North Shore Rubber targets non-tire rubber circularity

AKRON—Wayne Embry Jr. has worked at smaller businesses as well as global conglomerates during his 30-plus year career.

And there's no doubt he prefers the former. That gives him the chance to do what he has the passion to do—be an entrepreneur and help create manufacturing jobs—and to do that in urban areas, targeting distressed neighborhoods.

That trail has led Embry to be president and CEO of North Shore Rubber L.L.C. for the past nine years. During that time he and partner Bob Sheehy, who serves as the firm's executive vice president, have been looking to make their mark in the recycling/sustainability arena of the tire and rubber industry.

And Embry said the time is now for NSR to take that next step where it can build a substantial business in this sector. The company has a business model to provide tire-derived polymer through its relationship with Canada's Tyromer Inc., but also to focus on non-tire recycling through its Closed Loop Management Service (CLMS).

North Shore, he added, has interest from some of the top names in the non-tire rubber product world. NSR just needs to put its infrastructure in place by setting up a manufacturing shop in Northeast Ohio to begin to be able to service this demand.

"The timing right now is perfect," Embry told Rubber News. "We are restructuring. We have a lot of support in the region.

"... Our goal is to create that eco-system where sustainability isn't just materials and recycling. It's also community. So the job creation is critical as well."

Early in his career, Embry spent 10 years at Malco Inc., a minority-owned, Tier 1 automotive interior trim supplier. He came up in sales and marketing in Detroit, calling on General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. He moved his way up to chief operating officer and partner, overseeing a team of 300 employees at three plants.

The owners—which included his father, Wayne Embry Sr., a former NBA player and executive who was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999—ended up selling the firm, and the younger Embry went onto other things.

He earned his MBA at Case Western Reserve University before returning to his childhood hometown of Milwaukee to work with conglomerate Johnson Controls in business development.

There, Embry focused on creating new revenue streams in urban areas. He created a program where Johnson Controls would go in and increase its diversity spend in urban areas by working with minority-owned companies. It involved training programs and working with unions to get more minorities employed in construction.

But to say he didn't enjoy the transition from a 300-person firm to one with more than 30,000 is putting it mildly. He left after less than three years.

"I absolutely dreaded going into work every day," Embry said. "I couldn't stomach the corporate gamesmanship."

That's when he decided to pursue the entrepreneurial path.

Some years into this portion of his career, he was contacted by Sheehy, an old high school basketball teammate, who was looking at some technologies to break down tires. It used high pressure water, with the tire placed in a blast chamber. It definitely broke the tire down, Embry said, pulverizing it, burning off the fiber and completely removing the steel.

With that, North Shore Rubber was born in 2014, and the duo worked with the Canadian group for about 1 1/2 years, until the intellectual property holders and the financial backers ended up suing each other. What Embry recalls from this venture is thinking there was a "really nice looking piece of equipment sitting in a warehouse somewhere in Minnesota."

NSR's fortunes turned up however, in the late 2016/early 2017 time frame. Embry woke up to an alert from a tire trade publication that Tyromer was introducing its tire-derived polymer (TDP) devulcanization technology at an open house at the AirBoss facility in Kitchener, Ontario.

He quickly got on the phone with Tyromer CEO Sam Visaisouk, went up the next week to visit with him and see the technology. "And we've been working together ever since," Embry said.

North Shore started in Milwaukee, focusing primarily on non-tire applications, while Visaisouk and his team worked on tire applications.

"The first thing we learned is that devulcanization technologies have come and gone, and there was a stigma attached to them," Embry said. "So we literally had to create our own compounds to prove that the process and the materials worked."

NSR started working with Harley Davidson, as the motorcycle maker was interested in economic development and job creation in Milwaukee. North Shore targeted some of its rubber applications utilizing TDP, and was able to integrate 45 percent of the recycled material into the Harley Davidson compound and still meet performance requirements.

The project looked promising, according to Embry, but then Harley Davidson informed NSR it wasn't going to influence its Tier 1 suppliers into buying from them, feeling it wasn't appropriate and—perhaps more importantly—the volumes were too low.

At that point, Embry and his partner had to make a vital decision about NSR's future. It had been working with Akron Rubber Development Laboratory Inc. The officials there advised North Shore that while Milwaukee had a handful of companies that NSR could target, the ceiling of potential customers was much higher in the Akron/Cleveland region of Ohio.

So they picked up in 2019 and set up an office in Northeast Ohio, shortly before COVID kicked in. Embry knew the area well as his father had been general manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers during the time the team featured Brad Daugherty, Mark Price and Larry Nance, and could beat just about everyone except, of course, Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.

NSR's business development centered around the use of TDP in non-tire applications.

It also introduced its Closed Loop Management Service, which Embry explained this way: North Shore takes a company's rubber scrap, breaks it down, devulcanizes it, returns the revamped material to the customer, which then uses it in their compounds.

"Then they're able to increase the use of their waste stream, and also create a complete circular sustainable system," he said.

