Sapphire Opens New Chipping Facility

Sapphire Energy Recovery is opening a new tyre chipping facility at Western Tyres' Avonmouth headquarters in the South West. The business is leasing land at the Western Tyres facility in order to provide a secure outlet for used tyres for its customers across the South West.

Sapphire, which is owned by Lafarge Cement, is the UK’s leading processor of used tyres, with nationwide processing locations and a network of collectors across the country. It recently announced the acquisition of Willow Tyres in the South East due to the impending retirement of owner Ray Bates. The majority of the tyres Sapphire collects are incorporated into the cement manufacturing process, making the most of the energy locked within them and reducing the amount of fossil fuels required to make cement – which in turn helps reduce CO2 emissions and benefits the environment.

“We’ve had a long and healthy relationship with Western Tyres and have previously run a transfer facility from the Avonmouth site,” said John Pickering, who manages sales and marketing and contract management for Sapphire Energy Recovery. “Developing a new processing facility at the site helps us makes our environmentally sustainable operations more accessible through close proximity to the M5 and many of our customers in nearby Bristol.”

Mike and Paul Stephens, who run Western Tyres, welcomed the development: “We’ve already benefited from having a Sapphire collection point onsite, but having additional processing facilities gives us direct access to an effective disposal system for used tyres, which helps us give peace of mind to our own customers.”

Western Tyres has been operating for over forty years – after building its reputation dealing in casings it branched into tyre collection, and now runs a service covering a 200-mile radius from its Avonmouth headquarters.

The business manages collection and disposal of all sizes of tyres, including car, light commercial, truck, agricultural and earthmover, all of which are responsibly recycled through various sources.

Sapphire’s Avonmouth processing facility will be run by a team of four, headed up by Lee Pearce, who have all transferred from roles at Lafarge Cement’s recently mothballed cement plant at Westbury. The team expects to process an estimated 10 – 15,000 tonnes a year at Avonmouth, and will supply cement kilns around the UK with the tyre chips. Overall, Sapphire Energy Recovery expects to process well over 18 million tyres in 2009, a significant increase on previous years’ averages of 16 million.

Sapphire has OHSAS 18001 as well as ISO 9001 quality accreditation, and all of its processing centres in the UK are accredited with ISO 14001, registered to the Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) and regularly monitored by the Environment Agency.