Watts Industrial Tyres has strengthened its European operations by the acquisition of Kollenbach, of Rheinberg, Germany. Said Jean-Paul Mindermann, MD of Watts-Industrie Reifen: “We had outgrown our own premises in Langenfeld and the Kollenbach acquisition has enabled us to double our operation in the Ruhr area.”
Uniroyal is well-known for passenger and truck tyres. Now the brand, part of the Continental group, is trading under the name Uniroyal Agro in the agricultural tyre segment also. The exclusive distributor in Germany is Meyer Lissendorf, and negotiations are on-going regarding distribution in other European countries.
The Brock-Group is known across Germany as an alloy wheel marketing company. Successfully marketing an assortment covering everything from commonplace to extravagant wheels, the group has gained the reputation of a quality supplier. Although it wasn’t carefully planned for future business, it cannot be purely accident that the group has owned a wheel factory in Bosnia for two years now. Meanwhile, nearly 100 machines are working in the factory 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 50 weeks a year, with an annual production capacity of some 500,000 wheels. However, this figure alone does not say very much; equipment and machinery, as far as it has been replaced, is state-of-the-art, and it is obvious that within only a few months this factory will be run exclusively by new and modern machinery. E.T.R.T.O, KBA, TÜV, SF 1 JWL and Jaso standards are fulfilled in order to guarantee quality. The qualification procedure of the factory will take place this August. In the interview with NEUE REIFENZEITUNG, Claudia and Elisabeth Brock point out that in the future the Brock-Group will go on putting emphasis on the upper level, i.e. the high-tech level. The assortment consists of very nice and very costly wheels, which are in demand all over Europe and the marketing of which is very interesting for manufacturers and for both wholesalers and retailers. High class segments consisting of aesthetically designed wheels and many special sizes form the mainstay of the Brock-Group, well-known by the names Brock Car Fashion and Rad Center Derkum.
The executive board of Continental has said that it is looking to sell major parts of the ContiTech group in order to reinforce Conti’s core business as a supplier of chassis technology to the auto industry. The revenue generated will enable Conti to make further acquisitions. ContiTech’s sales last year were 1.4 billion Euros and it employs 14,000.
Tyre manufacturer Continental is producing a special edition of its WinterContact TS 790 V tyre exclusively for Porsche. The tyre – already mounted on the rim – will be distributed in Germany by Porsche dealers only.
The BRV invited its members to attend its annual meeting in Weimar, historically one of the most famous cities in Eastern Germany. BRV President Ludwig did not have only good things to talk about, as he believes that margins will fall even further and the tyre trade cannot afford more pressure on margins. He mentioned Michelin and Goodyear as brands sold to car dealers at prices which are unrealistic and, due to the fact that tyre dealers have not been successful in the fast-fit field, President Ludwig urged tyre manufacturers to give tyre dealers better buying prices than car dealers. The association also expressed concern that tyre manufacturers might establish direct selling contacts with big fleets.
The German subsidiary of Finnish tyre manufacturer, Nokian Tyres, has announced a 3% price increase for passenger car and SUV-tyres, and an increase of 2% for commercial vehicle tyres, effective from 1st April.
The car fleet servicing market in the UK is a very tough business. The size of this segment become evident looking at new car registrations in the UK last year, 57% of more than two millions were fleet vehicles. In absolute figures the German market surpasses the British, but the proportion of fleet cars is less. The potential is enormous: Industry sources say that the average fleet car needs 1.8 tyres replaced a year, which gives a total market of 9 million tyres in Germany. And it should be remembered that fleet cars are normally newer than the average, travel more miles per year and fitment rates of winter tyres are higher than for private cars. A fleet service provider knows how much he has to pay for tyres per mile. It should be routine to ask whether the fleet has the right cars and the most suitable tyres, but could another model of car be more appropriate to the needs of the fleet because of how it is used? Car fleets need a mobile fitting network wherever the cars are driving. The tyre dealer carrying out the service on behalf of a leasing company must know the state of the tyres, has to ensure that they are at the correct pressure, has to identify the reasons for unbalanced abrasion patterns and has to fit the car with winter tyres before the first snowflakes fall. Whoever wants to participate in the growing market segment of car fleets has to be fully professional – and he has to invest money. For example, an integral component of car leasing or full service fleet management systems is the use of the Internet. All those involved in the package use the Internet as a communication platform and they want to reduce the costs for the fleet parc. Customers are very interested in quality; the package they anticipate is more than “only” good tyres. Car fleet servicing might be an opportunity, but not a cheap one.
