Radial truck tyre recycling company Mathe Group has commissioned new equipment, including a new clean steel mill with an automated packaging line and several de-beading machines, to extract hundreds of tons of clean steel from waste tyres for export to India and South Korea.

Steel, which comprises 30% of each radial truck tyre, had been a by-product that had to be removed before tyres could be reduced to rubber crumb for reuse, but will now become a valued second income stream. This investment will boost earnings, says Mathe Group CEO Dr Mehran Zarrebini.

Radial truck tyres are processed by removing the walls that are supported by a steel ring - known as de-beading – before being fed through a shredder, which downsizes the tyre so that additional steel can be extracted and the remaining rubber turned into rubber crumb.

The current de-beading process, which was introduced when the Mathe Group moved to Hammarsdale in 2017, uses a hook to remove the steel ring on the sides of the tyres, but damages the geometry of the beads, making them difficult to bend, package and sell.

The new machinery, with the first two de-beaders already operational and a third en route, removes the entire bead free of rubber and keeps the bead intact.

This steel material is then used in blasting applications as a substitute for virgin steel. The price for this material is three times higher than that paid for scrap metal, with the added bonus of additional rubber removed boosting the amount of rubber recovered from each tyre, Zarrebini says.

“We are looking at material that could be potentially used in the local steel market which is under huge pressure. Right now, no steel extracted from tyres is sold locally,” he adds.

The steel extracted from the tyres is sent to India where it is cleaned before being shipped to South Korea for use in the manufacture of goods, such as ships or motor cars.

This cleaning process will now take place in-house, Zarrebini notes.

Increased capacity at the plant will see 108 t, or a minimum of four containers, leaving Hammarsdale each week. This steel is clean and does not need to be reprocessed.

“The new steel processing system cuts a lot of cost from the system and adds efficiency and a further 8% of rubber crumb to the process. Although steel wasn’t initially Mathe’s main income stream, with the escalating cost and complexity of doing business, it has become an important part of the business.”

Further, the installation of a steel cleaning mill will reduce the rubber contamination from the current 10% to less than 2%.

This is part of a broader redesign of the production process that will include an in-built packaging line, which will bag the steel and deposit it into awaiting shipping container that is trucked to the Durban port.

All of Mathe's new steel equipment will be fully operational by January 2026, he says.