Walloon start-up RISORCE has successfully raised €12.5 million for the construction of a factory to recycle used tyres, L'Écho reports. Unlike other recycling plants, the company will turn tyres into usable petroleum and gas products.
Based in Baelen (Liège province), the tyre recycling plant should be operational by the end of 2024, or in early 2025. Each year, the plant should process the shredded material from 2.4 million tyres and 18,000 tonnes of tyre granulates.
The recycling process, first pioneered by Bosnian company SGI Technology, has the benefit of reducing CO2 emissions compared to other recycling methods and allows for local solutions to rubber recycling.
According to Recytyre, the organisation responsible for the collection and processing of tyres in Belgium, some five million used car tyres are collected each year. The new plant will enable almost half to be recycled. Approved suppliers will provide the recycling plant with the shredded tyres.
In concrete terms, the plan will treat the tyre materials using a non-catalytic pyrolysis process. This means that the materials will be decomposed using heat. The end result of this process should be tyre pyrolysis oil, which has similar properties to petroleum, as well as black carbon and gas. The company says that European petrochemical companies are already poised to buy the end products.
Credit: Zzkysb / Wikimedia Commons
"We made sure we had the whole supply chain under control: supply, technology and customers for our end products," Bernard van den Wouwer, founder of RISORCE , told L'Écho. Until recently, most tyres were turned into rubber particles used in industry, flooring, soundproofing and asphalt.
It is hoped that the new recycling centre will have a positive impact for the local economy, especially on employment. RISORCE picked the Liège province location due to its strategic location (tyre materials come from Dutch Limburg) and the relatively large pool of potential employees in the area.
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The €12.5 million that it has already raised from investors will be used to finance the construction. Some of these stakeholders include the Walloon Region's holding company Wallonie Entreprendre, Liège-based investment fund Noshaq, ING bank, and Recytyre's fund GREEN.er, which was set up to diversify tyre recycling.
Noshaq states that it hopes that the project will help contribute towards the "reindustrialisation of the Liège region." Project initiator RISORCE says that it aims to eventually create around 20 local jobs.
