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Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton won the Pirelli-titled Steiermark race from pole, stopping just once to move from P Zero Red soft to P Zero Yellow medium tyres. Both Mercedes drivers, who finished first and second, used the same strategy, but with Hamilton stopping seven laps earlier than his team mate.
Goodyear will make its debut as a tyre supplier to the European Le Mans Series this weekend. The manufacturer is working alongside top teams in the LMP2 and LMGTE classes at the season-opening 4 Hours of Le Castellet. Goodyear’s latest tyre technology will be fitted to five front-running LMP2 prototypes and every car in the LMGTE field throughout the ELMS season. The brand’s entrance into the series follows last year’s fitments to LMP2 winners in the FIA World Endurance Championship. However the weekend will mark the first time that LMGTE cars have raced on the Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperSport race tyres. Having been delayed by the pandemic, the series will run over five races until November.
Norwegian tyre recycling startup Wastefront, has appointed Maria Moræus Hanssen as its chairperson. Heading up Wastefront’s board, Hanssen brings international experience from top-level positions within oil, gas and energy companies such as Hydro, Equinor, Aker and Engie. She has served as a board member of multiple Scandinavian industry leading companies – including Det norske oljeselskap ASA, Electromagnetic Geoservices ASA, and Yara International – over the past twenty years, with current, active board member positions at Alfa Laval, Scatec Solar and Oslo Bygg. She was previously deputy CEO and COO at Europe’s leading oil and gas company, Wintershall DEA. Wastefront has also announced its first £25 million tyre recycling facility will be built in the UK.
Norwegian tyre recycling startup, Wastefront AS has confirmed that its first plant will be located in the UK. It plans to invest between £20-30 million on the recycling facility, with its construction resulting in employment for around 100. When fully up and running, Wastefront adds the plant will employ between 20 and 30 people full time. The company, founded in 2019 in Oslo, is now deciding where to locate its first site. The company tells Tyres & Accessories that its plant will be the first to combine conventional technology with Wastefront’s own proprietary technology, which will minimise the environmental impact typically associated with traditional tyre pyrolysis. It adds that this will “make the UK plant the ‘greenest’ of its kind.”
Together, the increased utilisation of independent contractors on the supply side and record online search figures on the demand side show that MOT testing is booming. Considering that MOTs were put on hold for roughly four-and-a-half months between March and August (let’s not even mention the Northern Ireland MOT crisis), this is good news. Word of a coming MOT spike will be warmly welcomed by the tyre and aftermarket associations that lobbied government for the end of the MOT extension on both road safety and economic grounds. But what exactly does the apparent boom look like? And why does it matter to the tyre trade?
In order to support members during these unusual times, the National Tyre Distributors Association (NTDA) has developed a key worker identity card. According to the association, the NTDA was “inundated with members seeking advice and guidance on the status of their employees as key workers” during the full lockdown period.
The tyre retreading business has stagnated in many European markets for years. Imports of new tyres from the Far East and the major tyre brands’ own, large-scale retreading plants place small and mid-sized retreaders across Europe under substantial competitive pressure. Although consolidation has become the rule in recent times, a remarkable exception to this rule – one characterised by entrepreneurship and persuasiveness – can be found in Germany’s retreading market: Owner-operated Reifen Quirmback in Zweibruchen, Rhineland-Palatinate has invested a seven-figure sum to develop its own truck tyre retreading, and by doing so enters a completely new business area. When we visited the site, we discovered a very good reason for entering this line of work.
Autopromotec has postponed its 29th edition, originally planned for 26 – 29 May 2021 for a year. The event will now run Bologna from 25 – 28 May 2022. According to the show’s organisers Promotec SpA, the protection of exhibition was the primary reason for the decision. However, The Tire Cologne’s decision to postpone its 2020 show to dates that clash with the previously planned 2021 running of Autopromotec is likely to have featured in the decision.
The coronavirus crisis represents a challenge for almost all industries and markets in Europe and around the world. But tyres are system-relevant products that ensure, amongst other things, the uninterrupted transportation of goods and supply chain stability. In doing so, they contribute to securing the population’s basic requirements. Kraiburg Austria has adapted to the challenges associated with corona, aiming to guarantee all its partners receive the quality pre-cure and mould cure materials they require on time and with the expected high level of service.
The coronavirus crisis is global in its spread, but as generally known its affect so far has varied from country to country as well as from industry to industry. This is certainly the case within the retreading sector. While it’s been business as usual in Scandinavia and, to some extent, markets in the Baltic region, firms in Mediterranean countries, particularly Italy, were plunged into turmoil. Although the unanimous view amongst material suppliers in Europe – a lot can be read about the state of the market and its development from observing these companies’ business – is that Europe’s retreading market has slumped by around ten to 15 per cent up to and including May, forecasts for the remainder of the year vary. In doing so, they depend significantly upon the answer to one particular question: Are we experiencing a shortage of new tyres, as during Europe’s boom retreading years of 2010 and especially 2011? We asked how things look at two of Europe’s leading material suppliers – Kraiburg and Marangoni.
Tyrepress has published its 2020 ranking of the world’s top tyre manufacturers. Our ranking lists the top 20 tyre makers ordered by turnover from tyres in the previous calendar year. For example, Continental turned over nearly 45 billion euros in 2019, but 26.4 per cent of this was from its tyre divisions, making it the fourth largest tyre manufacturer in the world with 11.7 billion euros. The ranking presents a baseline for discussing the relative positions of the largest global players in tyre production. In 2019, we noted that Bridgestone had opened up a gap at the top of our ranking, around 2.65 billion euros ahead of second-placed Michelin in tyre turnover. This year, the French giant has reduced this gap to just over half a billion euros, reflecting its most recent acquisitions.
Unique? Grand Seigneur? Warhorse? Pioneer? Master of his Trade? Globetrotter? Man of Action? Tinkerer? Entrepreneur? Decision Maker? Visionary? – Somehow, all these names fit Karl Kurz. In his 87 years, the entrepreneur has combined more characteristics in his person than any other in the recycling and retreading industry. We look back on an extraordinary career.
Michelin has urged farmers to pay close attention to the condition of their tyres as they head into the harvest season. Gordon Brookes, customer engineering support manager at Michelin, explains: “We would always recommend a thorough inspection of your harvester tyres before you get the machine out into the field, but this year it’s probably more important than ever.
Michelin remains the world’s most valuable and strongest tyre brand, according to the latest Brand Finance Automotive Industry report. However, while Michelin has retained its top position for the second year in a row since it gained the crown from Bridgestone in 2018, Chinese tyremaker Linglong Tires cemented its position as an up-and-coming tyre brand by entering the top 10 after a couple of years of being tipped as a fast riser.
The retreading industry has worked hard over the years to compete with the new tyre industry and to be heard on political, economic and product issues at European level. Since the industry is strongly shaped by medium-sized and smaller companies, active and influential advocacy thus plays an important role, as we witnessed during the formulation and successful implementation of UNECE regulations 108 and 109 in 2006, a regulation effectively giving retreads type approval equivalency with new tyres. BIPAVER has spearheaded the retreading industry’s lobbying in Europe for many years now, and in April its administration and technical representation was taken over by the German Tyre Retail and Vulcanisation Trade Association (BRV). The association’s two managing directors, general secretary Yorick M. Lowin and technical secretary Michael Schwämmlein, explain why this change took place, what tasks the future holds and what they both can leverage together with BIPAVER’s committees.
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