\n Re-Tyre Ltd, in Unit 5, Sherrington Way, off Lister Road, uses a unique, patented process with bespoke machinery to strip down the tyres, remove all metal, powder down the rubber, and with high-pressure water and heat, turn them into new, road-legal tyres.\n<\/p>\n
\n Former marine engineer in the Royal Navy, Ken Jones, originally from Shrewsbury, is the secretary of the company and has ambitions to take Re-Tyre further than just Basingstoke.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said: “When you take the tyre off your car, the tyre fitters will actually pay me \u00a35 to take it away. And yet there’s still \u00a350 worth of rubber in there.\n<\/p>\n
\n ‘The tyre fitters will actually pay me \u00a35 to take it away. And yet there’s still \u00a350 worth of rubber in there’ (Image: Newsquest)\n<\/p>\n
\n “As a recycling operation, it’s not very exciting, but, because we do it in a very different way to anybody else, what we end up with is a powder that can go back into manufacturing new tyres – and that’s something nobody else can do.\n<\/p>\n
\n “I started on this process in 2008. I was working with a research fellow at Imperial College, I’d been tasked with designing a pyrolysis process.”\n<\/p>\n
\n Mr Jones explained that pyrolysis heats up rubber tyres in a reduced oxygen environment and because there is no oxygen, the tyre doesn’t burn. It starts to break down. This is called thermal decomposition.\n<\/p>\n
\n Some of the bespoke machinery (Image: Newsquest)\n<\/p>\n
\n He added: “To date, it’s never really been truly successful, but people keep chasing it as a big dream. We set up a four-year project to break down the rubber, take the steel out, and prepare it to go through a pyrolysis process, and then we developed a pyrolysis chamber using microwaves.\n<\/p>\n
\n “The end objective was met. We did manage to pyrolyse rubber and everybody thought it was wonderful, but eventually nobody took the project on commercially, and it just died a death.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Once they’d abandoned it, I picked it up and started to redevelop it again.”\n<\/p>\n
\n An example of the powdered-down rubber (Image: Newsquest)\n<\/p>\n
\n Mr Jones explained that he believes his business has the potential to expand its operations further afield, and believes Re-Tyre can eliminate all scrap tyres in the UK and prevent illegal tyre scrapping abroad.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said: “The intention is to set up another three to five units locally. I’m talking about Reading, Maidenhead, Southampton, somewhere within about a 50 to 60-mile radius of Basingstoke with the idea that each unit has a 15-mile radius for collecting tyres.\n<\/p>\n
\n “The eventual target is 300 units all the way across the UK so that there are no scrap tyres anymore in the UK.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Re-Tyre Ltd, in Unit 5, Sherrington Way, off Lister Road, uses a unique, patented process with bespoke machinery…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600124,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[728,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-600123","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115629856081939583","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}