A A$40 million mixing plant at Kwinana, opened in March 2026
Fenner Conveyors, the Michelin Group belting company, officially opened its K-MIX Materials Innovation Hub at Kwinana, Western Australia, in March 2026, a A$40 million rubber mixing plant built on the same site as its steel cord conveyor belt factory, and used the opening to launch InfinitySeries, its first belt range made with recycled content. The verified figures cluster as follows. The K-MIX project was announced in 2023 and mixes belt compounds on site; more than 50 industry leaders, politicians and Michelin and Fenner executives attended the opening, according to Fenner's own site history. The first InfinitySeries belt carries a minimum of 10% locally recycled material, recovered from end-of-life conveyor belts by recycling partner Tyrecycle, whose East Rockingham processing facility sits about 3 km from the Kwinana plant. Fenner's managing director, Jen Green, said at the opening: “We're proud to officially open our K-MIX facility, marking our latest investment in Australian conveyor belt manufacturing.” The launch belt was built for a Pilbara iron ore customer, Fenner's sales chief told Australian Mining, though the customer is not named in any published source.
What the 10% figure does and does not specify
The buyer-relevant judgement sits in the launch claim itself. Ten per cent is stated as a minimum for the inaugural belt, but no published source defines the basis of the percentage - share of total belt mass, or share of the cover compound the recycled rubber actually enters - and Fenner has not published which constructions beyond the launch belt carry the content, or how the share is meant to grow. The positioning is equally specific: Fenner keeps a premium belt range for critical applications and presents InfinitySeries for general-purpose duties, so the selection question is application tiering, not wholesale substitution. Performance support, as published, rests on Fenner's own testing and traceability system rather than on third-party certification. Trevor Svenson, Fenner's executive general manager for sales and marketing, put it this way: “All of these things are tested to meet the relevant standards and full traceability of testing; full chain of custody of all that used belt and where it gets recycled.” That is a vendor-run evidence chain, and a purchase specification should therefore ask for the test reports and custody records behind it, not for the brochure percentage alone.
In-house compounding: the asset behind the claim
K-MIX matters to buyers less as a building than as a change in where belt compounds are made. The InfinitySeries compounds are developed by Fenner's in-house industrial compounding specialists and mixed at Kwinana, next to the belt presses, instead of arriving as finished compound from outside the site. Svenson links the plant to keeping intellectual property in-house and to developing products with customers at the facility rather than in isolation. The hub was more than a decade in the making and was accelerated after Michelin acquired Fenner, which let the company pull more of the value chain onshore, according to Australian Mining's account. For a buyer in Western Australia, the practical consequences are compound consistency controlled at the same site that builds the belt, and a shorter, local chain between compound development and belt production. What has not been published is the plant's mixing capacity in tonnes per year, so no lead-time or volume conclusion can be drawn from the opening coverage; the A$40 million figure is an investment number, not a capacity number, and the two should not be conflated in a supplier assessment.
Tyrecycle and the return leg: 4,000 tonnes and an award
The recycling half of the system is a logistics arrangement as much as a materials one. Tyrecycle collects end-of-life belts, sorts and separates rubber and steel at East Rockingham, and micronises the recovered rubber, which Fenner then compounds at K-MIX into new belts - a belt-to-belt loop rather than a downcycling route into unrelated products. Tyrecycle says the partnership has diverted more than 4,000 tonnes of used conveyor belts from landfill, a figure reported when the pair won the Closing the Loop Award at the 2026 WasteSorted WA Awards. Fenner and Tyrecycle are extending the model beyond Western Australia, with programs rolling out in Queensland, a first recycling delivery arrangement with a port in north Queensland, and the Bowen Basin and Hunter Valley named as further targets. Legacy belt stockpiles - some sitting at mine sites for decades, in Svenson's telling - are part of the intended feedstock. For buyers, the consequence is that take-back is becoming a contracted deliverable with collection, processing location and material destination attached, and it belongs in the supply agreement rather than in a sustainability annex.
