Quality focus for Fortune

The Fortune brand is a relative newcomer in the UK commercial vehicle tyre market, but behind the range is one of China’s largest and fastest-growing tyre makers. Prinx Chengshan produces the entire Fortune truck tyre line-up in a state-of-the-art facility in Chonburi, Thailand, and recently invited distribution partners from the UK and Europe to see the technology behind this Industry 4.0 plant for themselves. This visit also served as an opportunity to forge stronger business ties as well as to present the latest products within the Fortune portfolio.

Located around 30 miles from the major port of Laem Chabang, the Prinx Chengshan Tire (Thailand) Co., Ltd. site is equipped to make 2 million truck tyres a year. The tyre maker sells these products around the world under the Fortune, Austone and Chengshan brand names. The truck plant operates 24/7 with three shifts. As its tyre building machines and 120 curing presses are already operating at full capacity, Michael Chu, general manager of international business, confirms Prinx Chengshan is now working to increase annual output to 2.2 million tyres.

An adjacent passenger vehicle plant is configured to produce 10 million tyres a year, almost all carrying the flagship Prinx brand name on the sidewall (Prinx Chengshan manufactures its Austone, Chengshan and Fortune passenger tyres in China). PCR capacity will also soon increase to meet growing demand; Chu says the company will add another 2 million units of annual capacity from May 2024, bringing daily car tyre output to 30,000 pieces by the end of the year.

Prinx Chengshan has a workforce of 2,000 at the 457,000 square metre Chonburi site, which isn’t many when considering that the truck and car tyre plants operate around the clock throughout the entire year. And a walk through the facility suggests that a significant proportion of the tyre maker’s US$600 planned investment ($539 million of this has been completed) has gone into automation. Curing presses and tyre building machines supplied by leading European and Chinese firms operate with a minimum of supervision, and an electrified monorail system (EMS) autonomously delivers unvulcanised tyres from storage areas to the presses. Robotics fulfil a similar hands-off role when transporting completed tyres to the plant’s 14-metre-high warehouses.

The plant in Chonburi began producing Fortune truck tyres in 2021. By this time the Fortune, Austone and Chengshan brand names were already present in the PCR segment, but Prinx Chengshan’s managing director Europe, Thomas Wohlgemuth, shares that the company adopted a “completely different approach” when developing its truck tyre range. “We established TBR on a much higher level from the very beginning, we didn’t introduce our TBR range on quantity, rather on product quality, including mileage.”

Prinx Chengshan focuses upon the Fortune brand in the UK market (Photo: Stephen Goodchild / Tyre Industry Publications Ltd)

Point S & International Tyres

An agreement signed with Point S covering Europe, the Middle East and Africa is in place for distribution in many markets. Point S UK was one of the first national operations to begin importing truck tyres following the start of production in Thailand three years ago, focusing on Fortune, which Thomas Wohlgemuth describes as Prinx Chengshan’s “main brand” in the TBR aftermarket.

Point S has appointed International Tyres & Trading to exclusively distribute Fortune TBR products in the UK, a remit that includes International Tyres supplying Fortune truck tyres to Point S retailers.

Tyre imports into the UK and Europe are currently cost, insurance, and freight (CIF) container shipments, an arrangement that offers customers far greater security than the FOB transactions that are frequently the rule when transporting tyres from the Far East. Local tyre stocks would provide even more protection from the vagaries of wars, pandemics and careless marine navigation, and this is something Prinx Chengshan Tire Europe may offer aftermarket customers at a later date.

Warehouse for OEMs

Right now, the company is dipping its toe into the waters of warehousing with a 3PL solution for its first European original equipment customer. This initial OE customer is a commercial vehicle trailer firm headquartered in Germany and manufacturing at several locations in Europe. Prinx Chengshan is supplying Austone tyres – products that share patterns with the Fortune range – in three SKUs, with a fourth presently undergoing homologation.

“An initial order was placed in December and the first tyres have already arrived,” says Wohlgemuth. “As a first step we’re supplying the customer via our partners in Europe, but we cannot rely upon containers for OEM business. For this reason, we’ve established a three-party logistics warehouse. The first shipments of tyres are now arriving there.”

This 3PL facility isn’t supplying aftermarket customers at the moment, with local partners such as Point S and International Tyres ensuring their customers have access to sufficient stocks of Fortune tyres.

Growing Fortune range

The Fortune range that fleets and other aftermarket customers can find at International Tyres is a full line-up of long haul, regional, mixed service and on-/off-road tyres. The distributor’s site currently lists 39 Fortune SKUs, but this will likely change in line with the range’s growth.

Recent additions to the range expand the appeal of existing Fortune tyre lines. The FAR603 all position tyre for long haul applications is now available in 355/50R22.5, an ultra-low aspect dimension for further improving vehicle payload volume. Then there’s the FTH125 trailer tyre, which similarly enhances payload volume in the new ultra-low aspect sizes 445/45R19.5 and 435/50R19.5.

Adrian Costache, Prinx Chengshan’s sales director Europe, tells us that these new products are characterised by “remarkable mileage, regroovability, dual retreadability and lower fuel consumption.” Not only do they provide customers with greater efficiency, but they also significantly reduce environmental impact, he adds.

(l-r): Micheal Chu, GM international business; Thomas Wohlgemuth, MD Europe; Adrian Costache, sales director Europe; David Oliva, marketing manager Europe (Photo: Stephen Goodchild / Tyre Industry Publications Ltd)

Both aforementioned tyre lines, along with the Fortune FTH155, gained TÜV SÜD certification in March 2024, an acknowledgement that Prinx Chengshan says will “serve as a milestone” to “accelerate” its entry into the European market. The certification agency’s awarding of the VECTO-based (EU) 2017/2400 carbon dioxide emissions and fuel consumption certification for the three commercial vehicle tyre models follows TÜV SÜD certification for the FDR606 in 2022.

“With its remarkably low fuel consumption, this tyre is Prinx Europe’s top product for all companies that want to optimise their CO2 footprint,” says Costache. “The range is also particularly interesting for trailer manufacturers and international fleets wanting to meet industry expectations for a low carbon footprint.” In light of Prinx Chengshan’s new remit as an original equipment supplier, the sales director adds: “The TH155 range has recently passed the stringent tests for OEM approval in Europe. The TH155 could become a key product for European trailer manufacturers.”