The Goodyear Tyre & Rubber Co.’s Fayetteville, North Carolina plant has successfully filled the nearly 200 buyouts required to avoid layoffs. The company had announced the need to cut 200 jobs in Autumn 2012, offering staff the option to take buyout packages. Local news sources estimated around 135 employees’ buyouts had been completed on 16 January, with the staff leaving their jobs in phases.
With Apollo Vredestein’s Enschede factory continuing to expand, and with the Indian parent company having invested around 100 million euros in the European company since the 2009 acquisition, Tyres & Accessories took advantage of its recent visit to Enschede for the opening of Apollo’s new global R&D centre and also have a look at the latest developments at the Dutch tyre factory.
Apollo Tyres Ltd has opened a global R&D centre in Enschede, the Netherlands as well as a global branding centre in London, UK. Opened just days apart, the two moves follow earlier commitments to put European activities in the driving seat for passenger car tyre development and, in company chairman Onkar S Kanwar’s words, to fuse the company’s three cultures into one team. Hints towards increased OE activity and the potential of a more international investor base are also evident.
Today the ‘coldest extreme sport event in the world’ got underway in Canada’s Yukon Territory. Seven German, Austrian, Swiss and French teams and a total of 14 athletes are taking part in this year’s Fulda Challenge, the 13th edition of the tyre maker-sponsored Arctic decathlon. Over the course of the coming five days the athletes will participate in ten sporting events in temperatures up to minus 40º Celsius, and will cover almost 1,000 miles in doing so.
Continental presented its estimation that the UK car, 4×4 and van tyre market remains worth around 33 million tyres at the launch of its partnership tyre supply deal with Mercedes-Benz World, a performance demonstration facility on the historical site of the Brooklands circuit. This number is similar to 2011, though Conti noted several trends affecting the make-up of this figure in 2012, most notably the growth in part worn tyre sales, estimated to represent just under 10 per cent of the total market. Initial signs of the impact of tyre labelling, introduced as a mandatory measure in November, are minimal, with premium segment sales holding up. Conti calls any current definitive assessment too early to truly assess, however premium tyre sales have held up well. Meanwhile the quality segment has come under pressure from aggressive pricing on either side, with brands in this segment struggling to maintain share, according to Conti.
Apollo Tyres intends to supply its Oragadam factory in India’s Tamil Nadu state with electricity produced in its own plant. The company plans to establish a 15 Megawatt coal-based thermal power plant at the site; the facility will consist of two 7.5 Megawatt units. In a statement, Apollo said the plant will improve overall efficiency and reduce pollution compared with separate power generation and process steam generation.
However depressed the market feels to suppliers and despite the legitimate complaints of tough times from the retail sector, the overall UK tyre replacement sales situation in terms of unit sales is actually getting marginally better. According to the latest passenger car tyre sell-out sales data for the first nine months of 2012, compiled by leading international market research firm GfK, things are far from rosy, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Apollo Tyres has disclosed further details about its global expansion plans. Speaking with news agency Press Trust of India, vice-chairman and managing director Neeraj Kanwar referred to projects amounting to $US1 million. This investment will take place over the next half decade.
Continental’s tyre business – the German automotive supplier’s most important division – aims to intensify its competition with the top three global players over the coming decade or so. According to an article published yesterday by German financial daily Handelsblatt, growth in international markets as part of its ‘expansion strategy 2025’ will fortify the European market leader’s position in other regions.
75 years after the company’s foundation, Stapleton’s, its suppliers and its partners are all celebrating three quarters of a century in business.
It’s hard to imagine what Sidney Stapleton would make of the company that bears his name 75 years on from the September day in 1937 when he first incorporated the firm and opened his premises at 195 High Street, Watford. By the end of the Second World War in 1945, the company had not only survived but expanded with the opening of a new depot in nearby Hitchin – a move that brought the weekly wage bill to a total of £20.
A sharp decline in demand for tyres within the European Union is Bridgestone’s stated reason for cutbacks in Spain and France; travel to Hungary, however, and the picture looks entirely different. The tyre maker states it will treble production capacity of passenger car tyres at its Tatabánya plant in the coming years. One hundred per cent Bridgestone Europe-owned local subsidiary, Bridgestone Tatabánya Termelö Kft, will invest approximately 267 million euros to increase daily capacity from 6,000 tyres (as of June 2012) to 18,000 tyres. The expansion project is expected to be completed during the first half of 2017.
The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd. has previewed the February 2013 launch of its Advan Sport V105. Speaking alongside the Macau Grand Prix, Yokohama Rubber Group president Hikomitsu Noji explained that the tyre will replace its V103 predecessor and has been developed through experience garnered in motorsport.
After years of planning, debating and discussing, tyre labelling is finally with us. From today every new passenger car and truck tyre must be sold with a European label of some kind (like the one opposite) and those doing the selling must tell their customers about it.
Of course with only small numbers of retailers prepared before today's deadline, no clear enforcement mechanism in place and with 70 per cent of consumers unaware of the new rules it is unlikely to be plain sailing for everyone's favourite sticker.
One of the most striking stands at Brityrex was the black and yellow of Shandong Wanda Boto Tyre Co., Ltd. Obviously this company does not hail from these shores, but walking onto the company’s show stand, Tyres & Accessories was greeted by a familiar southern accent. As it turns out, while the stand was clearly there to promote the Boto name, the decision to exhibit follows on from the Chinese manufacturer’s decision to partner with one of this country’s largest retreaders/fleet tyre suppliers. According to representatives of both companies Bandvulc will now wholesale Boto truck and bus radial tyres in the UK as well as selling the tyres direct to its fleet customers through its Bandvulc Tyre Contracts business.
On its Chinese-language website, the China Rubber Industry Association links the recently-expired US tariff on consumer tyres with the European tyre label – and refers to both as a “double whammy” for China’s tyre makers. The tariff, which the association also called an attempt at trade protectionism, is held responsible for China’s tyre passenger car and light truck tyre exports to the US dropping from 43 million in 2009 to 31 million in 2010 and 27.3 million the following year.
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