Wastefront

Wastefront is a Norwegian rubber waste recycling company that chemically recycles end-of-life tires into liquid hydrocarbons and carbon black through a pyrolysis process. Its advanced distillation process eliminates toxic gases from the pyrolysis process, converts sulfur to salts, and enables the production of low-emission, sulfur-free diesel fuel.

As of October 2023, the company's EUR 100 million (~USD 105 million) tire-recycling facility at the Port of Sunderland in Northeast England was under construction, expecting to be fully operational by 2026. In September 2023, the company secured an environmental permit for the same site. The plant is expected to process around 80,000 tons of end-of-life car and truck tires annually and save 1,800,000 tons of CO2 emissions over its lifetime.

Key customers and partnerships

Wastefront has entered several key partnerships for its Sunderland plant construction, including: 

1) Technip Energies in January 2022 as the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) partner

2) Gateway Resources in May 2022 for the complete supply of end-of-life tires (ELTs) and a potential ELT supply agreement for a Wastefront facility in continental Europe 

3) VTTI in July 2023 for an investment of up to USD 43 million for the initial phase and site selection surveys

In July 2022, Wastefront partnered with Newcastle University for an 18-month study to characterize and improve Wastefront's recovered carbon black (rCB). Prior to this in November 2020, Wastefront partnered with Vitol SA for a 10-year offtake agreement related to liquid hydrocarbons and select non-liquid products. The company also secured recovered carbon black (rCB) offtake agreements with Weber & Schaer in May 2023, covering a minimum of 35% of the rCB produced, and ENSO in March 2022 for rCB integration into ENSO's tires from 2024. 

Funding and financials

In November 2022, Wastefront and leading Swedish chemical engineering company Hulteberg Chemistry & Engineering secured a EUR 2 million (~USD 2.1 million) grant from Eureka Eurostars, supported by the Norwegian Research Council and the Swedish Innovation Agency. The two companies intended to use the funds for the HYFUEL project, aimed at purifying pyrolysis oil from end-of-life tires (ELTs) using a novel catalyst approach.