Market Movers

Several years ago, as Americans were reading about yet another fire or plague of mosquitoes occurring at a scrap tire stockpile, the notion of a tight supply of scrap tires may have seemed far-fetched.

But a roster of established and growing markets—ranging from tire-derived fuel to manufactured floor mats to dock bumpers—has scrap tire processors and recyclers competing for regional supplies of scrap tires.

Among the end markets that have gained momentum is one using tire shreds as landscaping or playground cover, a market addressed by Cleveland area company GroundScape Technologies and several other firms.

And now testing the commercial waters is Lehigh Technologies, whose Georgia plant is breaking down tire shreds into fine powders that can go back into new tires and into other high-end manufacturing applications.

LONG-TERM APPLICATION. Critics of the tire-derived fuel (TDF) market and some similar end markets hesitate to call such applications recycling, since the secondary commodity produced goes up in smoke, never to return to the resource loop.

Using tires or tire shreds for their stored energy may involve some resource conservation, but recycling is not the correct word to use, according to this point of view.

Similar criticism can be leveled at ground covering end markets for tire shreds. Although such products can offer a greater price-per-pound (and potentially greater profit margin), the application is not one that will keep all of the materials in the manufacturing loop.

The counter-argument, however, is that ground cover applications put processed scrap tires into higher-value and longer-lasting applications, keeping them out of landfills and emissions stacks for an indefinite period.

Gary M. Giller, president and CEO of GroundScape Technologies, Brooklyn Heights, Ohio, says "retailers are looking for this product," and that the company "has dramatically increased our [number of] outlets."

GroundScape manufactures a Premium Ground Cover mulch product as well as GroundScape Kids, a safety surface designed to absorb falls and prevent injuries on playgrounds.

At its Cleveland area plant, 2,000-pound sacks of ¾-inch-minus tire shreds are received at the GroundScape loading dock. According to Giller, these shreds come from processors who can promise 99.9 percent wire-free shipments. GroundScape also searches for the buffings that come from tire retreaders, especially for its playground cover product, which must consist of at least 25 percent buffings to meet ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) requirements.

Incoming shreds are run past a rare earth magnet supplied by Eriez Magnetics, Erie, Pa., to pull out any shreds with steel wire that may have made it past the supplier’s inspection process.

From there, the shreds and buffings receive their coloring in a large blender. Once they have received their commercial coloring (hues include red, green, brown, blue, teal and cypress), the pieces go through a sealing process that Giller says gives GroundScape products an especially long life.

Material to be marketed is either sealed in 40-pound bags or is stored in one-ton bulk bags for shipments to larger, commercial clients.

Giller says that exposure at trade shows and publicity such as a 2006 "Today" show report and another mention on "Extreme Home Makeover" have helped rubber ground cover and mulch merit consideration from people who would normally think only of mulch made from ground wood.

Giller says that for GroundScape to thrive, it will have to pay attention to the same things as most other manufacturers, including freight and logistics. "The key is to [grow the business] economically," he states. "At this facility or any others we might open, a necessity is to bring in raw materials from within an economic radius."

On the sale side, Giller says GroundScape is "not a technology company; we’re a ground cover company," and as such must also keep its eye on serving markets regionally.

Giller is optimistic that through regional alliances, distribution agreements and other methods, GroundScape can help supply America with a new type of long-lasting mulch and ground cover that will also provide a stable end market for scrap tires.

THE FINER THINGS. Whether for tires or for other widespread applications, the world’s manufacturers need fine rubber powder. Producing such engineered rubber powder from scrap tires has been considered difficult and impractical, if not simply impossible.

The management team at Lehigh Technologies, Naples, Fla., is taking steps to change that way of thinking and it has set up a plant in Tucker, Ga., that will ideally blaze a new end market for scrap tires.

In looking at the endeavor of creating engineered rubber powder from scrap tires, Lehigh Technologies Chief Operating Officer Tony Cialone says, "What we perceived originally as a technical hurdle we found out to be more of an economic hurdle."

An unlikely solution for an economical way to proceed came from a German company that supplies equipment to makers of time-release capsules in the pharmaceutical industry.

Cialone says when he and other Lehigh officers approached a representative from the German company about transferring this technology from pharmaceuticals to crumb rubber, "He almost threw us out of the building."

Eventually, though, an alliance was struck, and Lehigh was able to convince investors and new board members that it was time to build the plant in Georgia. That plant takes in ½-inch-minus and smaller feedstock and converts it to 140-mesh and 200-mesh powder that makers of sealants, plastics, fiberglass and ideally manufacturers of synthetic tires can use. "There are a vast amount of applications beyond rubber back into rubber," Cialone says.

However, the company plans to keep the product pure (and in its original black color) to keep the tire market accessible. "We don’t want to alter its color or chemistry," says Cialone. "We are making an engineered material. Manufacturers can put this product into a tire…not only doesn’t it degrade, but it can improve performance," he adds.

By making a vulcanized powder and selling it for 45 cents per pound, Cialone says Lehigh provides material to tire makers that offers tremendous price-per-pound savings, can reduce curing times during manufacturing and can provide a figurative gold star in corporate citizenship policies.

Cialone says Lehigh works with tire recyclers and processors, but does not include itself in that category. "We are not a tire recycler; we have to be a specialty manufacturer. Ultimately, we are producing an engineered product."

Currently, the 85,000-square-foot Georgia plant can produce more than 100 million pounds of PolyDyne fine and ultra-fine rubber powder products per year, shipping the material in sealed bags or in one-ton bulk bags.

Will an adequate supply of scrap tire shreds be a problem? "At the end of the day there are more than 300 million PTEs (passenger tire equivalents) per year," says Cialone. "We’ll still only make a small dent in that even if we build five or six plants in the U.S."

Building those additional plants is a goal of Cialone and other Lehigh Technologies executives.

Lehigh is securing financing and adding board members with connections to the manufacturing sector, with an eye toward creating a new standard where rubber powder created from scrap tires becomes a widely accepted ingredient in the production of a variety of manufactured goods.