Klean/L4T Group tie-up for tyre recycling in Japan

Canadian recycling firm Klean Industries Inc has announced that it has executed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Ireland’s L4T Group Life for Tyres Ltd, a company that develops, builds, and operates end-of-life tyre manufacturing & pyrolysis facilities. Klean and L4T intend to explore a business relationship in which L4T and Klean will collaborate on manufacturing & recycling solutions for the global marketplace with a focus on manufacturing sustainable commodities from end-of-life tyres (ELTs).

Initial efforts will be directed to the development of the first project to be located in Japan’s Koriyama city (Fukushima prefecture) which is about 230 km from central Tokyo, Japan.

The companies intend to leverage their respective relationships with industry-leading participants, including supply chain partners, customers, and technology providers to achieve the objectives outlined in the M\OU.

A significant component of the joint relationship will be in use of Klean’s and L4T’s technology in the project. Klean has a 20-year track record of working in Japan where it has built reference tire pyrolysis plants and developed well-established relationships with both feedstock and offtake supply chain partners that it will draw upon for introductions to L4T in support of the MOU.

L4T is also strongly positioned in Japan, with its subsidiary L4T Japan G.K. and a strong network of partners, including one of the world’s largest suppliers of commodities.

Closing the loop of the life-cycle on ELTs is complete when the end-of-life tyres are delivered to the processing plants where sustainable commodities such as recovered carbon black (rCB) and advanced biofuel feedstock are manufactured and re-distributed back into the rubber, chemical, and oil & gas manufacturing sectors. These sustainable commodities are reused to produce new green products with significantly lower carbon intensity throughout the manufacturing and production supply chain associated with the tire industry.

All these activities will then be combined into the Klean Loop, a SaaS blockchain technology, as a fully integrated system to track and trace all aspects of the tire life cycle. The patent pending Klean Loop platform will provide supply chain transparency which will further enable the supply chain partners to measurably improve their financial and environmental performance.

L4T specialises in manufacturing high-quality sustainable commodities from waste tyres. Its main activities include the development, investment, construction, and operation of upcycling facilities for waste tyres. Headquartered in Ireland, the company was founded in 2017 and owns the largest upcycling facility of its kind in Europe with an installed capacity of 27,000 tonnes.

L4T has a strong development project pipeline in the US, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia as an owner and operator and will in the next three years increase its installed capacity to at least 220,000 tonnes.