Recycling reps talk to county
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Company president David Davidson and Chief Operation Officer T.L. Mancuso answered questions about the proposed operation which will generate a minimum of 100 jobs in Warren County in its initial phase. The jobs will average from $10 to $15 per hour for hourly employees, according to Davidson, and the plant will run 24/7. Executives could earn anywhere from $58,000 to $78,000 per year.
Davidson said the company is ready to go and could begin almost immediately once a steady supply of tires is established.
“From our perspective, we have the machinery right now,” Davidson said. “If you ask me when we could set up, we could literally load it up on trucks and transport it immediately to whatever city or county designated within probably 48 hours.
“We need a building, we need approval, we need employees, but above all, it’s not going to do any good unless we have tires,” Davidson said. “We have to have a certain amount of rubber or the facility is no good.”
Davidson said the company needs a minimum of million tires a year in order for the facility to be successful. Rogers says he is working with the state on getting other counties to commit to supplying tires to the company.
“I think most counties have a contract right now up to the end of June,” Rogers said.
In order for other counties to come on board, Rogers said it was important to have the company in operation in the near future.
“We’d really like to have them up and operating just to assure people that we can handle it,” Rogers said. “And this is going to solve our tire problems. We’ll have absolutely no rubber going into landfills.
“Within a couple or three months, or maybe a month and a half, we’ll be up and running just to prove that we can handle all the tires. We talked to the governor’s office and he’s assured us if they can handle all the tires that he would push it for all over the state of Tennessee to bring them in.
The process is straightforward and does not include any burning of tires.
“It goes through an initial process where the tires are ground up into a 12 inch or six inch piece,” Davidson said. The rubber is then goes through a granulation process. It can then be marketed for asphalt mixture or for molding materials.
According to Davidson, all the product will be exported to China.
“All we’re going to do is supply the machinery and the counties will supply the tires,” Davidson said.
Davidson said the process is environmentally friendly.
“We just finished our prototype this year,” Davidson said. “We’ve passed all environmental tests.”
Davidson said the company is willing to bring the machine and give a demonstration of what it can do and how the process works. Though tires are going to be the initial phase, the machine can actually recycle almost any type of waste, including metal, household and commercial waste and even discarded computer components, which are generally a problem for many communities.
The company that will be operating the plant in Warren County is a subsidiary of OZT Holding called Gulf Coast Environmental. The company is already working on securing the contracts to process the debris left in the wake of the storms in the Gulf Coast.
The company also purchased a company in China which produces wind power generators for which the components will be manufactured in China but assembled and marketed in the U.S. Warren County is also in the running for one of the four assembly plants the company plans to build in the states.
The company hopes to begin in an existing building and then build a plant in the future. They haven’t decided on a building as yet, but are looking at several here in the county. They have also toured the industrial park as a site for possible future construction. Davidson and Mancuso say the process will require at least a 20 foot high ceiling and a minimum of 10,000 square feet, and preferably 20,000 square feet with at least 10 acres of land.
Davidson says he feels China will provide a strong market for these materials for many years to come. He emphasized this is an American owned company which markets its products in China.
WCPI Public Radio, 91.3 on your radio dial, will be broadcasting the meeting in its entirety at 12:25 p.m. today.