Big and Hungry

The lab-coated boffins at Jurassic Park may have produced one on the big screen, but it is not every day that one gets the opportunity to deal with a real Tyrannosaurus. But Cape Machinery International did so, and magnificently, in mid-2007 when they brought a fine specimen from Finland and delivered it to Credential Automotive. Okay, so the Tyrannosaurus we’re talking about here may not be a predatory prehistoric carnivore – this particular specimen is sustained by steady diet of tyres – but it is nevertheless impressive.

“It’s a unique machine,” comments Cape Machinery’s managing director David Hennessey. Manufactured in Rauma, Finland by materials handling systems specialists BMH Enviro, the Tyrannosaurus is a machine whose design has strongly drawn upon the experiences of equipment operators. “The story behind it,” he elaborates, “is that the company took current machine designs, looked at what was good and what was bad, and addressed feedback they had received from operators.” The result was a 90 tonne behemoth that attracted the attention of the UK’s largest tyre recycler.

“Credential came to us with specific requirements,” says Mr. Hennessey. “They wanted a machine that could process up to 25 tonnes per hour and reduce it to 50mm chip in a single pass.” Very few pieces of equipment on the market can process such hourly quantities, he adds, and a machine that can do this and still produce a 50mm output is a very rare beast indeed. The tyre chip produced by the Tyrannosaurus 9905 model installed at the recycler’s Wednesbury site will be processed by Credential into artificial turf, rubber surfacing and insulating products.

Cape Machinery’s installation of a machine possessing these capabilities gives Credential even stronger clout in the recycling market, believes Hennessey. “With the Tyrannosaurus, Credential has an opportunity to take a large chunk of the UK tyre recycling market. They have the capacity to handle 20 to 25 per cent of all tyre waste in the UK.” He adds that, while Credential has conservatively estimated the annual capacity of the Tyrannosaurus at 80,000 tonnes, the shredder is in fact capable of processing up to 100,000 tonnes each year, the equivalent of two 40-foot containers of tyres every hour. “This is significant, considering total UK tyre waste is around 450,000 tonnes. This is a large chunk for one company to control.”

Operating a machine of this size is logical for Credential, believes Cape Machinery’s managing director. “The whole objective of the waste industry needs to be increasing the volumes going through a single plant,” he says. “Doing this is essential for aiding margins, otherwise costs are constantly added every time waste is transported or handled.” Having said that, Hennessey acknowledges that very few operators other than Credential are in a position to employ a shredder anywhere near this ambitious in capacity.

While Mr. Hennessey concedes that the current set up of the UK tyre recycling industry makes any imminent further sales of the Tyrannosaurus into this sector here unlikely, he does mention that Cape Machinery have been in talks with several European tyre recyclers and at least one UK based general recycler interested in purchasing one. And for tyre recyclers in the UK who would like to shred tyres with dino-efficiency, all is not lost: a scaled down version of the Tyrannosaurus is in the pipeline.

“We acknowledge that not many tyre recyclers have the infrastructure for the Tyrannosaurus, so we have plans to make a smaller version that can process 10 to 15 tonnes per hour,” says Mr. Hennessey. “Even at this size it’s still a pretty brutish piece of kit though.” A prototype of this smaller sister to the Tyrannosaurus should be completed in February. Hennessey adds that other recycling machines, or resized versions of existing machines, are also on the drawing board.