Peril for Plan to Produce Fuels from End-of-Life Tyres in Toowoomba : OPINION: Tyre Recycling Project In Jeopardy in Queensland, Australia

Trevor Bayley, Chief Operating Officer of Green Distillation Technologies argues that the decision in Australia by the Queensland Government not to support a Resource Recovery Grant for the proposed Toowoomba tyre recycling plant has placed the project in jeopardy.

We had applied for a $5 million grant to pay 50% of the estimated construction cost and the decision not to contribute has meant that we have to either find the money from private investment, or re-evaluate the project and focus our attention elsewhere.

It may be that the people of Toowoomba will step up to the plate and support the facility as we were putting up $5 million of the capital required.

The tyre recycling plant was planned to be built at the Wellcamp Business Park based on our world-first Australian technology that turns end-of-life tyres into oil, carbon and steel.

That plant would have employed 14 to 18 people full time, as well as local contractors during the construction phase and create further jobs in the transport maintenance and collection of end of life tyres from retailers and other outlets.

The oil obtained from recycling end of life tyres will go to the newly built Northern Oil refinery at Gladstone, North Queensland, where it is the vital raw material in the Queensland Government plans to create a renewable fuels hub.

The oil is regarded by Northern Oil as ‘light crude’ that is low in sulphur and easy to refine into petrol, diesel or jet fuel and GDT has an agreement from them to take all the oil we produce anywhere in Australia and this also applies to oil from our plant in Warren, Western New South Wales.

We have always seen our Toowoomba facility playing a key role in the plans to develop the area as a major road and rail transport hub as recycling the end of life truck tyres will be a vital component of this.

When completed the plant would process approximately 700,000 end-of-life tyres per year into 7.2 million litres of oil, 9,100 tonnes of carbon, and 3800 tonnes of steel.

Except for the capital to cover the construction costs we are all systems go as we have received a Queensland Government Environmental License and Development Approval from the Toowoomba Regional Council.

GDT has plans to eventually establish 7 processing plants in Australia to handle the 25 million end of life car and truck tyres we discard each year and the potential for export of the technology is limitless and they are currently responding to enquiries to establish plants in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Middle East, Africa, Pakistan, Russia and New Zealand.

However, this depends on the investment support we receive in Australia to try and get those processing plants up and running, providing local employment and solving a major environmental problem.