Continental Wants To Be A Major Global Player In The Agricultural Field

If everything in life went according to plan or the way it was once written down in the corporate strategy books, then the production of agricultural tyres would have been abandoned long ago. Already way back when Messrs. Haverbeck and Borgmann were board members, there were such angry arguments about the distribution of costs that closing down production looked to be a foregone conclusion.

Eventually, however, they changed their minds and production of agricultural tyres continued, even though there was next to no money to be made from it. Closing down production would have cost the corporation even more and so it opted for the lesser evil, but for the company’s dedicated agricultural tyres there was virtually no scope for future growth. And yet in this new millennium the German corporation is one of the few truly serious suppliers in this highly specialised field.

In an interview with NEUE REIFENZEITUNG in August 2002 in Otrokovice, Werner Flebbe, head of the agricultural tyre sector at Continental AG, and Thorsten Bublitz, head of corporate marketing and distribution of agricultural tyres, admitted that up until 1995 the company did not exactly cover itself with glory – and yet, in the same breath they were able to add that the largest and most modern agricultural tyres demanded by the industry are now built in the Czech Republic. And the price ratios are now ‘OK’. What is more important, according to Werner Flebbe, is that the major Original Equipment suppliers are now strongly interested in co-operating with Continental.