At the RAR2025 Conference in Lisbon, Georgia’s Tegeta Green Planet took center stage under the leadership of its CEO, Shalva Akhvlediani, presenting a bold and practical roadmap for transforming end-of-life tyres into sustainable infrastructure. With infrastructure demands rising and environmental concerns growing globally, the speech by Shalva Akhvlediani underscored how policy, industry, and waste management are converging in Georgia via ambitious projects — especially the construction of a national tyre recycling factory scheduled to begin operations in the third quarter of 2026.
Tegeta Holding: The Industrial Foundation
To understand Tegeta Green Planet’s potential, it’s important to see its parent company: Tegeta Holding. Founded in 1995, Tegeta Holding began as a small spare-parts shop. It quickly expanded, importing tyres, forging a landmark partnership with Bridgestone in 1998, and moving into automotive services, construction equipment, and representation of premium automotive brands.
The largest automotive company in the Caucasus region and Central Asia, Tegeta offers customers the full spectrum of the automotive ecosystem, including light, truck and construction, as well as commercial, passenger and industrial transport. Tegeta Motors operates in 28 branches across Georgia, serving a combined customer base of 35,000 corporate clients and 500,000 retail customers, encompassing nearly 300+ global brand partners, and a team of close to 3,000 professionals. Tegeta carries out international trade on four continents and exclusively represents famous brands Porsche, Lamborghini, Bentley, Volvo, Toyota, Mazda, the partners are MAN, JCB, Liebherr, and others.
Sustainability has become part of Tegeta Holding’s core strategy. The company has published a formal sustainability report, aligned with international standards, and integrates environmental care in its operations: reducing paper usage, deploying electric and hybrid vehicle options, supporting green building standards, and running internal waste collection programs for plastics and paper.
Tegeta Holding has introduced a structured waste management system through its subsidiary Tegeta Green Planet — Georgia’s first licensed Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) operator, authorized by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture. Established in 2022, Tegeta Green Planet drives the company’s circular economy efforts by collecting, transporting, recycling and reusing automotive waste-specifically tyres, oils, and batteries, turning it into valuable resources. It forms the key arm of Tegeta Holding’s commitment to circular economy and responsible waste management.
From Tyres to Recycling: The Process and the Factory
Tyres are one of the most challenging waste streams globally: durable, large, often toxic when burned, slow to decompose, and bulky to manage. In Georgia, the accumulation of used tyres has posed environmental risks to soil, water, and human health. Under the leadership of Shalva Akhvlediani, Tegeta Green Planet has developed a multi-stage process to bring order to this challenge.
- Collection Network: Collection points across the country receive end-of-life tyres from service stations, retailers, municipalities. This ensures that tyres are diverted from informal dumping or disposal activities.
- Transportation to Licensed Facilities: Once collected, tyres are transported to licensed recycling or processing facilities, following regulatory standards established under Georgia’s Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation. Adherence to licensing ensures safety and environmental compliance.
- Recycling Process: The plan includes mechanical shredding, separation of steel and textile components, and grinding/crumbling of rubber into granules or crumbs. These secondary materials are then sorted into sizes for different uses.
- Reuse in Infrastructure & Other Applications: Shredded rubber and crumb rubber are used for rubberized asphalt — an application that promises improved road durability, noise reduction, heat resistance, and potential cost savings in maintenance. Other uses include playground surfaces, insulation, and other rubber-derived products.
At Lisbon, Shalva Akhvlediani emphasized that Tegeta Green Planet is not yet recycling tyres on the scale its ambition demands — but that is about to change.
The New Tyre Recycling Factory: A Game Changer
The most headline-worthy project presented by Shalva Akhvlediani at RAR2025 is the construction of Georgia’s first industrial-scale tyre recycling factory. Key features:
- Construction underway, aiming for operational status in Q3 2026.
- Will process thousands of tonnes of end-of-life tyres annually.
