Germany’s Chancellor visits Continental tyre plant

Continental hosted German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at its Hannover-Stöcken site yesterday. Accompanied by Dr Ariane Reinhart, Continental’s Executive Board member for Human Relations and Sustainability, and Christian Kötz, Executive Board member for the Tires group sector, Scholz visited the ContiLifeCycle plant, which retreads truck and bus tyres. During his visit, Scholz tried his hand at manual tyre carving, which is still a key part of the process of manufacturing precision tyre prototypes. Afterwards, he talked with employees and the chairman of the Corporate Works Council, Hasan Allak.

Chancellor Scholz also used his visit as an opportunity to talk CO2 neutrality, a subject close to his government’s heart: “We are in the midst of a profound transformation toward carbon neutrality. This is placing extremely high demands on all industries, yet at the same time presents new and exciting opportunities. Prosperity and climate change go hand in hand. Tackling the latter will ultimately benefit us all. Continental is impressively demonstrating how to manage change responsibly and successfully at its Hanover-Stöcken site.” Continental’s press release about the visit made no reference to the Scholz government’s decision to deactivate Germany’s last three remaining nuclear power plants last Saturday, nor that their absence from the grid will in part be filled by CO2-emitting coal power plants.

A tyre plant was first established in Hannover-Stöcken in 1938, and since that time Continental has evolved the site into an industrial campus that is home to, among other things, Continental’s largest tyre research and development centre and the company’s own manufacturing hub for tyre-building machinery.