Tasmanian businesses and the environment stand to benefit from a $1.27 million government grant awarded to Tyrecycle, Australia’s largest tyre recycler.

Announced at last week’s Tasmanian Waste and Resource Recovery Forum, the grant will upgrade Tyrecycle’s Bridgewater facility, enabling them to produce Tyre Derived Fuel (TDF) chips locally.

The TDF product is suitable as an alternative fuel for coal in a variety of industrial processes, like cement production.

Director of Business Strategy at Tyrecycle Ashley Battilana said the new facility will keep tires in Tasmania instead of shipping them back to the mainland.

Currently, about 6,000 tonnes of waste tires are transported to Melbourne each year.

“The whole tyres we collect from around Tasmanian from retailers, trucking yards etc… we bring them back to our facility here where we process them,” Battilana said.

“They’ll go through a processing facility … through a primary shredder, then a secondary shredder and we get it down to the desired spec, this being about 38 millimetres and then from there it goes as a coal replacement burnt with coal for energy use.”

“All of Tasmania’s tyres will stay on land, apart from truck tyres where they’ll go into a crumming facility back in Melbourne, but all the passenger four-wheel drive tyres will go into TDF or tyre-derived fuels here in Tasmania.”

The project is expected to generate job opportunities and provide stability for Tyrecycle’s employees.

Funded by the $3 million Waste Tire Reprocessing Grant Program, the initiative aims to establish sustainable solutions for managing end-of-life tires in Tasmania.