How is the steel wire actually separated out from shredded tyre material?
Short answer: After shredding breaks the tyre down into smaller pieces, magnetic separators pull the loosened steel wire — both the bead wire and the internal steel belts — away from the rubber and fabric fractions as the shredded material passes along a conveyor, a genuinely effective separation method precisely because steel is magnetic and rubber is not, allowing fairly clean separation without needing to melt or chemically treat anything.
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List Free →Why magnetic separation works so cleanly here
Because steel responds to a magnetic field and vulcanised rubber genuinely does not, running shredded material past magnetic drums or overhead magnets pulls the steel fraction away with minimal cross-contamination — a simple, physical separation rather than anything chemical.
Why the steel has to be loosened first
Magnetic separation only works once shredding has genuinely freed the wire from the surrounding rubber — an intact steel-belted section still embedded in rubber will not separate cleanly, which is why this step always follows shredding rather than preceding it.
Why the recovered steel still has genuine value
The recovered wire is a real, sellable scrap metal stream in its own right, separate entirely from the rubber output — most facilities treat it as a distinct, valuable byproduct of the overall recycling process rather than waste.
How ScrapTrade Fits In
This recovered steel wire is exactly the kind of scrap metal stream that gets weighed, graded, and sold through ScrapTrade once it has been separated from the rubber.
Tyre recycling recovers far more material than most people realise — rubber, steel, and fabric each follow a distinct path from collection to end product. ScrapTrade connects verified buyers and sellers of the scrap metal recovered along the way, with transparent weighing and escrow-protected payments.
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