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.
Cheng Shin Rubber has unveiled a new global website for its CST tyre brand. The company says it aimed to develop a user-friendly site that features a responsive design, one that allows customers to “seamlessly find the tyre that best suits their passion.”
Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to the Secretary of State for Transport, Gavin Williamson visited the Goodyear factory in the West Midlands last week. The famous Wolverhampton factory has been developing tyres for 85 years in the region and is now a ‘Centre of Excellence’ for retreaded truck tyres.
Gavin Williamson MP started: "Goodyear are an important employer for the local area. My constituency starts at the edge of Wolverhampton so many of my constituents will be working at the plant. It is an important local employer and important local investor in the West Midlands.”
Both Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and Bridgestone Americas have reached tentative agreements with the United Steelworkers (USW), avoiding strikes in several plants across the US.
Goodyear reached a tentative agreement with USW on 27 July, the deadline for its former contract. The deal, covering 8,500 employees, still needs to be approved by the majority of the six local USW unions.
Demand for low rolling resistance tyres, and the materials necessary for their production, has far from peaked. Evonik Industries believes demand will rise by 18 per percent a year for the coming five years, and has responded to this expected growth by increasing capacity for silica. The company plans its silica capacity to reach 30 per cent above 2010 levels by 2014, and part of this increase will come through an expansion of its Maptaphut site in Thailand.
The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company announced today that Tom Kaczynski has joined the company as vice president of investor relations. He will report to Darren R. Wells, executive vice president and chief financial officer. Kaczynski joins Goodyear from Affinia Group Inc., where he had been vice president and corporate treasurer. At Affinia Group, Kaczynski established the company’s treasury office and led financing and investor relations activities.
Strike action at Goodyear plants in the US has been averted following the announcement of a tentative agreement between the tyre maker and the United Steelworkers union. On the evening of Saturday 27 July, as the clock ticked away on the previous four-year contract, the two parties reached an understanding over a four-year labour agreement that covers some 8,500 employees at Goodyear’s Buffalo, Topeka, Fayetteville, Danville, Gadsden and Akron plant.
Cooper Tire & Rubber reports it has now manufactured more than two million passenger car tyres using silica masterbatch (SMB) technology developed together with Mexico’s Industrias Negromex S.A. de C.V (INSA). The tyre maker says the technology has delivered a number of benefits, including improved mixing productivity and flexibility, the elimination of volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions) which are associated with the standard silanisation process of mixing silica) and improved silica dispersion in tyre tread formulations. Cooper says better dispersion means superior traction, wear and rolling resistance performance.
On 25 July, United States Senator Sherrod Brown, who represents the state of Ohio, met with Apollo Tyres chairman Onkar Kanwar and vice chairman and managing director Neeraj Kanwar to urge them to protect jobs in his – and Cooper Tire & Rubber’s – home state.
Financial analysts will need to form their own opinions when Cooper Tire & Rubber releases its second quarter 2013 financial results on 8 August. The US tyre maker has announced that in light of its pending acquisition – described as a “merger” in a Cooper press release – by India’s Apollo Tyres, the company will not host a financial community conference call. In the absence of this otherwise regular event a press release will be published on the tyre maker’s website, and Cooper says further information will be available in Form 10-Q of the company’s quarterly report.
Carlisle Companies, parent of Carlisle Transportation Products, says it will investigate “strategic alternatives” for its tyre and wheel subsidiary following quarter results punctuated by poor sales for the business unit.
Although India’s Automotive Tyre Manufacturers Association recently expressed a measure of dissatisfaction about the domestic rubber situation, member company MRF Ltd’s latest quarter results show profits that have been helped by the commodity. In the three months between 1 April and 30 June (the third quarter of MRF’s financial year), the tyre maker’s net profit leapt 57.2 per cent to Rs 2.27 billion (£25.0 million).
It is with great sadness that Tyrepress.com reports the passing of Infleet founder Bill Hall, following a long battle with cancer. A prominent figure in the tyre business for nearly 30 years, Hall joined Goodyear in 1980, serving in several senior positions in the UK and Europe, before leaving to set up the independent tyre service network in the mid-2000s. His long and distinguished career also included two years as chairman of the British Rubber Manufacturers Association tyres committee, forging a close working relationship with most of the major tyre brands and the industry associations. Hall died on Friday, 19 July, and was commemorated at a funeral on Thursday, 25 July. A keen sportsman who was a lifelong supporter of Bolton Wanderers, he lived with his wife in Sandbach, Cheshire and has a grown up son and a daughter with three grandchildren.
The launch of Avon Tyres’ latest sports touring motorcycle tyre aimed at the hypersport market, the Storm 3D X-M, took place near the brand’s Melksham, Wiltshire manufacturing base at Castle Combe in May. The Cooper-owned brand says it has since been reaping the plaudits for the new tyre, tested out by two-wheel specialist journalists on the fast and bumpy circuit.
India’s RPG Enterprises, parent company of Ceat Ltd, shares that the tyre maker aims to become one of the most profitable firms within the domestic market. Comments made by Ceat managing director Anant Goenka to this effect during an interview with local motoring journal Motown India were published on RPG’s website on 25 July.
For a decade or more the case has been made for the development of winter tyre market in the UK. While there have always been residual levels of winter tyre take-up in the most northerly and mountainous parts of Britain, in the past 10 years or so tyre manufacturers have invested considerable time, effort and resources in making it a relatively normal part of the UK tyre culture. In recent years there has been development in the winter tyre market and it seems clear that this has far from peaked. However, at the same time there is now evidence that sales of all-season tyres have matched and overtaken these. With all this in mind Tyres & Accessories spoke with representatives of Bridgestone, Falken and Hankook and asked what is the right tool for the job in the UK? And is the UK becoming an all-season tyre market?
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