Tyres can’t function without this critical raw material. Whether its natural or synthetic rubber you are interested in, articles bearing this tag feature this indispensable polymer.
Goodyear Tire & Rubber’s Board of Directors has elected two members of the company’s finance leadership team to new roles. Scott Honnold, vice-president and treasurer, was elected vice-president, Business Development. Tom Kaczynski, vice-president, Investor Relations, was elected vice-president, Treasurer & Investor Relations. The changes take effect 1 January 2014.
Three days before Cooper Tire & Rubber’s scheduled appeal hearing, Delaware Supreme Court has dismissed the tyre maker’s appeal. A court filing signed by Justice Randy J. Holland stated that “based upon the filings by the parties, the Court has concluded that this interlocutory appeal was improvidently accepted”, or in other words it shouldn’t have been accepted by the court to start with.
Ground rubber from scrap tyres has resilient properties that can be used to enhance the performance of construction products. For the asphalt industry, which currently depends on materials with very high embedded energy costs – polymer-modified bitumen is expensive in carbon terms both to make and to transport and store – asphalt made using bitumen modified with rubber concentrate from ground recycled tyres could therefore offer a welcome solution to greenhouse gas emissions associated with traditional asphalt manufacturing.
New Year, new prices. As of 1 January, German specialty chemicals firm Lanxess will increase prices for the rubber chemicals supplied by its Rubber Chemicals business units. The company says this move is necessary to offset raw material cost increases expected in the first quarter of 2014.
Expansion work on Yokohama Rubber’s ‘TireTestCenter of Asia’ is complete. The company reported on 16 December that a ceremony marking the conclusion of related construction was held at the site on 9 October. The expansion adds four new test courses – a 2.5-kilometre dry-test course and a 1.5-kilometre wet-test course for handling tests, a skid pad and a corner hydroplaning test road. Yokohama says the proving ground expansion enables it to conduct complete tests of its tyres’ handling and vibration performance.
According to an unconfirmed report, the United Steelworkers union has reached an agreement with Cooper Tire & Rubber regarding labour contracts at Cooper’s Findlay, Ohio and Texarkana, Arkansas plants. Financial website The Street wrote on 12 December that “a source close to the matter” said the USW has “worked out tentative agreements with Cooper based on potential outcomes.”
Today Michelin North America will present the first earthmover tyre produced at its new Starr OTR tyre factory in South Carolina, USA. The tyre maker is holding an invitation-only event to unveil the 13 foot (4 metre) tall, 5.5 ton tyre at the new factory, which is located adjacent to Michelin’s existing rubber processing plant.
The world’s fourth-largest sugar producer, Tereos, has joined the French BioButterfly project to develop and roll out a process for producing bio-butadiene. The company has signed a partnership agreement with Michelin that focuses on the industrial transformation of agricultural raw materials; this partnership aims to strengthen the upstream phase of the BioButterfly project.
Yokohama has published details of a number of personnel changes scheduled to take effect on 1 January 2014. These include Director Yuju Goto swapping his role as Tire Business president for that of Chief Tire Production Officer (he will remain Head of the Tire Production division). Atao Kishi will become President of Yokohama Tire Retread Co. Ltd, while Sigeru Kagami and Osamu Mikami will be made corporate officers; they will respectively also be appointed to the roles of Head of the Tire Production Technology division and Head of the Tire Overseas Sales & Marketing division.
A Wiltshire-based rubber research and development specialist is working with Canadian Tire to develop a tyre that changes colour when winter tyres are needed. The retailer approached Artis, the firm created as a result of the reorganisation of Avon Rubber in 2007, and tasked the Melksham company to develop such a product. It has now produced a concept tyre featuring a sidewall that changes from white to a vivid blue at 7°C.
Toyo Tire North America Manufacturing, Inc. (TNA) has broken ground on a 700,000 square foot (65,000m²) addition to its 2 million square foot (186,000 m²) tyre manufacturing facility in White, Georgia. The plant’s warehousing capacity will also be expanded by 323,000 square feet (30,000m²); Toyo says it needs a larger warehouse area to accommodate increasing demand for Toyo and Nitto brand passenger car and light truck tyres. Parent company Toyo Tire & Rubber is investing US$371 million in the TNA expansion over the next four years.
According to a report from market research and consulting company TechSci Research, three tyre majors account for more than 70 per cent of tyre sales in Thailand. Bridgestone, Michelin and Goodyear dominate a market that is expected to grow significantly in the next few years and generate revenues up to around US$17 billion by the end of 2018. However the report, titled ‘Thailand Tyre Market Forecast and Opportunities, 2018’, opines that companies such as Yokohama, Sumitomo and Continental tyres are providing these three with “tough competition”.
Purchasers of Toyo truck and bus tyres in the US will now enjoy a more comprehensive casing warranty. Toyo Tire U.S.A. Corp. says its improved casing warranty for its medium TBR range sees the casing value increasing to US$110 for the first retread on many popular sizes. The company also offers a rubber allowance of up to $50.00, based on the tyre’s remaining tread depth. Toyo Tire U.S.A. opines that these latest changes to its casing warranty make it one of the best in the tyre business.
Since the beginning of November ATS Euromaster has seen sales of winter tyres increase seven-fold, and the company expresses confidence that the number of cold weather fitments will continue rising now the winter has properly begun. It expects total cold weather tyre sales to exceed £10 million in 2013.
GfK has been carrying out research on car tyres in India since January 2013 and says that, although demand for passenger cars in India has fallen somewhat short of expectations this year, the replacement passenger car tyre market is thriving with robust sales reported for car and SUV tyres in the last three quarters. Car owners in the top 43 cities in India bought more than 5.5 million tyres in first nine months of the year; with the third quarter sales volume having surged by a substantial 11 per cent over the previous quarter.
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