Southeast Scrap Tire Investment: Policy Shifts Pull Capital Into Recovery
Southeast Scrap Tire Investment
State policy changes across the Southeastern United States are pulling fresh capital into scrap tire processing, with new fee structures and disposal restrictions reshaping where end-of-life rubber goes and who invests in handling it.
North Carolina is the clearest example. Under SB 706, tire disposal fees collected in the state are directed back into the scrap tire management program, with much of that money reimbursing counties for the cost of collecting and recycling end-of-life tires.
Funding that follows the material rather than disappearing into a general fund changes the arithmetic for collectors. It also makes the state a more attractive place to site processing capacity, which is exactly what is happening.
Capital Follows the Policy Signal
Liberty Tire Recycling has committed roughly $1.4 million to upgrade equipment at its facility in Cameron, North Carolina. The company already runs three North Carolina locations alongside a corporate office in the state.
The upgrade is expected to add about 3,300 tons of annual capacity, equivalent to close to 300,000 passenger tires a year. It will also let the plant take on more truck tires, a stream that commands rising demand for recycled rubber but resists easy processing because of thicker carcasses and heavier steel reinforcement.
Alabama is driving a parallel shift. After the state moved to stop landfilling whole tires, the same company announced plans for two new facilities there. A disposal route closed by regulation becomes a feedstock stream for whoever builds the capacity to take it.
Where the Material Ends Up
Most of the processed volume becomes crumb rubber. That material shows up in floor tiles and mats, walking paths, playground and athletic surfaces, synthetic turf systems, rubberised road binders and moulded products.
It is a real market, and it keeps tires out of landfills. It is also a single destination for an enormous tonnage, and crumb rubber demand does not scale indefinitely with the volume of tires coming off vehicles.
Ownership is shifting too. I Squared Capital acquired Liberty from Energy Capital Partners, and the new owner has pointed to footprint expansion plus investment in automation and advanced processing technology as priorities.
The Opening for Higher-Value Recovery
Advanced technology is where the Southeast story gets interesting for anyone weighing a project. Granulation plants are capital-light and well understood; they are also competing for the same downstream buyers.
Thermal conversion sits further up the value curve, breaking the tire into recovered carbon black, oil and gas rather than a sized rubber particle. Where a state has guaranteed the feedstock economics through fee recycling and banned the cheap disposal alternative, that higher-value route becomes far easier to underwrite.
The Southeast now has both conditions in place in more than one state. That combination is rarer than it sounds, and it is usually what separates a project that reaches financial close from one that stays on a slide.
Build on the Policy Window While It Is Open
When a state funds collection and closes the landfill door at the same time, the feedstock question largely answers itself. What remains is technology risk, and that is the part Klean Industries removes outright.
Klean delivers tire recovery plants on a KBR turnkey basis: performance-guaranteed, fully bankable and structured so the technology risk sits with us rather than with the project owner. The references are commercial, not pilot scale, including a commercial recovered carbon black plant operating in Poland.
Two routes are open. License the technology and build it yourself, or have KBR construct the facility turnkey and hand it over against guaranteed performance. Tell us the county, the tonnage and the offtake you are chasing and we will tell you whether it banks.
Contact Klean Industries » GO.
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