Part-worn car tyres to be banned in UAE

As of September the use of part-worn passenger car and motorcycle tyres will no longer be permitted in the United Arab Emirates. This decision was announced by the Emirates Authority for Standardization and Metrology (ESMA) on 15 March as part of a range on measures intended to regulate the whole tyre life cycle.

“We are addressing the question of safety from the time when the tyre is manufactured to its disposition,” said EMSA acting director general Mohamed Saleh Badri. “We used to focus only on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) certificate because our temperature is high, but now we have widened the net.”

Among the new regulations the agency will address is the lifespan of the tyre, storage, retread and disposal. “We are working with relevant bodies such as the Ministries of Interior and Environment, the police, municipalities and private sector bodies,” Badri continued. The World Trade Organisation has already granted the UAE permission to go ahead with the move to ban the use of second-hand tyres, he added “We are placing more control on the process. The tyres have to be stored properly in shelves and not piled together and those retreaded have to bear relevant certificates conforming to the UAE standards and showing the place of manufacture.”

Director of the UAE’s Conformity Affairs department, Abdullah Abdelqadir Al Muaini, said the laws will apply to “all vehicles and motorcycles except heavy duty trucks which pose less risk to safety.” Badri added that tyres have a lifespan of “normally five years. The manufacturers label them, and we will not allow them to be used beyond their time span.” He said ESMA is working closely with the manufacturers, all local distributors. “We will continue to issue the GCC certificates and now also issue certificates of conformity.”

In terms of tyre lifespan and retreaded tyres, Badri said “it is normally two years, but we measure the length of layers and damage.” The importation of retreaded tyres is banned by ESMA, however. “This has been in place for the past two years,” Badri commented, adding that 25 retreading facilities operate in the UAE. “They produce few tyres, around 60,000 a year compared to, for example, eight million that were imported last year.”

Rashid Bin Fahd, chairman of ESMA and the Minister of Environment, stated: “Working according to international standards facilitates the flow of goods across borders and extends the scope of commercial exchange between countries. Moreover, attracting foreign investment requires the existence of standardisation and metrology practices because investors place great importance on these practices before finalising their investment decisions.”

Bin Fahd added that “the existence of the Authority makes the consumer confident that the products displayed in the local market are in conformity with international standards.”