LEGISLATION
Minardi owner, Paul Stoddart, has singled out the Formula 1’s new tyre rule for criticism. Running tyres for a whole race distance creates additional concerns he explained. “I’ll tell you what, if there is a serious accident, and I sincerely hope there isn’t, the person who brought this regulations in will be totally responsible,” Paul Stoddart told the Australian Sports Entertainment Network. “And it wasn’t any of the teams.”
One year after becoming chairman of the NTDA’s Tyre Wholesaler Group (TWG), Peter Gaster addressed his second TWG annual lunch. In his speech the managing director of Kings Road Tyres conveyed the TWG’s support for three millimetre tread depth, shared his thoughts on how businesses can protect their ever-decreasing margins, while warning members of the continuing and expensive reality of health and safety scrutiny. One of the industry’s best-known figures, Sir Tom Farmer, also addressed the collection of members and invited guests.
According to TWG chairman, Peter Gaster, profits margins are under continued attack: “In reality we all face many of the same problems and as we know tyre prices are on the way up, I think we will all have to carefully consider the need to remain competitive and take into account our rising costs, as I don’t think that wholesale margins can absorb these increases,” he said adding, “as wholesalers we need to focus on maintaining service, as essentially that is what we are, service providers. But rising costs are putting us under pressure to maintain this level of service and keep prices down.”
In his speech, Mr Gaster went on to define one source of this continuing pressure, the requirements of the health and safety executive. “I am not complaining about the need for proper and safe working conditions, and I understand that this needs to be monitored, but it appears to me that the tyre industry is under scrutiny and I can only repeat what I have said before – if you have not had a visit, you probably will,” he explained.
Wholesalers are not tax collectors
For Mr Gaster, the devil is in the detail: “I don’t hide from the fact that I am personally concerned about the increasing bureaucracy, red tape and legislation that this government continues to burden the industry with.” Warning that the powers that be were responsible for the current situation, the TWG chairman told of his frustration at being treated as an unpaid tax collector: “If anyone from the government should hear or read this speech, I will be very happy to explain in detail about my frustrations. I recently received a letter from our local MP who wanted to know how all the advantages of ‘government working with business’ was helping our company – I am still working on my response.”
However there was definitely a positive side to the story: “The good news is that the NTDA has been working closely with the health and safety executive and has recently agreed upon an advisory package regarding the manual handling of tyres in the workplace. I think it is fair to say that if the NTDA had not been consulted, the resulting regulations would have been extremely difficult to apply.”
When is an E-marked tyre not a European tyre?
The love/hate relationship between wholesalers and manufacturers was also briefly touched on. “I received a letter, as many of us did, from Goodyear/Dunlop regarding their right to protect their trademark on the one hand, and warnings about compounds etc on the other. In seeking clarification of these intentions I would ask one question. If a tyre is E-marked and is homologated for the EEC, wherever it is made, is that tyre not legal and fit for use in the UK?” From Sir Tom Farmer’s point of view this kind of banter comes with the territory. “They are just doing their job,” he said, adding that “its all part of the fun.”
Mr Gaster also highlighted the TWG’s “unanimous support” for the current campaign to improve awareness of three millimetre tread depth, which is being driven by Brian Smith of Continental. “We at the TWG and the NTDA are firmly behind this campaign and will do all we can to support it via out association and by choice as individual companies. Let us not forget that our parliamentarians and police forces do not ride on tyres with less than three millimetres tread depths.”
Referring to the government’s landfill directive, Mr Gaster explained that he was “delighted” to confirm that “the current thinking is the industry has taken care of the problem so far and has increased the recovery rate away from land fill up to approximately 85 per cent. Therefore the government has agreed to monitor this progress and in the meantime will not be putting forward mandatory legislation.”
Further results from the TIC’s 2004 tyre safety campaign show a four per cent increase, to 17 per cent, in the number of defective tyres in use on the roads of Leicestershire.
In 2003 Leicestershire recorded that 13 per cent of vehicles checked had at least one tyre at or below the 1.6mm legal requirement. The national average is 12 per cent.
