Turnkey car tyre recycling set-up

TWO market leaders have come together to provide a new concept for tyre recycling.Germany-based size reduction machinery supplier Pallmann has tied up with Spanish tyre recycler GMN to develop plants
for shredding and reprocessing vehicle tyres.

Pallmann has been supplying GMN with tyre shredding plants since 2004. The two companies have been working together to optimise costs per tonne, final product quality and output rates. Rubber, steel and
textile fractions are extracted and sorted from used car and truck tyres; the separated materials are then marketed for reprocessing into various applications.

Against this background, GMN and Pallmann are now cooperating to come to the market as Ecotrec, a global
provider of complete systems that encompasse s all modules necessary for recycling car and truck tyres. These include shredders (Lion and Tiger units), granulators (Panther) and separators (Eco-Sep) as well as complete conveyor and control technology, including appropriate know-how. Initial focus will be on Europe and
the US.

Tyres that do not go directly back into retreads have until now typically been ground up and burnt on an industrial level, in cement plants, for example. However, profit margins are not attractive. The companies say that Ecotrec systems create high value added raw materials that can be sold at attractive prices. There is a large market for pure steel, for example, while the high-quality, pure rubber fraction can be produced
in different, easy-to-process granule sizes that can be sold directly to producers of tyres or other products.

Other applications, such as the use of the rubber granules as aggregate in asphalt mixtures, offer sales opportunities that are interesting on both economic and technical levels . (PRA)