A European pioneering £4 million tyre recycling facility has been officially opened in South Wales.

The TyreGenics plant at Baglan, near Port Talbot, will reprocess some four million used tyres a year into rubber crumb, handling 80 tonnes of tyres a day.

With approval from the Welsh Assembly the development received a £1.4m grant from the EU’s Objective One fund in support of the 30 jobs and commercial opportunities the venture has brought to South Wales.

The plant’s process uses liquid nitrogen to freeze shreds of tyre to below -80˚C, at which point they become brittle, then mechanical hammers break them into crumb. The end product has a number of uses, including the production of artificial sports pitches, insulation products and rubber flooring.

TyreGenics is a joint venture between majority shareholder Credential Environmental, the UK market leader in recycling used tyres; BOC; the Canadian artificial sports pitch business FieldTurf Tarkett; and the Canadian cryogenic plant manufacturer RTI Cryogenics Inc.

Its start-up follows the recent banning of used tyres from landfill disposal.

Nick Wyatt, managing director of TyreGenics said, “FieldTurf will take around two-thirds of the production of the crumb, but we are getting all types of enquiries from people looking to use it in widely varying areas of manufacturing.

“The scarcity of rubber ‘crumb’, and its value as a recycled green manufacturing alternative to other materials, means there are many potential customers for the remaining production.”

TyreGenics’ main product is rubber crumb separated and graded for a variety of uses. Around 70% of the plant’s output is used by joint venture partner Field Turf Tarkett, which designs and manufactures the surfaces at sports clubs and stadia in North America.

The company has also installed practice grounds for the Welsh Rugby Union and at Premiership and Championship football clubs including Leeds United and Chelsea.

Approximately 4,000 tonnes of steel a year recovered during the TyreGenics process is supplied to Welsh steel works. Six thousand tonnes of fibre extracted during the process is recovered and currently sent to landfill, but the firm hopes it will soon be used to produce energy.

Other potential uses include insulation and cattle bedding, a component in the manufacture of safety flooring systems, within specialist sound insulating wall coverings and in the manufacture of other rubber products.