Humboldt Environmental and Renewable Technologies Inc. is planning a creative and innovative project to open a tire recycling plant without relying on outside companies in Wells, Nevada.
The tire plant will be shareholder-owned, with the community buying the shares, and the city won't be involved in owning or managing the tire recycling plant, HEART Chairman Jolene Supp said.
Supp is also city manager, but she was acting as HEART chairman at a public meeting Thursday to announce the proposed project that would replace the earlier World Renew plan to build a tire recycling plant in Wells.
"The city was not a good fit to take over the tire plant, when it became apparent that World Renew could not get adequate funding. So we set up HEART, a private corporation to own and manage the tire recycling plant," Supp said.
"This is the first of several public meetings. Everyone will have the opportunity to comment, ask questions, and to become a part of this," she said.
Supp told a standing-room-only crowd that civic leaders made a determination several months ago to develop a plan to control the town's destiny.
"We determined that we could no longer be at the whim of outside sources. We felt we needed to start from within this town, and from within our own hearts, to make things happen," she said.
"This board has its 'heart' committed to the success of our own tire recycling plant, and to the future of this town," Supp said of the HEART board.
"We are tired of corporations coming to town with great plans for us. We've heard from a dozen of them in the last decade: Sierra Pacific, Tire Oil, Engleheart Gold, Simplot, World Renew and several others," Supp said.
"A variety of factors led to their demise. Most failed to find the required funding, or they suddenly realized they needed a natural gas source before they could commit, or, in the scenario with the coal-fired power plant, the 'down winders' were complaining. Well, we have heard it all, and we have had enough," she said.
From there, the Supp outlined the goals for the corporation:
€ To construct a high-tech, efficient facility that will be profitable.
Board member Mike Eriksen said, "We are looking for a profitable result. Any solid business shows a strong bottom line."
€ Develop a strong job base.
"We want to provide jobs and long term careers for our kids," Supp said.
€ Develop a strong tax base.
"The community deserves a strong and healthy economy. We have waited a long time for 'something to happen,'" Supp said. "Our merchants deserve better returns."
€ Develop an environmentally friendly business.
€ HEART is committed to finding spin off industries and other high tech processes to further shore up the economy of Wells and Elko County.
To kick start the project, HEART is selling shares of private stock. The minimum stock purchase requires a $2,000 buy-in. Currently, HEART has collected more than $200,000 in stock purchases.
"Our goal is to sell a million dollars worth of stock. The purchase option will close when we achieve that goal. We don't want to dilute the value of this stock," Supp told those gathered at the meeting.
HEART stock will allow the corporation to apply for a line of credit with funding sources. Supp used a flip chart to show potential funding sources, and the loans and grants anticipated from each source.
Supp said that $8 million will be required to set up one line of production. This will buy a 35,000-square-foot building in the Wells Heavy Industrial Park. And it will buy the fabrication of the specific machines that will use a microwave process to reduce tires to carbon black, steel and a fuel by-product.
The $8 million also will pay production costs for one year.
Board member Marla Griswold said before the meeting that HEART has some good things going.
"We have the industrial park complex with utilities and a railroad spur waiting to be developed. We don't have zoning problems. The permitting process is under way," she said.
Supp opened the meeting to questions from the public.
"What is Environmental Waste Inc.'s role in this tire recycling plant?"
Supp responded, "EWI is a pioneering research and development company. They developed the process for breaking down tires with microwaves. They hold the patent on this process.
"Currently, they are working on breaking down medical waste, and sterilizing water with a microwave process. They are working to solve biohazard problems. They are a research and development company, not a long-term production company.
"However, EWI is hoping to sell many of these tire-recycling companies. They have been very supportive through this whole process," Supp said.
"In our contract with EWI, we have specified that EWI will form a mutually agreed buffer zone so that another tire recycling processing concept will not compete for feed stock with this plant," she said.
Another listener at the meeting asked when HEART expects the first line of production to be up and running.
"Realistically, I think it will be fall of 2005 before we will be seeing tires moving down the processing line," Supp said. "HEART, just this week, made the down payment to secure the contract for one line of equipment. We are hoping to build the plant this summer."
"How many tire recycling plants are there in production?"
"Zero," Supp said. "EWI sold a system to a corporation in the United Kingdom. But that company is not as far along in the process as we are. For five years, EWI did have a pilot plant set up in Toronto for the purpose of verifying numbers.
"Currently, they have a scale model production line that shows potential customers, like us, how the process works," she said.
"What if you order the equipment built, and then when it is set up, it fails to work?"
Project Director and Plant Manager Doug Molohon responded to this question. "There will be milestones all the way along. The fabricating company will make the machinery and set it up in their factory to be sure everything works. They will not be sending us 1,000 parts and we won't be responsible for building it here.
“The machinery will come in, probably, four big components, and we will bolt those together here on site," Molohon said.
Supp told the crowd that the HEART board feels confident that an adequate number of tires will be available to meet the need. The facility will "digest" 1,500 tires daily, initially.
She also assured listeners that adequate markets for the byproducts will be available.
"A Community Block Development Grant could be used to fund a railroad spur to the recycling company. The city has reserved a 10-acre parcel adjacent to the railroad for access to the railroad spur by other industries locating in the industrial park," Supp said.
Supp pitched HEART's stock certificate sales, while reminding the public that there is always risk involved in any business venture.
Mike Eriksen said, "We have crunched the numbers. We have maximized the expenses and minimized the income, and even with just one line of production, we will be running in the black."
Local general contractor Gary Jacobucci said of the project: "When I first heard of this plan, what struck me was the brilliance of the acronym HEART. HEART may be the catalyst for a tire recycling plant, or something else, but the intention is the key to what the future will attract to our town.
"The anthropologist Margaret Mead said, 'Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed people can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has,'" he said.