Rockwell Automation, Inc., the world’s largest company dedicated to industrial automation and digital transformation, has strengthened its collaboration with Michelin. This reinforced relationship focuses on digital innovation across Michelin’s manufacturing processes and builds upon more than three decades of collaborative history.
Purge any thought that Hankook Tire has a monopoly when it comes to tie-ups between the tyre and fashion industries, even in the Korean Peninsula. Rival firm Nexen Tire is collaborating with French-born outdoor wear brand Eider to release four types of hiking shoes and boots. All feature soles containing tyre compounds.
Synthetic rubber and plastics manufacturer Trinseo has reached definitive agreements with Swiss sustainable tyre recycling specialist Tyre Recycling Solutions (TRS) on a commercial collaboration and an equity investment in TRS. The transaction is expected to close later this quarter, subject to ordinary closing conditions.
Michelin CEO Florent Menegaux has suggested about further collaboration with fellow leading tyre manufacturer and automotive supplier Continental. The French and German companies have cooperated on the Eurofit wheel business since the 1990s and entered into the Rubberway supply chain joint venture in September 2019.
Through a new arrangement with Mitsubishi Corporation (Mitsubishi), Toyo Tire & Rubber (Toyo) aims to “survive and remain viable” during the “unprecedented transformation” currently occurring in the automotive industry. The two parties have entered into a business alliance agreement that involves Mitsubishi increasing its shareholding in Toyo from 3.05 per cent to 20 per cent. Toyo will issue Mitsubishi 26,931,956 new shares via a third-party allotment that will be paid in between 15 January and 28 June 2019. With this share acquisition, Mitsubishi becomes Toyo’s largest shareholder.
Under a cooperative deal signed with Hyundai Motor, Michelin will work together to develop a new all-season tyre for electric vehicles, and will also collaborate in the development of a bespoke tyre for a successor model to the Genesis G80 saloon. Representatives from Hyundai Motor recently visited Michelin’s research and development centre in Clermont-Ferrand, France, to sign a technical partnership agreement.
A collaboration between Continental’s Tire division and Kordsa, the Sabanci Group’s textile reinforcing materials business, is expected to result in a new, sustainable system of bonding textile reinforcing materials to rubber-based compounds. Specifically, the two companies are working on a technology that replaces resorcinol and formaldehyde with more environmentally friendly chemicals. Continental reports that to-date the joint work has delivered “very promising” results, adding that the technology will be available to others under a free licensing concept.
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Michelin/Ludovic Combe