CM helps bring first tire recycling program to New Zealand

Although geographically small, the islands that make up the country of New Zealand discard as many as four million tires each year. Until now those tires have been discarded all over the countryside, tossed away onto farms, piled up as silos, or dumped along roadways and other rural properties, creating serious fire hazards and mosquito and rodent infestations. All in all, the piles of tires are a major liability and intense eyesore on the landscape.   

New Zealand’s Ministry of the Environment along with the country's two major tire manufacturers, Dunlop and Bridgestone, have talked about this mounting problem for many years, but none had ever taken responsibility for the collection and proper disposal of end-of-life tires.  

Enter Owen Douglas, a Kiwi cattle farmer and entrepreneur who came onto the scene like an "environmental white knight" back in the late 1990’s. Over the years his cattle and sheep farms had been among the country's used tire dumping sites, resulting in mountains of tires accumulated. With the goal of finding a solution to this challenge, Mr. Douglas spent several years tirelessly doing vast amounts of research, attending educational seminars and traveling the globe to learn everything he could about waste tire processing. In the end, he concluded that the best way to rid his country of all the tire piles and all future tire disposal was to shred the tires for TDF.   

Mr. Douglas set up his new venture as Tyre Disposal, Ltd. and made his first pitch to introduce the idea locally to the New Zealand Dairy Co. to process the tires at its coal-fired facility.  Sadly, the project never got off the ground due to "corporate restructuring".   

Brushing off this first hurdle he spent the next six years meeting with many power plants, cement companies and paper mills in New Zealand, but was sidelined by indifference among the principals to accept TDF as a fuel source, and by New Zealand environmental officers who decided that burning TDF “was not a good idea.”  

During this time Mr. Douglas had been having conversations with the team at Columbus McKinnon (CM) including Mike Playdon (now retired and the father of one of CM’s Field Techicians, Josh Playdon) and CM Sales Manager Rick  Colyar. They chose to investigate other options for potential markets for Owen and contacted Chris Aum, Sales Manager for e & Resources of Korea and a CM Sales representaive for Asia. Chris was able to arrange for Owen to meet with the group at  Asia Cement, located just outside of Seoul to discuss the opportunity. In 2010, the meeting took place and in less than fifteen minutes Asia Cement eagerly agreed to take as much TDF as Tyre Disposal could    produce and ship. With this agreement now in place Owen placed the order with CM for a Dual Speed Shredder, a stage one processing system specifically designed to produce clean cut 2-inch chips, ideal for TDF.   

The system was delivered in early January, 2011 to Tauranga with the plan to ship 1,000, 20-foot containers of 2-inch tire chips (20,000 m/tons) to Korea annually. Mr. Douglas has set up his facility at an old dairy company close to the railway at the Waharoa Industrial Park in Tauranga. He plans to supply lockable containers to any site with a stockpile of old tires, even for one-off cleanups, and will charge per tire.

According to Douglas, targeted clients include; quarry and mining operations, contractors, tire retailers and council transfer stations. The tipping fees are based on the size of the tire. Passenger tires will be charged $6 with larger tires up to 50kg at  $30, and mining ires weighing up to a ton cost will be charged $250 to be collected.   

Owen, now in his 70’s has fought long and hard to win this for New Zealand. Over the next several years, because of his efforts, the country will see a dramatic change in the rural landscape. 

Source: CM Tire Recycling News, Winter Edition 2010, Volume III