Last June, Sweden’s Trelleborg AB finalised its acquisition of Mitas parent company CGS Holding. At the time, Trelleborg chief executive officer and president Peter Nilsson stated the intention to integrate Mitas into the Trelleborg Wheel Systems business unit. Tyres & Accessories asked what is changing, and what will remain the same, for the Mitas brand.
The ‘2 in 1’ tyre from Michelin wasn’t the only tyre innovation honoured at yesterday’s 2017 SIMA Innovation Awards. Trelleborg Wheel Systems also walked away with a gold medal for its soon to be released Variable Inflation Pressure, or VIPTM, system.
On 27 January, Trelleborg held a ceremony to inaugurate its first agricultural radial tyre factory in the USA. The official opening followed the start of production at the facility late last year. Production at the US$50 million, 430,000 square foot (40,000 square metre) factory in Spartanburg, South Carolina will be gradually ramped up, with all manufacturing equipment expected to be installed by 2018. Trelleborg anticipates that the project will have created around 150 jobs by this time.
Trelleborg will support the Tractor of The Year awards as official partner for a further four years, further strengthening its strategic partnership. The agricultural tyre and wheel supplier was the awards’ first sponsor in 2012, and has remained in place every year since.
Towards the end of last year, ‘Tractor Girl’ Manon Ossevoort drove a Trelleborg-shod Massey Ferguson MF 5610 tractor across Antarctica to the South Pole. The agricultural equipment manufacturer is celebrating this chilly 3,000 mile round trip with the release of a new limited release product – the MF 5610 Antarctica2 Special Edition tractor. And Trelleborg is once again on board, this time as exclusive fitment for the ‘Antarctica2 Special Edition’ line.
Trelleborg has been named as the official partner of AGCO’s Future Farm project. Launched with a ceremony in Lusaka in Zambia, on 27 May, AGCO’s Future Farm aims to develop a sustainable food production system and increase farming output by utilising Africa’s agricultural resources more effectively.
The agricultural tyre market appears particularly well suited towards specialised manufacturers; Trelleborg Wheel Systems acquired Pirelli’s agricultural business in 1999, with the branding switched between 2006 and 2010. Since acquiring various technologies from Pirelli, the Trelleborg Group has invested heavily in order to make its tyre and wheel operation a premium brand player in the agricultural and forestry tyre market. The Tivoli facility, with its buildings showing a manufacturing history dating back to the 1940s, but also incorporating the latest agricultural tyre building machinery, represents “a history full of innovation for farming professionals,” in president of the Agricultural and Forestry Tyres business unit, Paolo Pompei’s words.
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