Right now, North Shore is working with about 10 companies as potential customers for the CLMS, with three hoping to move to production soon, possibly by sometime in the first quarter of 2024.

What that means is that NSR needs to get a facility set up so it can meet these capacity needs. It was aiming for a 40,000-sq.-ft. facility that could be expanded, and Embry said the firm has selected a site in Cleveland but hasn't finalized details.

Any material currently processed for customers for use and testing—for both TDF and reprocessing the non-tire scrap—is done through a tolling agreement with Tyromer's facility in Kitchener.

And as Embry and his team gear up for that next step, those they have been working with are impressed with what North Shore has demonstrated thus far.

Visaisouk said while the tire industry is the main focus of its TDP, it also can be used in many non-tire rubber goods to help customers reach sustainability and cost targets. And Tyromer has worked with NSR on a range of such projects, as the U.S. rubber market requires a local presence that a firm like NSR can provide.

"Tyromer has made great progress on producing d-EPDM—devulcanization EPDM—from manufacturing scrap for reuse in production," Visaisouk said. "In addition to his work on TDP with leading companies, Wayne has developed some large partners who will benefit from this technology.

"Our focus now is to support Wayne on setting up an operation in the Cleveland area in the coming months."

Trial runs performed by Mission Rubber Co. have been positive, Mission Vice President Chris Vansell said. The devulcanized EPDM has good physical properties, and processes well in Mission's injection molding machines.

"We look forward to North Shore Rubber ramping up their production to supply us with truckloads of environmentally friendly EPDM rubber compound," Vansell told Rubber News.

ContiTech USA Inc. and Danfoss Power Solutions also are in various stages of projects with North Shore.

Danfoss is looking at using material from NSR in multiple hose layers, including the tube and insulation, said Aaron Clark, global materials science manager and chief chemist out of its Maumee, Ohio, location. NSR was easy to work with and was transparent in its product, availability and pricing, he added, and offered technical expertise and rapidly supplied samples for its initiatives.

The hose manufacturer has done considerable formulation with the NSR TDP-B material and has been able to replace 50 percent of its standard SBR content without issue.

"The benefit is both cost-driven and, from a sustainability perspective, taking advantage of the 'reclaimed' nature of the product," Clark said. "To be clear, as I formulated the product I did have to manipulate other constituents in the recipe to achieve acceptable physical properties. However this was not a complicated effort."

Danfoss, he said, has maturing sustainability goals and does expect to partner with NSR for many of these opportunities.

ContiTech USA has evaluated North Shore's materials for conveyor belting, industrial belt and hose applications, and has been pleased with the progress, Lance Miller, an R&D fellow at the firm's site in Fairlawn, Ohio, told Rubber News.
"NSR has been insightful and responsive from the very beginning of our work together and continues to provide support when called upon," Miller said. "They are focused on meeting our technical performance needs as well as the potential long-term servicing of our manufacturing sites."

North Shore also has taken the initiative to test some specific recipes that have enabled ContiTech to accelerate its assessments. Miller said the TDP material performs satisfactorily in most cases, and many of ContiTech's compounds have shown in lab testing to be technically capable of utilizing the NSR TDP material, though sometimes recipe adjustments are made to enhance its utilization.

At this point, ContiTech also is actively evaluating the Closed Loop Management System for potential use, and that appears promising as well, he said.

"Being able to recycle our 'in-process' waste materials back into our process should not only be better for the environment but also cost-effective by avoiding landfilling," Miller said. "As we look to the future, being able to collect end-of-life rubber goods and put them through the CLMS process is a focus of our sustainability strategy. Having companies in this field, like NSR, will be necessary for us to achieve our sustainability goals, and we look forward to continued collaboration as we move down the path of sustainability."

With those potential opportunities on deck, Embry knows it is imperative NSR needs to get its operation equipped and operating as soon as possible.

But as they do that, Embry also is cognitive of the fact that it is advantageous for North Shore to maintain its status as a minority-owned and controlled business enterprise (MBE). Embry, who is Black, owns 58-percent equity in NSR.

And as it grows, that means funding further growth through available programs, such as the growth initiative of the National Minority Supplier Development Council. That will avoid diluting ownership equity that could put MBE status in jeopardy.

Besides Embry and Sheehy, other current staff primarily are rubber industry veterans working under contractor status in business development roles.

But Embry still has as a long-term goal of creating manufacturing jobs in distressed areas, and he believes each NSR facility would have the potential to employ 55-60 people with "fully loaded" salaries in the $22 to $23 an hour range. Wherever the company would do business, it would work with local schools and universities to try to recruit potential workers, as well as spread the word about the benefits of sustainability.

While a business summary North Shore put together outlines ambitious goals for the years ahead, Embry knows that the only priority right now is getting the first operation up and running, and making sure it's a success.

"I'm very excited," he said. "The timing is great from an industry standpoint, with everyone focused on sustainability. And we're here. We've been participating. But now it's time to go."