Pirelli renews FIM Motocross World Championship supply deal to 2019
Pirelli has renewed its partnership with Youthstream, the organiser of the FIM Motocross World Championship. Under the deal the manufacturer will continue to be the official tyre supplier to the headline international series for off-road motorcycles until the end of the 2019 season. Pirelli has supplied the tyres for 66 world titles (since 1980) in the championship, and calls its Scorpion MX32 “one of its most successful tyres.”
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GT Radial presents 3-year development programme at European dealer event
Giti Tire has presented its three-year development programme for its GT Radial brand to key dealers, including UK distributor Micheldever Tyre Services (MTS). The annual PCR European Marketing Council, held in Austria, was attended by customers from across the continent. It looked at current market conditions, future trends, product development and marketing direction, including the brand proposition across advertising, point-of-sale and online activities, comprising the brand website and social media.
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Michelin: Planned obsolescence is ‘quite developed’ in the European tyre market
Michelin further re-affirmed its opposition to increasing minimum tyre tread depths (and of those that recommend changing tyres at 3mm) on 11 May when the company held a “The truth about worn tyres” demonstration at its ultra-modern Ladoux global research and development centre near Clermont-Ferrand in France. But what is the truth about tread depth? Tyres & Accessories spent a day experiencing some of the differences between tyres currently available in the European market and spoke with the Michelin senior vice president responsible for the firm’s whole-life tyre strategy, Bernard Delmas, in order to find out more.
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Yokohama hails Chelsea success as team wins ‘football’s biggest prize’
Chelsea’s 1-0 victory at West Bromwich Albion completed the club’s Premier League championship with two games to spare in shirt sponsor Yokohama’s second season with the club. The Japanese tyre manufacturer has enjoyed the benefits of its association with the winners of what it calls the biggest and most prestigious prizes in world club football, with a “big increase” in “brand recognition,” according to David Seward, managing director, Yokohama HPT Ltd. Yokohama’s sponsorship also helped generate some publicity for road safety charity TyreSafe this year, as Chelsea became a member, and displayed the organisation’s messages at Stamford Bridge.
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Chelsea title run boosts Yokohama brand
Chelsea could wrap up the Premier League title this evening with a win at West Bromwich Albion, and the club’s excellent season has helped boost shirt sponsor Yokohama’s global brand recognition. The tyre manufacturer states that it is benefitting from record levels of brand exposure thanks to the concentrated attention on the club. Chelsea has also reached the FA Cup final, taking place on Saturday 27 May at Wembley Stadium, giving Antonio Conte’s team even more live television coverage in the UK and around the world.
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‘Consistent front to back’ – Continental wins Motor tyre test
Good on yer, Continental. Australia’s Motor magazine has crowned the ContiSportContact 5 the king of its test of nine performance tyres. In the conclusion to the test report published in the May 2017 issue of Motor, the test team stated they had “little doubt” when it came to choosing the winner, given the two gold and three silvers the Continental tyre bagged in various test categories.
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AllSeasonContact – Continental’s new all-season tyre for European markets
Towards the end of 2015, tyrepress.com reported that Continental may be warming to the idea of selling all-season tyres in Europe, and earlier this year we were given further reason to believe these products were on their way. The wait, it seems, is nigh on over. Several of Continental’s European market websites now include details about a new tyre, the AllSeasonContact.
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Growing demand fuels BBC Superfactors move
The Parts Alliance member BBC Superfactors has moved premises just a year after first opening in Preston. The new building boasts double the footprint at 10,000 square feet and has a full mezzanine too, boosting storage capacity to around 20,000 square feet.
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Apollo Tyres opens €475 million greenfield Hungarian plant
The opening of Apollo Tyres’ Gyöngyöshalász plant, 100km east of Budapest, marks a significant event for both the company’s global aspirations and the Indian tyre industry – the 72 hectare greenfield factory, begun in April 2015, is the first inaugurated by an Indian tyre company to come online outside the domestic market. The importance was reflected in the event itself, with some of the plant’s cavernous warehousing housing around 1,300 guests, among whose number was the prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, who declared Apollo’s sixth global tyre manufacturing plant – its second in Europe after the existing Netherlands facility acquired alongside Vredestein – open on 7 April.
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Re-globalisation of the international tyre market?
In the last few weeks, Apollo has initiated production at its new Hungary tyre factory and launched a brand new European truck tyre range (see Company News section pages 32 – 24); Doublestar has confirmed that it is the only remaining bidder in the race for 42 per cent of Kumho Tire (see pages 36 - 37); and as we went to press, Finnish tyre maker Nokian announced that it will build its third production plant, this time in the USA. All this points to what we might call a re-globalisation trend. Rather than businesses from the large so-called developed nations expanding around the globe, this second wave of international expansion sees the roles reversing to some extent. While before the Western nations were looking to invest in fast-growing “emerging” economies, now the proverbial shoe is on the other foot and large companies in what used to be called the BRIC nations are investing in more developed tyre markets.
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Bridgestone UK launches Olympic sponsorship campaign
Bridgestone has launched its extended worldwide Olympic Partnership in the UK with a national campaign focused on “putting some emotion” into its brand marketing, according to the manufacturer’s representatives. In order to achieve this, the world’s largest tyre maker has adopted the campaign slogan “Chase Your Dream, No Matter What”, with three British Olympians who have overcome different kinds of adversity representing this ethos.
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Dmack seals sixth British Rally Championship victory in Carlisle
Dmack’s Fredrik Ahlin and co-driver Torstein Eriksen won a sixth consecutive MSA British Rally Championship victory at Carlisle’s Pirelli International Rally. The team maintained their winning run in 2017 by taking a 39.4-second victory over Osian Pryce and Dale Furniss, who made it a Dmack one-two. The result was a debut success for Dmack’s new medium GH43 compound DMG+22 gravel tyre. Four different drivers registered stage wins through the tough Kielder forest complex, all using Dmack tyres. Pirelli runners were successful in the Cadet class for young drivers, taking the top two places.
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Arthur Gregg new Bandvulc MD
Bandvulc managing director Patrick O’Connell, who started in the family tyre retreading business by working on the factory floor in his school holidays, stepped down as MD of the Bandvulc group of companies on 1 May 2017. According to the company, he will now “spend more time on other projects within Continental”, Bandvulc’s owner since the tyre giant purchased the retreader and fleet business last July.
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Doublestar the only bidder left to buy Kumho
Speaking off the record, Chinese executives within Qingdao Doublestar have confirmed the company’s intentions to purchase well-known South Korean tyre manufacturer Kumho Tyre and that it is “now only Doublestar left to buy Kumho”. However, at roughly the same time, Korean newspapers have been reporting that Doublestar probably won’t have the right to use the Kumho brand name post-acquisition. With all this in mind, Tyres & Accessories summaries the story so far.
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