Retreading
Marangoni Commercial Tyres will present its wide range of products at the next Ecomondo exhibition, held in Rimini from 3 to 6 November. Customers visiting the company’s stand (Pav. C3, Stand 174) will have the opportunity to view Marix retreads for trucks, light transport vehicles and earth-moving machinery. Marangoni says its event highlight will be […]
Marangoni Commercial Tyres has introduced the new super-single MT National 3 to its Marix range of hot retreaded truck tyres. The next generation product offers increased mileage performance and contained fuel consumption, the manufacturer says. The MT National 3 was created to meet the needs of users in the regional and long-distance transport segment, in normal conditions of tread use, and is suitable for trailers and semitrailers.
Bridgestone says its Lincolnshire retreading facility played “a huge role” in its latest fleet contract win. Leading haulage company Maxi Haulage agreed the fleet deal with the tyre manufacturer, coinciding with the 10 year anniversary of Bridgestone’s acquisition of Bulldog in Bourne, which boasts an output of roughly 50:50 mould cure to pre-cure. As a result of this ratio, the company says the operation stands out in the historically mould cure dominated UK retreading market.
Following on from the second Kraiburg summit, Kraiburg Austria invited its Czech and Slovakian customers to a workshop at the end of September in Cerna Hora in the Czech Republic. During the even the retreading specialist shared its stance on various “pro-retread” campaigns and gave a status report on the ReTyre project, explaining the background behind the impending tyre labelling.
Grantham, Lincolnshire-based Vacu-Lug reports that it has ramped up retread production in light of increased demand for its Logistik range of tyres. Vacu-Lug, launched its Logistik 295/80R22.5 commercial vehicle drive axle tyre in November 2014. In early 2015, the new Logistik Drive 315/70R22.5 followed and is reportedly already proving popular across the commercial vehicle sector. The demand is such that a second tyre press has recently been installed.
At the UK Tyre Recovery Association’s Recycling Day 2015, Bandvulc director Richard O’Connell presented an update on the ongoing pan-European ReTyre (tyre labelling for retreads) project. As T&A mentioned briefly within the first article of this supplement, supplying information on running costs (including fuel efficiency and safety characteristics) could play an important role in retreads’ competitiveness against cheap imported new tyres. The ability to provide a tyre label for retreads, facilitated by an algorithmic tool to take variables into account, could help to achieve a new way to do this, yet there are significant challenges to overcome – a fact referenced by O’Connell when he joked that a talk on the Higgs boson would be “simpler”.
Goodyear Dunlop UK has confirmed the closure of its Wolverhampton retreading plant. Closure will happen on a phased basis. The first roles to be made redundant are likely to occur on 31 December 2015, with anticipated production at the plant ending no earlier than January 2017. “It is important to understand that no alternatives to the company’s proposal have been made”, company representatives wrote in a statement.
Just before the September Retreading Special went to print, Goodyear Dunlop was in consultation on the proposed closure of its Wolverhampton mixing and retreading plant, announced in June. Though the plant was the subject of significant investment as recently as 2012, its viability has ultimately reduced to a level at which Goodyear Dunlop believes “there is no other option” but to close the facility, in the words of UK managing director, Erich Fric, who spoke to Tyres & Accessories shortly after the announcement. Indeed, the company’s exit from Wolverhampton appears the logical conclusion to decades of diminishment since its post-war peak, when Goodyear employed more than 7,000 jobs in the city, mostly manufacturing new tyres, an activity that ended in 2006. With the new tyre manufacturing site the subject of a £150m redevelopment plan to make the area a housing zone, Goodyear Dunlop signed a 10-year lease on the land occupied by its mixing and retreading operations, a commitment that was augmented by a five-year investment plan that brought two new Next Tread retreading machines and a Banbury mixer to Wolverhampton.
Truck tyre retreading and the new truck tyre market upon which it depends have developed in terms of sophistication over the years. At the same time increased amounts of low-cost products have put pressure on the opposite end of the market. Recent years have seen Michelin address this with investment at the top and now additional product lines at the bottom. Tyres & Accessories met with new Michelin UK head Guy Heywood, who was promoted from his role as sales director for the company’s commercial vehicle tyre sales in the UK and Ireland earlier this year, in order to find out more.
Manufacturers that aim to offer a comprehensive and competitive commercial vehicle fleet portfolio can’t get by without retreading (typically mould cure retreading performed in large, centralised facilities), nor can they reduce fleet transport costs and meet customer expectations without partnering with the tyre trade and drawing upon the extensive range of services these specialists offer. In the five years since opening a truck tyre retreading facility alongside its new truck tyre plant in Wittlich, Germany, Goodyear Dunlop has made greater inroads into the local fleet business market.
There’s a lot of talk within the tyre market at the moment – particularly in the retreading business – about tyres imported from the Far East, tyres that sometimes cost barely half as much as a new, European-made truck tyre and therefore make life very hard for many retreaders. But even though the market weakness that follows these imports is a point of concern for all involved, the problems that arrive along with these budget tyres don’t affect everyone equally.
Just a few months after the partnership between the Marangoni Group and Leader Rubber Co. S.A., a leading South African retreading materials supplier, began with the intention of supporting Marangoni’s African market development, Auto & Truck Tyres (A&TT), the biggest retreader in the region, has completely upgraded its plant in Wadeville, Johannesburg. This large A&TT […]
10 years after Bridgestone bought Bulldog, the retreading market is a different place. A decade ago passenger car retreading was still going on (albeit some way from its peak). At the same Chinese tyres were present, but in nowhere near the current quantities – and in some cases they were being sold at the same or higher prices they are now. On top of this many more retreading operations were running than there are today.
Bridgestone Australia’s Bandag Manufacturing retreading operation has completed the first part of a project that will enable its Wacol plant in Brisbane to harvest and store more than one million litres of rainwater. Bandag added 13 new rainwater tanks to its existing harvesting capabilities at the end of August, enabling the business to collect and store an extra 610,000 litres of water. Stage two will be completed in the coming months and will take Bandag’s total rainwater storage capacity to 1,100,000 litres.
Boris Stevanovic, marketing director for commercial vehicle tyres at Goodyear Dunlop Tires Europe (EMEA) until the end of last year, has taken on a new role in his home country. On 1 September he began as director of Goodyear Dunlop Tires France’s Commercial product business unit. Day-to-day, Stevanovic will report to Jan-Piet Huylebroeck, sales director truck tyres at Goodyear Europe, Middle East and Africa.
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