The new and first Michelin brand tire recycling plant in the world will be located 5 kilometers from the city of Mejillones, which will be called Bahía Verde.
This was announced in a visit made by the mayor of Mejillones, Marcelino Carvajal Ferreira, to the Michelin facilities in Santiago de Chile and who specified the conversations that had begun with the previous mayor of the commune, Sergio Vega. The meeting was also attended by the Economic Counselor of the French Embassy in Chile, Phillipe Autier.
The new plant will be dedicated to the recycling of mining tires (45-63 inches), and will have a capacity to recycle 30,000 tons per year of tires for mining vehicles at the end of life.
End-of-life tires will be collected directly from customers and transported to the plant to be cut and recycled. With the innovative technology of the Swedish company Enviro, with which it has a joint venture , new high-quality materials will be recovered, such as Carbon Black (or also called Carbon Black), which will be reused in the manufacture of new products. of rubber, such as tires and conveyor belts, green diesel and gas, which can be reused as fuels in other industrial processes, and steel that is reused to make new mining products.
This plant is in line with the Recycling and Extended Producer Responsibility (REP) Law enacted in 2016. This law, essentially, obliges manufacturers and importers of six priority products to recover a percentage of them once their life ends. Useful. As of January of this year -after its publication in the Official Gazette- the Law for tires began to govern, which implies that from 2023, companies that import tires must recycle 25% of mining tires outside of use (called NFU).
Michelin is always supporting resource recovery and reuse solutions in many countries, as well as seeking to accompany, and even anticipate, the decisions and policies that occur in various countries, and where Chile is no exception.