Guangrao County Delegation Visits Brityrex

Brityrex 2010 attracted a group of visitors from Shandong Province’s Guangrao County, which met with Tyres & Accessories on the Tuesday evening in Manchester’s Renaissance Hotel off Deansgate. The delegation included the president of Deruibotire (also known as Shandong Deribao Tire Co Ltd) Yuan Tingshu; Guangrao Shandong vice county magistrate Li Jianjun; and Bureau of Commerce of Guangrao County director and party secretary Zhu Hanqing. The delegation gave a presentation on the strengths of Guangrao County – a location described by Li as “an economic powerhouse within Shandong Province” and one of China’s major tyre and automotive accessory producing regions, as well as the host of China (Guangrao) International Rubber Tire & Auto Accessory Exhibition (ChinaGRTAE), which is due to be staged for the second time in 2011. Along with Tyres & Accessories and other representatives of the UK tyre trade, the delegation met with the NTDA’s Richard Edy and Peter Gaster, also of UK wholesaler Kings Road Tyres.

Li Juanjun stressed the continuing development of the tyre and accessory industry in Guangrao County, which has 180 companies in the field, 135 of which are in tyres. Within its thousand square metres alone are 40 tyre companies with a turnover of more than $5 million. The region produced 80 million tyres in 2009, continued Li, with the aim of breaking 100 million in 2010 and reaching 150 million by 2011, most of which are radials – “approximately 75 per cent,” said Li. In total, 50 per cent of tyres made in Shandong province come from Guangrao County.

May 2010 saw the first ChinaGRATE, hosted by the Shandong government and the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, an event Li branded a “success”, with 315 companies exhibiting and 15,000 visitors. Of those companies, 60 per cent of the World’s top 30 and 19 of the top 30 Chinese tyre companies were represented. There was also a strong international element to the visitor numbers, said Li, with 50 different nations represented by 1,000 exhibition attendees. “Therefore,” concluded Li, “the event will take place again in 2011.”