Leicestershire Constabulary’s road safety officer, PC John Budulis said: “I am very disappointed that so many people put not only their own lives at risk, but many other people’s by driving about on defective tyres. It only takes a few seconds to check the condition of your tyres, but very few people take the time to do so. Leicestershire Police are committed to making our roads safer and will continue to enforce the tyre legislation.”
Recent research carried by car care company, motoreasy has found that one in eight vehicles has at least one illegal and potentially dangerous tyre. Based on more than 1,000 tyre inspections taken at a number of the company’s approved independent garages across the UK. According to the research a further 24 per cent of tyres had tread so close to the legal requirement, a replacement would be needed “imminently.”
Regionally, Londoners were found to be the worst offenders, with a fifth of the cars tested running on tyres below the legal limit. In contrast, motorists in Scotland had the highest pass rate with only 6 per cent of cars in need of a replacement tyre.
The current legislation requires tread depth to be at least 1.6mm across the central three-quarters of the width of the tyre. This rule also applies to the spare tyre. Even so 17 per cent of those inspected were illegal, or would be following what the company describes as “a short usage.”
Quite apart from the obvious safety benefits of having correctly fitted tyres (shorter stopping distances, reduced likelihood of aquaplaning), according to this research, drivers are foregoing the main financial benefit of using safe tyres, i.e. improved fuel economy. Not to mention the legal costs: three penalty points and a fine of up to £2,500 per tyre.
“Added to this, insurance companies are within their rights not to pay out on claims if the vehicle insured is not in a roadworthy condition. It’s shocking that so many motorists seem to ignore the conditions of their tyres – something that should ideally be checked every fortnight,” commented Motoreasy managing director David Gerrans adding: “A simple method of checking the tread is to use a 5 pence coin. Slot an upside down coin into the tread of the tyre and the depth should come up to the top of the Queen’s crown. If you don’t reach the crown, it’s likely your treads are nearing the end of their life and should be replaced.”
If Motoreasy’s research is correct, millions of drivers are failing to meet the minimum legal standard. In light of this, it makes the manufacturers and UK trade associations attempts to introduce a three-millimetre minimum tread depth look a fair way off.
BERU has received a three-year contract for its TPMS systems worth in excess of 80 million euros. The company says it will begin producing for the order “in the middle of 2005” when it will supply pressure monitoring systems for the US market of a European automobile manufacturer’s model. The company has not yet named the manufacturer.
The product will be developed at the BERU Group electronics facility with the first deliveries of the new Tire Safety System (TSS) planned for the middle of 2005, in good time before the relevant US legislation comes into force. BERU reports that the order will contribute between 15 and 20 million to the Group’s total revenues in the 2005/2006 financial year.
If every manufacturer made modifications to new cars at an estimated cost of £75 per car, the lives of 1,700 pedestrians and cyclists could be saved across Europe, according to the RAC Foundation.
Alcoa’s contribution to the 60th IAA show centred around the company’s first forged aluminium wide base 17×22.5 wheel.
When a concept, like Tyre Pressure Monitoring Systems (TPMS), is still relatively new, it means that developments are more clearly noticeable. Even in a few months it is possible to trace the concept’s development.
There are two versions of this technology; direct and indirect measuring systems. As you would expect, both have advantages and disadvantages. Direct systems are substantially more expensive but more precise than indirect systems. Indirect systems are cheaper, but less accurate. These systems were originally based on the ABS infrastructure, but are now also based on ESP. Indirect systems cross-link with the vehicle’s electronics so they cannot be installed after manufacture. Conversely, direct systems are components of the wheel and therefore can be re-tooled relatively straightforwardly in the aftermarket.
It is not yet clear which system will be accepted as the standard, something that is largely to do with American legislation. The American road safety authority, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), will have to decide which criteria will govern the regulation of these devices before they can become components in newly certified vehicles in the USA.
