“People in this world will always eat bread and rice,“ an agricultural tyre supplier said some years ago while participating in a panel of experts. However, it isn’t just the passenger car and truck tyre businesses that are vulnerable to negative conditions; the year following the Lehman collapse, 2009, showed that the agricultural tyre business was by no means recession proof. Investments in farming equipment and in tyres for these machines collapsed, however even back then it was clear that the market must bounce back at some stage as people will always need to eat. And that applies around the world, not just here. Because global populations are on the rise – we’ve already passed the seven billion mark – there is a corresponding increasing need for foodstuffs to be grown. Agriculture is a growth industry.