Tyrexpo Asia: Wholesalers Keep a Strong Presence

It appears that Tyrexpo Asia – like other leading international tyre shows – represents a must-do for wholesalers from Europe. At a minimum members of these companies’ top management come to Tyrexpo Asia as visitors, but many companies each year book floor space in the Singapore Expo Centre for Tyrexpo Asia. Counted amongst the latter is the commercial tyre specialist Heuver Banden from the Netherlands, which displayed its products together with the manufacturer of the new “Maitech“ OTR tyre brand. The distribution rights of this brand have been granted to Heuver Banden for major parts of Europe by Uzmai International from Verona, Italy – however, the tyres are produced in Turkey, as Oskar Snijders, director wholesale with the Dutch distributor, explained.
The most important market for Heuver Banden and Uzmai International is Germany, added Ian Thomas, head of international sales and marketing at Uzmai. The Turkish produced radial OTR tyres are not only sold in the European replacement markets; there also are numerous OE customers. As a matter of fact, says Mr Thomas, a major part of the annual output is directly shipped to off-the-road vehicle manufacturers. When the Maitech brand was initially launched two years ago there was only a very small number of L5 tread patterns in 25 inches available. This situation has already changed and is continuing to change during the course of this year. Mr Thomas explained that the Maitech brand certainly does not play second fiddle to so-called A brands such as Michelin or Bridgestone – at least in regards to quality. Maitech tyres “incorporate a high input of research and development time, the best possible compounds and state-of-the-art manufacturing processes to ensure optimum tyre performance,” he said.
The Dutch wholesaler has not only focused on the distribution of the Maitech brand in the immediate past; at the same time it has been able to establish the truck tyre brand “Aeolus” in European markets. The brand is produced in China by Aeolus Tyre. Since it was launched in Europe about three years ago, said Oskar Snijders, orders have been coming in “just like that.” Furthermore, Aeolus truck tyres offer a competitive cost per mile. In addition to being involved in the truck, OTR and agricultural tyre business Heuver Banden is currently trying to establish yet another product within its portfolio: industrial tyres. This market segment is not only known as a very profitable one, it also completes Heuver Banden’s product range in the commercial tyre segment.
The tyre wholesaler Tyre Trading International (TTI) is also currently working on the expansion of its product range. The company, which is based in Numansdorp, the Netherlands, mainly sells the tyre brands Falken and Sumo Firenza alongside the usual products from the market’s A segment. While Tyre Trading International has exclusive rights to the Falken brand (manufactured by Sumitomo Rubber Industries, Japan) for the Netherlands, since last year it has been officially able to distribute Sumo Firenza tyres in Germany, Denmark and the Benelux states. It is Chinese factories that produce Sumo Firenza branded tyres for Singapore’s Stamford Tyres that in turn supplies TTI (see separate article on Stamford Tyres in this Tyrexpo Asia review).
“At the moment Sumo Firenza is among the best Chinese-made tyres,” Peter-Alexander van’t Hof, who together with his father Peter van’t Hof he runs the business at TTI, said in praise of the brand. At present there are two different tread patterns in the Sumo Firenza product catalogue. First there is the ST-07, which is currently available in sizes between 13 and 15 inches and will shortly also be available in 16 inches – in total there will be 16 different sizes available this autumn. The ST-08 in turn is available in sizes between 15 and 18 inches, low aspect ratios (down to 30 per cent) and high speed indexes. In the course of this year further sizes in 19 and 20 inches will be produced in the factories of Stamford’s production partners in China. Nevertheless, the successor to the ST-08 has already been announced and will be launched shortly. At the beginning the new ST-09 will be added to the existing ST-08 sizes, Mr van’t Hof said, and maybe next year the new tread pattern will eventually replace the existing one. To start with, dimensions between 19 and 22 inches are planned but the line-up offered to European customers will be expanded very soon. In addition to that, Tyre Trading International announced during Tyrexpo Asia that there will be a winter tyre available under the Sumo Firenza brand by the 2008/2009 season. In parallel with this product launch there will also be additional 4×4 or SUV tyre sizes available next year.