In the past decisions had to be taken back because interest groups opposed them. Sometimes representatives of the other competing technology protested, sometimes consumer federations did, and on other occasions the automakers makers used their influence. Again and again new arguments arose, most of which contained at least a few good ideas. The consumer federations, for example, argued that drivers have a right to the best technical solution, which supports direct measurement. The manufacturers, on the other hand, referred to the fact that, in the US, ABS is still far from penetrating the market as well as the technology has in Europe (100 per cent of new vehicles produced in Europe are now fitted with ABS). If one side decides to support indirect measuring systems, ABS has to be introduced at the same time, which gives significantly more leverage to the safety argument. In short the decision remains up in the air.
Goodyear Dunlop Tyres UK Limited has announced that it is taking further steps to combat illegal importers and to protect customers; by ensuring the right tyres are fitted to vehicles in the UK and Europe.
Michelin’s first quarter results show that the group’s net sales totalled 3.799 billion Euro; up 3.9 per cent on the 1Q 2003 figure of 3.654 billion Euro. If currency fluctuations are factored out, the increase would be nearer 9.5 per cent. In tonnage terms, volumes rose 7.6 per cent over 1Q 2003. Net Sales by Product 1Q 04 were as follows millions of Euros: Car/light truck: 1,842.3. Truck: 995.5. Other businesses: 1,187.6. Inter-sector eliminations: – 226.4. Total: 3,799.0.
RFID chips proposed for use in tyre identification and TPMS are coming under attack in the USA as an invasion of privacy, as campaigners say that the information recorded can be collected and used to monitor the car driver’s activities. As the price of RFID chips drops, tagging individual items will become the norm. According to Katherine Albrecht of the New Hampshire-based privacy rights group Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, tagging individual items “only becomes helpful if you want to register individual items to individuals.” She contends that the RFID chips Michelin is already embedding in its tires, to help in product recall cases, someday could be used to track people as they drive past chip readers on highways or in parking lots. In California, a state senate subcommittee in August held the first-ever public hearing on RFID and privacy, and more hearings are planned for later this fall. Legislation is expected to be introduced early next year that could influence policies in other states.
T&A has looked at the waste tyre issue several times recently. In fact retreading and recycling is hardly ever missed from the magazine. Our focus has largely been on the legislation, the collection, the mass disposal of tyres and the issues surrounding the problem. There is nothing to say that those issues will go away any day soon. Some of the solutions being wholeheartedly supported at present are not universally popular, and may themselves in time become problems. Most solutions only extend the life of a tyre, or its constituent parts, ultimately the waste will either be burned or buried. The key to winning ground in this battle is to extend the life of the product before it is disposed of. Some say, closing the loop.
If you try asking a granulating company what their products get used for, they will usually admit to Equestrian surfaces, or sports surfaces, but little else. Yet we are told that rubber crumb has a multitude of uses, but what are they?
The article in October’s issue looks at some of the wider uses for waste tyres, serious and not so serious.
Ireland, the Emerald Isle, the land that has made green its own colour, yet there is nothing much green about the waste management infrastructure North or South of the border. Waste has not been a priority problem until recently. The local authorities, certainly in the North were at one time expecting a further delay in the implementation of the Landfill Ban on whole tyres. Their reasoning was that there quite simply were no suitable alternatives available. There were no tyre shredding facilities in Ireland.
However, the UK government has in its now traditional style not only adopted the latest legislation to arise as a result of an EU directive, but is intent on implementing the new law. That is creating a peculiar scenario in Northern Ireland where, as the deadline approaches, there is still no route to disposal, save shipping them to the UK, or perhaps to the Republic. The former is costly, and the latter may not be sustainable in the long term. With nowhere to take these tyres the gate fees are bound to increase in the run up to the ban, and as the cost of disposal rises, the attraction of players to the market will also increase. However, unlike the mainland UK, there is no widespread network of retreaders or collectors seeking to expand their business into shredding. That makes the Northern Ireland situation one of interest and we spoke to Lynn Kerr, the managing director of ADCO retreading and power behind R4 Tyre Recycling in Portadown to get the lowdown on the Northern Ireland situation.