Pit Stop, the fast-fit group belonging to Kwik-Fit (and thus, ultimately, Ford) is pushing ahead with plans to open up to 400 centres in Germany within the next two years. Pit Stop focuses on exhausts, brakes, shock absorbers, etc., as well as selling tyres.
It has been announced that the former Kleber tyre factory at St. Ingbert in Germany will close at the end of June next year. The factory began making tyres in 1970 and ceased tyre production in 1994. Since then it has manufactured tyre components such as textile fabrics and rubber mixings. 200 jobs will be lost and the closure is part of the Michelin Group’s on-going restructuring programme to improve competitiveness.
HMI (short for Trade Marketing Initiative) is a special relationship between the tyre trade and the industry, offered in Germany only by Goodyear. The marketing programme has been widened over the past year; for example the long-awaited Tyre Soft 2 software is now available at long last. At the annual meeting in Sonthofen, Mr. Zubanovic, managing director of Goodyear Handels Systeme GmbH, expressed little concern despite the problems the organisation is facing. He said that the tyre trade has to go for growth and seize every opportunity to expand – dealers who do not will prove to be uncompetitive in the long run. Goodyear MD Jarro Kaplan, who is president of Goodyear Eastern Europe, pointed out that teamwork with Goodyear is beneficial because it “always guarantees the trade a good year.”
Sales of Winter Tyres for 2000 were in line with those for the previous year. Roughly 16 million winter tyres were supplied to dealers in Germany last season. 1999 was a record year with sales of 16.1 million winter tyres. However, the Continental Group has been successful in increasing its market share of that figure to around 33%.
No doubt about it: distribution of passenger car and truck tyres is undergoing a dramatic change in Germany. With the (re)-organised workshops and fast fitters a lot of new distributors of passenger car tyres have entered the market in recent years, attacking the monopoly of the professional tyre retailers, which had been successfully preserved over the past decades. In addition, the tyre distribution channel of car dealers has grown continuously over the last few years. Approximately every third car tyre is sold through this kind of distributor nowadays. The speed of this process will increase because all leading car manufacturers have developed programmes to accompany the customers with a lifelong full-service, which includes tyres and wheels. How threatening is all this for tyre retailers? It would be possible to have a nice discussion about these trends but we wanted to take a look on the concrete, everyday tyre business situation at car dealers and car repair workshops. For this we visited a total of ten companies in Hamburg. Who is selling tyres? Under which conditions are they sold? What about the competence and motivation of the employees? Do they give advice to customers? If so, how good is this advice? Where are tyres neglected as a product? How professional is the marketing? Which companies could be regarded as serious competitors to tyre retailers? The variation in the results of this report could hardly have been wider! In general the trend is that most of the car dealers and workshop stations are miles away from a professional tyre marketing operation. There is always a big difference between the stated goals and the actual achievement in real life. In the end the conclusion is that, on the one hand the importance of these new distribution channels should not be underestimated, but on the other hand, their professional performance should not be overestimated by tyre retailers.
The alloy wheel market in the UK is nothing like the size of , say, that in Germany, and reliable estimates of its size are hard to come by, although one educated guess is £500 m at wholesale prices. Reasons for the comparatively small market are manifold, varying from the way cars are sold in the UK to the effect of the large company car/fleet sector, which accounts for over half of new car sales. Fleet buyers do not welcome anything which increases costs, and alloy wheels fall into this category. Despite this drawback, the UK alloy wheel market is growing, due largely to increasing fitment in the OE sector. In the aftermarket, it is those who have disposable income to spend and who are fashion conscious that buy alloys and, as with most other fashion accessories, this means the young. As with other fashions, there are labels which are “in” and others which lack street cred and, again as with other fashions, the successful designs spawn many imitations. So, in order to stay ahead of the pack, the leading design labels have to introduce new designs – to reinvent the wheel.
The latest comparative study of the European Commission regarding car prices, shows that 46 of a total of 81 passenger car models cost over 20 percent more in Germany than in at least one of the other Euro-zone markets. Companies such as PSA, Fiat, VW, Ford, Opel and some Japanese manufacturers follow a high-price strategy in Germany. The cheapest prices for new cars to be found in the Netherlands, Finland, Spain and Denmark, which does not even belong to the Euro zone.
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