Charles Astafan, general manager of Columbus McKinnon Corp., Amherst, N.Y., served as moderator for a session at the TIA World Tire Expo titled “Getting the Wire Out.” The panel included tire processors Rick Johnson of High Tread International Ltd., Mark Rannie of Emanuel Tire Corp., and Chuck Smith of Synergy/Polymerix. Discussions focused on the revenue-generating power of clean steel recovered from scrap tires.
Astafan said recovering the wire from scrap tires represents an “opportunity for the [tire] processing industry” and something the industry as a whole should be doing, particularly because the current market demand requires that the rubber be free of wire and in light of transportation and landfill costs associated with wire disposal.
Mark Rannie of Baltimore’s Emanuel Tire Corp. served as chair of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc. (ISRI) Tire Wire Taskforce and told attendees about the nine-month process that lead to ISRI’s specifications for recovered tire wire, which the ISRI Board of Directors adopted in 2003.
Rannie stressed that the specifications are not static, but continue to evolve through discourse between the steel industry and tire processors.
Information on ISRI’s specifications, which include bale density and cleanliness requirements, for steel recovered from tires can be accessed at http://www.isri.org/specs/specs.pdf.
Rick Johnson of High Tread International, based in New York State, outlined the company’s operations and offered advice for producing and marketing clean wire to scrap yards and steel mills.
High Tread processes 2 million PTEs (passenger tire equivalents) per year, Johnson said, adding that while crumb rubber is the company’s main product, it produced 100,000 pounds of tire wire weekly in 2004.
Johnson said that the wire is a “significant portion” of High Tread’s product line and that the company focuses on the quality of the wire because it does not see the material as a byproduct.
In 2004, High Tread avoided $70,000 in landfill costs because through its marketing of clean tire wire.
High Tread’s processing system consists of an Eldan shredder, two Eldan 122 raspers and a series of four magnets. The clean wire is conveyed directly in to a trailer with a live floor and ships within a day in many cases, Johnson said.
The company markets its clean wire to four outlets currently: two local scrap yards and two brokers with access to different steel mills, he said.
“Steel mills are somewhat fickle,” Johnson said, adding that when they can get an adequate supply of material, their standards are often higher. When material is harder to come by, they are less selective, he said. “It’s not always a consistent marketplace.”
Johnson closed by saying that tire wire “can be and has been an important product” and an important source of revenue, but that it takes considerable detail and investment in equipment to produce a quality product.
Chuck Smith of Synergy/Polymerix, Stanford, Texas, provided attendees with information related to his company’s wire recovery. Synergy operates scrap tire and buffing dust collection operations in Texas and Oklahoma. Polymerix is the trade name used to market the products.
Smith began his presentation by saying that a company’s clean-wire system can never be too large or have enough magnets, which also can never be large enough.
The company has a clean-wire system from Bi-Metal of Ridgefield, Conn. Bi-Metal also markets the recovered steel for Synergy.
Smith says that the cleanliness of its recovered wire means that it can command a higher price on the market or be sold when other companies cannot move their wire. However, he added that Synergy’s Bi-Metal system is undersized for the rest of the company’s processing equipment—a Barclay shear and a Granutech Grizzly granulator, which means that material has to be run through the system a few times in order to produce a clean steel product.
The TIA World Tire Expo was April 20-22 at the Kentucky International Convention Center in Louisville.