Lehigh, MTR team up to recycle tires.

Lehigh Technologies Inc., based in Naples, Fla., has announced an agreement with MTR Inc., the Southeast's largest collector and processor of scrap tires and other scrap rubber with facilities and operations in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi processing more than 15 million tires annually.

With this agreement, Lehigh will source its raw materials from an ISO 9001 processing facility, giving the company complete accountability and assurance over feedstock consistency and quality. In addition, Lehigh and MTR will also offer customers closed-loop recycling/reuse programs, enabling manufacturers to use their own overstock to feed new products. The MTR strategic relationship marks another cornerstone in Lehigh's long-term, global strategy.

Under the terms of the agreement, Lehigh will host a crumb rubber feedstock processing facility at MTR's Jackson, Ga., tire collection and recycling plant. The crumbing facility will have enough capacity to supply 100 percent of Lehigh's fine powder plant's feedstock requirements.

In addition, the closed-loop recycling/reuse programs are designed to address significant disposal and raw material challenges, especially where it pertains to non-degradable rubber tires. These programs will meet corporate ISO 14001 and environmental stewardship goals and objectives for tire manufacturers. Together, Lehigh and MTR will offer customers the ability to collect and process their factory discards into reusable raw materials, thereby lowering disposal and raw material costs under the same system.

Lehigh expects to spend about $5 million dollars at the Jackson site. Upon completion of the Jackson crumbing facility, Lehigh will have the capacity to process more than 100 million pounds of scrap tire material into high quality crumb rubber feedstock.