Two market leaders have come together to provide a new concept for tyre recycling.The German Pallmann Group, one of the world's largest developers and producers of innovative size reduction technologies, has formed a partnership with Spanish company GMN, a well-established and successful tyre recycler. Together, the two companies intend to develop, construct and sell complete plants for shredding and reprocessing vehicle tyres.
Pallmann Group has been supplying GMN with the most advanced and efficient tyre shredding plants since 2004. The two companies have been working together to optimize costs per tonne, final product quality, and output rates. The tough operating conditions at GMN provide full proof of the efficiency and reliability of the plant components. Rubber, steel and textile fractions are extracted and sorted from used car and truck tyres, the separated materials are then profitably marketed for reprocessing into various applications.
Against this background of extensive experience in plant construction, optimization and operation, GMN and Pallmann are now cooperating closely to come to the market under the Ecotrec banner. Ecotrec is a global provider of complete systems that encompass 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 North America.
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. Ecotrec systems, on the other hand, create high added-value raw materials that can be sold at attractive prices. There is a large market for the 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 at interesting prices 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.
“Leading edge technology resulting from the development partnership between Pallmann and GMN opens new market opportunities,” says Carlos Gomez, head of the Pallmann subsidiary in Spain.“Instead of going up in smoke, old tyres are turned into valuable resources. With costs of raw materials continuing to increase on the world markets, the proposition is likely to become even more economically attractive than it already is today.”
