Awards
Bridgestone Corporation has received a 2015 VW Group Award in recognition of its status as one of the Volkswagen Group’s best suppliers. The VW Group bestows this award upon a small number of international suppliers that excel in innovative capabilities and reliability.
Point S International business development manager, Adrian Smiechowski, attended the first Indian Tyre & Rubber Industry Leadership Acknowledgement (TRiLA) Awards in Chennai. The TRiLA 2015 event took place on the sidelines of Tyrexpo India 2015.
Apollo Tyres has received recognition for its ‘Air Master by Vredestein’ spoiler. The invention was given a DKG Product Award in the ‘Technical Rubber Products and Tyres’ category at this year’s International Rubber Conference in Nuremberg, Germany.
Rubber Asia has announced it will honour “those who have made outstanding contributions to the rubber industry” at the Asian Latex Conference (ALC) 2015 and India Rubber Summit & Dinner (IRSD) 2015. The two events are organised on consecutive days on 10, 11 (ALC), and 12 (IRSD) September in Kochi, India.
The UK Garage of the Year Award was presented at the prestigious Auto Express Car of the Year Awards in London on June 30th. Motor Codes, the government-approved garage scheme revealed that Crescent Motoring from Burton on Trent in Staffordshire had scooped the prestigious award.
Wheel servicing specialist Pro-Align has been awarded a five-star rating by leading garage equipment manufacturer Hunter Engineering for the first time. Pro-Align said this reflected the significant progression and development of the Hunter brand in the UK. The company was also presented with Hunter’s “Platinum Partner” award for the ninth consecutive year, indicating the Towcester-based company as one of Hunter’s most successful and important global distributors.
Trelleborg won ‘Best Agricultural Tire’ at this year’s “O Prêmio VisãoAgro Sudeste”, in Brazil. Awarded by the Agriculture Secretary of São Paulo, Arnaldo Jardim, the accolade recognizes the performance of Trelleborg’s innovative agricultural tyres in the sugar cane industry in the south-eastern region of Brazil.
Exol Lubricants has won the top award of Business of the Year 2015 at the Express & Star Business awards. Taking place in the Ringside Suite at Wolverhampton Racecourse, a sell-out crowd of 440 people witnessed the UK’s largest independently owned oil blender take the top award and also the prize of Exporter of the Year, being praised for its success in winning work overseas and creating and maintaining long-term partnerships with customers.
Goodyear’s Wrangler DuraTrac tyre has been chosen as the best off-road tyre by readers of the specialised German magazine Off Road. It was the third successive year the tyre has won. The Goodyear Wrangler DuraTrac won in the “Traction Tyres” category in which readers were invited to vote for one of 10 candidates. 30 per cent of the votes went to the Goodyear tyre, which was developed for use on tough terrain.
For a number of years, Continental’s Tire division has collaborated with the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology (IME) in Münster, Germany and the University of Münster’s Institute for Plant Biology and Biotechnology (IBBP) to develop rubber from dandelions that is suitable for series tyre production. The scientists heading the ‘Rubin – Industrial Emergence of Natural Rubber from Dandelion’ project have now been awarded the Joseph von Fraunhofer Prize for their research into Russian dandelion and the development of prototype passenger car tyres that used dandelion-derived rubber. The award was presented yesterday in Wiesbaden, Germany, to IME’s Professor Dr Dirk Prüfer, IBBP’s Dr Christian Schulze Gronover and Continental’s Dr Carla Recker.
In 2018, Nexen Tire’s new 1.2 trillion Korean won (£705 million) tyre factory in the Czech Republic will enter operation. The tyre maker confirmed the project in June 2014 and says the facility it is building in Zatec will be “one of the most cutting-edge and eco-friendly plants in the world.”
Goodyear has been awarded the Luxembourg Green Product Award for the third time in the Luxembourg Green Business Awards’ five-year history. The award was handed over to Henk van Tuyl, technology directory for commercial tyres at Goodyear Europe, Middle East and Africa, during an event held in May as part of the Luxembourg Green Business Summit.
The Maxplo, a super-low aspect ratio concept tyre developed by Kumho Tire to demonstrate how tyres of the future may look and operate, has been awarded a Platinum A’ Design Award in the Futuristic category. Along with the other winners of no less than 89 different categories, Kumho received its A’ Design Award last month at a gala dinner in Italy. The Platinum award received by Kumho is the highest of four A’ Design award levels – the others being Iron, Silver and Gold.
Trelleborg and the Tractor of the Year awards will come together again in the following year, strengthening their strategic partnership for the co-marketed event, “Tractor of the Year 2016: Let the challenge begin”. The event will take place at Palazzo Di Varignana, in Bologna, on 18-19 May.
The Dunlop Sport BluResponse, and the ContiWinterContact TS850 have been named winners in the latest Auto Express Product Awards. Detailed in the latest June Special of the UK’s best-selling motoring weekly, product experts Henry Willis and Kim Adams wrote that its summer tyre winner – the Sport BluResponse – “has clearly been designed with EU tyre labels in mind [with highly rated fuel efficiency and wet grip characteristics]… Yet Dunlop engineers haven’t ignored other performance attributes,” with the tyre achieving “six top-three places” in Auto Express’ nine testing categories. The winter tyre winner – the ContiWinterContact TS850 – was lauded for its all-round ability, having been bested by competitors in snow track testing. Conti’s tyre was rated highly for achieving highly in the “conflicting demands” of wet grip and braking, and low rolling resistance.
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