GeT Metal Group launches innovative waste-to-energy initiative to eliminate fossil fuels in aluminium production.
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GeT Metal Group and its subsidiary GeT Alloys plan to eliminate fossil fuels from their aluminium melting operations by launching a pioneering waste-to-energy initiative that transforms 150,000 end-of-life tyres a year.
The tyres are converted into 1.44 million litres of high-quality industrial fuel, directly tackling South Africa’s severe waste tyre burden while decarbonising heavy industry, GeT Metal Group director Andrew Bishop said Monday.
In South Africa, the tyre recycling sector has largely been focused on shredding, crumb production, and energy recovery, with one of the biggest being the KwaZulu-Natal-based Mathe Group, which recycles about 1,000 radial truck tyres per day to produce 45 tons of rubber crumb, while the waste steel which is exported.
The scale of what to do with used tyres in South Africa is huge - an online search shows some 11 million tyres are discarded in South Africa annually.
GeT Metal Group’s initiative displaces 1.44 million litres of conventional heavy fuel oil annually, and the initiative delivers greenhouse gas saving of about 720 tons of carbon dioxide. Calculated using international Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol methodologies, the savings represent an avoidance of heavy upstream emissions linked to crude oil extraction, refining, and fuel transportation.
The initiative also boosts local environmental management by diverting around 12,500 waste tyres every month from landfills, tyre waste stockpiles, and unmanaged dump sites. It supports South Africa's Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Regulations by establishing a stable, high-volume market for end-of-life rubber, promoting beneficiation and strengthening the broader metal packaging value chain.
"Before launching this initiative, our facility required massive volumes of conventional furnace oil to sustain our melting operations. By engineering a solution that transforms a problematic waste stream into a valuable manufacturing input, we have eliminated the use of virgin fossil fuels in our primary furnaces,” said GeT Metal Group director Andrew Bishop.
GeT Alloys is a prominent South African aluminium recycler, processing roughly 350 million used beverage cans, packaging items, and post-consumer scraps annually into aluminium ingots. After implementing the new initiative, the plant’s monthly consumption of 120,000 litres of conventional heavy fuel oil is completely replaced with fuel oil from tyres.
The fuel is recovered through an oxygen-free thermal conversion process that alters the chemical structure of the waste tyres. Carbon black, a secondary product of the process, is used within GeT Alloys’ own aluminium dross recovery operations.
The steel wire recovered during the tyre conversion process is supplied as feedstock to GeT Steel, the group's steel foundry in Atlantis Industrial, where it is included in the production of steel billets for the South African and export markets.
“This shows heavy industry can successfully decouple production from fossil fuels through smart engineering," said Bishop.
"We wanted to look beyond simple emissions reductions and demonstrate true circular economy principles in action," said GeT Metal Group director Ebrahim Khan.
"With this model, waste provides both the raw material and the energy required to remanufacture that material into world-class aluminium ingots. Simultaneously, building this sustainable value chain from collection to processing has allowed us to create 32 direct jobs across the recycling and manufacturing sectors, driving local economic development when it is needed most.," he said.
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