August sees growth in UK van market
The UK’s new light commercial vehicle (LCV) market returned to growth in August, rising 1.7 per cent to record the best performance for the month since 2021 after two months of decline. According to the latest figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), 16,575 vans, 4x4s, pickups and taxis joined the road in what is traditionally a low volume month ahead of September’s plate change.
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August new car market holds steady ahead of critical plate change month
Continuing the recent trend, fleet purchases drove the market, accounting for six in 10 cars registered last month, or 51,329 units, despite a -1.2 per cent drop compared with the same month last year, Registrations by private buyers, meanwhile, were flat, up 0.2 per cent units to 32,110. Business registrations were down by -30.3 per cent to 1,136 units.
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Continental PremiumContact 7 tops What Car? tyre test
Hankook Ventus S1 evo3 SUV gave it a run for its money, but Continental’s PremiumContact 7 recently won the What Car? With a weighted score of 86 per cent, the PremiumContact 7 was one percentage point ahead of the second-placed Hankook Ventus S1 evo3 SUV (85%). Michelin’s Primacy 4+ rounded off the podium, albeit some way back, with a weighted score of 71 per cent. The test also considered a number of tyres outside the premium stable. Interestingly, What Car? ranked Triangles EffexSport TH202 ahead of the GT Radial FE2 SUV and the Landsail LS588 SUV.
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Kirkby Tyres’s sustainable trucking solutions distinguish it from single-use-orientated suppliers
Earlier this year, Kirkby Tyres exhibited at Road Transport Expo 2024, an event tailored for fleet managers, owner-operators, and equipment manufacturers, unveiling one of the first available products from Sailun’s EcoPoint3 range.
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ETB creates jobs, promotes colleagues to senior roles
ETB Wholesale reports that it is “empowering staff members to steer their careers in a variety of positive directions”, after a number of colleagues were promoted to senior roles in 2024. The wholesale business is currently recruiting for a number of vacancies including driver and warehouse operator roles, following a successful seven months of trading this year. According to the company, each position is created with the potential to develop, with opportunities to progress and gain industry qualifications and accreditations.
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Klarius releases new Audi A1 parts
Klarius has added a list of 10 new emissions control components to its range. Included in this release are new exhausts for the Audi A1 (2014-2018).
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Micheldever invests in solar panel installation
Micheldever Tyre Services (MTS) reports that it is making “significant strides towards its sustainability goals” with the installation of cutting-edge solar panels at its Halifax (Elland) depot. This initiative is expected to save the company up to £7.5 million over the next 25 years while also substantially reducing its carbon footprint.
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Potteries Tyres celebrates anniversary of partnership with Ceat Tyres
At the end of July, Potteries Tyres celebrated one year of successful partnership with Ceat Tyres. Working with UK truck tyre distributor TIA Tyres, Potteries first joined the Ceat Ambassador programme in March 2023.
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GYS: Induction heating changing the tyre trade
Fast fit centres, garages, and large national chains are making the switch to induction technology, according to GYS. For years, oxy-gas flame methods were the standard for heating, but now, induction heating is said to be taking over. Induction heating offers numerous benefits over oxy-fuel, including “cost, efficiency, ease of use, and significant safety improvements”. For its part, GYS offers a wide range of technology-driven induction heaters, backed by “full commercial and technical support”.
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SharkEye offers van-based garage equipment franchise zones across the UK and Ireland
SharkEye, the UK manufacturer of laser wheel aligners, is teaming up with FASEP and the Garage Equipment Group (GEG) to offer 33 van-based sales and service franchise investment opportunities across Britain and Ireland. The goal is for the trio of well-known garage equipment brands to be “a major new player in the automotive sector”.
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HiQ: more than a third of tyres are worn past legal limit
New research conducted by HiQ Tyres & Autocare on tyre changes in the UK has found that drivers in some areas of the UK are allowing their tyres to wear beyond the legal limit, with more than a third of tyres are worn past legal limit.
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The UK’s leading tyre business websites 2024
Last year we debuted our online tyre website research. It started because we wanted to find the UK’s leading tyre business by website traffic and rank them in three sectors: Retailers, companies that are known for their bricks-and-mortar tyre retail and have branched into online tyre retailing over the years; eTailers, companies are based online and may not even have accompanying bricks and mortar or may operate a partner network for fitting; and tyre comparison, an online tyre business sub-sector that plays a key role in the crucial pre-sale research phase of the online tyre business.
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Hankook data played a key role in UK truck tyre tariff recommendation
The news that the UK’s Trade Remedies Authority (TRA) has decided to recommend import tariffs of up to £110.11 per tyre on imports of Chinese-produced truck and bus tyres to the secretary of state has attracted understandable interest. A couple of days after the initial recommendation was made, Tyres & Accessories has discovered further details both of the recommendations themselves and about how tariffs came to be recalculated.
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The top UK tyre eTailers 2024
Following similar research last year, in July 2024, we took a closer look at tyre etail again. Building on the foundation of last year’s research premiere, this year we once again triangulated our analysis across three poles: third-party data, industry expertise and our own research. The difference is that this year we have improved our methodology by broadening out the number of data sources we included in out third-party stage. Indeed, this time round we tripled the number of data sources used for the third-party phase of our analysis. Since eTailers don’t publish their monthly traffic data, this is the best way to get a robust calculation of where these companies are up to. The short story is that we have a new winner this year and new entrants to boot.
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Top 10 tyre comparison sites 2024 (UK)
Our third and final category takes a close look at tyre comparison websites because all the data suggests that pre-sale research is growing in influence as a strategic part of the increasingly important online tyre business. Our methodology is basically the same as our initial tyre retail category inasmuch as we began with two third-party online traffic data sources, verified this via discussion with an industry expert and then contextualise our findings here in this article.
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