Tyre industry pioneers, Michelin has a long history. Having begun in 1889, Michelin is now the second-largest tyre manufacturer in the world after Bridgestone and larger than both Goodyear and Contineantal.
Following the consolidation of its car, van and truck divisions into one single company, ATS Euromaster Ltd has strengthened its national and divisional sales teams by appointing two new directors. Martin Saint will become national sales director and Robert Blaikie has been appointed divisional sales director.
Michelin’s winter tyres have come out on top in a survey conducted into customer satisfaction in Japan.
Research company, J.D Power Asia Pacific, performed the study, which showed of the five tyre brands ranked by the customers, Michelin scored highest with 655 out of a maximum of 1,000 points. The overall industry average is 586.
Formula 1 tyre producers, Bridgestone and Michelin, provided the all important tyres for an event promoting the possibility of a London Grand Prix. The companies were part of a convoy that drove into London under Police escort on Monday night.
“Something like this takes a minimum of 18 months’ planning, so you’re most probably talking two years away.” London mayor, Ken Livingstone told the BBC. One suggested race route would “centre on Hyde Park Corner and Park Lane” and would involve cornering that would stretch the F1 tyre compounds to the limit.
Williams driver Juan Pablo Montoya lent his support saying: “I’ve raced in a lot of street circuits in America and they test the teams and drivers more. To bring Formula One to people would be a really good thing.”
Former world champion, Nigel Mansell and future hope Jenson Button also supported the proposed London Grand Prix.
The Bridgestone Potenza equipped Ferraris of Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello successfully reclaimed the French Grand Prix crown as they claimed first and third places respectively. Fernando Alonso’s Michelin running Renault took second place.
The 2005 season will see the introduction of new regulations governing competition vehicles. The FIA has assigned experts to ensure that speeds will be reduced in the next Formula 1 season. The decision will also lead to further rules regarding tyres.
Michelin has launched the new Pilot Activ as a replacement to part of its existing Macadam 50 range of motorcycle tyres.
According to Michelin the new belted crossply tyre with sports-orientated tread pattern, “offers improved manoeuvrability, better dry and wet grip, higher mileage, and improved rider comfort,” compared with the Macadam 50.
The new tyre’s tread pattern features an optimised void ratio which puts four per cent more rubber on the road compared with a Macadam 50 of the same size. Which in turn improves grip, tyre life and contributes to better stability.
To achieve the improvements Michelin revised the recently developed casing construction to improve grip in all weather conditions.
The tyre is available in seven front sizes and six rears and in H and V speed ratings.
Renault’s F1 test driver Franck Montagny accomplished Michelin tyre tests this week in Barcelona. At first the Michelin tyres were only tested regarding compounds, later different tyre constructions were added to the programme. According to chief test engineer, Christian Silk, a few improvements were found in the tyres.
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.
Renault has produced a concept car, which could be seen as precursor to a Laguna Coupé. The “Fluence” uses 22 inch (245-710 R560) Michelin PAX tyres. The tyres fit to wheels produced by aluminium cast wheel producer, Montupet that feature spokes designed to reduce air resistance.
Michelin’s reputation for quality and durability has taken on a new meaning after a globetrotting couple drove 100,000 km, twice round the world, in their Land Rover Discovery on just two sets of Michelin 4×4 tyres.
“The tyres were fantastic throughout. The first set were used during the Northern Hemisphere section of the journey, and the second set took us through Australia, South America and then onto North Africa before heading back through Europe to England,” said Peter and Eileen Crichton. And all without a single puncture!
Michelin has announced the appointment of Chris Logan as car tyre sales manager, for the UK and Ireland.
Mr. Logan will replace Rob Beddis who will now take over the control of Michelin group agricultural sales. However Mr. Beddis will retain his responsibilities as Michelin’s representative on the BRMA tyre executive committee and also as one of the BRMA representatives with the TIC.
Dave Crinson will also move from the agricultural department to take responsibility for specialist activity in the car fleet section of the business.
Workers at BFGoodrich’s plant in Kitchener, Ontario, began strike action on June 1st in a protest against changes made to their contracts. United Steelworker’s Ontario Director, Wayne Fraser, says that workers produce “a number of high quality tyres and are not prepared to accept deep cuts to their benefits.”
The Michelin owned company is demanding that workers pay a portion of their health benefits and is imposing a lifetime cap on health care benefits for future retirees. Plans to contract out jobs have also angered the workers who feel that their livelihood is being threatened.
