Whether its raw materials, machinery, research and development or the latest manufacturing trends, this tag provides up-to-the-minute insights into the upstream part of the tyre industry.
While Michelin North America officially says it has not committed to expanding its Woodburn, Indiana tyre plant, behind the scenes it has secured tax breaks to make that investment happen, reports Tire Review. The Allen County Council unanimously supported tax breaks, voting last week to provide incentives worth between $50 million to $75 million to the tyre-maker.
The US commercial truck tyre market rebounded strongly in 2010 – Yokohama Tire suggests that it may even have rebounded too strongly, leading to fill rate difficulties. The tyre maker has published an interview held with Dan King, its senior vice president of sales and marketing; King discusses this issue along with other challenges facing the industry and what the market may expect in 2011. The Yokohama Q&A session is published complete and unchanged below.
The Mexico based Corporacion de Occidente joint venture, 58 per cent owned by Cooper Tire & Rubber, has earned the ISO 9001:2008 quality certification, joining six other Cooper Tire facilities – the company’s manufacturing facilities in Melksham plus its Findlay, Texarkana and Tupelo plants in the US plus its Cooper Kenda Tire joint venture in China and the Tall Timbers Mold Operations facility in Findlay – that hold this designation.
Based just about an hour outside China’s rubber capital city (Qingdao in Shandong province), Himile Mechanical Science and Technology Co., Ltdis purportedly the largest mould manufacturer in the People’s Republic.
Growing into the position of leadership in one of the largest tyre markets is a process that has been completed within the space of one and half decades. Founded in 1995, Himile initially went into business with just two production lines – one for tyre mould making and one for manufacturing tyre manufacturing equipment. Since then the scale of the business has multiplied many times over.
While much attention has been focused on the amount of tyres being produced in China in general and the rapid growth of the most professional Chinese tyre manufacturers, the machinery companies that supply them have kept their similarly meteoric rise somewhat beneath the radar. But while the tyre mould and machinery making companies have managed to avoid the limelight so far, some market observers argue that their growing influence should not be ignored.
A US$9 million upgrade at Cooper Tire & Rubber’s Tupelo, Mississippi passenger car and truck tyre plant will, according to plant manager Patrick Jodon, make the facility “stronger, more flexible and more competitive.” Jodon explained that the Tupelo plant will receive new equipment that will aid in improving its efficiency; this new equipment will be installed within the next 12 to 14 months. The upgrade is expected to add 35 new jobs to the plant’s 1,300 strong workforce.
Current annual production stands at 100 units a year, with annual turnover totalling 400 million yuan. The main customers, which include names known to European tyre import business such as Shandong Jinyu and Yongtai Chemical, reside within the People's Republic. Less than 10 per cent of production is exported.
That said the company reports that it plans to develop its export business depending on market conditions. The intention is to further develop the “excellent local support” the company's products and services have been receiving before moving into the export business. In the meantime domestic demand is described as a “more than sufficient opportunity.”
Having taken the reins of Trelleborg Wheel Systems UK in September 2010, managing director John Westwood believes there is an important job to do in the distribution of agricultural tyres at the dealer level. As a whole, Westwood explains that TWS’s philosophy has undergone a “change of focus”, altering the emphasis “from products to solutions”. The implication of this attitude is that TWS will try to find ways to show the value of choosing its self-professed premium products, which often include the mounts in addition to the tyres. When Tyres & Accessories met with Westwood at the company’s Ashby de la Zouch office, he looked back on the successes Trelleborg has experienced with original equipment partnerships, such as that with New Holland Agriculture and AGCO, the company behind Challenger, Fendt, Massey-Ferguson and Valtra tractors, while explaining that the next step forward would be to forge partnerships with “progressive tyre dealers” who want to engage in technical conversations with end users, creating a “premium dealership network” to deliver “solutions rather than just products”. As well as what the dealers can offer Trelleborg, Westwood explained that the company would seek to “become proactive in helping dealers sell out”, a fact underlined by the company’s commitment to spending four per cent of its annual turnover on communications.
