Pile of tyres mysteriously shifted to farm

By SIMON COLLINS

Hamilton's pile of tyres that nobody wants has been moved - but nobody is owning up to moving it.

The 82,000 tyres have been piled up on two properties in Maui St, Te Rapa, since the company that aimed to recycle them, Rubber Technologies, collapsed last year.

Last weekend they were cleared off one of the properties, owned by Grasshopper Properties, and dropped at a farm in nearby Ruffell Rd.

Waikato District Council manager Nath Pritchard said the move was illegal because no one obtained a resource consent to put the tyres on the farm.

There was "a distinct possibility" that the council would issue a removal order.

But council officers are still trying to trace the registered owner of the farm, Stephen Wallis.

A director of Grasshopper Properties, Graeme Lee, refused to comment.

Dave Hoskin of Hamilton accountants Hoskin and Co, which owns the other site in Maui St where 30,000 of the tyres are still lying, said he was still trying to find someone to take the tyres off his hands.

"The perpetrators of this mess, as far as I'm concerned, have left us holding the baby," he said.

Mr Pritchard said the tyres in Ruffell Rd were a fire risk.

John Ellegard, an Auckland consultant working on the tyre problem for the country's two big tyre companies Bridgestone NZ and South Pacific Tyres, said New Zealand had to find a solution to a growing "mountain of tyres".

He said Bridgestone hoped that Rubber Technologies would solve the problem with its plans to break the tyres down to tiny granules to be sold overseas for doormats, horse arenas and the like. That hope was lost when the company folded.

"It was underfunded, despite the fact that Bridgestone-Firestone paid a good price per tyre to those people," he said.

He said that until recently all used tyres were either retreaded or used by farmers to hold down canvas over silage.

But that has ended since imports of second-hand tyres were allowed in the late 1980s. New Zealand and Russia are now the world's largest importers of used tyres, bringing 500,000 used tyres a year into this country with so little tread left that they soon have to be thrown out.

"Your average imported tyre sells for $40-$45. I have seen them with 60 to 70 per cent of their tread gone selling at the low $30s," Mr Ellegard said.

He said Bridgestone-Firestone hit back by producing a new "budget tyre" priced at around $55 - "for running round town, you wouldn't want to go on the Auckland motorways with them".

The company stopped retreading tyres in 1998, followed by South Pacific Tyres last year.

Mr Ellegard said there were now increasing reports of tyres being dumped, while piles were building up outside every tyre shop in the country.

The only big tyre shredder in the North Island is Laughton Shredding Services in West Auckland, which supplies shredded rubber to horse arenas and children's playgrounds.

But owner Jim Laughton said he could not take any more tyres.

"We never have enough markets," he said.

Even in the peak summer season he sends 20 to 25 per cent of his shredded rubber to landfills, and at this time of year 40 to 50 per cent goes there.