Wastefront, a Norwegian waste tyre recycling company, has signed a deal with Gateway Resources to supply end-of-life tyres for its £100 million Port of Sunderland plant.

Wastefront obtained planning permission in January 2022 to construct the plant, which is expected to be commercially operational by 2024, processing 80,000 tyres per year, or 20% of the total in the UK.

Gateway Resources plans to supply nearly 10 million tyres per year, which it claims is comparable to the volume of end-of-life tyres currently exported, and the plant will play a critical role in eliminating waste tyre export from the UK entirely by creating a local solution to a global problem.

The company stated that it would not use the traditional method of burning tyres in cement kilns, which it described as "one of the most polluting forms of manufacturing in the world." Instead, Wastefront will recycle tyres into commodities like biofuels and recovered carbon black, which can be used in alternative fuels or as raw materials for the production of new tyres or other products.

The company claimed that replacing virgin carbon black with recovered carbon black would result in an 80 percent reduction in total emissions.

Chief executive Vianney Valès said: “We cannot continue with our dependency on new and scarce materials while continuing to burn existing materials with devastating and immediate environmental consequences. To solve the problem, Wastefront is proposing a solution that is both circular and at scale.”