Australia: WA recycling plant to address tyre export ban impact

Last Friday, CTS Tyre Recycling broke ground on the first-ever tyre recycling facility in Western Australia. Construction work will begin in the coming weeks, and when the AU$7 million (£4.1 million) plant enters service, it will have a capacity to process around 30,000 tonnes of end-of-life tyres a year with the possibility of doubling this at a later date. The facility’s aim is to help Western Australia manage the impact of Australia’s recently-introduced ban on waste tyre exports, which leaves the country with some 56 million end-of-life tyres, around 500,000 tonnes in total, to deal with each year.

Located on the outskirts of state capital Perth within the Jandakot Airport Industrial Estate, the facility will accommodate equipment required to process passenger car, truck, industrial construction, and quarry tyres – including the largest mining tyres in use anywhere in the world – into 3mm crumb rubber. It will produce crumb rubber to specification for use in the Western Australia asphalt and spray seal industry. CTS Tyre Recycling is equipping the plant with shredding machinery supplied by Denmark’s Eldan Recycling – the CTS website indicates that the Super Chopper SC2109 FD220 is the unit of choice – as well as an MT-Rex pre-shredder from Italy’s Salvadori capable of handling 63-inch tyres.

CTS Tyre Recycling is also considering investing or partnering in a second facility that will shred OTR tyres removed from mining trucks operating in the Pilbara region.