Recycling company’s £150k tyre investment

8:58am Tuesday 15th May 2007

A RECYCLING firm at Breighton, near Selby, is proving its £150,000 upgrading investment has teeth.

In five years since the £12 million turnover Credential Environmental established its 23-tonne shredding plant at its Yorkshire depot on ten acres at Bubwith aerodrome, its iron teeth have recycled 15 million tyres.

Although the cutting blades are replaced every month, a major refurbishment is now under way, with a new set of rotors direct from the US manufacturer being installed by York-based Bootham Engineering at a cost of £150,000, part of an ongoing £400,000 upgrading scheme for the Breighton operation.

Replacement of the rotors is a major task, and the teams at Credential and Bootham have worked round the clock to minimise disruption to the plant's customers.

Shredded tyres from the plant will soon be feeding the Tyregenics plant, due to open in Neath in July, 2007.

Tyregenics is a £4 million-plus joint venture between Credential, BOC gases and Canadian artificial sports pitch business Field Turf Inc.

In a cryogenic process, some 9,000 car tyres a day will be reduced to various grades of rubber crumb suitable for a wide range of applications, including sports pitches and fragments that can be used as drainage for landfill sites.

Credential Environment, which has two other depots, in County Durham and Wednesbury in the West Midlands, is a UK market leader in the sale, collection, transfer, processing and disposal of tyres and automotive wastes.

That includes disposing of waste oils, filters, glycols, brake fluids, batteries and catalytic converters.

Credential director Steve Patterson said: "The new rotors are part of a £400,000 scheme to increase efficiency at Breighton, as the new Tyregenics plant will process more than 30,000 tonnes of used tyres a year."

The group, which employs 100 people at four depots, has benefited from changes to waste disposal legislation and ever-tougher environmental directives, including the Landfill Directive and End Of Life Vehicle Directive.

Two years ago, the firm was snapped up by Yorkshire-based private venture fund, Ailsa3, for an undisclosed seven-figure sum.

Since then, the workforce at the highly-automated plant at Breighton has expanded from eight to 12.

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