Genan, the world’s leading tire recycling company, recently unveiled its $140 million state-of-the-art plant in northeast Houston earlier this month with plans to recycle 10 million tires each year. The 40-acre plant, the largest of its kind in the world, will employ 60 workers and divert nearly one-third of all used tires in Texas from landfills.

 

Genan currently operates four plants throughout Europe that recycle about 7 million tires each year. The company extracts and produces rubber granulate, rubber powder and steel from scrap tires for re-sale as synthetic turf installations, playgrounds and recreational facilities, sports tracks and grounds, asphalt roads, building products, flooring, injection molded products, industrial applications, noise insulation, and many other purposes and applications.

 

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. generates about 290 million scrap tires each year. Roughly 45 percent are used as fuel, 20 percent are used in civil engineering projects, and 30 percent are converted into ground rubber and recycled into products. Genan’s Houston facility will serve as the company’s U.S. headquarters as the company seeks to expand its operations to include four sales and distribution plants across the U.S. in the future to capture 10 percent of the American recycled tire market.

 

Within 24 months, the plant will be expanded to produce a line of very fine cryogenic rubber powder and a technologically unique devulcanization line for the production of rubber, which will be able to substitute virgin rubber compounds.