Inroads made to shredding tyre mountain

Here's the scene. It's 11am outside Shed 20 at the Port of Tauranga container wharf on Sulphur Point.
The McLeod crane arrives, followed by the Waharoa Transport truck carrying the 40-foot container.
Wharf handler C3's staff and straddle carrier manoeuvre the container alongside the other one containing a 11-metre conveyor belt and elevator, freshly imported from the United States.
The crane carefully lifts the equipment from one container to the other, owned by retired Waikato dairy farmer Owen Douglas, and it will soon be on the road to Waharoa.
Mr Douglas, who lives on an Ohauiti lifestyle block, has paid for everything - the crane, equipment, port handling fees and transportation.
Dressed snappily in a tailored suit, the snowy-haired Mr Douglas was on hand to make sure the unloading operation went without hitch.
He was fulfilling a 10-year-old dream.
He had spent all that time researching the best way to reduce waste and eliminate the ugly used tyre piles dotting the New Zealand landscape, on the farms and in the city industrial areas.
His answer was to import the country's first tyre shredding machine, which chews through 1000 car tyres in an hour and turns them into 10.16cm rubber chips.
They are used as tyre-derived fuel (TDF) for big production plants - TDF is hotter than coal and produces more energy.
Mr Douglas, now in his 70s, is determined to make inroads into New Zealand's used tyre pile. Each year about four million tyres are discarded in the country - they are sent to farms and landfills or simply dumped down gullies and piled on the side of the road.
He has invested $2 million on his dream. The shredding machine from Columbus McKinnon in Sarasota, Florida, cost $1.2 million, the freight costs amounted to $265,000, and he's leasing the old dairy company's coal bunker, 190m long and 17m wide, at the Waharoa Industrial Park for his new business, called Carbon Recovery.
This week Mr Douglas took possession of just half of his machine - the chipper which went via Hong Kong arrives on a second ship at Tauranga on January 19.
Already on land was the elevator that lifts the tyres, of all sizes, on to the chipper and the conveyor belt that moves the tyre chips to the waiting truck.
Columbus McKinnon staff will commission the machine at Waharoa in late January.
Mr Douglas has had to install his own 1000hp generator to run the machine, and so far he's got 120,000 tyres stashed away at his quarry in Bayleys Rd, Otorohonga.
It will take the electronically-controlled CM Dual Speed Tire Shredder 20 hours to chew through that amount of tyres. He needs more old tyres.
"I got to the point of no return. I had done my homework and I had to bring in the machine or else no-one would take any notice of me," Mr Douglas said.
"Seventy five per cent of world's used tyres go through these machines, and the supply will come."
What if the supply doesn't come? "Then I've spent $2 million (setting up the business)," he said matter of factly.
"There's no other way around it. No place in the world will take the used tyres," Mr Douglas said, referring to the Basel Convention which limits the movements of hazardous waste between nations, including old tyres.
Mr Douglas has scoured the country for business.
He has made arrangements with several councils, and tyres will be collected at transfer stations in Palmerston North, Feilding, Te Puke and Te Maunga in Tauranga.
He will also be taking forklift tyres from Eastwood Tyres in Auckland. "We've cleaned out the Whakatane landfill and taken tyres off farms when they've been sold," Mr Douglas said. "I'm still battling with the two big tyre companies (Dunlop and Bridgestone). They won't see me."
The companies charge the tyre shops (and ultimately the customers) $5 for arranging collection and disposal of an end-of-life tyre.
Carbon Recovery will send a container anywhere to pick up the tyres and will transport them mainly by rail to the siding right alongside the factory at Waharoa.
Mr Douglas is charging $6 each for collecting discarded car tyres, including $2.50 freight. "If people can get the tyres to the plant, then we will take out the freight cost and it will be cheaper."
The tyre chips will be sent from Waharoa to South Korea and will be used to help power the Asia Cement Co plant 150km inland from Seoul.
"They will take everything I can supply," said Mr Douglas.
He has also spoken to staff at Golden Bay Cement in Whangarei, the Kinleith pulp and paper mill, and Fonterra about using tyre-derived fuel.