New compounds, new machinery in Enschede

With Apollo Vredestein’s Enschede factory continuing to expand, and with the Indian parent company having invested around 100 million euros in the European company since the 2009 acquisition, Tyres & Accessories took advantage of its recent visit to Enschede for the opening of Apollo’s new global R&D centre and also have a look at the latest developments at the Dutch tyre factory.

Walk through the back door of the factory and it soon becomes apparent that you have entered under the shadow of the large carbon black silos and are continuing under the large Banbury mixers in parallel with the production process of the proto-tyres themselves. And here we find our first update. With Enschede producing up to 46 compounds at any given time and with 10 of these required for passenger car tyres alone, there is clearly a call for modern mixing equipment in addition to more conventional equipment, mixing machinery capable of automatic weighing and complex processes already in place. That’s why from 2014 another mixer will be running exclusively mixing the company’s “very complex” ultra-high performance compounds. According to company representatives, it will be one of the best machines available in the world and will be operating at “a very high degree of accuracy”.

Continue past this stage into some of the next phases of production and you see a unique quadruplex extruder, which was brought over from a Russia factory, harking back to the company’s old Amtel-Vredestein days. The word is that the Russian factory simply was not able to produce tyres of a sufficient standard to utilise such technology, meaning it was much better employed in the more modern Eschede facility. There are also various kinds of triplex extruder in operation, as there has been for some years now.

Cutting edge technology

The next noteworthy feature really is new technology. Brought into the factory at some point in the last year or so, Apollo Vredestein’s newest steel belt/cutting machinery is said to be an example of next-generation technology in action. This VMI-produced, fully automated machinery not only completely replaces scissoring with more accurate and consistent cutting, but actually forms belts two at a time. This means the approach offers large accuracy, speed and therefore efficiency benefits. According to those T&A spoke with, this machinery is actually still in development, emphasising just how new it is.

Around the corner from here another VMI-development can been seen. Not only are the bespoke fully automatic tyre builders Vredestein made its name with in the 1980s still going (albeit with some electronics updates, owing to the scarcity of original spare parts in the world), but there are also a fleet of new tyre builders produced by the machinery from the fellow Dutch engineers at VMI. This new generation of semi-automatic builders – dubbed VMI JK40s – not only operate as fast as anything else like it out there. According to the company, the JK40s currently operating in Enschede are only the second installation of this machinery anywhere in the world. And there are said to be room for three more of these, should managers decide to install them.

A quick word about Vredestein’s much lauded bespoke fully automatic machines. While the original technology was able to produce a green tyre every 32 seconds, following the electronics upgrade described above, technicians have now shaved this down to 28 seconds per tyre.

Skipping to the end of the factory tour, it is also worth noting that in addition to the Vredestein branded tyres visible in the warehouse, Apollo tyres – including some of the latest models – can now been seen on the stillages. What we can glean from this is that a few Apollo products are now being made in the Enschede factory alongside their Vredestein-branded counterparts.