News and feature articles relating to recycling, including collection, of end of life tyres.
A man from County Down, Northern Ireland has been fined £900 after he disposed of waste tyres on a bonfire. Leonard Nicholson was ordered to pay £150 on each of the six charges brought under The Waste and Contaminated Land (Northern Ireland) Order 1997 following an investigation into a Newry bonfire conducted by the country’s Environment Agency.
At the upcoming TIA Environmental Symposium, Mike Wezel, vice president of sales and marketing for Liberty Tire Recycling, will debunk myths about crumb rubber, its uses and its safety, reports Tire Review. The Environmental Symposium will be held 30 September-2 October at the Ocean City Convention Center in Ocean City, Md.
On September 13 Israel based clean tech company Adama Technologies Corporation announced the signing of a Letter of Intent with entrepreneurs in Romania to establish a series of tyre recycling facilities. The company anticipates the establishment of these plants will be partially facilitated through European Union and local government funding. Expected annual revenues from this new project are in excess of 100 million euros.
October’s Brityrex International ‘10 show in Manchester is a sell-out, with all exhibitor stands taken, according to organisers ECI International. The news follows a run of late confirmations including: SD International, Gripen Wheels, Marix UK; Ayce Systems and aircon supplier Autoclimate. Market analysts Encircle Marketing, tyre education operation TEFORS, Banner Batteries, Strongman Tools and Straightset are also said to be on board.
Since 2007 the world’s biggest tyre industry show, Reifen has had an annually-held Chinese twin event named Reifen China. 25-27 November, 2010 sees the fourth “Asian Essen Tyre Show” taking place at the Shanghai New International Expo Center in Pudong, Shanghai in a joint-organised event between the China United Rubber Corporation and Messe Essen, the latter coming off the back of another successful Reifen expo in Germany back in June (see Tyres & Accessories, July 2010). As always, Reifen China will be held in parallel with the latest Rubber Tech event and cover manufacturers, distributors, repair shops, recycling, waste disposal and retreading in relation to the Chinese and wider Asian market. A programme of technical seminars will run concurrently, with past subjects including tyre proving and testing, retreading trends and tariffs imposed on exported Chinese products.
OTR Tyres Ltd is to exhibit at the Recycling and Waste Management Exhibition (RWM) again this year OTR to promote the benefits of OTR Tyre Hire, a service exclusively designed for the waste management industry in addition to the company’s range of new and retreaded solid, cushion and pneumatic tyres.
With the economic recovery now seemingly underway and truck tyre sales in the UK growing again, demand for Pirelli truck products has reportedly outstripped this increase three-fold. According to the company, Pirelli’s success can be attributed to its focus on the premium market, the launch of two “extremely successful products” during the year and a number of new commercial fleet contracts. But how have these three elements linked together to put Pirelli’s sales so ahead of the market trend?
Morgan Stanley analysts have upgraded Michelin shares to “overweight” and more than doubled their target price from 36 – 80 euros, commenting that the French tyre manufacturer “can surprise again.” This means analysts believe Michelin will beat consensus earning projections by more than a fifth: “We expect earnings to come in 20-25 per cent above consensus and cash generation to surprise significantly.”
In an investors note published 25 August, Morgan Stanley’s Eduardo Spina explained that the upgrade is based on the fact that while Michelin stock trades at a roughly 25 per cent discount historically, “high earnings visibility” and pent-up demand contribute to making it attractive. As a result Spin predicts that earnings per share will ramp up to 10 euros by 2012, 25 per cent above the consensus of 8 euros by the same point.
Bridgestone UK’s success in the retread market has seen some significant milestones reached in 2010, along with major investments in equipment and integration with both the Bandag and Bulldog product lines (for further details of how this is panning out across Europe see this month’s Retreading Special supplement). In the UK the integration has resulted in advancements into new sectors, one of which is waste management. SITA UK is one of its contract gains with Bridgestone providing tyres to support SITA’s core business of providing a range of recycling and resource management services to business and local authorities throughout the UK. They collect recycling and general waste from 12 million residents and 40,000 businesses across the country via 300 facilities.
Retreading tool and rasp manufacturer B&J Rocket Sales AG has reported that its sales are back on the up after the recession. Speaking to Tyres & Accessories, managing director Andreas Mueller explained that during the first 7 months of 2010 sales showed “a strong upward movement” compared to the previous year. This probably isn’t too surprising considering the fact that like other players in the sector sales plummeted due to the economic recession. But in B&J Rocket’s case the effects of the recession were amplified by the fact that 2008, says Mueller, was the exact opposite of 2009 – it was a record year.
In the US, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) and its more than 1,550 members are urging the Environmental Protection Agency not to adopt proposed rules that will have a significant impact on the scrap recycling industry – specifically the recycling of scrap tyres.
The Economist news magazine has referred to the TyGre gassification method of tyre recycling as “the ultimatum retread” in an article published online on 9 August 2010. TyGre, a project developed by nine collaborators including Tubitak Marmara Research Centre in Gebze, Turkey in a European Union-financed endeavour intended to make useful things out of redundant rubber researchers at the sees tyres transformed into silicon carbide by reacting them with sand. The resultant silcon carbide can reportedly fetch up to 10,000 euros ($13,000) a tonne.
Fly ash recycling technology firm RockTron has announced it will launch RockTron Asia at the IGEM Conference in Malaysia between 17 and 24 October. Malaysia will provide the British company’s first Asian facility, which will be able to recycle 100 per cent of both fresh and stockpiled coal-fired power station waste (otherwise known as fly ash) through its closed wet system, without any waste stream, according to the company. The processed “eco-minerals” can be used to manufacture tyre rubber filler, as a company representative explains: “RockTron’s product MinTron is a filler for tyre rubber and costs a fraction of the market price (approximately 25-40 per cent less). The amount destined for tyre application is limited to how much a client wishes to order (i.e. it is limitless). Our UK plant at fiddlers ferry is capable of recycling 800,000 tonnes of fly ash and turning it into fillers for rubber in tyres.”
In this final category only two companies – Credential Environmental and DME Tyres – survive from last year's finalists and they are joined by previous winners Kingpin Tyres, Envirotyre and Hardings Vans, a company providing a localised service. I said final category, however, it is worth noting that the NTDA's "Innovation Award" will be presented on awards night too. But seeing as the nominations for this haven't been published yet, the Environment Awards counts for the last category in our coverage. Click more for the nominations.
Years of work in the field of tyre recovery and in the tyre industry as a whole has earned Michelin Tyre PLC managing director Jim Rickard a lifetime achievement award from the Tyre Recovery Association (TRA). Rickard is the first ever recipient of this award from the association, which he received at the recent TRA annual dinner in front of more than 100 distinguished guests from the tyre recovery industry.
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