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Bridgestone has received the 2010 ‘Euskal Makila’ award from the government of Spain’s Basque Autonomous Community in recognition of the company’s long-term contribution to the region’s economy. The award was presented to Bridgestone Spain chief financial officer Joseba Luzarraga by Carlos Aguirre, minister of Economy and Finance for the Basque government, in the presence of Kepa Hernández, manager of Bridgestone’s Bilbao plant and Jesús Blanco, the company’s director of Human Resources, at a gala ceremony in Bilbao.
With varying reports of a product shortage and increasing raw material and shipping costs, how do companies sourcing products from China expedite production when the workers in the People’s Republic down tools for two weeks over Chinese New Year? Mould maker Bluestar recently contacted Tyres & Accessories offering the following advice.
If you cast your mind back to before 2009’s Apollo/Vredestein merger deal was announced there was much talk about plans for the construction of a greenfield tyre production plant in Hungary. Newspaper reports published at the time suggested that Apollo had earmarked around 200 million euros for this. Most observers interpreted the Vredestein purchase as being a substitute for the Greenfield plans, but bearing in mind that the pricetag was reported as being just US$ 50 million in June 2010, it raises the question of what was done with the rest of the money. The short answer is that Apollo executives say they have invested it in the construction and rapid development of its Chennai manufacturing facility, which had a budget of around 350 million euros before the firm decided to further its plans for truck and bus radial tyre production last year. Anything else looks like to have been absorbed by the company’s liabilities. However, regarding the Chennai investment Tyres & Accessories recently had the opportunity to tour the facility, see production in action and learn more about the thinking behind the investment.
Maine Industrial Tire LLC is restructuring its global business operations and welcoming an old friend back into the fold. The company says it will close its Gorham tyre plant in the US state of Maine, relocating that production to plants in Pennsylvania and China. The shift is expected to take six months, Maine Industrial said. The plant is being closed “in order to reduce both manufacturing costs and operating expenses,” the company added. “Not only will this result in a financially stronger company, by streamlining operations, Maine Industrial Tire will be able to provide customers with the same high quality, premium products at competitive prices.”
The UK car market reported full-year growth at the end of 2010, but with registrations down nearly a fifth in the last weeks of the year analysts are predicting a 5 per cent decline in 2011. The latest UK automotive registration figures issued by the SMTT show that the market grew by 35,847 units to 2,030,846 units in 2010 ending 1.8 per cent up on 2009 figures. However, with registrations falling 18 per cent in December (123,817 units for the month), the SMMT predicts registrations will decline 5 per cent in 2011 to 1.93 million units due to continuing tough market conditions. Put into long-term context, 2010’s registration figure is the second lowest in the past decade and almost 375,000 units short of the 2007 levels.
While wholesalers importing Chinese tyre products into mature European markets such as the UK struggle to negotiate supply issues and brace themselves for another round of price increases, there are reports that tyre makers in one part of the People’s Republic are over-producing to the extent that they are actually stockpiling tyres.
Southeast China's Fujian province exported 32.85 million between January and November 2010, signalling a 27.6 per cent year-on-year increase in shipments, according to a report from the province's customs officials. The total value of the tyres sold is said to have amounted to US$460 million, a jump in value of 34.8 per cent over the corresponding period of 2009. The export price averaged $13.9 per unit, up 5.7 per cent from 2009.
Production capacity at Cheng Shin Rubber is anticipated to grow a hefty 70 per cent through the construction of three new facilities. According to the China Economic News Service, the Taiwanese manufacturer of the Maxxis tyre brand has set aside NT$30 billion (₤640 million) to establish plants in China’s Sichuan and Fujian provinces and in Yunlin County, Taiwan. When the three plants are in production alongside the company’s existing Taiwan, Thailand and China factories, daily capacity is expected to rise from 100,000 to 170,000 pieces.
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