Velorim is making cycling green

The founding Directors were previously Trustees of a Bicycle Recycling Charity, providing training and work experience for long-term unemployed to get them back into the job market. The work involved renovating/refurbishing donated second-hand bikes, so they could be sold at an affordable price to those in the community who needed them. However, about ½ of the bikes donated were too deteriorated to be economically refurbished, so were stripped for any usable parts. 

At the end of this process, the charity was left with piles of steel, aluminum, plastic, and rubber. The local scrap dealers were more than happy to take the first three piles, but no one wanted the rubber. At the time the Trustees were working closely with other cycle shops across the UK redefining the Cycle Mechanic Apprenticeship and in discussing what to do with waste rubber, everyone involved said they had the same issue. 

To try and deal with the growing mountain of waste rubber (tyres & tubes), the Trustees approached local car tyre recyclers. One felt sorry for the charity and agreed to take a single payload, most said ’No way José!’, and a couple said they would take them at charges up to £9/tyre! The charity simply could not afford such costs or raise funding to such excessive charges, so the Trustees tasked Richard & Russ to find a solution. After much research, they found out that no one in the world recycled cycle tyres or tubes in any significant quantities, and they were either incinerated or dumped in landfill.

Richard & Russ thus decided to spin off Velorim in 2018 with the sole purpose of researching and developing a solution. With the help of the University of Birmingham, the type of materials in tyres and tubes were identified and a full R&D Road Map was created that defined how these end-of-life waste items could be completely 100% recycled into reusable materials that were desperately needed by British industry. First, however, the company needed to get customers who would support this approach and accumulate enough material to make recycling economically viable. 

Velorim launched the UK National Bicycle Waste Recycling Scheme in September 2020 and it it now services over 650 locations across the UK. At present the waste tyres and tubes are recycled by 3rd parties, which is monitored, but not very cost-effective for the scheme. Thus in late 2022, Velorim started seeking property to enable it to bring the reprocessing of the tyres and tubes in-house, with machinery it has specifically developed for that purpose, and expects to have its new site in South Staffordshire operational before the end of 2024.