Turning tires into gold: tire-recycling plant to process OTR tires.

• Author: Kelly, Lindsay
• Position: GREEN REPORT

Success for Ellsin Environmental has come in incremental steps--inches as opposed to leaps and bounds--but Bob MacBean recognizes that's the way it goes when you're innovating new technology.

MacBean, CEO of Environmental Waste International, Ellsin's parent company, said its Sault Ste. Marie tire-recycling plant has made a number of advancements in the last eight months, with the company poised to sign a deal within the next 60 to 90 days.

Launched in 2011, the facility uses reverse polymerization technology to process used tires, breaking them down into their core elements of carbon black, oil, syngas and steel, which will then be sold to end users in the rubber, coatings or plastics industry.

Since last spring, Ellsin has reduced the capital cost of the plant by 40 per cent and made the facility more energy-efficient.

"That size of plant was originally built to do 900 tires," MacBean said. "It actually does maybe 500 or 600 a day, but that size of plant, we've now figured out how to do 2,000 tires a day (with plant modifications), with roughly with the same energy level."

Ellsin has also continued to court potential clients, and now has a list of interested parties hailing from China, Europe, South America, the Caribbean, the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

"I'd say the technical risk is pretty well gone and I'd say the market risk is pretty well gone, from two aspects," MacBean said.

"One, the number of opportunities to sell plants around the world has increased --we've got people from pretty well everywhere in the world--and, two, we've figured out how to make the end products --the carbon black, oil, steel--in a manner that's acceptable to the marketplace, so those are all very positive things."

But perhaps the most interesting development is the plant's slight shift in focus, from processing regularly sized tires to the large, industrial, or "off-the-road" (OTR), variety of the kind used on mining, forestry and construction vehicles.

In mid-November, following extensive research and economic models, Ellsin decided the best use of the plant, should it be...