Fulton Hogan opens crumb rubber blend plant

Infrastructure company Fulton Hogan officially opened their new crumb rubber bitumen blending plant in the Launceston suburb of Mowbray on Sunday, June 18.

The blending plant takes crumb rubber - a substance created through recycling glass and tyres - and turns it into a longer-lasting form of bitumen, which has seen wide-scale Tasmanian adoption with incentives from the state government.

Crumb rubber bitumen was first used in the state on roads in the Meander Valley in late 2020, which was provided and surfaced by Fulton Hogan, who have since diverted over 40,000 end of life tyres from landfill for use in Tasmanian roads.

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Fulton Hogan state manager Rob Nucifora said the new facility allowed his company to be "more efficient, produce a more consistent product and ultimately have better roads for the community".

The plant has the capacity to process approximately 10 tonnes of crumb rubber per hour - a staggering figure that Mr Nucifora said would allow the company to fulfil almost any future demand.

"As big as the market will take, really," Mr Nucifora said.

"Over the next 12 months, this facility will use 200 tonnes of crumb rubber and produce over two million litres of blended bitumen, and we expect that demand to grow."

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The crumb rubber is sourced from tyres processed in Victoria, with the government still planning to bring a crumbing plant to Tasmania in hopes of diminishing the wastage of the roughly 1.3 million tyres annually disposed of in the state.

Australian Flexible Pavement Association executive director of technology Anna D'Angelo said crumb rubber in road surfacing was certainly nothing new and had been extensively used in the United States but only sparingly in Tasmania - something which would change with this plant.

"It's a wonderful opportunity to use crumb rubber and see it expand in Tasmania," Ms D'Angelo said.

"Introducing the use of waste beneficially in the state is excellent."

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The new plant and equipment are designed for permanent operation of 'batching' recycled crumb rubber together with bitumen for future road applications, including asphalt and spray seal.

Deputy Premier and Infrastructure and Transport Minister Michael Ferguson said the new plant was a great innovation and "something the Tasmanian government has been strongly supporting".

"I'm personally passionate about seeing more waste products being value-added and incorporated into our future road projects," the Deputy Premier said.

"The state government has already resurfaced 20 roads this financial year using recycled products, particularly crumb rubber.

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"And now we've built that into our tenders and new road specifications, so it is becoming, for us, something we will mainstream going forward"

Mr Ferguson said Tasmanians can expect to see more crumb rubber roads in the future as the government places a "value on waste and encourages the use of crumb rubber from recycled tyres into our roads".

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