting online webinars designed for anyone interested in tire recycling and pyrolysis business. This month, our three webinars will cover not only introductory topics, but also will help established pyrolysis companies focused on recovered carbon black, who already operate on the market and would like to strengthen its business positions. Special topic: Recovered carbon black markets (April 22, 2020) One of the webinars hosted by Weibold will be devoted to recovered carbon black (rCB) markets, where Weibold’s special guest, Martin von Wolfersdorff, will be the speaker. Martin von Wolfersdorff is a world-class expert in pyrolysis and recovered carbon black as well as marketing of specialty chemical materials. He is deeply involved in the industry, serves one of the organizers of the first global conference on recovered carbon black and has been supporting multinational companies in the tire pyrolysis sector, the tire industry, tire trade organizations, rubber and the plastics industries.

Grupo Soledad, a parent company of the Spanish tire retreading firm Insa Turbo, has grown in the last years and shown some great results in circular economy advancement. It produces tire retreads at Insa Turbo’s retread manufacturing plant at Aspe that actually has expanded and now serves not only as a facility where retreads are made. The Group has its tire retreading plant — annually, the plant turns back to life some 200,000 tires of various types and makes OTR retreads. The corporation also looks for the ways to boost retread sale. For instance, Grupo Soledad tries to do so by teaming up with Continental that sends all its casing to the group’s site at Aspe, so the two can produce quality retreads.

Tyre Stewardship Australia reports that in 2019 it engaged Randell Environmental Consulting in association with Brock Baker Environmental Consulting to complete an analysis of the consumption and fate of mining industry Off-The-Road tyres. This analysis followed the completion of the report commissioned by Tyre Stewardship Australia titled End-Of-Life Tyres Supply Chain and Fate Analysis (REC 2019) by Randell Environmental Consulting.

British branch of Schwalbe Tyres is set to launch an inner tube recycling plan — it will team up with bike shops that will conduct collection of used inner tubes; the collected materials will be returned to Schwalbe to undergo reprocessing. The company’s plan seeks to help retailers show to their consumers that their businesses are environment-friendly and sustainable. Schwalbe also targets bike riders by asking them to bring used inner tubes to special shops that collaborate with the company.

On March 16, 2020 Liberty Tire Recycling – the biggest tire recycling operator in the United States – announced that it acquired a premier tire removal and recycling company Lakin Tire to create a “new national footprint with best-in-class service and a commitment to sustainability.” Liberty Tire Recycling reports that is made the acquisition of Lakin Tire with support from its majority equity sponsor The Carlyle Group. Lakin, headquartered in Santa Fe Springs, California and with operations focused throughout the Western United States and the Northeast, is regarded as one of the most established and technologically advanced tire removal and recycling companies in the United States. Combined, the two companies collect over 180 million tires per year and recycle approximately 2.6 billion pounds of rubber into innovative, sustainable products. Thomas Womble, CEO of Liberty Tire, will continue to lead the combined business, while key leaders of Lakin, including Bob Lakin and Sean Lakin, will take on expanded roles within Liberty to drive continued world-class customer service. Bob Lakin will maintain an equity ownership stake in Liberty.

The Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries (ANRPC) recently released a report, which sheds light on the current situation and provides forecast for natural rubber (NR) markets. The association reports that the world produced 13.804 million tons of natural rubber in 2019, 1.4% down compared to the annual production volume in 2018, as per the updated estimates available from individual NR producing countries. Whereas the production was anticipated to increase 2.7% to 14.177 million tons in 2020, according to the revised outlook, it witnessed an annualized 5.2% drop in world production during the first two month of the year.

The tyre baler conveyor is an all-new product from Gradeall designed to maximise tyre baling efficiency. The manufacturer reports that the tyre baler conveyor combined with either the MK2 or MK3 tyre baler is the fastest, most user-friendly way to bale large volumes of tyres. Rather than have operators spend valuable time searching for tyres, or walking to a pile of tyres and back to the baler repetitively the conveyor hopper is loaded with tyres via telehandler in a matter of minutes.

TRA reports that a recent significant reduction in often questionable waste tyre exports to the Indian sub-continent has resulted in a return to more legitimate recycling and recovery outcomes of the kind we all want to see. Responsible recycling outcomes of the kind we should all be encouraging do, however, come at a modest cost which can also attract criminal elements who simply charge, collect, then dump said TRA Secretary-General, Peter Taylor. He continued “recycling gate prices for old tyres have risen significantly in the past few months and this fact may well provide new opportunities for the unscrupulous. We must all be on our guard”.