Truck Tyre Manufacturing To Cease At Conti’s Herstal Factory?

Continental is reviewing plans to discontinue truck tyre manufacturing at its plant in Herstal, Belgium. An announcement to this effect was made to workers yesterday by Jean-Marie Pirnay, chairman and managing director of Continental Benelux. Herstal majors in truck tyre production and employs 645 factory workers and 132 salaried employees.

Should truck tyre production cease, Continental says that “other activities would be retained and expanded”, especially the production of car tyres using the Modular Manufacturing Process (MMP), which would secure around 100 jobs. Continental also stresses that, should the review recommend cessation of truck tyre production, every effort will be made to re-integrate redundant employees into the labour market. The reason for the review is the severe price pressure in the European truck tyre market, which has cast doubt on the profitability of the operations at Herstal, which have a high production cost.

The level of investment required at the plant to restore high level production of truck tyres would be uneconomic, says Continental. Market analysts estimate that closure of the truck tyre unit at Herstal would reduce Continental’s truck tyre capacity by some 600,000 units, or 15 per cent of total output. It is expected that truck tyre production will be moved to low-cost production centres, such as Central Europe.