International Airlines Group invests in company developing SAF from waste tires

International Airlines Group announced Jan. 22 that it has invested in Wastefront, a leading tire-to-fuel company, which plans to turn used tires into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).

The SAF will be made by converting waste tires into tire-derived oil (TDO), which is then refined into road fuels and SAF.

The SAF produced is expected to give lifecycle carbon-emission savings of over 80 percent versus fossil fuels.

IAG said this deal is another step forward for the company in its commitment to SAF and enables Wastefront to begin construction on its fully circular tire-to-fuel facility in the Port of Sunderland on England’s North East coast.

The £100-million-plus plant will begin operations in 2026 and, once fully operational the following year, will process up to 10 million waste tires annually.

The U.K. currently generates around 50 million end-of-life tires 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 U.K.’s SAF mandate, which came into effect Jan. 1 requiring at least 10 percent of all jet fuel used in flights departing the U.K. to come from sustainable feedstocks by 2030, rising to 22 percent by 2040.

Achieving the U.K.’s 2030 SAF target will require producing 1.2 million metric tons of SAF annually for the aviation industry—almost 20 times the U.K.’s estimated production of 64,000 tons in 2023, according to the International Air Transport Association.

“We’re proud to support innovators like Wastefront, who are finding new forms of feedstocks to produce advanced fuels,” said Jonathon Counsell, IAG’s group sustainability officer, said. “However, as global demand for SAF grows, it’s crucial to expand production in the U.K. The recent government mandate will help reduce aviation’s overall carbon impact, but airlines need confidence that the planned revenue certainty mechanism will support U.K. businesses in developing SAF technology without further increasing the cost base for U.K. airlines.”

Vianney Valès, CEO of Wastefront, said, “At Wastefront, our mission is to turn a problematic waste stream into a highly valuable resource. We can create SAF at an extremely competitive cost with a very low environmental footprint—capable of reducing carbon emissions in the production process by up to 80 percent compared to traditional jet fuels. This investment is a testament to the potential of Wastefront’s technology in tackling waste and air pollution.”

IAG’s investment is part of its broader strategy to reduce carbon emissions in its operations across its airlines Aer Lingus, British Airways, Iberia, Vueling and Level.

The group has already secured more than a third of its 2030 SAF target and was the first European airline group to pledge 10 percent SAF usage by 2030.

Wastefront already has a 10-year agreement in place with Gateway Resources, the largest exporter of end-of-life tires (ELTs) in the U.K., for the feedstock supply of ELTs at its flagship plant in Sunderland.

In its initial phases, the plant will coprocess TDO into SAF in third-party refineries before transitioning to fully dedicated SAF production facilities.

The plant will be built in phases, starting with one module producing 8,000 tons of oil annually and eventually expanding to four modules with a total capacity of 32,000 tons per year.

By 2030, Wastefront plans to operate four large-scale plants, collectively producing 128,000 tons of oil annually.

This will feed into a centralized SAF facility capable of converting 70 percent of this oil into SAF, yielding approximately 90,000 tons of SAF per year.