High-Volume Tyre Processing: When a Conveyor System Becomes Essential

By:     Conor Murphy

High-volume tyre processing creates a threshold at which a conveyor system transitions from a useful improvement to an operational necessity. Below that threshold, manual loading is inconvenient and carries health and safety risks, but the operation functions. Above it, manual loading becomes a bottleneck that physically prevents the facility from meeting its daily intake commitments, regardless of how many operatives are assigned to the task.

Identifying where that threshold sits, and what it means for equipment specification, is one of the more important decisions a growing tyre recycling business makes. Getting it wrong in either direction carries a cost: specifying conveyor automation too early adds capital expenditure before the volume justifies it; leaving the decision too late creates a period of constrained throughput and compounding health and safety exposure that is difficult to manage through operational measures alone.

This article defines the volume indicators that signal when conveyor automation has moved from recommended to essential for high-volume tyre processing, covers the system configurations appropriate for genuinely large-scale operations, and addresses the multi-baler facility design questions that arise at the upper end of the tyre processing volume spectrum.

The Throughput Threshold Where Manual Loading Fails

A single experienced operator loading a tyre baler manually can sustain approximately 70 to 90 car tyres per hour over a full shift. At 8 hours per shift, the practical maximum for a single-operator manual baling operation is approximately 560 to 720 tyres per day. Two operators can increase this, but not linearly: the second operator at the baler is often constrained by the baler’s cycle rate rather than the loading rate, so the throughput increase from a second manual loader is typically 20 to 40% rather than 100%.

At 800 or more car tyres per day, manual loading cannot sustain the required feed rate to the baler without either running double shifts (which doubles labour cost and still hits a physical ceiling) or accepting that the baler will be idle for portions of the shift while operators rest. This is the practical threshold at which a conveyor system moves from highly recommended to operationally essential.

High-Volume Single-Baler Configurations

For facilities targeting 600 to 900 tyres per day with a single baler, the minimum configuration is the full conveyor line, including an infeed section from tyre storage to the base of the inclined conveyor and the inclined conveyor itself. This allows the operator at the intake point to continuously place tyres on the infeed conveyor, without having to carry or transport them to the baler. The system runs at a sustained pace that approaches the baler’s rated throughput capacity for the full shift.

Gradeall’s TBC8M tyre baler conveyor provides the extended infeed capacity needed for high-volume single-baler configurations. Combined with the MKII Tyre Baler, this configuration can process 700 to 900 car tyres per day with two operators managing the full line from tyre placement to bale ejection.

Multi-Baler Facilities: Design for 1,000+ Tyres Per Day

Facilities that target over 1,000 tyres per day need either a single, very high-throughput baler or multiple standard balers operating in parallel. For most tyre recycling operations, parallel balers with dedicated conveyor systems per baler is the more operationally robust approach: independent systems mean a single baler or conveyor failure does not shut down the entire facility’s production.

A two-baler facility, each with its own dedicated inclined conveyor and infeed section, can process 1,200 to 1,800 car tyres per day with three to four operators managing the two parallel processing lines. The facility’s tyre intake area needs to be designed to efficiently distribute incoming tyres to both baler lines, without cross-traffic or staging congestion.

“Multi-baler facilities need to think about the whole system, not just the individual machines,” says Conor Murphy, Director of Gradeall International. “The baler and conveyor are straightforward. The tyre distribution from intake to the correct processing line, the bale storage and collection logistics, and the site layout that allows all of this to work without vehicles and people crossing each other’s paths: that is the design work that determines whether a high-volume facility actually performs to its capacity.”

For high-volume facility design, Gradeall’s manufacturing and engineering experience across nearly 40 years of tyre recycling equipment supply supports facility layout planning alongside equipment specification. The Gradeall tyre recycling equipment range covers the full processing line, from intake conveyors through sidewall cutters, balers, and bale handling, to create complete, high-volume processing facilities.

Combining Truck Tyre Processing in a High-Volume Line

High-volume tyre recycling facilities rarely process only car tyres. A commercial truck tyre stream, typically in a 22.5-inch rim format at 45 to 60 kg per tyre, requires a sidewall cutter upstream of the baler to ensure consistent bale quality. In a high-volume line, the sidewall cutter can be fed by a dedicated conveyor section and its output directed to the main baler conveyor, merging the cut-tyre stream with the car tyre stream at an appropriate point in the baler feed.

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