Tyrecycle has launched Australia’s first dedicated large-scale mining tyre recycling facility in the heart of a premier resources district.
It’s difficult to conceptualise the scale at which Tyrecycle has been recycling Australia’s used tyres, but the company’s chief executive officer Jim Fairweather has given it a go.
“If you take the tyres that we collect and recycle each year and put them side by side, it would reach from Sydney to Perth and back again,” Fairweather told Mining.
“Across Australia, Tyrecycle collects in the order of 20 million tyres a year; that’s about 180,000 tonnes kept out of landfill and the CO2-saving equivalent of taking 40,000 cars off the road.”
These tyres are repurposed into a multitude of useful products, the most common of which is a crumb rubber which is used in a variety of surfaces, from playgrounds to roads.
“For every tonne of rubber crumb put into roads, approximately 2500kg of CO2 is avoided from being released into the atmosphere,” Fairweather said.
Other tyres are turned into feedstock to be transformed into micronised rubber to be made back into tyres, or into tyre-derived fuel (TDF) that is used to displace coal as a fuel.
“Australia is ahead of the game when it comes to successfully recycling and reprocessing tyres,” he said.
“As a nation, we’re collecting about 98 per cent of [passenger and commercial] used tyres. For context, New Zealand just launched a product stewardship scheme for scrap tyres, and their goal is to have 80 per cent of tyres repurposed by 2028 and 90 per cent by 2030.”
Australia may be a leader when it comes to recycling passenger and commercial tyres, but the nation’s mining industry hasn’t been so lucky.
Historically, Australia’s mines have been unable to access the appropriate infrastructure to recycle or repurpose off the road (OTR) tyres, which are much thicker than regular tyres and unable to be recycled through traditional avenues. This means millions of tonnes of waste has had nowhere to go.
Until now.
Tyrecycle recently opened Australia’s first large-scale OTR mining tyre recycling facility in Port Hedland to service the Pilbara region of Western Australia – the state’s premier mining district.
“Tyrecycle is Australia’s oldest, largest and only national collector and recycler of tyres, and we take the responsibility very seriously,” Fairweather said.
“For the first time, Tyrecycle’s new Port Hedland facility gives mining companies a dedicated solution that can help them make a massive positive impact on the environment.”
According to Fairweather, the mining industry’s OTR tyres currently have a recycling collection rate of around one per cent, a figure he is confident Australia’s miners would like to see on par with passenger and commercial tyre collection rates.
Such is the strong interest in Tyrecycle’s growing OTR tyre recycling capability, the company had already locked in a major miner in the south-west of WA as a customer well before its Port Hedland facility was commissioned.
“We’re already seeing great interest from operators, who collectively contend with around 50,000 tonnes of OTR waste from the Pilbara region alone,” he said.
“This is Australia’s first bespoke mining tyre plant, and part of the reason for that is it takes incredibly powerful equipment to process these tyres.”
The Port Hedland facility’s aptly named T-Rex OTR tyre cutter is the first piece of equipment of its kind installed in Australia and is capable of cutting through OTR tyres that can weigh up to seven tonnes apiece.
This has allowed Tyrecycle’s Port Hedland facility to begin the process of ramping up to process around 30,000 tonnes of OTR tyres per annum, a figure that is ready to double should the need arise.
“The plant was designed so that a second production line can be installed should the feedstock exceed the current set-up,” Fairweather said.
“That means we would be able to process the entirety of the Pilbara’s OTR tyre waste at one facility.”
But Tyrecycle isn’t just stopping at tyres. The company is turning its attention to the glut of used rubber conveyor belts taking up space on mine sites across Australia.
“As the leader in this space, it’s incumbent on us to find a solution for recycling and repurposing the conveyor belts stockpiled at mine sites that are getting in the way of operations,” Fairweather said.
“We’re gathering a lot of momentum in this space, and it’s something we’re looking at having a solution for in the next six to 12 months.”
With the Port Hedland facility as its OTR recycling flagship, Tyrecycle has plans to see large-scale recycling facilities in all of Australia’s top-tier mining districts, including the Bowen Basin in Queensland, the Hunter Valley in New South Wales and the southern Goldfields in WA.
“Every day, we collect commercial tyres from Mt Isa to Hobart to Esperance to Port Hedland to Alice Springs to Darwin – everywhere,” Fairweather
said. “We have recycling facilities in every capital city of Australia, so it makes sense that we would expand our offering and aim to deliver the same support to the mining sector.
“We’re very excited to continue building our capabilities and expanding our mining footprint across the nation.”
