The Western Australian and Australian Governments are working together to transform Western Australia’s waste and recycling industry through the Recycling Modernisation Fund.
Joint funding of $35 million has been awarded subject to contract to eight infrastructure projects that will increase Western Australia’s capacity to process and recycle the State’s plastics and tyres waste. The Western Australian Government remains committed to awarding $5 million in industrial zoned land in the future.
Government funding will leverage $47 million of industry investment meaning that total combined investment in local processing is likely to be more than $82 million.
The projects funded will create at least 200 new ongoing full-time jobs and provide the capacity to process 140,000 tonnes of Western Australian plastic and tyre waste every year
Successful recipients
Chairay Sustainable Plastic Company
Construction of a new 15,000 tonne per year plastics reprocessing plant and 6,000 tonne per year sorting line in the Perth metropolitan area to recycle PET, HDPE and polypropylene.
Funding: $5,640,000
D&M Waste Management
Build a recycling facility in Kwinana processing polyolefin and polyester plastics (such as PET, HDPE and polypropylene), with a supporting shredding and grinding plant in Karratha for high density polyethylene pipe. Annual capacity of up to 2,500 tonnes.
Funding: $832,000
Pact Group Holdings Ltd
Develop a reprocessing facility in Perth’s eastern suburbs to sort, shred, wash and granulate 17,000 tonnes of input plastic (such as PET, HDPE and polypropylene) annually into high quality flake to produce resin locally. This will be used to substitute virgin material in local plastics manufacturing.
Funding: $9,590,400
4M Waste Pty Ltd
Expansion of operations at a new site in the Perth metropolitan area to allow recycling of up to 12,000 tonnes of used tyres annually as a crumb rubber product to be used in road construction.
Funding: $2,966,505
Complete Tyre Solutions
Build a tyre recycling plant to process waste tyres into crumb rubber to Main Roads WA specifications to be used in the WA asphalt and spray seal industry. The annual processing capacity of the proposed project is over 9,000 tonnes.
Funding: $3,500,000
Elan Energy Matrix Pty Ltd
Purchase a high-capacity shredder as part of process of turning tyres into products such as oil, carbon char and milled steel using thermal processing technology. The Welshpool facility proposes to increase recycled waste tyres by 40 per cent, raising the existing recycling capacity from 5,000 to a total of 7,000 waste tyres per day.
Funding: $357,867
Kariyarra-Tyrecycle Pty Ltd
Establish a tyre processing facility in Port Hedland that will allow at least 27,000 tonnes of mining tyres to be recovered annually and processed locally for use in international crumb rubber production. The company is a 50 per cent indigenous-controlled joint venture targeting end-of-life mining tyres.
Funding: $6,921,845
Tyrecycle Pty Ltd
Invest in equipment at a site in the Perth metropolitan area to produce up to 42,000 tonnes of export-approved tyre shred and 3,000 of tyre crumb annually.
Funding: $5,191,383
Background
In March 2020, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) agreed a timetable to phase out exports of certain waste materials.
The COAG decision followed increasing community concern about the impact of exported Australian waste on developing countries and changes to the local recycling industry resulting from various countries’ restrictions on imported waste.
The COAG waste export bans agreed on 13 March 2020 are planned to come into force from:
- 1 January 2021 for glass
- 1 July 2021 for mixed plastics which are not of a single resin/polymer type and/or which require further sorting, cleaning and processing before use in remanufacturing
- 1 December 2021 for tyres that have not been shredded or further processed
- 1 July 2022 for single resin/polymer plastics which have not been reprocessed (e.g. cleaned and baled PET bottles)
- 1 July 2024 for mixed paper and cardboard.
The Australian and Western Australian governments are partnering to invest a total of $40 million in Western Australian recycling projects through the Australian Government’s Recycling Modernisation Fund. The funding will be distributed by the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation.
$15 million dollars in grant funding is being provided by the State. The State Government has also allocated access to industrial zoned land valued at up to $5 million for processing infrastructure.
State Government funds will be matched by the Australian Government.
In July 2020 the Government of Western Australia called for expressions of interest for funding to support the development of sufficient new plastics and tyres processing infrastructure to manage all of the plastics and tyres currently collected in Western Australia that will be restricted by the COAG waste export bans. This closed on 17 August 2020 and proponents were shortlisted for more detailed evaluation which concluded in January 2021.
