Raw Materials
Marangoni Retreading Systems (Marangoni Tread SpA and Ellerbrock Reifenrunderneuerungs-Technologie GmbH) have announced a 4 – 5 per cent price increase on all pre-cure retreading brands and product lines. The increase will be applied from 3 July 2006 in European, East European and Mediterranean countries.
Dr Alan Hippe has admitted that retreating from the North American tyre business is an option. This is the first time a top-level manager has made such an assertion. Dr Hippe, board member responsible for finance, controlling and law – and also Continental Tire North America (CTNA) president and CEO – told German daily Die Welt: “In principle, if there is no more prospect of profitably working in the US passenger car tyre business, in the long run we will withdraw the US market.” CTNA’s US passenger car tyre business has been in the red since 2000.
(Akron/Tire Review) Bridgestone Australia barely posted a profit for the first quarter of 2006 thanks to rising raw material costs, the company said. The company posted after tax profits of $270,000 (Australian dollar), down from $2.1 million for the same period last year, against sales of $124.9 million, up 1.2% from last year.
(Akron/Tire Review) Effective 1 June Yokohama Tire Corp. will increase prices for its passenger, light truck, medium truck radial and “some” OTR tyres by up to 7 per cent.
A 5-7 per cent increase will go into effect for medium truck radial tyres, light truck commercial tyres, earthmover and mining tyres, as well as Mohawk and private brands, according to Yokohama. There will also be in-line adjustments on select sizes and treads, the tyremaker added.
Cooper Tire & Rubber’s passenger replacement tyre volumes declined 4.3 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2006, Deutsche Bank analysts have reported. While this was slightly better than the market watchers feared, raw materials rose by more than expected, ruling out any advantages. Even the $4.3 million Cooper is believed to have gained as a dividend from its shares in Kumho was not enough to offset the higher raw material costs.
Bridgestone Europe NV/SA has announced that it will increase prices on all of its tyre brands and categories. It will apply to all replacement channels in all European countries. The increases are between 3.5 per cent and 5 per cent depending on the product category, and are scheduled to take effect from 1 June 2006.
It seems that the announcement by Kumho that it is to spend US$155 million on building a factory at Binh Duong in Vietnam (30th April) is only part of the whole story.
Due to the continuing rise in prices of raw materials, Pirelli Tire North America has announced that it is increasing passenger and light truck tyre prices by 3%. The price increase will be effective May 1, 2006, and will cover all product lines in the US and Canada.
(Akron/Tire Review) Toyo Tire USA Corp. will raise prices on medium truck, bus and OTR tires, effective 1 April. Commercial (medium truck and bus) tyre prices will increase by 5 per cent, and OTR tyre prices will be bumped up 7 per cent.
(Akron/Tire Review) Federal Tire Corp. announced it would increase prices by 5 per cent to 8 per cent across its full line of tyres, effective 1 April.
Continental Tire North America (CTNA) says it will suspend production at its Charlotte, North Carolina tyre plant in mid-September. CTNA has already threatened to cut production in half at the plant, laying off some 513 workers in total over two separate reductions, the first scheduled to take place 15 March and the other in June.
“Due to skyrocketing costs for energy, raw materials and health care, CTNA cannot continue to operate the Charlotte plant with our current manufacturing cost structure,” said Alan Hippe, CTNA’s president and CEO. “Because we have so far been unsuccessful in restructuring our labour agreement with the union to significantly reduce manufacturing costs, CTNA must take immediate steps to reduce its costs.”
During January and February of 2006 JSC “Nizhnekamskshina” says it produced 100,000 less tyres than planned. According to the company, the basic reason for the disruption was the high rubber price. The beginning of March has not proved to be much better for Russia’s largest domestic tyre producer. In Nizhnekamskshina’s words the situation “remains complex” due to short supplies of natural rubber.
The International Rubber Study Group has announced that the Government of India will join the Group on 1 April 2006. India’s total rubber consumption has been increasing steadily since 1960 at a rate of 6.8 per cent/year to reach 968,000 tonnes in 2004. This makes India the fourth largest rubber consuming country, behind China, the USA and Japan.
We hear so much about overcapacity in the tyre industry, with too many tyres chasing too few wheels, but this is not the case in all sectors and certainly not in the OTR/Earthmover tyre market, where words and phrases such as “crisis” and “global shortage” are freely bandied about.
Reports suggest that there is little prospect of improvement in the short to medium-term, with the entire global OTR tyre production for at least the next couple of years having already been sold. One prediction, from the UK’s OTR Tyres, forecasts that demand will exceed supply through to 2010.
Its not just new tyre manufacturers and retreaders that are benefiting from booming OTR tyre sales. Businesses such as Stahlgruber’s Tip Top division have benefited from the recent increase in demand. The demand for tyre repair systems has multiplied over the last year, export manager Maximilian Spenger says. Today it is an absolute priority for users of OTR tyres everywhere to “keep the tyres going somehow.” At Tip Top’s headquarters near Munich those in charge are reacting quite calmly to the current situation because the market changes did not go unforeseen.
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