Tyre recycler invests to reduce landfill
A TYRE company has invested heavily in new recycling equipment to reap green credentials and expand its operations.
York-based Swiers and Grainger has invested £62,845 in equipment to divert an extra 6,284 tonnes of rubber waste from landfill over the next three years.
A cash injection of £25,000 from business support programme Resource Efficiency Yorkshire (REY), backed by Yorkshire Forward and the European Regional Development Fund, helped the firm to buy a pre-shredder, tripling Swiers and Grainger’s processing speed and boosting its capacity to recycle a wider variety of tyres.
Rowena Grainger, director of Swiers and Grainger, said: “Our existing shredding machine had the capacity to shred 360 tyres per hour, but cutting tyres manually meant that we couldn’t load feedstock into it quickly enough to achieve that.
“The new pre-shredder automates tyre cutting. We can now load the main shredder to run to capacity, tripling our productivity. We couldn’t have achieved this without the funding from REY.”
Shredded rubber produced by Swiers and Grainger is used as flooring for riding arenas. It gives good grip for horses, provides a soft landing for riders, allows for drainage and does not freeze in winter months.
Steve Ogden, project manager at REY said: “More than 48m tyres are disposed of every year in the UK, 33% of which are recycled. Swiers and Grainger is providing an important alternative to energy recovery, landfill engineering and export, which are the other key routes for unusable tyres.
This investment has also created a sustainable end-product that other businesses, such as equestrian centres, value.”
REY’s investment means Swiers and Grainger can help more organisations across Yorkshire to comply with the EU Landfill Directive, which banned whole and shredded tyres from being landfilled in 2003 and 2006 respectively.