Representatives from the local union and the Canadian Ministry of Labour spent the previous weekend trying to negotiate a settlement, but BFGoodrich was unwilling to make any concessions.
Seven days after Monaco, May 28-30 Formula One is poised to return to another of its traditional venues – Germany’s Nürburgring. Michelin is approaching the seventh race of the season in a positive frame of mind: Jarno Trulli (Renault) and Jenson Button (B·A·R-Honda) scored a memorable one-two for the company in Monaco and Ralf Schumacher (BMW WilliamsF1 Team/Michelin) won at the Nürburgring in 2003, when he led team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya across the line. “We know the Nürburgring well and have achieved some good results here in the past,” says Pierre Dupasquier, Michelin Motorsport Director. “We finalised our tyre options for this race a couple of weeks ago, because there hasn’t been time to test since our tremendous victory in Monaco last Sunday. We will have three dry-weather compounds available and these all come from the softer end of our range, because the Nürburgring isn’t especially abrasive. It is what I would call a ‘balanced’ track. The loads on the front and rear tyres cancel each other out during the course of a lap so the wear rate tends to be very even,” adds Michelin F1 Programme Manager Pascal Vasselon. “It is always vital to have a suitable tyre compound at the Nürburgring, because conditions are very changeable, and I am confident Michelin will provide us with exactly that,” comments Ralf Schumacher with regard to the tyre set-up.
Hankook Tire has concluded a 3-year agreement to supply Ford Motor with 140,000 VR-rated (up to 240km/hr) K105s tyres annually. The tyres will be mounted on the Ford Mondeo, a high-quality family car, and will bear the Hankook Tire logo. The export price, to include replacement tyres, will total 22 million euros over three years.
The global tyre market may be dominated by a handful of large players, with a number of “second row” players, followed by the rest of the world. The gap between the primary three and the fourth and fifth place manufacturers is considerable, and between the fourth and fifth and the rest of the market there is a considerable gap. However, the impact of the rest of the world on the market conditions enjoyed by the top five players is quite considerable. Tyre quality used to be such that there was a clear and distinct difference between the market leading brands of Michelin, Bridgestone, Goodyear, Pirelli and Continental, (and we must include Cooper here) and those of any of the other manufacturers. The reality though has been changing and increasingly brands from smaller manufacturers such as Toyo, Yokohama, Hankook, Kumho and latterly Federal have been increasing their market share by improving the quality of their products and building their brand image – often in the high performance sector.
Today, the market dominance of the key players is under pressure. Profitability is being eroded across tyre ranges by the increasing availability of low cost budget tyre brands. The commodity tyre requires no brand loyalty and sells on price alone. Thus, the high volume market necessarily targeted by the budget tyre manufacturers has largely become their domain. It has in essence been abandoned by the big brands. Yes, if you need a 155/13 from Michelin, or Goodyear you can still get it, but increasingly that tyre is being manufactured in a low labour cost centre in a joint venture with another tyre manufacturer who is also feeding his own budget tyres into the same market at a fraction of the price of the main brand names. If a big player is using a JV, or an offtake agreement in the Far East to fill commodity demands, he has surely all but abandoned that market. Indeed, if there is so little margin left in commodity tyres, if it were not for market shares, corporate egos, overall economies of scale and public relations where is the logic in continuing to offer branded commodity tyres?
The “great white hope” for the leading players, who have lost margins to the budget brands, is to develop a technologically advanced premium sector where quality and premium branding help create an exclusive market offering higher margins to the manufacturer, the wholesaler and the retailer. The high performance market offers just such an opportunity and the leading manufacturers are concentrating their efforts on the UHP sector in spades. Every new tyre launch is about UHP. Summer tyres, SUV tyres, winter tyres, all have an emphasis on the UHP market. Repeatedly the message is that the sector is growing in Western Europe and that it is destined to expand rapidly when Central and Eastern Europe follows the Western trend. However, it is not just a trend in Europe; it also follows in the USA – though perhaps surprisingly performance tyres account for only 13 per cent of the US market, whilst they amount to some 54 per cent of the European market according to Michelin; in Russia as an emerging market and in the Indian sub-continent – long ignored by the main brands as too poor an economy or too competitive a market. Here too the main brands are setting up camp and preparing to take market share from the domestic producers with high performance tyres. Pirelli being one of the first to see the potential and react with an improved sales operation.
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