Pyrolyx AG, a German company that recovers carbon black from old tires, intends to enter the U.S. market through a partnership with a Weld County company.
The Munich-based company has signed a letter of intent with CH2E Group, which owns the largest tire dump — called a monofill — in the country. An estimated 600,000 tons of tires are at CH2E Group’s monofill, located north of Hudson.
Pyrolyx will build a plant at the Hudson site where the mountain of tires will be shredded and the carbon black recovered from them. The carbon black will then be used to make new tires.
The plant is scheduled to be operational next year. Pyrolyx said the Hudson facility will be the largest plant in the world for the production of recovered carbon black.
CH2E Group and Pyrolyx reached an agreement last week.
“By partnering with the CH2E Group, we have now taken the strategically important step of entering the U.S. market, the second-largest in the world,” Niels Raeder, CEO of Pyrolyx,said in a statement announcing the agreement.
“With Pyrolyx Carbon Black now having been successfully tested by the tire industry, we’ll be able to produce a significant amount of recovered carbon black in the U.S. when the plant is complete. This will make a significant contribution to reducing the world’s scrap tire [supply].”
The agreement with Pyrolyx solves a problem for CH2E Group. Colorado passed a law last year that requires tire monofills to stop accepting old tires by Jan. 1, 2018, and to close down by July 1, 2024. Colorado has three tire monofills.
Pyrolyx, meanwhile, is planning to merge with another German company called Carbon Clean Tech AG that also recovers carbon black from tires. The merger is expected to close by the end of the second quarter.