According to the Dutch tyre wholesaler Euro-Tyre, Tyrexpo Asia as it is today is almost all about networking. As sales manager Frank van Leeuwen explained, the company has not missed a single Tyrexpo since it was inaugurated. In earlier years the exhibition was much more of a trade fair in the literal sense of the word. Today, almost nobody sells containers of tyres during the show. Different aspects of doing business are considered more important today, Mr. van Leeuwen said: Tyrexpo Asia is a meeting point for tyre specialists from around the world, a show where a number of suppliers can meet a number of customers, and vice versa. In addition to that, such a show offers an ideal “marketplace for information” from the tyre business. You wouldn’t need an intelligence service to learn what’s going in the tyre business but you need to attend the exhibitions – that’s the bottom line. And in this respect it is almost irrelevant where exactly such an “information fair” takes place, for so long as all or at least most of the important players are there, whether they be competitors, customers or suppliers. The Dutch sales manager in particular praises the open atmosphere that is provided by Tyrexpo Asia as well as the attractiveness of the city of Singapore as the venue location. In earlier years representatives of Euro-Tyre have also travelled to China to visit the CITExpo in Shanghai. This year they didn’t attend. Others also have expressed the misfortune – to say the least – that both shows have taken place at the same dates.
During this year’s Tyrexpo the Dutch wholesaler Interstate Europe understandably focused on its “Interstate” passenger car tyre brand. Currently there are three tread patterns that are produced in China by Interstate Tire & Rubber, a company established in 2005: Touring IST, Sport IXT and Winter IWT-2. Interstate has announced a host of new sizes that will be launched next year. While the line-up of the Touring tread pattern will remain unchanged with 16 available dimensions, the Sport tyre line-up will be increased with the addition of eight new sizes. These new dimensions will particularly improve the line-up at the top end of the size range, with new dimensions in 18 to 20 inches. In addition the winter tyre will be added, with eight new dimensions. With a programme expanded as such Interstate Tires will have a complete range of summer and winter passenger car tyres available, the company stated in a publication. At the time of the Tyrexpo Asia Interstate already had exclusive distribution partners in more than 40 countries and it is still looking to take on new partners worldwide. By the way, Interstate Tires was one of the few companies that exhibited in Singapore and in China at CITExpo at the same time.
That the need to network is considered a major reason why a company should exhibit during Tyrexpo Asia or other comparable shows proved also true for other companies. According to Maurice Drossaert and Stany Croughs from the Belgian tyre wholesaler Beltyre N.V., a show like Tyrexpo Asia was good to create such networks and to improve them and then – eventually – to turn them into customer-supplier relationships. Mr. Drossaert and Mr. Croughs founded their company together in 2004, although they have been in the tyre business a some years more. The new company mainly focuses on the distribution of large new, second-hand and retreaded OTR tyres as well as OTR tyre casings. As Maurice Drossaert said in an interview with Tyres & Accessories during Tyrexpo Asia, Beltyre usually has about 400 OTR tyres in stock. More than half of these tyres are retreads. Among the new tyres in Beltyre’s product portfolio there are most of the major tyre brands including Michelin, Bridgestone, Continental (only radial tyres), General (only bias-ply tyres) and Goodyear. “We want to sell quality,” the co-owner of the company explained. This is why there are almost no Chinese-made products in the company’s portfolio. Although quality is not automatically linked in with a brand name or the manufacturers name, there is a strong correlation between them. Thus A brands are not just named after the first letter in our alphabet by a happy coincidence but because they offer top quality. Together with all the products Beltyre offers to its customers, the Belgian wholesaler also offers substantial consultancy services to (potential) customers.
The global nature of the OTR tyre market is also reflected in Beltyre’s organisation chart. Just one and a half years ago the company established a distribution joint venture in Russia with a local office in Moscow. The newly found Russian company offers the same assortment of products and services. In terms of logistics, Beltyre’s business in Eastern Europe and Russia operates through a warehouse in Lithuania. The company has a total annual turnover of about 10 million euros and will continue to invest into the internationalisation of its business.
For the tyre wholesaler Hercules Tire International, which belongs to the Hercules Tire & Rubber Company, Singapore’s Tyrexpo Asia is a must-do. The company, which is based in Kitchener in the Canadian province of Ontario, is particularly known for its vast private brand portfolio, containing brands such as Hercules, Merit, Electra and Ironman. The latter was only launched last year. By the way: until last year the company – one of the leading tyre distributors in Northern America – was called Treadway Exports. This in turn was taken over by Hercules Tire from Findlay, Ohio in 1997. During this year’s Tyrexpo Asia Hercules exhibited a major part of its product and brand portfolio.