Tyre Baler Conveyor Systems: How Automation Increases Daily Throughput

By:     Conor Murphy

Throughput is the commercial metric that determines whether a tyre recycling operation is viable, marginal, or highly profitable. At a given gate fee per tyre and bale price per tonne, a facility processing 600 tyres per day has a fundamentally different financial position from one processing 1,200 tyres per day with the same equipment and headcount. The difference between those two outcomes is often not the baler itself but the system surrounding it: specifically, whether the baler is being fed efficiently or whether manual handling constraints are starving it of tyres.

Tyre baler conveyor systems address this directly. They mechanise the tyre feed to the baler, removing the manual loading constraint and allowing the baler to operate closer to its rated throughput capacity for sustained periods. The result is more bales per shift, more tonnes processed per day, and a revenue increase that is directly attributable to the conveyor investment.

Why Manual Loading Creates a Throughput Ceiling

A skilled operator loading a tyre baler manually can sustain a loading rate of around 60 to 90 car tyres per hour over a full shift. This is the practical ceiling imposed by the physical demands of the task: lifting tyres from a floor-level collection point, carrying or rolling them to the baler, and loading them into the elevated chamber repeatedly. As the shift progresses and physical fatigue accumulates, the loading rate typically drops. By the final two hours of a shift, a manual loader may be sustaining 50 to 60 tyres per hour rather than the 80 they managed in the morning.

A tyre baler rated at 6 bales per hour, with 12 car tyres per bale, needs a feed rate of 72 tyres per hour to run at full capacity. Manual loading at 60 to 80 tyres per hour keeps the baler at 83 to 111% of its theoretical feed requirement, meaning the baler is running at or slightly below capacity but with no headroom for pace variation. Any interruption to the manual loading, a rest break, a moment’s distraction, or a brief blockage at the collection point, immediately reduces baler output.

Conveyor System Configurations for Tyre Baling

Tyre baler conveyor systems range from a single inclined conveyor serving one baler to fully integrated multi-stage systems with infeed conveyors, elevated transfer sections, and automated baler loading. The appropriate configuration depends on the daily tyre volume, the facility layout, and the degree of manual handling reduction required.

The simplest configuration is a single inclined conveyor positioned at the baler’s loading side, receiving tyres from a floor-level operator and delivering them to the baler chamber. This addresses the primary manual handling bottleneck: the lifting and elevation of tyres to baler chamber height. For operations processing up to 600 tyres per day, this configuration is typically sufficient.

For higher-volume operations, Gradeall’s TBC8M tyre baler conveyor provides an extended conveyor system designed to feed the MKII tyre baler in high-throughput configurations. Paired with the inclined tyre baler conveyor, these systems create a complete automated feed chain from tyre intake to baler loading.

The Revenue Case for Conveyor Investment

The financial case for a tyre baler conveyor system is built on incremental bale production. A facility adding an inclined conveyor to an existing manual-fed baling line and increasing daily output from 40 bales to 50 bales per day creates 10 additional bales per day of revenue. At a bale value of £30 to £50 per bale (combined gate fee income and bale sale), 10 additional bales per day represents £300 to £500 per day of additional revenue, or £75,000 to £125,000 per year over a 250-working-day year.

Against a conveyor system investment of £15,000 to £30,000 including installation, payback at this revenue increase rate is 1 to 5 months. Even accounting for variable throughput and market conditions, the financial case for a tyre baler conveyor system at a facility processing more than 400 tyres per day is typically compelling.

The Gradeall MKII Tyre Baler is designed to accept the conveyor infeed. Operations planning to add conveyor automation to an existing MKII installation should contact Gradeall to confirm the integration specification for their specific baler serial number and installation configuration.

Multi-Baler Facilities and Conveyor Architecture

Large tyre recycling facilities operating two or more balers face a conveyor architecture decision: dedicated conveyors serving each baler independently, or a shared infeed conveyor distributing tyres across multiple balers. Dedicated conveyors are simpler to operate and maintain, and a failure of one conveyor does not affect the other baler lines. A shared infeed architecture has lower total equipment cost but requires a diverter mechanism and a control system that distributes tyres to the correct baler.

For most multi-baler facilities, dedicated conveyors per baler is the more operationally robust approach. The redundancy built into having independent feed systems on each baler means a single conveyor failure does not shut down the entire facility’s production. The incremental cost of a second conveyor versus the operational continuity benefit is generally favourable for facilities processing over 1,000 tyres per day.

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