A group of entrepreneurs, James Coen, and Gerry Fahy from Galway, and James Foley, and Tommy Hamill from Meath, are leading a project to build Ireland’s first dedicated thermolysis tyre reprocessing facility, for end-of-life tyres.
The company, Cleantech Group, is set to eliminate the environmental threat of 15 million tyres currently in landfills and storage around the country. The new plant will be built in Trim, Co Meath.
This state-of-the-art technology, the first of its type in Western Europe, will return end-of-life tyres to their component parts, carbon black, recovered oil, shredded steel, and gas
The new state of the art plant, will be built at an investment of €18m. Work will begin on the facility early in 2017, with the plant due to open in Q3 next year. It is estimated that between five million and 5.5 million tyres are disposed of every year in Ireland.
New Government regulations on the recycling of tyres are due to come into force in January 2017, and in Galway alone, there are substantial stores of end-of-life tyres, potentially up to one million tyres currently stored, which can be recycled with this new technology.
The project has been developed over the last six years.
This new approach to reprocessing tyres will require no additional cost to consumers and will see the incomes of tyre collectors protected and enhanced.
