As long as TPMS remains the third largest selling intelligent car component after ABS and ESC, the performance of this technology in key emerging markets will remain of significant interest to the wider industry. With this in mind, and as part of more detailed coverage in our February magazines TPMS feature, we have prepared this brief market overview:
The Australian Open has begun in Melbourne, and for the fourth year in a row Maxxis is on board as an official sponsor. It is also the ‘official tyre’ of the Australian Open. Under the terms of its sponsorship deal Maxxis signage is present in Rod Laver Arena (centre court), and the tyre maker is entitled to use the Australian Open logo in marketing materials and promotional activities.
Pirelli highlights OE business, market-specific products at NAIAS 2014
At this year’s North American International Motor Show, held in Detroit, Pirelli is showing off its latest products developed for the North American market. Meanwhile, some of the most desirable cars on show are wearing the Italian manufacturer’s P Zero tyres.
Multistrada shelving factory plans, reports Indonesian source
According to unverified news published by Indonesian business publication Kontan and repeated in English by Reuters, tyre maker PT Multistrada Arah Saran has cancelled its plan to build new plants in Egypt and Kazakhstan this year. Even Go, investor relations officer at Multistrada, said this decision was taken due to concerns about political instability and security within the Middle East region.
Cooper brand tyre manufacturing set to resume in China, say US firm
Cooper Tire & Rubber Company is suggesting that production of Cooper branded tyres is set to restart at the company’s Cooper Chengshan (Shandong) Tire (CCT) joint venture facility in Rongcheng, China. Production was halted when the workers at the Chinese joint venture company became embroiled in a significant industrial dispute with the US firm linked to the erstwhile Apollo Tyres takeover bid.
Retention of Chinese tyre tariffs a “good outcome”, says US union
Commenting on the U.S. International Trade Commission’s extension of the antidumping and countervailing duty orders on certain off-the-road tyres produced in China, the United Steelworkers union says the decision to continue with the 2008-introduced tariffs is a “good outcome to provide job security for the hundreds of tyre workers who make these same tyre products at Titan Bridgestone-Firestone and Goodyear factories in Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Kansas and New York.”
German car parts supplier Mahle Group acquired all of the shares in its former joint venture company Mahle IPL Limited. Mahle had already been a majority partner in the joint venture with a share of about 60 percent.
Hankook Tire has donated KRW 1.05 billion (approximately £600,000) to the “Campaign for Sharing Hope 2014” programme run by South Korean charity Community Chest of Korea. The company participated in a fundraising event held in Seoul on 30 December; Hankook has taken part in this event since 2003.
While the North American tyre market struggled to create demand for additional volume in 2013, Bill Sweatman, president of Marangoni Tread North America, announced the company managed to achieve a 70,000 unit sales increase for the year. “Growing faster than the market is a key indicator that we continue to collectively provide our customers with best-in-class products, service, support and the best network of independent dealers in the industry,” he said.
Goodyear lodges complaint over managers’ ‘boss-napping’
Public prosecutor for the French commune of Amiens, Bernard Farret, reports that management at Goodyear Dunlop Tires France have filed an ‘arbitrary detention and abduction’ complaint following the enforced detainment of two senior managers at its Amiens Nord factory earlier this week. Production manager Michel Dheilly and human resources director Bernard Glaser were held for almost 30 hours and only freed at around 3:30pm Tuesday after police entered the building.
Chinese TPMS market worth 1.5 billion yuan in 2013
The TPMS market was worth 1.4 billion yuan in 2012, according to research published in 2013. According to Huidian Research, this number is expected to exceed 1.5 billion yuan in 2013. Although China’s TPMS market has maintained rapid growth in recent years in parallel with a booming automotive and following tyre sector, the market scale is still relatively small compared with other automotive electronics products (such as EMS, ABS, automotive audio, airbags and auto instruments) and this industry is still described as being “in the initial stage of development”.
Just after the summer of 2013 PanAridus reported that it had broke an industry milestone, becoming the first bio-agricultural company to produce sufficient quality and quantity of guayule rubber samples in-house for commercial testing and use.
The China Rubber Industry Association reports that its ‘green tyre specifications’ document is currently open for input from the industry before its official launch during the first quarter of this year. The document was opened for comments on 27 December and will remain so until 20 January. According to the CRIA, the document defines what a green tyre is and sets out parameters to be used in a Chinese tyre label.
While shares in Cooper Tire & Rubber have begun 2014 at roughly the same price they traded for a year earlier after climbing as high as $34.79 and dipping to $20.55 in between, former prospective purchaser Apollo Tyres’ share price has risen to an all-time high following the breakup of negotiations between the two companies […]
The fifth “Tyre Guys Tour” ended up in the Grand Canyon this year. Every year a Group of tyre traders from Europe meet up to exchange information and enjoy a fantastic trip on a Harley Davidson.
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