Last Friday, friends and colleagues from the industry bade farewell to Ruud Spuijbroek, the “long-time helmsman” of European retreading association BIPAVER and secretary general of Dutch association VACO as he retired from his duties. At a valediction event in the town of Gernsbach, in Germany’s Black Forest, his successor at BIPAVER, Tim van der Rijken, and Hans-Jürgen Drechsler, technical secretary of the European association and managing director of German association BRV, acknowledged one last time Spuijbroek’s contribution to retreading in Europe.