Recycled Tyre Rubber: Mexico Resurfaces 6.3 km of Federal Highway
Recycled Tyre Rubber
Mexico is incorporating rubber recovered from end-of-life tyres into asphalt maintenance on a 6.3-kilometre stretch of the federal Pachuca–Querétaro highway, putting recovered material straight back into public infrastructure.
The work is being delivered by the Secretariat of Infrastructure, Communications and Transport, known as SICT, through its regional centre in the state of Hidalgo.
The section runs between kilometre 61+500 and kilometre 67+800 on carriageway B, from Portezuelo in Tasquillo to the Hidalgo–Querétaro state border. SICT expects the maintenance programme to take roughly two months, depending on operating and site conditions.
Rubber in the Asphalt Mix
By blending ground rubber from waste tyres into the asphalt mixture, the project gives end-of-life tyres a productive application rather than sending them to disposal or stockpiles.
SICT has framed responsible resource use and the productive reuse of waste tyres as core aims, alongside the ordinary objective of keeping the toll-free federal highway network in serviceable condition.
Discarded tyres are notoriously difficult to manage. Folding them into road maintenance converts a problem stream into a specified construction input, which is why rubberised asphalt keeps reappearing in circular economy policy.
Part of a Wider Pattern
The Hidalgo scheme is not an isolated trial. In a separate highway rehabilitation project announced in September 2026, authorities reported using tyre-rubber powder in modified asphalt on the Irapuato–Silao–León route in Guanajuato.
Two projects in different states within weeks of each other suggest growing institutional comfort with recovered tyre material in Mexican road construction, rather than a one-off demonstration.
For recyclers, public road programmes matter because they create predictable, specification-driven demand for crumb rubber at volume, which is exactly what is missing in many markets where tyre arisings outpace offtake.
The Limits of Rubberised Asphalt
Road applications are valuable but they are also finite. Highway maintenance budgets are cyclical, specifications vary by state, and the tonnage a given programme can absorb is capped by the length of road being surfaced.
A 6.3-kilometre section consumes a useful quantity of recovered rubber, not a national arisings stream. Countries that rely on civil engineering alone to absorb end-of-life tyres tend to find the market saturates well before the waste does.
That is why mature circular strategies pair material recovery routes such as rubberised asphalt with chemical recovery routes that can take whole tyres, including the steel and fibre, and return carbon black, oil and gas to industry.
Mexico already hosts commercial tyre pyrolysis capacity, so the two routes are not hypothetical alternatives. They are complementary outlets competing for the same feedstock, and the balance between them will shape how much value the country captures from each tonne of tyres it collects.
Beyond the Road Surface: Higher Value per Tonne of Tyres
Rubberised asphalt proves the material works. The next question for any region collecting tyres at scale is how much value each tonne can carry, and that is where recovery plants outperform road fill. Klean Industries delivers tyre recovery facilities as KBR turnkey projects: performance-guaranteed, 100% bankable and engineered so the owner carries no technology risk.
Those guarantees are underwritten by commercial-scale operating references, including a commercial recovered carbon black plant in Poland. For a transport ministry, a state development bank or a private developer, that is the difference between a pilot and an investable asset.
Two commercial routes are available. License the technology and build your own operating capability, or have Klean and KBR deliver the plant turnkey with performance guarantees attached. Both start with a feasibility study grounded in local tyre arisings, logistics and offtake markets.
Contact Klean Industries » GO.
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