A circular approach to the tire supply chain

Canada’s sustainability goals increasingly rely on transforming supply chains to reduce waste, conserve resources and close the loop on industrial materials. While tire management may not be the first sector that comes to mind, Kal Tire, a Canadian-owned, family-operated company founded in 1953 in Vernon, B.C., is proving that even traditional industries can play a pivotal role.

With 275 retail locations coast to coast, five warehouses — including a new facility in Ontario that opened in 2025 — and mining tire operations spanning five continents, Kal Tire has become a leader in sustainable tire lifecycle management.

Dany Veipans, procurement and remanufacturing specialist at Kal Tire, spoke at the CITT’s annual Canada’s Logistics Conference in Toronto earlier this year, diving deeper into the impact the company and its processes are having on the environment.

Kal Tire’s sustainability impact centres on its circular processes, which include retreading, devulcanization and thermal conversion. It is currently the only Canadian company offering all three methods, combining innovation and environmental responsibility to extend tire lifecycles and reduce resource consumption.

Retreading is at the heart of Kal Tire’s sustainability efforts. In this process, worn tires are stripped down to their base structure and a new tread is applied to meet manufacturing specifications. This allows about 70 per cent of the tire material to be reused, reducing the need for raw rubber, steel and carbon black.

To understand the environmental value of retreading, Kal Tire performed an independent study that compared tire wear. Using a premium tire as the benchmark, a retreaded tire achieved 92 per cent of the mileage, while a single-use tire reached only 34 per cent. Without retreading, used tires typically enter provincial recycling programs and are converted into products such as car mats, mulch or barbells. Once those products reach the end of their life, they are no longer collected for recycling, representing a permanent loss of material. Retreading, in contrast, keeps valuable resources circulating in the tire supply chain.

Each year, Kal Tire collects five to six million pounds of buffings — the rubber shaved from tires during the retreading process. These buffings are cleaned and resized, and impurities such as rocks, wood and fibre are removed. The material is then granulated to the size of sugar, ready for the next stage: devulcanization.

The devulcanization process, tested in collaboration with the University of Waterloo, transforms granulated buffings into 10-kilogram rubber slabs that substitute for high-quality rubber materials in new tires. About 25 per cent of the devulcanized material is further processed into rubber compounds that are reincorporated into retreaded tires, effectively creating a circular material loop that reduces dependence on virgin resources.

This innovation demonstrates how industrial waste can be transformed into a high-value input, reinforcing a sustainable Canadian supply chain while conserving energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with producing new rubber.

The third process Kal Tire offers is thermal conversion in the mining tire sector. For large mining tires, logistics poses a significant sustainability challenge. Their size and weight mean simply transporting them to a retreading facility can generate more CO2 than other parts of the tire lifecycle. To address this, Kal Tire developed and built a thermal conversion facility in Chile, enabling material recovery closer to mine sites.

Thermal conversion breaks tires into reusable components, including oil, carbon black and steel, while also generating syngas for facility energy needs. By processing tires near their point of use, Kal Tire reduces emissions associated with transport and provides a scalable model for mining operations worldwide.

Dr. Darryl Moore of Kal Tire emphasizes that sustainability cannot be achieved by one company alone:

“Sustainability is a team effort. Kal Tire can’t do all of this for all tires on our own. Customers must want to retread, customers have to want to get away from single-use solutions. Even our competitors in the tire market have to be on board. It’s not a one-company solution, but we are at the forefront of developing these technologies.”

This approach highlights a critical principle: environmental sustainability in supply chains requires collaboration across manufacturers, distributors, competitors and customers. Retreading and circular processing are only effective when demand exists to keep materials circulating instead of disposing of them.

Through its comprehensive tire lifecycle initiatives — retreading, devulcanization and thermal conversion — the company keeps millions of pounds of material circulating within the economy, reduces greenhouse gas emissions and conserves natural resources. More importantly, Kal Tire’s model underscores the collaborative nature of supply chain sustainability: technology, infrastructure and customer engagement must align to create meaningful environmental impact.

In a country striving to meet ambitious climate and circular economy goals, Kal Tire’s practices illustrate how innovation and industrial responsibility can intersect to produce measurable environmental benefits across Canada’s supply chain.