IAG has invested in Wastefront, a leading tyre-to-fuel company, who plan to turn used tyres into Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF).
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The SAF will be made by converting waste tyres into tyre derived oil, which is then refined into road fuels and SAF. The SAF produced is expected to give life cycle carbon emission savings of over 80% versus fossil fuels. This deal is another step forward for IAG in its commitment to SAF and enables Wastefront to begin construction on its fully circular tyre-to-fuel facility in the Port of Sunderland.
The plant will begin operations in 2026 and once fully operational the following year, will process up to 10 million waste tyres annually. The UK currently generates around 50 million end-of-life tyres each year, with most of them currently exported to countries such as India where they are incinerated in cement plants or disposed of in landfills.
Facilities like Wastefront’s planned Sunderland plant are critical to meeting the UK’s SAF mandate, which came into effect on 1 January 2025, requiring at least 10% of all jet fuel used in flights departing the UK to come from sustainable feedstocks by 2030, rising to 22% by 2040.
Achieving the UK’s 2030 SAF target will require producing 1.2 million tonnes of SAF annually for the aviation industry – almost 20 times the UK’s estimated production of 64,000 tonnes in 2023, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
