Recycling plant in Upper Austria

How tires become flour

"For me, a good tire is one that no longer has the tread depth and the rims," says Managing Director Christian Zirgoi.(Bild: Markus Wenzel)

"Give us rubber" is the motto of KIAS Recycling. In Ohlsdorf (Upper Austria), the company operates the only plant in Austria that breaks down old wheels from cars and trucks into their component parts to produce raw materials. Recently, deliveries have even been coming in from Switzerland.

In the area in front of the company building, truck tires of all sizes lie disorderly next to and on top of car wheels. "All that's left of them is tire shreds the size of your hand," says Christian Zirgoi, who has been Managing Director of KIAS Recycling in Ohlsdorf since 2020.

The tires are processed to produce rubber, spring steel and textile fibres. The latter are used as fuel in cement plants, for example, and can be used instead of gas or oil.(Bild: Markus Wenzel)

At the only used tire recycling plant in Austria, the wheels are shredded, then ground and sieved, allowing the individual components to be neatly separated from each other: Spring steel, textile fibers and rubber, which is turned into flour or granulate.
These are all materials that can be used again later and find buyers. The rubber, for example, is highly sought after by manufacturers of mats or is used in road construction.

16 employees work for KIAS in Ohlsdorf.(Bild: Markus Wenzel)

Business with used tires has been anything but smooth recently. While up to 30,000 tons of wheels can be recycled at KIAS every year, the amount processed fell to 15,000 tons in the previous year. Reason: tire shortage.

Disposal in Turkey was apparently cheaper
"We naturally asked ourselves where the tires had gone," says Zirgoi. There was no clear answer, but apparently the used tires were exported to Turkey for cost reasons: "They are incinerated there."

Tire return fee: 1.50 euros per piece
Curious: Swiss waste disposal companies are now taking a liking to the processing of waste materials in Ohlsdorf. Because incineration generates significantly more CO2 emissions, the route to the Traunviertel is chosen, where private individuals also dispose of their old tires. A fee of 1.50 euros is charged per tire.