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On September 13 Israel based clean tech company Adama Technologies Corporation announced the signing of a Letter of Intent with entrepreneurs in Romania to establish a series of tyre recycling facilities. The company anticipates the establishment of these plants will be partially facilitated through European Union and local government funding. Expected annual revenues from this new project are in excess of 100 million euros.
Nanophosphate lithium ion battery and systems developer and manufacturer A123 Systems has announced the opening of what it claims to be North America’s largest lithium ion automotive battery production facility. The grand opening of the plant in Livonia, Michigan was held on September 13, and A123 Systems says that when the facility is fully operational it will expand the company’s manufacturing capabilities by up to 600MW hours per year. The Livonia factory’s opening comes just over one year after A123 Systems was awarded a US$249 million grant from the US Department of Energy (DOE) as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to help the company execute its strategy to ramp up US manufacturing capabilities to meet increasing, market-driven demand for innovative technologies.
Recent expansion to Toyo Tire’s factory in the US state of Georgia is expected to create a further 200 jobs at the plant. The Bartow County facility, which has been in operation since early 2006, currently employs around 650 people in the production of passenger car and light truck tyres and was instrumental in Toyo Tire North America Manufacturing being named ‘Georgia Manufacturer of the Year in 2009.’ When current expansion work is complete the 167,000 square metre facility will have the capacity to produce six million tyres per annum. The new jobs will most likely be added by the middle of next year.
Toyo has held a groundbreaking ceremony for its new Chinese passenger car tyre manufacturing facility in Zhangjiagang City, Jiangsu Province. The subsidiary – Toyo Tires Zhangjiagang Co, Ltd will be chaired by Toyo senior corporate officer Mitsuru Hitotsuyanagi. Production is scheduled to begin in December 2011 with an annual capacity of 2 million units and a workforce approximately 500 in number.
CGS Tyres has today confirmed it will build the production plant for agricultural tyres reported on tyrepress.com over the past two months. A $43.81 million investment will allow the Czech company to build its new plant in Charles City, Iowa. Company representatives and the Iowa Department of Economic Development signed an investment agreement at the Farm Progress Show in Boone, Iowa, marking the end to negotiations that begun in 2009. The company said the plant would create at least 159 new jobs for local residents. Production is scheduled to commence by 1 January, 2012.
Almost a year has passed since the United States imposed a tariff upon consumer tyres imported from China. This tariff, which in its first 12 months added 35 per cent to the existing four per cent import duty, has been applauded in some quarters. United Steelworkers international president Leo W. Gerard, for example, stated in an April 2010 letter to US President Obama that “the domestic industry is, in fact, continuing to make good progress in recovering from the near fatal blow caused by the market disruption from a surge in Chinese consumer tyre imports.” Yet such opinions are not universal. As the tariff’s first anniversary approaches, the US-China Business Council (USCBC) has also drafted its own letter to the President, in which it states it “has found no evidence that the tariffs on low-end Chinese tyres have had a positive effect on American jobs, and we suspect the tariffs have had an overall negative economic impact on American consumers.”
On August 19 it was announced that the Iowa Economic Development Board, an Iowa state government agency, has awarded CGS Tires US $924,000 from its Grow Iowa Values Fund. This amount, the board reports, will be used to support 154 of the 192 jobs to be created when the Czech Republic’s first factory in North America is built. The total project cost is $43.8 million and involves reconfiguring the former Winnebago Industries manufacturing facility in Charles City for the production of radial agricultural tyres, amongst other products.
Ireland’s government apparently is considering increasing the tax levied upon tyres, and the association representing the country’s tyre industry has slammed it as a measure that would compromise safety and jobs. HGV Ireland reports that in a submission to Environment Minister John Gormley, the Irish Tyre Industry Association (ITIA) has stated that any tax increase would lead to hundreds of job losses as motorists would cross the border into Northern Ireland to make their tyre purchases.
HiQ franchise Easy Autocentres’ branches in Erdington and Kettering say they are benefitting from their investment in Pro-Align’s £30,000 wheel alignment systems. HiQ says there has been an increase in wheel alignment work of up to 50 per cent at each centre that now uses advanced Pro-Align machinery. Pro-Align says its systems help to improve motorists’ fuel economy, while also spotting defective and dangerous tyres at an early stage, thus reducing the potential of serious accidents.
North Carolina’s Stanly County and two towns located within the area are offering Michelin US$900,000 in incentives for the promise of adding 70 jobs to the company’s Norwood aircraft tyre facility. The Norwood operation currently employs 320 people and Michelin intends to spend $11.3 million to add a retreading capability to the plant during the second half of 2010.
Retail Motor Industry (RMI) MOT chairman John Ball, is urging members, industry colleagues and consumers, to take the opportunity to make their voice heard by participating in an EU MOT survey, which runs from 30 July to 24 September: “This survey is a chance to make clear your view on the importance of the MOT and highlight the potential issues with and reduction in the regularity of testing”.
In the US the Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission is to inhale $5 million into a $14 million project to establish a tyre research facility within the state. A further $5 million is to come from General Motors and $4 million from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), and will be situated in Halifax County, in Virginia’s Southside region.
Responding to a US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposal to declare whole scrap tyres as a solid waste, the Rubber Manufacturers Association (RMA) has declared the potential change in policy a measure that would “significantly harm the existing infrastructure that manages scrap tyres.” The association also believes two decades of environmental cleanup success is at risk of being reversed as a result.
On August 1 the German tyre component manufacturer Gumasol-Werke Dr. Mayer GmbH & Co. KG became a subsidiary of India’s Ruia Group. The firm will continue operation at its site in the Rhineland-Palatinate town of Germersheim under the name Gumasol Rubber-Tec GmbH and all 110 jobs at the plant have been retained. Gumasol describes its acquisition by the Ruia Group as “a new chapter” for a company “rich in tradition”, and comments that the incorporation of a previously medium-sized firm into an international enterprise “offers very good perspectives for Gumasol-Werke.”
This category reminds us that it is not all about round, black, rubbery objects; tyre shops need the consumables, tools and machinery to demount, repair, balance and align wheels and tyres. Three of last year's nominees have made it again – Apaseal, Auto4 and Rema Tip Top – and are joined by Harvie Tyres and Pro-Align, who won last year's Innovation Award.
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