Fedima Offers ”Widest Product Line-Up“

The retreading market is – just like the new tyre market – highly diversified. A retreading market segment that usually doesn’t automatically spring to mind, even though it offers retreaders good sales opportunities and kudos aplenty, is motorsports. It is this specific market segment that the leading Portuguese retreader, R31, with focusing on with its “Fedima” retreading brand. Furthermore, as the company’s German distribution partner points out, Fedima – a Bridgestone Qualitread retreading partner – has in particular acquired a reputation for its 4×4 and light truck tyre retreads for road and off-road applications. R31, or rather Fedima, as the company is usually and simply called, continues to invest into these market segments.

Recauchutagem 31 (to give its full name), based in Alcobaça 100 kilometres North of Lisbon, has remained a family-run business since its establishment in 1969. Over the past 40 years the Marques family has developed its retreading business into an impressive-sized operation with countless distribution partners in and outside of Europe. Today the company employs around 120 people. What makes R31 and its retreading brand Fedima so unique is, above all, the product line-up on offer. A cursory glance into Fedima’s catalogue shows that this is not just ‘any other’ retreader but a highly specialised company producing virtually one of a kind products.

As Bernhard Schlüter from Fedima Deutschland points out, his Portuguese supplier (which holds no shares in the German company) has the “widest product line-up of a retreader”. Naturally, the Fedima portfolio contains more pedestrian products such as retreaded passenger car tyres. These products – although under pressure in Western Europe due to cheap new tyre imports and the existence of a strong price war even among well-established premium brands – still find strong demand in a number of markets. One of these markets obviously is Portugal, Fedima’s home market. Another very common product to be found in the Fedima product catalogue is retreaded truck tyres. Some of these are produced under the company’s own “Fedima” brand, but R31 also operates as a Bridgestone Qualitread partner. The company has been a certified partner since 1998 and undertook substantial investments in order to enter this partnership. Investments to the tune of 1.25 million euros have been necessary in order to establish a Qualitread production where truck tyres are either retreaded bead-to-bead in a mould-cure or in a pre-cured procedure.
However, it is not these products that have led the company to gain a pole position in the global retreading markets; this has come through its motorsport tyres. For example, R31 and its Fedima brand were the first in the retreading business to cultivate a name for themselves in truck motorsports; at some point Fedima retreads have even been used in the famous Truck Grand-Prix races. Due to the high cost of FIA homologation, however, this commitment to truck motorsport has been “put on stand-by”, says Joana Marques. A business, that – on the other hand – is very much flourishing is that of retreaded 4×4 and rally tyres. These tyres are produced by R31 for a good number of race series as well as for ordinary road use, and they are marketed globally. As of late, even rally tyres for tarmac driving (as opposed to solely for off-road or gravel) have also been produced, although Fedima is clearly placing an emphasis upon products for off-road use.

It was rally and autocross motorsports that initially sparked the relationship between Bernhard Schlüter, Fedima’s German importer, and the retreader from Portugal. Schlüter already held a passion for autocross racing even before gaining his vehicle construction engineer’s qualifications, and he remained true to this love later on when launching his professional career with the company “Schlüter Motorsport”, a firm specialising in the trade of motorsport equipment and accessories. As Mr. Schlüter points out today, the company still intentionally avoids the trade of ordinary car parts and accessories, or even tuning; it wants to concentrate upon motorsports. The German motorsport specialist began importing Fedima retreaded tyres in 1994 and can boast numerous sporting successes over this time. Last year, for example, Schlüter supplied tyres to a German autocross team that ended the season as European champion – on retreaded Fedima tyres. Fedima supplied the only retreaded gravel tyres in this series, tyres that delivered “tangible results”. Another retreader, from Belgium, is also supplying tyres to European Autocross Championship.

In order to separate organisationally the Fedima and Schlüter Motorsport businesses, Bernhard Schlüter decided to found “Fedima Deutschland” in 2006. At the same time as this new company was etablished, Mr. Schlüter invested into a new a new workshop and storage hall on his 7,000 m² property. From this workshop, incidentally, Fedima Deutschland also distributes workshop equipment from Launch, a Chinese manufacturer offering a full line-up of tyre changers, wheel balancers, lifts and diagnostic equipment. Launch products not only offer “a good price”, they also come with full service backing through Launch’s European headquarters in Germany, which can assist with any product related requests.

In the time since the company’s founding in 2006, Fedima Deutschland has exclusively focused on the distribution of 4×4 and rally tyres from Portugal, yet in principle the German importer could sell the entire Fedima product range including retreaded passenger car and truck tyres. But as Mr. Schlüter points out, both logistics (transport and storage costs) and the market situation – especially with regards to truck tyres – do not make it especially worthwhile for him to expand the product portfolio offered on the German market.

Alongside with the Fedima brand, the company also exclusively distributes “Silverstone” rally tyres from Malaysia, which by the way are all E-marked. Furthermore, Fedima Deutschland also holds the distribution rights to the Spanish motorsport wheel brand “Braid”. Once the expansion of the company’s already too small premises is completed later this year, Mr. Schlüter also plans to install a CNC machine with which Braid wheels can be prepared according to customers’ needs.

Currently, the Portuguese retreader is delivering tyres to more than 30 countries worldwide and desires to continue investing into the deepening and broadening of its product portfolio. When the Fedima brand was created in 1991, the Portuguese company also introduced a retreaded agricultural tyre brand called “Cafema”, however Joana Marques reports this side of the business is no longer of great importance to R31. Instead, the retreading of OTR tyres appears to be where the company’s interest lies. In the course of this year, R31 will invest about 500,000 euros, most of which will be spent on OTR tyre retreading. Currently, Fedima possesses the technological capability to retread up to 49 inches in a pre-cured process; the plan is to increase these limits up to 63 inches. Smaller OTR tyres, depending on their use, can also be mould-cure retreaded.

All in all, R31 is attempting to keep its production facility state-of-the-art. Over the past four years, for example, the company has invested up to 2.25 million euros. The Alcobaça site today is home to 71 curing presses, three extruders, five buffing machines as well as four curing chambers for the pre-cure process. According to company statements, annual production stands at about 20,000 units, which is – in light of the specialised market that Fedima operates in – a substantial number. However, there is no mixing department at Fedima. Instead, compounds and tread rubber are sourced from established suppliers such as Borvul, Midas, Pal Tread, Avon, Indelband, Ellerbrock (Kontur) and of course Bridgestone (Qualitread).

“In the long run nothing really goes past retreaded tyres,” concludes Bernhard Schlüter. He is confident that his young company has the scope to develop still further before he passes it on to his two sons.