Starco Promotes Growing Wheel Business at Reifen 2010

It’s only about a year since Tyres & Accessories visited Starco Europe’s head office in Denmark, so it came as a surprise to discover how much activity has occurred within the company in the months between our last interview and the Reifen 2010 show in Essen. Starco Europe group marketing manager Brian Lorentzen explained that recent developments are opening up a whole new market segment for Starco, and while it is not turning its back on the traditional business of smaller tyres for manually driven vehicles, the company now offers aftermarket customers much, much more.

“People coming here are surprised,” Lorentzen says. “They expected to see the same programme here as last time, so when they visit us they are asking ‘do you really have wheels?’ Yes – that’s what we’ve been trying to say for the last two years.” The wheels Brian Lorentzen refers to are manufactured by Starco itself and are available for a large variety of industrial and agricultural applications, from large sizes for industrial trailers down to smaller units, such as 14.5-inch wheels for ploughs and barrows.

“Almost all the tyres on our stand at Reifen 2010 have been fitted with wheels we manufactured ourselves,” the group marketing manager states. “We want to show that we are not only distributing our own manufactured and developed Starco brand tyres to the aftermarket, we are also a supplier of aftermarket wheels. What we see is, especially in implement and high-speed trailer, that sales of loose tyres are only a small part of the business. The trend is moving in a direction where the aftermarket customer is more willing to buy a complete wheel and tyre unit and replace the old wheel.

Lorentzen believes a large market demand exists for Starco’s aftermarket wheels. “It is something we basically do not touch today,” he notes. “There is a market both for wheel and tyre combinations and wheels on their own. And as we actually manufacture the wheels ourselves, we stand behind their quality. Some wheels available on the aftermarket have a very thick disc welded onto them to ensure they can take the load, but there is no need to have a very thick disc and it brings additional cost. Our approach is to design the wheel so that it is suitable for the job from the outset.”

Wheel design is carried out in-house at Starco, and Brian Lorentzen comments that if a customer wants to buy a special tailor-made wheel, once Starco receives the specifications it will have a design ready for the customer’s approval the following day. The finished wheel can be produced within two weeks and delivered to the customer. The addition of wheel products has helped Starco’s product range expand considerably within a short period of time. This growth could be observed in the catalogue the company’s German subsidiary – which operates Starco’s European central warehouse – brought with it to Reifen 2010. The number of items included within has of late grown from less than 2,000 to 2,500 items. “Some of that comes from newly developed Starco products, but it also reflects our company motto that ‘if it exists, we have it’,” Lorentzen comments.

Tyres remain an important business for Starco and here too the company has grown its portfolio for larger applications. Brian Lorentzen singled out a couple recent additions to the company’s portfolio: “A significant new product is the Starco RT (Road Transportation) Agritread. This is made by a retreader in the UK. It’s retreaded upon a premium manufacturer’s carcass and bears the Starco brand name on the sidewall as we’ve participated in the creation of the pattern used. We introduced this product three or four months’ ago and it is sold to OE customers in the UK market and exported into other markets such as Germany, Denmark and France to be fitted on agricultural trailers, slurry tankers and other similar vehicles. It is available in two different sizes – we have one mainly for road transportation (the RT Agritread SL) and a more mud-friendly version (RT Agritread ML). An additional important product is the AP Loader XT. Again, this is a Starco tyre. We introduced it at the start of 2010 as we have high expectations for the industrial, earthmoving and off-the-road segments. Starco has decided to move further into the industrial segment and this particular radial tyre is designed for loaders, graders and other vehicles used in construction, stockpile and truck-loading applications.”

These products are a far cry from the tyres Starco focused upon in its early days. “If you look back on its history, you see that Starco has in the past been principally known as a distributor of small tyres; small tyres for wheel barrows, turf tyres, maybe some small tractor pattern tyres,” Lorentzen reflects. “But today turf tyres and wheel barrow tyres are a very small part of our business. We’re going into agricultural, into heavy transportation and industrial. That’s where we are right now. But the market seems to remember us as being the small tyre people.”

The tyres Starco often deals in today may no longer be small, but that hasn’t prevented the Danish company utilising technology it developed for smaller applications employing it in products for other segments. When Tyres & Accessories visited Starco Europe’s head office in Galten, Denmark last year, an as-yet unreleased product was on display. This was the Starco Flex Lite, a puncture-free tyre and wheel combination for wheelbarrows and warehouse trolleys. The Flex Lite took Starco’s existing Flex puncture-free tyre concept a step further by combining tyre and wheel in a single, weight saving unit. At Reifen 2010, Lorentzen confirmed this technology will soon be applied to other products. “We are developing it for other applications, we didn’t just introduce the technology for wheelbarrows. We are developing products for internal transportation but we also want to use the technology for larger applications. These larger products should be ready some time from the second half of 2011, with others in 2012. In this respect we will move away from tyres for manual driven vehicles and towards powered applications.”

This increased activity in the industrial and off-road sector, plus the growth of its wheel business, was the key message Starco wished to convey during the week-long exhibition. And it appears there was no shortage of potential customers wanting to hear this message: “Of all the customers that visited us on the stand yesterday, 80 per cent are new customers,” Lorentzen comments regarding activity at the Starco stand on the show’s first day. “If this keeps up, it will be very good.”