Dikabo a Supplier of Raw Material for Retreaders

One of the major prerequisites of a functioning retreading market is the fluidity of casing supply. This is where casing dealers such as Dikabo and Robeo play an important role, because what retreader – whether small-scale or even from the new tyre industry – would choose to deal with the logistics and technical requirements of dealing in casings personally rather than look after their core business of retreading used tyres. The secret to Evert Dilling’s success has been the ongoing availability and supply of casings to his customers, plus the high level of casing quality.

Evert Dilling has operated his casing company, Dikabo, in the Dutch town of Assen for 30 years now. Before starting his own business he spent eight years working for Caruba, a casing company and tyre recycler no longer in existence. Since its humble beginnings in 1979, Mr. Dilling has managed to establish a substantially sized company, and the business is now competing in the industry’s top European and even global ‘league’, so to speak. Dikabo has a permanent stock of about 200,000 casings, of which – of course – most are truck tyre casings. It sells about 450,000 casings in total per year throughout the whole of Europe and worldwide.
In fact, it is not only small and medium sized independent retreaders that purchase casings from Evert Dilling to keep a constant supply of casings streaming into their workshops. Major industrial players from the new tyre industry such as Goodyear and Michelin also rely on Dikabo’s casings. Both of these customers make up for about 50 per cent of the company’s annual sales. For example, Evert Dilling delivers truck tyre casings to the retreading factories in Riom (France) and Wolverhampton (Great Britain) where Goodyear Dunlop produces its own in-house retreads, and also to Homburg, Oranienburg (both in Germany), Clermont-Ferrand, Avallon (both France) and to Stoke-on-Trent (Great Britain) where Michelin and the Michelin subsidiaries Pneu Laurent/Laurent Reifen produce retreads for its customers.
That companies mainly dealing in new tyres, such as Goodyear Dunlop or Michelin, rely on Dilling when it comes to the supply of casings (of their own respective brands, of course) shows two things. First, it becomes apparent that the logistic requirements of dealing with casings – collecting, controlling, stocking, selling and supplying them – is no simple task. Thus, companies in general opt to rely on the support of logistic specialists such as Dikabo. Second, it is obvious that the casings supplied are of a quality that even satisfies the high standards of the new tyre giants and their diversified tyre management approaches.
“The big factories are just not interested in several suppliers,” says Evert Dilling in an interview with Tyres & Accessories. Instead they want to keep their efforts to the minimum necessary in order to ensure sufficient quality casings are available in their retreading factories. In order to accommodate these new tyre industry requirements, Dikabo does maintain international relations with other casing dealers. Thus Dikabo is in a position to buy casings wherever and whenever they are available. The Dutch company even frequently buys truck tyre casings for European market use in Japan. Before the exchange rate with the Yen deteriorated (it has increased some 30 per cent over the Euro since last August) four to five containers were shipped to Dikabo from Japan every week. This has been reduced to some degree during the last couple of months although an over-supply of good, retreadable casings in Japan still exists as local demand is weak.
All in all, a company of Dikabo’s size buys up to 50 per cent of its casings from other casing dealers, most of which are European. Evert Dilling even calls these entrepreneurs “Konkollegas” which roughly translates into “competing colleagues”. They are competitors, of course, but a major part of the business relies on good relations with these other market players. The remaining half of his casings are bought from the tyre trade and major truck fleets throughout the whole of Europe, although most of these casings stem from Western European markets, among which Benelux and Germany are obviously the most important markets.
After a truckload full of casings arrives in Assen in Northern Holland, each single tyre is closely checked. Then they are divided according to their respective quality, their make, and their size. While checking the incoming casings, shearography is not used; a visual inspection by a very well experienced casing controller is relied upon. While some deliveries – in particular those coming a long way from Asia and other distant locations – are very thoroughly pre-controlled by the company selling the casings to Evert Dilling and his company, others sometimes contain up to 50 per cent of scrap tyres. It is only natural that the prices to be paid for a batch of casings is adjusted according to the quality delivered. The presence of many end-of-life tyres means high recycling costs. Mr. Dilling typically sends these scrap tyres to the cement industry, and the costs incurred are usually charged to the casing supplier.
A well-trained casing controller is able to filter out most of the casings that will not be retreadable. Nevertheless, Dikabo’s customers – in particular those from the new tyre industry – want to make sure and use shearography in their own incoming quality control. As Evert Dilling points out, only a very respectably small ratio of up to ten per cent of casings do not make it past shearography. The Dikabo founder has always worked according to a very simple but important fact: “You can only sell rubbish once!” The fact is, customers that are not satisfied with the quality of the casings supplied won’t buy again. “It is not the price of the product that’s all-important. But it is its quality and its constant availability.”
Talking about quality, Mr. Dilling points out that, due to the increasing cost of cheap imported tyres from the Far East, the availability of high-quality retreadable casings is permanently decreasing. In the past these imported tyres often did not meet the high demands of Dikabo’s customers from the European retreading business. He even says that “Chinese casings are of no value to us”. Instead it is the so called “Eastern makes” such as Kormoran, Taurus or Barum that today can be offered and sold to retreaders without great difficulty. Thus, things can change.

Dikabo to invest millions

Since a devastating fire destroyed Dikabo’s premises in the city of Assen six years ago, the company has operated on a somewhat makeshift basis. Today almost all of Dikabo’s casings are stocked in the open air, water collects within the tyres, and employees as well as visiting customers often have to work outside without a roof above their heads. This rather awkward and unsatisfactory situation will soon be over, explains Evert Dilling. Currently, construction work for two new open storage buildings is underway. One hall will be 4,500 m², the second one 2,800 m². The construction work, which started early last year, will be finished this April. Later this year, in September, Dikabo will also open its new office building on the same site, ending the difficult years since the fire. “Into the reconstruction of our buildings we are investing several million euros”, Mr. Dilling says without giving any further details about the costs involved.
Dikabo (the acronym stands for “Dilling Karkassen Banden Onderneming”) is not a solitary outfit; subsidiaries and other locations exist aside from Assen, which is however by far the largest site. Since 2002 “Dikabo GmbH” has operated in western Germany, not far from Münster. Back then Evert Dilling was made the offer of taking over the company Wehmeyer Karkassenhandel GmbH; he did so and integrated it into the “Dikabo Group”. In 2005 Dikabo GmbH started to operate from a second location in Southern Germany. In addition, the Robeo Group (Lelystad, Holland), which is comprised of Robeo Casings and Robeo Car Tyres, is part of Dikabo. Robeo is one of the largest suppliers of casings for retreaders of passenger car tyres. In addition to these companies the casing dealer Recuband from Belgium (Gent) is a Dikabo subsidiary.
Evert Dilling, today 66 years old and still living in the city of his birth, is happy that soon two of his three sons will fully take over responsibility and ownership of the Dikabo Group. Both Harm and Gerlof Dilling are already involved in managing the company’s businesses. In total 60 people work in the Dikabo Group.