Tarmac complete first start-to-finish road recycling contract

TARMAC have successfully completed their first start-to-finish road recycling contract. Working in partnership with the Coventry City Council, the company resurfaced two 1km stretches of road providing access to the city’s ring road. The work was carried out as part of an ongoing highways maintenance contract.

To complete the contract, Tarmac used new, state-of-the-art processing plant and equipment to process recovered planings. The recycled material was then mixed to produce FoamMaster, Tarmac’s foamed bitumen-based asphalt, before being re-laid to provide a durable sub-base. By recycling as much as possible, only a small quantity of new aggregate was used to complete the top surface.

As part of Tarmac’s quality assurance, the recycled mix fulfilled the Highways Agency’s requirement for stiffness and met standards specified in TRL 611, 2004, which provides a guide to the use and specification of cold recycled materials.

Paul Fleetham, Tarmac’s national contracting director, commented: ‘For the first time we have been able to use 5,000 tonnes of recycled material to construct the lower layers of the new road surfaces, to a depth of up to 250mm in places, without the need to sub-contract any part of our service. It’s a total Tarmac solution, from start to finish.’