“Fear & insecurity” within Nokian Tyres’ Central Europe region

The EU ban on tyre imports from Russia has hit one company particularly hard: Nokian Tyres. Prior to February 2022, the Finnish manufacturer produced 17 million tyres a year in a factory near St. Petersburg, 82 per cent of its global output. Ten million of these were exported, mainly to Europe. This has no longer been possible since 10 July, with consequences for Nokian Tyres’ Central Europe sales region.

Following the departure of Bahri Kurter, executive vice-president of the Central Europe region, at the end of August, talk in the market is now that the company is dismissing “60 employees, minimum.” Nokian Tyres’ response to questions regarding this is monosyllabic, retracting prior comment made on the issue. The affected employees are less reticent, however, and speak openly about a “crappy situation” that’s no fault of their own. What do we know so far?

Although Nokian Tyres imported above-average quantities of tyres from Russia to build up stocks in Central Europe before the 10 July deadline, and even though its plant in Finland is producing tyres, Nokian’s customers say these sources don’t suffice to satisfy levels of demand within the region, particularly in the winter season. Furthermore, it appears the tyre maker hasn’t been able to quickly implement a planned off-take agreement with other manufacturers that produce in Europe. The combined result of these factors is that the supply situation has become more difficult over the past weeks and the supply gap has grown, especially for passenger car tyres.

Dangerous situation

Late last month the manufacturer apparently began announcing redundancies amongst its Central Europe region workforce. According to an employee of Nokian Tyres, the talk internally is of this affecting a ”minimum” of around 60 employees. Those already affected and employees who at risk are obviously reluctant to openly talk about the matter, as the first group must think of their severance pay and the second fear for job security. As one commented, the situation “is dangerous at the moment” and there is “fear and insecurity.”

Sentiment isn’t being helped by the company’s communication, which those affected consider poor. “We don’t know anything; it’s like flying blind at the moment,” says one affected employee. While media representatives need to accept when a company suddenly retracts comments it has made as “non-citable” without any justification of this no-comment, employees who are affected are certainly less understanding about this void of information.

This article was originally published by our German-language sister publication, Reifenpresse.de