Recycling company Wastefront AS has signed an agreement that paves the way for the building of a £100m tyre recycling plant in Sunderland.
The agreement with Gateway Resources guarantees supply of end-of-life-tyres (ELTs) for Wastefront’s Port of Sunderland plant, which was given planning permission in January and should be operational by 2024.
Once at full capacity, the plant will be able to process 80,000 tonnes of used tyres every year.
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Gateway Resources will supply Norwegian firm Wastefront with nearly 10m tyres on an annual basis, similar to the number that are currently exported from the UK.
The used tyres will be burned in cement kilns and turned into useful materials such as biofuels and recovered carbon black. The process will reduce waste and emissions from the tyre manufacturing process, with tyre making firms keen to purchase recovered materials for use in their products. Following the supply agreement for the Port of Sunderland plant, Wastefront and Gateway have also signed a memorandum of understanding to work together on a potential plant in continental Europe.
Wastefront CEO Vianney Valès said: “Our agreement with Gateway Resources is a key part of our mission - tackling the scourge of ELTs at scale and pace, whilst creating a truly circular economy in tandem. It is unparalleled both in the UK and Europe. Such an agreement suddenly gives the UK a world-leading position in the resolution of this serious waste issue, and we are proud to spearhead such significant progress.
“We cannot continue with our dependency on new and scarce materials whilst continuing to burn existing materials with devastating and immediate environmental consequences. To solve the problem, Wastefront is proposing a solution that is both circular and at scale.
“Gateway Resources is the right partner, able to aggregate the large volumes of ELT that we will recycle into tyres or other valuable products. This agreement is yet another key element of the ecosystem that Wastefront is creating to tackle the problem of ELT. ”
Gateway Resources director Soham Khemka said: “The core ethos of our company has always been economically sound and environmentally conscious trading. Our agreement with Wastefront reflects this commitment, with their scaled solution for one of the significant environmental problems of our time – the burning of raw materials – paving the way for the elimination of unnecessary exports from the UK altogether.
“We have long been engaged with regulators to find a local, more sustainable solution, to replace our existing shipping routes for ELTs across the world.
“Wastefront is the first player to tackle the ELT problem at scale across Europe, with the significance of their plans having a massive impact on the industry. Wastefront is going head on with the necessary evils of exporting waste, finally rendering it unnecessary and truly building a circular economy both at home and abroad.”