Not recovered carbon black, and not take-back alone
Two neighbouring ideas should not be confused with this one. Recovered carbon black is a pyrolysed filler, typically sourced from end-of-life tyres and dosed into compounds as a carbon product; the InfinitySeries input is different - mechanically recovered belt rubber, micronised and re-compounded into new belt material, with the steel fraction reclaimed separately. The specification questions differ accordingly: carbon black asks about ash, grit and reinforcement behaviour, while recycled belt rubber asks about feedstock consistency, compound share and application limits. The second confusion is with take-back programs that promise collection at end of life but have no manufacturing outlet for what they collect. Kwinana closes both ends in one place - a mixing plant that consumes the recyclate and a return channel that feeds it - which is why this article treats the Fenner event cluster as a single story covering the earlier take-back angle as well. A buyer comparing circularity claims across suppliers should establish, for each, whether both ends exist and where each sits.
Specifying recycled content: four checks before the order
First, define the percentage in the purchase specification: state whether the recycled share is measured against total belt mass or against the compounds it enters, set the minimum per product rather than per range, and require the figure on the belt's delivery documentation. Second, fix the application boundary in writing: record which conveyors at your site qualify for recycled-content belts and which stay on the premium range, using the vendor's application criteria rather than a verbal assurance. Third, ask for the evidence pack behind the claim: test standards and results for the recycled-content construction, plus the chain-of-custody records that follow the feedstock from a returned belt to a delivered one. Finally, write the return leg into the contract: who collects end-of-life belts and at whose cost, where they are processed, what credit or pricing treatment returned material earns, and what happens to belts the loop cannot accept. Fenner has not published pricing for InfinitySeries against its conventional range, so any cost assumption - premium, parity or saving - is currently the buyer's to verify at quotation, not the vendor's to imply.
Manufacturer announcements and our analysis are distinguished. Product claims require verification for the specific application.
Sources
Fenner Conveyors - Fenner Conveyors Officially Opens K-MIX Materials Innovation Hub, Launches Recycled Content Conveyor Belt ↗Fenner Conveyors' launch release, distributed via PR Wire and opened in full: the official opening of the K-MIX hub at Kwinana, the InfinitySeries launch as the inaugural recycled-content belt in the Tyrecycle partnership, compounds developed in-house and processed at K-MIX, the A$40 million project announced in 2023 at the steel cord belt plant site, and both Jen Green statements quoted in this article are taken from it.
Australian Mining - Building towards a circular conveyor future ↗Australian Mining's feature from its June 2026 issue, opened in full: the March opening and A$40 million investment, Trevor Svenson's comments on the first belt built for a Pilbara customer, the premium-range positioning, the testing and chain-of-custody statement quoted in this article, Tyrecycle's plant about 3 km away, the decade-long development accelerated by the Michelin acquisition, and the Queensland and port rollout plans are taken from it.
International Mining - Fenner Conveyors takes major circularity step with launch of INFINITYSERIES recycled-content belts ↗International Mining's report of 24 March 2026 on the launch: the inaugural belt produced using 10% locally recycled materials through the Tyrecycle partnership, compounds developed by Fenner's in-house specialists and mixed locally at K-MIX, the general-purpose application positioning across mining, processing, ports, industrial operations and agriculture, and the full-lifecycle chain-of-custody framing are taken from it.
Fenner Conveyors - Our Story ↗Fenner Conveyors' own company history page: its 2026 entry records the K-Mix official opening before more than 50 industry leaders, local politicians and members of Michelin and Fenner Conveyors, and describes the Kwinana mixing facility as significantly enhancing Fenner's ability to offer tailored belt compounds and enabling circular manufacturing next to its recycling partner Tyrecycle.
Weibold - Tyrecycle and Fenner Conveyors win Closing the Loop Award for InfinitySeries ↗Weibold's report on the 2026 WasteSorted WA Awards: the Closing the Loop Award to Tyrecycle and Fenner Conveyors, Tyrecycle's figure of more than 4,000 tonnes of end-of-life conveyor belts diverted from landfill, the minimum 10% recycled content derived from locally recovered belts, and the description of Tyrecycle's East Rockingham processing - sorting rubber and steel, granulating recovered rubber - are taken from it. The tonnage is Tyrecycle's figure, reported by Weibold.
