Company looks forward to doubling revenue with recycled tire products. (NISKAYUNA) - Tire Conversion Technologies Inc. has risen from the ashes. 

Company looks forward to doubling revenue with recycled tire products

By LARRY RULISON Business writer

NISKAYUNA - Tire Conversion Technologies Inc. has risen from the ashes.

The Niskayuna-based manufacturer, which turns shredded tires into rubber products sold to the industrial, business and household markets, has acquired the assets of Enviroform Recycled Products Inc. of Geneva.

TCT's prospects looked bleak just three years ago after a fire that was later ruled arson destroyed its manufacturing facility at the Scotia-Glenville Industrial Park. The company moved to the Hillside Commerce Park off Balltown Road in 2004. It occupies 35,000 square feet in what is the former Nova Bus plant.

The company's future looks a lot better now. Terms of the Enviroform deal, which occurred last August, have not been revealed. But TCT, which moved the company's manufacturing equipment to Niskayuna in late December, hopes to double Enviroform's revenues from last year, which totaled be tween $250,000 and $300,000. "We're not starting from scratch, but we're still trying to build it," said Stephen Perrin, TCT's chief executive. "We're trying to find ways of improving the products." Before the acquisition of the Enviroform assets, TCT's main product was DuraBoard, a rubber material also made from recycled tires that is used as snowplow edges, protective bumpers for docks and foundation pads for heavy equipment. The Enviroform product line includes traffic and safety sign bases, wheel chocks, speed bumps, and parking lot wheel stops. It also makes rubber flooring and splash blocks used to channel gutter runoff into the ground. Some of Enviroform's equipment was left at its former facility in Geneva, and research and development and some manufacturing will continue there, Perrin said.

Robert Bates, the former owner of Enviroform, has been retained by TCT as a consultant, Perrin said. TCT now employs 13 people in Niskayuna and five people in Geneva. Four people were hired locally to handle the additional manufacturing capacity.

While the DuraBoard products were seasonal in nature, TCT officials say the Enviroform products will be manufactured year-round. Manufacturing manager Chanan Shapiro said the Niskayuna facility's manufacturing capacity for the Enviroform product line is now 20,000 pounds of product per week, although he declined to say how much the company is producing right now.

The company does not process any old tires itself. Instead, it buys shredded tires, also known as crumb rubber, in lots of 40,000 pounds at a time. The rubber is then mixed with a liquid binder, and that mixture is placed into a mold, where it is heated into a shape and then cooled down to become the finished product.

TCT is not the only tire recycling company based in the Capital Region. Another manufacturer, New York Rubber Recycling, is located at the Rotterdam Industrial Park. That company is a subsidiary of PermaLife Products LLC, a New Jersey company that uses a cryogenic process to make crumb rubber that is used as a wood mulch substitute, for playgrounds and for synthetic athletic field surfaces.

Another tire recycling company, CRM Co. LLC of Los Angeles, is also planning to open a facility in Colonie later this year.

The scrap tire recycling industry has been credited with significantly reducing scrap tire stock piles in the United States. Since 1990, the stockpile has been reduced by 73 percent, and totaled 275 million tires at the end of 2003, according to the Rubber Manufacturers Association, a trade group based in Washington, D.C. The tires are used for fuel, civil engineering and ground rubber applications, which includes rubber molded into shapes or used for athletic fields.

TCT's expansion is expected to also benefit the Hillside Commerce Park, which includes the 190,000-square-foot former Nova Bus facility. That property is owned by Hillside Venture LLC, a partnership that is affiliated with Rotterdam General Contracting Corp. of Rotterdam.

Hillside Venture also owns a parcel of land next door to the building that is home to Unilux Advanced Manufacturing LLC, a boiler manufacturer. That parcel has about 28 acres that are "shovel ready" for development, and another 60 to 70 acres that are vacant but could be developed in the future.

Ray Gillen, chairman of the Schenectady Metroplex Development Authority, a local economic development group, says officials have been marketing the two sites as the Niskayuna Tech Park.

John Tommasone, a managing member of Hillside Venture, said the former Nova Bus building is almost full, which is good news for the partnership.

"Everybody is starting to inquire about the property next to it," he said.