Netherlands Plant Turns 50,000 Tons of Old Tires Into Fuel

Every year, millions of old tires pile up in landfills, but a new facility in the Netherlands just proved those mountains of rubber can become something valuable again.

King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands personally kicked off operations at the Circtec recycling plant in Delfzijl in late January, loading waste tires into a high-tech reactor himself. The facility uses a process called pyrolysis to break down old tire rubber at high temperatures and transform it into useful products like marine fuel, ingredients for plastics, and recovered carbon black that goes into making brand new tires.

The plant can already handle 50,000 metric tons of waste tires each year in its first phase. That's roughly equivalent to taking 5 million car tires out of the waste stream annually and giving them new life as fuel and raw materials.

Circtec has already lined up buyers for everything the plant produces. BP has committed to purchasing the marine fuel and recycled naphtha, while Birla Carbon will buy the recovered carbon black for manufacturing new rubber products across Europe and beyond.

The company announced funding for the facility back in May 2024, and construction wrapped up just over a year and a half later. Now they're planning Phase 2, which will begin construction later this year and eventually boost the plant's capacity to 200,000 metric tons annually.

The Ripple Effect

This facility represents more than just one successful recycling operation. Major global companies partnering with Circtec shows that circular economy solutions can work at industrial scale with real commercial viability.

John Loudermilk, CEO of Birla Carbon, noted that the partnership will support availability of sustainable materials across Europe and worldwide markets. Meanwhile, BP's Netherlands operations head Corné Boot called it "a great example of companies and governments working together delivering green growth."

The technology itself could be replicated elsewhere. Circtec CEO Allen Timpany hopes the plant will "inspire others, here in the Netherlands and far beyond, to rethink waste, reimagine value and to keep moving forward" toward sustainable industrial practices.

Instead of seeing waste tires as a disposal problem, the Netherlands is showing the world they're actually a resource waiting to be unlocked.