A second win for Markko Märtin has clinched both runner-up honours for Ford-Michelin in the 2004 Manufacturers’ World Championship and has promoted the Estonian to within three points of Petter Solberg in the competition for the silver medal in the Drivers’ classification.
Continental AG, has announced that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Economy of the Slovak Republic.
According to US media sources Continental’s decision to lock its Mayfield tyre plant has been finalised. Together workers and unions had undertaken a last attempt to divert Continental from resolving the situation through closure but their cost cutting suggestions to make the factory more competitive were to no avail.
On 24 September 2004 Bridgestone Corporation officially opened a Chinese tyre plant.
With the closure of its Coventry based Jaguar plant scheduled for next September, Ford will shed 1100 jobs and the massive cash injections it has ploughed into trying to revive the brand. Jaguar has seen disappointing sales this year, its performance led to production cuts of 15,000 this year and its negative impact on the Ford group was realised through an unexpectedly high loss of £201 million in the second quarter.
The British brand has been hampered by falling global sales, especially in America, excess factory capacity and uncompetitive operating costs. The decision was not unexpected and the closure of the Brown’s Lane assembly line, which builds the XK sports coupe and XJ luxury saloon was based on the logic that producing 125,000 cars a year at three different factories was inefficient and costly. Foreseen or not, the restructuring is another blow to the British auto industry and one of its prestigious brands.
“Jaguar is currently turning out about 120,000 vehicles a year at three plants,” said analyst David Healy of Burnham Securities. “That’s about half the capacity of one full-size plant in the United States,” where its sales are down 11.5 per cent this year.
Understandably improving Jaguar’s financial performance has become a major priority for Ford, as its four luxury brands, with help from its Lincoln brand, are expected to contribute one-third of the manufacturers $7 billion pre-tax profit target by 2006. Despite the cost cutting measures Jaguar still faces a long struggle and has now abandoned its target of producing 200,000 models a year and is aiming to stabilise sales at the current level of 125,000.
Operations at Bridgestone’s Amagi plant have resumed after a fire, which burned for two hours, was put out last Friday. As a result of the fire, and the resultant clean-up operation, the Amagi factory had been closed for five days. The financial implications of the fire have been described by analysts as minimal due to the company’s strong “earnings momentum.” The same Deutsche Bank analysts have predicted that the financial impact, in terms of operating profit, will at most approach 2 billion yen (£10 million).
The Indonesian company Gajah Tunggal is one of the biggest tyre manufacturers in south-east Asia producing its leading brand GT Radial for demanding markets like Europe. At the moment Gajah Tunggal is expanding its product ranges in order to offer up-to-date tyres for an increasing number of customers around the world. With a tour of the factory Tyres & Accessories was given the opportunity to get an idea of how tyres are produced on Gajah Tunggal’s all-in-one site in Tangerang near Jakarta where the company is also developing and producing tyres for the domestic and regional markets.
Bridgestone has resumed rubber-rolling operations at its Tochigi refining facility two months ahead of schedule. Production was suspended after the building was destroyed by fire in September 2003.
Bandvulc Tyres’ has announced an all time high in its sales volumes, following its achievement of record production levels at its Ivybridge factory.
The company believes that the increase in performance is all thanks to the £1 million investment, which refurbished the company’s facility with a ‘Camelot’ theme, earlier this year.
Bridgestone has announced that it has begun supplying Potenza RE050 RFT runflat tyres to Ferrari, for installation on the 612 Scaglietti. This will be the first model that Ferrari has equipped with Bridgestone runflats.
Michelin & Cie., one of Europe’s largest tyre makers, is set to open a tyre plant in Russia on 7 July. Both Interfax and The Moscow Times reported the information, citing an official at the company’s press service in Paris, who stated that the plant, based in the Moscow region, will produce 2 million car tyres a year. The company intends to expand this capacity to 6.5 million next year. The press service source said Michelin is investing $160 million in the plant.
Michelin, based in Clermont-Ferrand, France, planned to borrow $20 million from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development for the Russian factory two years ago, on the understanding that the EBRD had would have a 49 per cent stake in the plant.
Workers at Ronal’s plant in St. Avold, France, have gone on strike in a protest against restructuring plans. The aluminium cast wheel manufacturers angered employees after using redundancies as a way of cutting costs. Part of the restructuring programme would have meant producing wheels for the high-quality aftermarket segment, but would have led to decreases in annual output.
While the Goodyear shares jumped around 5 per cent to 8.56 US-Dollars on the stock exchange, finance experts have reacted more cautiously. Rod Lache, DB-analyst in New York, doubts whether the contract with the unions or the closing of a factory in the USA last year is sufficient to have a positive effect on the high fixed costs. He expressed surprise that Goodyear’s volumes slipped by 1.7 per cent while the industry gained 3.7 per cent. The value of Goodyear shares is in the region of 6 US-Dollars, according to Deutsche Bank.
The Goodyear factory at Tyler, Texas, is to increase daily production by 3,000 tyres to 27,000. This follows growing demand for Goodyear’s new Assurance line of tyres and will involve the recall of around 50 workers. These were among 200 staff laid off in November last year.
Malaysian industrial giant the Lion Group, which owns Silverstone Tyre among its many other interests, is to introduce the brand into China. The group has a factory in China and already produces tyres under the Dong Feng brand name. The introduction of Silverstone marks a policy of expansion in China, with the Lion Group planning to invest US$ 1.5 billion over the next decade. As well as the tyre plant, Lion’s Chinese interests include 37 department stores, three motorcycle plants, a car manufacturing plant and 12 breweries. The Chinese operations account for almost 45 per cent of Lion’s annual turnover and 40 per cent of net earnings.
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