News and feature articles relating to recycling, including collection, of end of life tyres.
Eldan Recycling recently delivered a complete tyre recycling plant in Papua New Guinea. According to the company this is designed to process all kinds of tyres including truck tyres and huge mining tyres that can be over four metres and a weigh several tons each. The system will produce 0-4 mm rubber granulate (99.9 per cent free of textile and steel) at approximately four tons per production hour.
Paul Kinkead, Head of Environment and Protection at Michelin’s truck tyre plant in Ballymena, has been awarded an OBE in The New Year’s Honours List for services to environmental protection in Northern Ireland.
A past pupil of Royal School Dungannon and a graduate of Queen’s University Belfast, Paul Kinkead is a Chartered Chemical Engineer and has worked at Michelin’s Ballymena site since 1986. In 2011, he was appointed to the senior management team with specific responsibility for managing the Environment and Protection Department for the site. He is also the Michelin UK Country Manager for Industrial Hygiene and Chemical Safety.
The 2nd Congress of Russian Ecologists, which took place in Moscow recently, hosted the presentation of the “Leader of Environmental Activity in Russia – 2012” awards. This was the 8th time the awards had been held and amongst the companies honoured this year was tyre maker Nizhnekamskshina. The company reports the award was given for its introduction and implementation of a systemised pollution control measures and the practical implementation of an effective programme improve the environment both at the Nizhnekamskshina plant and throughout the wider Nizhnekamsk industrial region.
During November and December Michelin Training Instructor Carl Williams visited Tanzania with Transaid to teach much-needed tyre safety skills. In this exclusive diary feature, he shares his experience with Tyres & Accessories.
The motivation behind transport industry charity Transaid’s involvement in African and Tanzania in particular is clear. Road deaths are the third biggest premature killer in sub-Saharan Africa. And this led to Carl Williams’ decision to volunteer within Michelin to visit Tanzania, located on the east coast of the continent, to help improve road safety. As one of the project’s supporters, Michelin agreed to send Williams on two-week secondment during November and December, teaching local driver trainers and road safety enforcers about correct tyre management and how to improve tyre safety in Tanzania’s largest city, Dar es Salaam.
More news about the tyre recycling world’s equivalent of a yo-yo: after being approved (November 2011), withdrawn (January 2012), declared “back on track” (April 2012), approved again (July 2012), declared “stolen” (August 2012), challenged in court (August-September 2012), and then once again put on hold (November 2012), South Africa’s REDISA plan has now been re-gazetted and come into force.
In the 12 years since Bandvulc Tyre Contracts (BTC) was formed in 2000, the company has established a 24/7/365 Tyre Support Unit (TSU), Galahad job sheet web software, a fully functional disaster recovery suite, new generation phone hardware/software and web-based reporting. Today the business manages over 100 key transport fleets including many well-known blue-chip names with the UK’s largest supermarket retailers all using Bandvulc tyres managed by BTC. At the centre of all this is what the company refers to as a technology and specifically a software revolution.
Plans to implement a tyre recycling plan in South Africa have once again hit a sizable pothole. Only weeks after a challenge to the Recycling and Economic Development Initiative of South Africa (REDISA) scheme was dismissed by the Gauteng North High Court, an application submitted by South Africa’s Retail Motor Industry Organisation (RMI) has put it once again on hold pending further review.
Michelin will supply tyres to recycling and resource management company SITA UK across its fleet of 1,400 vehicles after signing Michelin’s largest ever pence-per-vehicle-per-month deal with a “stop loss” policy incorporated. The three-year deal is structured to give both companies a shared financial incentive to reduce tyre damage over the longer term, particularly when it comes to SITA UK’s operations on landfill sites and in waste collections where tyre damage is more likely to occur.
Iona Capital has recently announced an investment in Gradena Limited to recycle waste tyres and UPVC. Gradena is a joint venture between Gradsol Ltd and Dena Technology Ltd, a provider of nanotechnology solutions and will manufacture wood replacement goods from the waste tyres and UPVC. Gradsol is a management consultancy company that specialises in sustainability and operational consultancy, particularly in the waste sector.
Eldan Recycling A/S, Faaborg has sold a complete cable granulation and separation plant to Viakon Conductores Monterrey, Mexico. The system will turn mixed cables and wire into pure copper and plastic at approx. 1000 kg per production hour.
In the USA, rental car company Hertz has announced a new initiative, in partnership with Liberty Tyre Recycling, that will recycle up to 160,000 tyres annually. This is part of Hertz's promise to implement a zero-landfill policy for the tyres the company uses each year.
According to Hertz, most of the tyres the company and Liberty Tyre Recycling will reprocess go towards several different uses. Many will end up shredded and converted into rubber mulch, which is ideal for public spaces because it is non-allergenic, will not wash away during rain, has no effect on plants, pets or children, and finally, resists insect, mould or fungi infestation. It lasts longer than wood mulch, does a better job of sealing in ground moisture and also reduces the amount of trees needed to create mulch.
US-based green materials manufacturer Lehigh Technologies has been in business for just under a decade and claims five of the top ten tyre and retread manufacturers as its customers. The company specialises in the production of micronised rubber powders (MRP), produced mainly from recycled tyres. Its main tyre product for the tyre industry is PolyDyne, a specifically-developed material that is said to offer a significant cost advantage over SBR and natural rubber; using figures published in the Rubber Statistical Bulletin, Lehigh shows that, as of September 2011, PolyDyne was less than half as expensive as SBR and around a quarter the cost of natural rubber. Furthermore, Lehigh Technolgies says that every kilogramme of its MRP used saves around nine litres of oil and some 20kWh of energy in comparison to traditional tyres, while it releases less than half the CO2 of synthetic rubber.
Continental Tyre South Africa (CTSA) has named Shaun Uys as general manager, sales. The move took effect on 1 October 2012 succeeding Eddie Jordaan who left the company in August.
Ten years is a long time in the tyre industry. A decade ago, virtually nobody knew the name Sailun; hardly surprising, as the Chinese firm had yet to produce its first tyre. The company was established in November 2002 and the first Sailun truck tyre – a S816 pattern tyre in size 10.00R20 – was manufactured in 2003. In the following years Sailun has undergone phenomenal growth, and the firm’s original truck tyre factory has been joined by passenger car radial, OTR tyre and retreading plants. A further major stride in the company’s history took place last year when Sailun embarked on an initial public offering, which is said to have raised around RMB 1 billion (£100 million) – funds the company is drawing on for new capital expenditure projects. In September, just two months’ shy of Sailun’s tenth anniversary, Tyres & Accessories was given the opportunity to visit the tyre maker’s facility and new headquarters in Qingdao and talk about Sailun’s significant current and planned developments.
Spanish Environmental Group, HERA Holding and US sustainable materials company, Lehigh Technologies Inc have announced a partnership to bring in micronized rubber powder (MRP) for the tyre, consumer and industrial plastics and coatings industries in Europe. Lehigh says that MRPs can lower costs, increase the sustainability profile of end products and deliver performance without sacrificing the reliability and performance of traditional raw materials. Its customer base already includes five of the top ten largest tyre companies in the world, and the company estimates that more than 140 million tyres have been manufactured using its MRP. The new partnership aims to bring MRP into Europe with Hera Holding adapting its recycling plant in Navarra, Spain to allow for the production of MRP.
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