Market Growth Stymied, Says RMA

(Akron/Tire Review) The RMA says it expects 2007 tyre shipments to “decrease slightly” due to continued weakening in the OE market. In its revised forecast, the RMA says the replacement market is up slightly, but not enough to offset decreased OE demand. The RMA now sees replacement market shipments up almost 2 per cent, but OE markets will be down about 8 per cent overall.

Segment by segment, the RMA sees:

• OE Passenger Tyres: Decrease by approximately 4.5 per cent in 2007 to 46.0 million units from 48.2 million units in 2006, due to decreases in domestic light vehicle sales and production.

• OE Light Truck Tyres: Decrease of approximately 12 per cent or 600,000 units from 2006 levels, due to more light trucks being fitted with P-metric tyres rather than LT-metric units.

• OE Medium/Wide-Base/Heavy Truck Tyres: Due to reduced new truck sales, the forecast has been revised downward to a 29 per cent decrease for 2007, or nearly 4.8 million units in total, or approximately 2 million units less then the 6.8 million units shipped in 2006.

• Replacement Passenger Tyres: An increase of nearly 2 per cent to approximately 200 million units in 2007 in expected, up 4 million units over 2006. Growth coming from increases in P-metric tyres for SUV and smaller pick-up trucks, which are projected to grow more than 8 per cent, and the high and ultra-high performance segments, which are projected to increase more than 6 per cent and 11 per cent, respectively.

• Replacement Light Truck Tyres: Forecasted to increase by approximately 500,000 units to approximately 34 million units in 2007 primarily a result of higher demand from commercial vehicles using LT type tyres.

• Replacement Medium/Wide-Base/Heavy Truck Tyres: The forecast for this market has been revised to 16.4 million units in 2007, a decrease of 500,000 units from 2006’s shipments, reflecting the slightly weaker economic forecast for the remainder of 2007.