The situation in the South is similar to that in the North in that there is no widespread tyre collection service. We are advised that what competition exists does so courtesy of a loose application of the law. As in the UK, waste carriers need to be licensed, but rather than a single license giving rights to operate nationally, the licences are issued on a county basis, so to collect in County Cork and shred in Louth, one needs to hold licenses for every county between. However, Ireland has a hidden competitor in tyre collection, something it has in common with France, the agriculture sector in the republic has some 140,000 individual farmers, of whom we are informed some 80,000 might be involved in making silage. With some 40,000 tyres each year allegedly going to silage that averages out at 500 tyres per farmer. Farmers can collect without license, apparently, and there is no monitoring of their collections as of yet. This is obviously something that needs to be controlled if tyre disposal is to be legitimised and any environmentally effective recycling is to take place. The Irish government cannot expect retailers to pay the licensed tyre trader 2 Euro per tyre when they can have their local farmer take them for 50 cents a time.
Far be it from T&A to accuse Ireland’s farmers of collusion in avoiding the law, but if those figures are correct, either the agricultural sector is dumping tyres in some hidden corner of a forgotten field, or the whole of Ireland is gradually going to be covered in tyres used for silage. Ultimately, the only thing green about the Emerald Isle would be on the mould and algae growing on their rotting surfaces.
The EU is planning legislation to significantly reduce (by 25 per cent) the amount of fluorinated greenhouse gases in a range of products by 2010. One of the worst greenhouse gases is sulphur hexafluoride, which is present in tyres, and which has a greenhouse effect 23,900 times that of carbon dioxide. Should the proposals become law, any EU country not meeting the standards could face sanctions and non-EU countries wanting to export goods that do not comply with the standards into Europe would be prevented from doing so.
“The European Truck Tyre retreading industry is healthy and provides the transport industry with high quality products which allows them to reduce tyre cost and transport cost. However, retread products are not legislatively treated equally to new tyres, and this is a growing threat to sustained growth for this industry”. The legislative problems faced by the retreading industry were outlined to T & A by Lennart Lindström – product manager at Bandag Europe – during Autopromotec 2003. The basis for the EU legislative framework is the Whole Vehicle Type Approval (WVTA) directive 70/156/EEC. This directive sets out the rules for the use and production of many vehicle parts, including tyres. Up until now, the WVTA has not taken into account the existence of retreaded tyres, nor have any of the quite numerous regulations and directives that exist for new tyres. All legislative work on tyres in the EU is solely focusing on new tyres. The WVTA does not yet exist for trucks, but work is underway to introduce this certification for trucks, and then new truck tyres must meet the same requirements. The certification principle for type approval implies that each authority grants authorisation for a vehicle, a system, a component (like tyres) and this authority remains solely responsible for the conformity of production of the certified product. For retreads ECE Regulations 108 (passenger tyres) and 109 (truck tyres) exists. Despite industry efforts to introduce ECE 108 and 109 into an EU mandatory directive, Brussels has not taken any visible initiative. In absence of the expected and desired EU directive, some member states have started to introduce ECE regulations 108 and 109 into national mandatory legislation. This is the case in France, Spain, Poland, Croatia and the Czech Republic. Other countries like the UK, Sweden and Denmark have begun the national legislative process to introduce them. This still leaves a great number of countries with no active plans to introduce these regulations. It is estimated that over 200 retread companies out of approximately 700 active companies in Western Europe have gained their ECE 109 certificate to date. Absence of equal rules creates an unfair competitive market. Bandag are suggesting that it is necessary to form a retread industry interest group, in order to proactively define potential future legislative content on matters like noise, wet traction and rolling resistance, and work in close co-operation with legislative bodies. BIPAVER and BLIC should, perhaps, take the joint initiative to the creation of such a group. The need to recruit new members to BIPAVER, including supplier members was emphasised by RMA secretariat, Sheila Ikin. This is especially relevant now that BIPAVER is focused on the interests of the retreading industry. One of the causes taken up is the unjustified ban on the importation of retreaded tyres, currently operative in 11 countries known to the RMA. There is a definite need to protect the retread industry against damaging legislation, hence the moves by BIPAVER to persuade Brussels to transpose ECE 108 and 109 from a recommendation to a directive.
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