Australian tire recycler looks to expand into Europe

Warren, Western New South Wales – Australian tire recycling company Green Distillation Technologies (GDT) is considering expanding into Europe to win a slice of the tire recycling business pie in the region.

The company was prompted to target Europe following a industry data showing that only 42% of the 12 million tonnes of end-of-life (ELT) tires are recycled in the region annually.

“In addition, there is the waning interest in crumbing tires for sporting field infill, as well as a potential ban on this use,” said GDT chief operating officer Trevor Bayley in a 7 July statement.

Furthermore, GDT believes that it offers “a much better and environmentally sympathetic” recycling alternative to mechanical recycling.

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.

The company claims that the oil produced through its technology is comparable with “light crude, which is low in sulphur and easy to refine into petrol, diesel, jet fuel and other petroleum based products.”

GDT also maintains that the carbon produced in the process is a high-grade product with high potential for sale as carbon black.

The company is currently working to bring its two Australian processing facilities in Warren in Western New South Wales and Toowoomba in Southern Queensland into full production.

It is also planning to build five other Australian plants in Gladstone, Wagga, Geelong, Elizabeth and Collie Western Australia.

In addition, according to Bayley, GDT is in negotiation to finalise agreements for plants in the US, UK and South Africa.

Each plant will have a capacity to process 19,300 tonnes of ELT’s comprising a mix of passenger car, 4WD and truck tires.

The hihg-yield process can produce, for a typical 10kg car tire, 3.7 litres of oil, 4.68kg of carbon, 1.95kg of steel, according to Bayley.

“In the light of this burgeoning environmental disposal problem our approach provides a recycling solution… to turn a problem into valuable and highly saleable materials,” he concluded.