Hannover-based Continental AG is a leading automotive supplier and – according to the company – is “the choice of leading car manufacturers, offering award-winning tyres that deliver responsive braking in all weather conditions.”
Continental Tire the Americas has thanked “everyone who came from near and far and braved the weather” to attend the opening of its Sumter factory in South Carolina. Despite the arrival of an Arctic cold front, on 28 January several hundred guests, including Germany’s Ambassador to the US and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, attended the facility’s official inauguration.
Volkswagen has approved Continental summer tyres for original equipment fitment on three of its models – 15 and 16-inch versions of the ContiEcoContact 5 and ContiPremiumContact 5 will be fitted to the Golf 7, the CC receives a 17-inch rim diameter version of the ContiSportContact 5 and ContiEcoContact 5, while the car maker says that the Beetle will be fitted with the 20-inch ContiSportContact 5.
UK car producers have come out as strong supporters of Britain’s membership of the EU, and a new group has commissioned a major research study into the benefits of belonging to the trading block to underline the ramifications of a potential exit.
The proliferation of electronic driver assistance systems is making the average vehicle more dependent on computing power than ever before. The latest trends see cars becoming more connected to their user’s personal computing systems and the Internet than ever as well. The combination of the two raises security questions, but are they valid and how does all this related to the tyre/TPMS business?
Starting 1 January 2014, Thorsten A. Bublitz is supervising the international expansion of all agricultural activities within Continental’s Commercial Specialty Tires business unit in his new role as business line manager agro. In this position he reports to business unit managing director Dr. Michael Maertens.
As long as TPMS remains the third largest selling intelligent car component after ABS and ESC, the performance of this technology in key emerging markets will remain of significant interest to the wider industry. With this in mind, and as part of more detailed coverage in our February magazine’s TPMS feature, we have prepared this brief market overview:
Giti Tire has appointed Daria Sala Della Cuna as country manager for the Italian, Spanish and Portuguese markets. She will replace Corrado Moglia who has accepted a new international role within Giti Tire to be announced soon, in the position. Moglia joined Giti Tire in 2006 as sales director for Southern Europe, before becoming marketing […]
Continental’s newly-published provisional key figures for the 2013 fiscal year show the tyre and automotive component maker achieved an adjusted EBIT margin of 11.2 per cent, comfortably beating the target of at least 10.5 per cent set last November. Year-on-year sales increased slightly, rising from €32.7 billion to €33.3 billion.
As reported yesterday, Pirelli CEO Marco Tronchetti Provera, whose family holds the largest single stake in the company, plans a full departure from the company, first as CEO and then as shareholder. The only point we can now speculate on is the timeframe this will occur within; Tronchetti says he plans to take this step in 2017.
Last year, Continental introduced the first tyres in its third generation commercial vehicle range. These initial products, the HA3 Conti Coach, Conti CityPlus and the Conti Urban, catered to passenger transport, and now the manufacturer has followed up with the launch of its first 3G tyre for the goods sector, the Continental EcoPlus HT3 trailer tyre.
To mark his upcoming 66th birthday on 18 January, Marco Tronchetti Provera granted German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung a long interview. During this he shared his intention to step down as Pirelli’s chief executive in the coming two years and subsequently sell the family’s 25.1 per cent share in the company. His three children are following their own paths and anyway it is difficult to inherit the role of business entrepreneur. Until last year, Tronchetti was also engaged in a showdown with the Genoa-based Malacalza industrial family. Tronchetti originally invited the Malacalza family to become investors, but later Tronchetti gained the impression they were trying to oust him. In the course of this struggle Francesco Gori, in charge of Pirelli’s tyre business, lost his job. He now serves as an advisor to Malacalza Investitmenti, which is currently the second-largest Pirelli shareholder but openly interested in expanding its involvement.
The Federation Internationale de I’Automobile (FIA) Land Speed Records Commission has homologated Continental Tire the Americas’ world speed records for both ten kilometres and ten miles from a standing start. The tyre maker, in conjunction with Michael Shank Racing, Ford, Roush Yates Engines and International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) set out to break the records at Daytona International Speedway on 9 October 2013; the attempt was made by Colin Braun, who drove a Ford EcoBoost-powered Daytona Prototype (DP) fitted with Continental’s ExtremeContact DR (Dry, Race) tyres.
People in the UK tend to think they live in a heavily-regulated country, and when it comes to commercial transportation this is certainly the case. In addition to the safety laws that apply to all motorists, the professional driver and fleet operator must take a host of workplace health and safety and duty of care requirements into account – and on top of this come the regulations that apply to the vehicles themselves. Towards the end of October, Tyres & Accessories spoke with Tony Stapleton, commercial fleet sales manager for Continental Tyre Group, about the issues facing fleets and what the tyre maker can do to address this while minimising whole life tyre cost.
The truck market was amongst the first to take steps to reduce costs when the credit crunch bit, but the flipside is that is also amongst the first to respond when conditions improve. And this is likely to have a knock-on effect on the tyre market that supplies it. Continental’s logic certainly fits with their figures. And the fact that marketing is growing again is evident based on the fact that UK and Irish truck and bus tyre replacement markets shot up 14 per cent and 5 per cent respectively in 2013. Now it is worth pointing out that these figures are based on ETRMA data which includes the top five and some other leading manufacturers, but not many of the imported brands that are popular to UK tyre buyers.
There are already signs that European tyre labelling is having an effect on the purchasing decisions of consumers, that’s the view of Continental representatives shared at the company at its recent annual trends briefing in London. Conti’s reading of market response to labelling follows a number of different view proffered by other manufacturer, supplier and retail sources. So far much of the data has suggested that the label is unused or unoffered and so therefore doesn’t have much influence.
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