- Will use advanced European technology for the separation of raw materials: steel, textile fibres, rubber granules of various sizes. Each component will have specific downstream uses.
Shalva Akhvlediani described how this factory will make possible what has until now been limited scale: converting large volumes of waste tyres into structured materials that feed infrastructure and industrial needs. The vision is to close loops: tyres → collection → processing → reuse.
The factory stands as a tangible anchor for Georgia’s circular economy — turning what has been environmental cost into industrial input, increasing local manufacturing of recycled materials, generating employment, improving road performance, and reducing waste, landfill use, and greenhouse gas emissions.
Policy, Industry & Institutional Support
To make these plans happen, Tegeta Green Planet, under Akhvlediani’s direction, relies on legal frameworks and institutional cooperation. At RAR2025, Shalva Akhvlediani highlighted the critical role of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture and the Ministry of Infrastructure in drafting and enforcing Extended Producer Responsibility legislation, setting licensing standards, and permitting regulation for collection, transport, and recycling facilities.
Without the EPR framework, the tyre recycling factory would lack both regulatory grounding and market incentives. Shalva Akhvlediani made clear that the policy environment is now favorable, that waste-producers — companies importing or manufacturing tyres — are incorporated into systems that assign responsibility for end-of-life management. This creates predictable revenue streams, compliance requirements, and accountability — necessary elements for long‐term investment.
Challenges & Opportunities Ahead
In his presentation, Shalva Akhvlediani didn’t shy away from the challenges:
- Public awareness: many consumers are unaware of how to properly dispose of used tyres.
- Collection logistics: reaching remote areas, ensuring licensed transport, preventing illegal dumping.
- Technology and scale: the recycling factory’s capacity must scale to meet rising volumes.
- Market development: finding consistent demand for recycled materials (rubber granulate, crumb rubber) in asphalt producers, construction firms, product manufacturers.
But with opportunity comes momentum. Under Akhvlediani’s leadership, Tegeta Green Planet aims to attract international technical partners, Portuguese and European manufacturers interested in recycled materials technology, investors seeking green industrial projects, and downstream industries (road builders, infrastructure firms) who can incorporate recycled tyre products such as rubberized asphalt.
Why It Matters for Infrastructure & Environment
Tyre-based rubberized asphalt is increasingly seen worldwide as a promising method to reduce road noise, improve durability (rubber helps resist cracking), reduce urban heat absorption, and lower lifecycle costs. For Georgia, where road infrastructure is important in mountainous terrain and varying climates, the inclusion of recycled rubber could bring substantial performance benefits.
Additionally, the environmental benefit is clear: every tonne of tyres processed represents reduced risk of fires, avoided leaching of chemicals into soil, lowered volume in landfills, and emissions reduced through less incineration or uncontrolled burning.
Shalva Akhvlediani’s message at RAR2025 places Georgia in regional leadership: showing that middle-income countries can build circular systems that combine environmental protection, industrial development, infrastructure improvement, and global cooperation.
Conclusion: A Vision in Action
By the close of RAR2025, Shalva Akhvlediani presented not just promise, but actions underway. The new tyre recycling factory, the operational EPR system, existing collection networks, and commitment from Tegeta Holding form a coherent strategy. Georgia is not waiting for external examples; it is building its own model of circular innovation.
For those following circular economy developments — policy makers, investors, infrastructure service providers, and environmentalists — Tegeta Green Planet under Shalva Akhvlediani is a case worth watching. Georgia’s approach combines Tegeta Holding’s organizational strength, industrial scale, regulatory support, and environmental responsibility in ways that could inspire replication across the region.
About Tegeta Green Planet & Tegeta Holding
Tegeta Green Planet is a subsidiary of Tegeta Holding, Georgia’s leading automotive and automotive-services company, with operations in vehicle sales, servicing, parts, and construction equipment. Tegeta Holding represents more than 300 automotive and industrial brands, operates 28 service centers nationwide, serves both retail and corporate clients, and has substantial presence in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
