Australian tire recycler to set up five plants in South Africa

Warren, New South Wales — Australian recycler Green Distillation Technologies (GDT) has signed an agreement with waste-to-power specialist Volco Power to establish up to five tire recycling plants in South Africa.

The project is part of Volco’s plans to build recycling units, based on GDT technology, in five of South Africa’s nine provinces depending on the volume of tires available.

With each plant rated at AUD10 million (€6,1 million), the deal could be worth up to AUD$50 million, GDT announced 1 Oct.

The proposed plants will each comprise of six tire processing modules and will process approximately 700,000 old tires per year into eight million litres of oil, 7,700 tonnes of carbon black and 2,000 tonnes of steel.

Green Distillation has developed an emissions-free “proprietary technology” which is capable of recycling end?of?life car and truck tires into saleable commodities of carbon, oil and steel.

Volco is specialised in the conversion of municipal solid waste and used tires into electricity and other forms of energy and operates in over 15 African states.

According to GDT, Volco has recently faced problems obtaining power purchase agreements with the South African government and has therefore concentrated its efforts on providing energy to private industrial clients.

“South Africa is a good market for tire recycling as it generates more old tires than all the other southern African countries put together,” said Wilson Machekanyanga, business development manager of Volco.

According to Machekanyanga, South Africa produces 300,000 tonnes of tire waste a year, of which less than 20% are recycled and some 60 million units are “kept at illegal storage sites.”

The agreement marks GDT’s first overseas deal, according to Trevor Bayley, chief operating officer of Green Distillation Technologies.

“We have had enquiries from most of the major countries throughout the world, but this is the first memorandum of understanding we have signed,” he noted.

In Australia, GDT operates one plant in Warren in Western, New South Wales and is currently working on a second plant to be built in Toowoomba, Queensland.