Thanks to a recent promotion run by County Tyres and Continental, motorist Danny Henkus from Chudleigh in Devon has won a long weekend to Barcelona including £200 spending money. The promotion, which required customers to purchase Continental tyres, ran at all County Tyre retail branches between August and September and Dany Henkus bought his tyres and entered the competition at the Exeter branch of County Tyres.
Online tyre retailer Blackcirlces.com has joined TyreSafe, continuing a year of membership growth for the not-for-profit organisation reach top gear. The e-Tailer will assist TyreSafe in a wide range of campaigns aimed at raising the awareness of correct tyre maintenance. Mike Welch, managing director of Blackcircles.com, said: “A key priority for us has always been helping our customers to remain safe on the road by reducing the cost of their tyre purchase.
Manufacturers and tyre safety organisations generally recommend replacing tyres when tread depth reaches 4mm; with winter tyres, the role tread plays is even more pronounced. In an official release, Continental quotes the advice of one Ruprecht Müller, an expert at the technical centre run by the German motoring organisation ADAC: “The tread pattern makes a crucial difference, especially on snow and slush,” stated Müller. “A winter tyre loses much of its traction on snow in particular when the residual tread depth drops below four millimetres or so. It makes good sense to replace the tyres at this tread depth at the very latest.
Almost 20 years ago, Harshad Mehta achieved infamy in India through an engineered rise in the Bombay Stock Exchange that became known as the ‘securities scam’. After the stock broker’s activities came to light in mid-1992, a number of Mehta’s assets were sold off as part of court proceedings. This sale included 5,488,850 shares in Apollo Tyres, equal to 15.1 per cent of the company’s equity, which were purchased by Apollo and its managing family the Kanwars in April 2003. Now the Supreme Court in New Delhi has ordered Apollo Tyres to return a portion of these acquired shares to the Mehta family custodian. A two-judge Supreme Court bench accepted in part the appeal of Ashwin Mehta, brother of Harshad Mehta (who died in 2002) challenging the Mumbai Special Court’s 2001 order that allowed the sale of bulk holding shares back to Apollo Tyres.
Distri Cash, exclusive distributor of the Westlake tyre brand in France, recently announced plans to more than double the number of retail outlets it operates over the next three years. Laurent Charlé, purchase manager at Distri Cash, explained “we currently have nine shops and we intend to increase this number to 20 to 25 over the next three years.” On the wholesale side of the business, at present Distri Cash services its 6,000 or so customers from eight warehouses, the last of which entered operation last year.
Russian billionaire Leonid Mikhelson has reportedly concluded a full takeover of Russia’s Sibur Holding.
According to various new reports, Mikhelson upped his stake in Sibur from 50 to 57.5 per cent through his investment firm Dellawood Holdings. His partner in Cyprus-based Dellawood Gennady Timchenko is also said to have acquired a 37.5 per cent shareholding in the petrochemicals group. The remaining 5% stake is held by Sibur’s top management.
According to a recent study commissioned by Kwik-Fit, as many as 1.9 million part-worn tyres may have been purchased by UK motorists in this past year – and many more drivers would contemplate buying them. The study of 2,024 UK adults, carried out by ICM Research in September 2011, not only showed that the aforementioned six per cent of car owners fitted part-worn tyres to their vehicles; it also revealed that as many as 19.3 million motorists, or 62 per cent of car owners, would consider buying part-worns.
Leading tea and coffee retailer Ringtons has signed up with Michelin in a deal that will see the manufacturer provide tyres for its 200-vehicle fleet of light commercial vehicles. The Newcastle company had fitted mid-range tyres two years ago in an attempt to reduce costs. Its fleet manager Stephen Killinger says that the cheaper product led to a greater frequency of replacement due to a reduction in tyre life.
A commercial court will hear on 26 October TIRE Invest's 42.256 million euro lawsuit against Holland's Amtel-Vredestein N.V., the court told the Russian Legal Information Agency (RAPSI). Nomos-Bank was the initial plaintiff, but reportedly assigned its claims to TIRE Invest last summer.
Peugeot UK has announced its own winter tyre scheme, following in the footsteps of other manufacturers, such as BMW, Suzuki and Volvo. The company’s new “swap and store” service being provided by dealers enables customers to equip their cars with four cold weather tyres and have their Summer ones placed in storage.
Bridgestone and McConechy’s tyre dealerships are running “Re-inventing the Wheel” drawing competition in schools across Scotland. Pupils from schools in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness and Kirkcaldy are drawing their ideas of how they could reuse tyres from their family cars after they are no longer road safe. Each of the four schools: Sighthill Primary, Giffnock Primary, Merkinch Primary and Torbain Primary are paired with a local McConechy’s dealership.
After labour and fuel costs, tyres are one of the largest items in a truck fleet operator’s budget, representing a valuable asset that requires careful management, Bridgestone representatives recently told Tyres & Accessories.
Quoting figures from a survey conducted by online research firm One Poll, Manheim Auctions notes than less than five per cent of British motorists plan on purchasing winter tyres this year. Out of the 3,000 respondents to the August 2011 survey, 95.5 per cent said they are not planning to buy winter tyres despite last year’s hard winter.
The number court convictions related to d driving on defective tyres in England and Wales is at a four year high, according to the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office. TyreSafe has released details of the figures which show that in 2010, 10,475 motorists were successfully convicted – almost 1,000 more than the previous year. The figures highlight the scale of the problem of illegal tyres in the UK, especially as they do not take into account tyre related matters dealt with by the police at the roadside.
Credit agencies Fitch and Standard & Poor’s have altered their rating for GITI Tire Pte. Ltd. According to Fitch’s latest assessment, “GITI's liquidity is likely to remain strained over the next 12 months because of substantial cash outflows despite the refinancing of the company's notes.”
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