(Akron/Tire Review) Goodyear Dunlop has opened a new distribution centre in Senec, Slovakia, which will serve the central European region. Consequently, the company will close its current warehouses in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, according to reports in the Prague daily Monitor.
Hyundai is to build a plant in the Czech Republic, investing 1 billion euros in a factory with the capacity to produce 300,000 units annually. The factory is expected to start production of the B segment Getz in the fouth quarter of 2008. The announcement follows the news that Kia’s Slovakia plant will be production later this year.
MotoGP is gearing up for action again with the Czech Grand Prix in Brno, Prague. The circuit has hosted motorcycle GP’s since 1987 and has always offered fascinating racing action. Bridgestone has conducted numerous development tests in Brno, and has always scored strong results at the Czech Grand Prix, such as fourth place in last year’s round. The German Grand Prix four weeks ago also marked a significant step forward in Bridgestone’s tyre development programme, with Ducati star Loris Capirossi clocking the fastest lap of the race, and with Kawasaki’s Shinya Nakano scoring a remarkable sixth place, only 4.5 seconds behind race winner Valentino Rossi.
Tyre technicians used the summer break to develop a choice of three or four different front tyres, and seven to ten different rear tyres for Brno. In order to satisfy the different demands of the riders and to cater for all possible weather conditions, a total of 1100 tyres were shipped to the Czech Republic.
Kayaba has increased its original equipment business with PSA Citroen and Toyota, supplying shock absorbers for the Citroen C1, Peugeot 107 and the Toyota Aygo. All three vehicles share the same platform and will be manufactured at the Toyota Peugeot Citroen Automobiles (TPCA) plant at Kolin in the Czech Republic. Initially, the shock absorbers will be supplied from Kayaba’s factory near Pamplona in Spain, but this will switch to a purpose-built factory in the Czech Republic. This plant is due to begin production in February 2007.
According to German media sources Continental is threatening engineers to relocate development resources from Hanover to countries such as the Czech Republic, Romania or Malaysia if they do not agree on proposals to increase weekly working times from 37.5 to 40 hours – without an increase in earnings.
Negociations between employees and the German tyre manufacturer will be held early next week. If an agreement is not reached130 jobs in the R&D department, where there are 700 employees in total, would be threatened according to Bernhard Trilken, chief of truck tyre development in Hanover-Stöcken.
In the future Mitas US will be known as CGS (Ceska Gumarenska Spolecnost) Tires US Inc, said Mitas president Dennis Vavrik.
The International Tyre Club is to hold its 2005 meeting in Lisbon, Portugal from March 9-11.
Club secretary James Graham pointed out the reasons behind the decision: “Although recently we have concentrated on introducing the markets of Eastern Europe to our members we do not want to over-focus on these. Other areas of Europe offer just as much new opportunity and in Lisbon we will not just be introducing new faces from Portugal itself. We will be looking to the whole of Spain, South to Morocco & NW Africa and West to Brazil. All areas of equally fast moving potential.”
The ITC’s ‘summit’ style format provides an arena for trade discussions for its tyre and wheel business members.
Club events seek to foster new and mutually beneficial commercial links in regions offering the prospect of higher than average long-term potential. Both the Czech Republic and Hungary have hosted recent successful Club meetings.
In a continuation of its recent wage dispute, Michelin has started negotiating a new wage agreement. The deal, which also discusses medical benefits, concerns four plants and 5,000 members of the company’s North American workforce.
Hankook Tire Manufacturing Co Ltd is considering investing up to 500 million Dolars to build a plant in the Czech Republic. This follows the decision of Hyundai to build cars in Slovakia. The area is rapidly becoming the centre of the new European automotive industry. Hankook Tire may be looking at other countries in the region but they are clearly considering the Czech Republic as an option. Hyundai announced on Tuesday that it will set up its factory in the north western city of Zilina, about 30 km from the border with the Czech Republic, where a number of foreign car part makers are already present.
In 2003 the automobile markets of the EU candidate states Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland have developed strongly. According to press releases the Poles have bought 358,414 or 16 per cent more new cars than the year before. In Hungary the same figures amounted up to 210,000 cars or plus 21 per cent compared to 2002 while the Czech new car market only grew by 1.2 per cent.
A double success for Continental: The mould factory of Barum Continental (VFB) in Otrokovice and the Continental Teves factory in Jicín have been awarded the “National Quality Award 2003” of the Czech Republic in Prague. In addition, the Czech prime minister appointed Jicín’s plant director Ladislav Drázný “Quality Manager of the Year 2003”. Jicín is Continental’s only factory in Europe producing brake boosters. Since 2002 the staff has worked strictly according to the guidelines of the European Foundation for Quality Management, says Continental in a press release. Thus Jicín achieved relevant goals for customers in areas such as product quality, price and delivery satisfaction, plus the staff became better qualified and more strongly motivated. “This award shows that we are on the right track. We will continue to increase our competitive ability prior to European Union entry,” promises the plant director Drázný. The award was a confirmation for the 330 employees of the mould factory in Otrokovice, Drázný continues. Through consistently improved efficiency and quality as well as responsible personnel management the VFB factory has developed to become one of the leading suppliers for passenger car tyre moulds within the Continental corporate group. “We owe this award to a large extent to our employees,” says VFB chief Ladislav Zemko.
Continental is set to invest 74 million Euro in building a plant on the Barum Continental site in Otrokovice, in the Czech Republic. Expected annual capacity will be three million tyres, mostly high performance products for the OE market. The project will mean the creation of 430 jobs over the next decade and a new company, wholly-owned by Continental, will be incorporated to manage the project.
The cornerstone has been laid for Peugeot Citroen’s new factory in Trnava, Slovakia. Vehicle production should begin in 2006, with an annual capacity of 300,000 units, employing 3,500 staff. The project represents an investment of 700 million Euros and is part of PSA’s strategy to move manufacturing closer to expanding markets. In March this year, PSA’s market share in the six Central European countries of Croatia, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia was 13.6 per cent, compared to five per cent five years earlier.
Belshina is seeking investment of 72.2 million dollars from Germany, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Japan for the completion of three projects to develop new tyre production at Belshina. The Belarussian government has a programme to attract 1.5 billion dollars in place for 2003. This will be allied to a monetary, price and tax reform designed to encourage inward investment.
If everything in life went according to plan or the way it was once written down in the corporate strategy books, then the production of agricultural tyres would have been abandoned long ago. Already way back when Messrs. Haverbeck and Borgmann were board members, there were such angry arguments about the distribution of costs that closing down production looked to be a foregone conclusion. Eventually, however, they changed their minds and production of agricultural tyres continued, even though there was next to no money to be made from it. Closing down production would have cost the corporation even more and so it opted for the lesser evil, but for the company’s dedicated agricultural tyres there was virtually no scope for future growth. And yet in this new millennium the German corporation is one of the few truly serious suppliers in this highly specialised field. In an interview with NEUE REIFENZEITUNG in August 2002 in Otrokovice, Werner Flebbe, head of the agricultural tyre sector at Continental AG, and Thorsten Bublitz, head of corporate marketing and distribution of agricultural tyres, admitted that up until 1995 the company did not exactly cover itself with glory – and yet, in the same breath they were able to add that the largest and most modern agricultural tyres demanded by the industry are now built in the Czech Republic. And the price ratios are now ‘OK’. What is more important, according to Werner Flebbe, is that the major Original Equipment suppliers are now strongly interested in co-operating with Continental.
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