International Airlines Group (IAG) 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 life cycle carbon emission savings of more than 80% versus fossil fuels.

This deal is another construction on its fully circular tire-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 tires annually. The UK 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 such as 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).

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% 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 UK, for the feedstock supply of ELTs at its flagship plant in Sunderland.

In its initial phases, the plant will co-process 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 tonnes of oil annually and eventually expanding to four modules with a total capacity of 32,000 tonnes per year. By 2030, Wastefront plans to operate four large-scale plants, collectively producing 128,000 tonnes of oil annually. This will feed into a centralized SAF facility capable of converting 70% of this oil into SAF, yielding approximately 90,000 tonnes of SAF per year.

IAG is one of the world’s largest airline groups with 582 aircraft, directly connecting Europe to 250+ destinations in 91 countries and carrying 115+ million passengers per year. Its leading airlines in Spain, the UK and Ireland include Aer Lingus, British Airways, Iberia, Vueling and LEVEL. The Group also consists of two additional businesses: IAG Cargo and IAG Loyalty.

Founded in Oslo in 2019 by Inge Berge, Christian A. Hvamstad, Vegard Bringsjord and Jon Gausen, Wastefront is a Tire-to-Fuel business that is on a pathway to convert End-of-Life-Tires into ultra low- cost Sustainable Aviation Fuels and Sustainable Chemicals such as recovered Carbon Black (rCB). Its solution, the Wastefront Blueprint, is a circular process through which Wastefront has taken a wasteful industry practice and generated a series of sustainable outcomes which extract value throughout.

Its first phase of the full-scale plant at the Port of Sunderland will be fully operational in 2027 and have an annual capacity to process 10 million waste tires.

Wastefront has created a first-of-its-kind complete supply chain for this, by striking a series of deals to rapidly bring these products to market. The company has offtake agreements in place with Vitol and Weber & Schaer, partnerships with Devaltec and Technip Energies, strategic partnerships with University of Newcastle and ENSO, support from the Sunderland City Council, and feedstock supply through a 10-year agreement with Gateway Resources, the largest exporter of End-of-Life Tires in the UK.