The Kumho Asiana Group has appointed Kumho Tire vice-present Park Se-chang the group’s chief executive officer. According to a Kumho press release, 40-year old Park, the only son of group chairman Park Sam-koo, will lead Kumho Asiana’s strategic management unit with current CEO Seo Jae-hwan.
Following the rollout of similar facilities in South Korea, the US, Australia and the UK, Kumho Tire opened its first ‘Kumho Flagship Store’ in Italy on 20 March. As in the other markets, the Italian flagship centre scheme aims to reward and help dealers who focus on the Kumho brand. The first facility, at the Pneus2000 centre in Offanengo, Cremona province, was selected from within the tyre maker’s Kumho Platinum Club network in Italy and will be followed in the near future by other centres in main cities throughout the country.
Some nine months after his government signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Nexen Tyre on the construction of a new factory, Czech Republic Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka visited Nexen Tyre’s Changnyeong plant during an official state visit to South Korea. “We are pleased to welcome Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka to Nexen Tyre,” stated Nexen Tyre chairman Kang Byung-Joong during today’s plant inspection. “We look forward to further cementing our partnership with the Czech government and to set up the best tyre manufacturing facility with advanced technology in Europe.”
Netherlands-based industrial tyre manufacturer Magna Tyres and its official agent in South Korea will supply a “considerable quantity” of M-Straddle tyres to one of the world’s largest container terminals as part of a new one-year contract. Magna Tyres and its agent, Hyoshin Hispec Co. Ltd, signed an official contract with BNCT (Busan New Container Terminal) this week and will provide unspecified but large numbers of the M-Straddle in size 16.00R25 over a 12 month period.
Nexen Tire reports that operating earnings increased 18 per cent in 2014. According to the Korea-based tyre manufacturer, this was based on lower raw material costs and improved sales. Meanwhile sales were 1.7 per cent higher at US$1.68 billion, raising the operating ratio nearly two points to 11.9 per cent. Net income rose 4.7 per […]
Eleven years of Chinese government anti-dumping duties on imports of styrene butadiene rubber (SBR) from Russia, Japan and South Korea ended on 8 September, the country’s Ministry of Commerce reports. The products had attracted duties of four to 38 per cent, however the ministry decided to remove them as these imports were deemed no longer a threat to China’s domestic tyre and rubber industry.
Hankook has slowed its production in response to amassing a record inventory glut. Seoul’s Yonhap News Agency reports that the manufacturer has 660,000 unsold tyres, or 8.5 per cent of its monthly 7.75 million production capacity. The agency quotes an unnamed Hankook source as saying that the growth in demand expected after March had failed to materialise, leading to the surplus.
Groundbreaking took place yesterday on Hankook Tire’s new KRW 266 billion (£155.7 million) R&D centre in South Korea. When complete in 2016, the Daejeon-based Hankook Technodome will be the first of two new research and testing facilities the tyre maker plans to establish as the core instruments of its overall research and development infrastructure. The Hankook Technodome will serve as an incubator for innovative new technologies and eventually operate in tandem with a further facility that is scheduled to open in 2018, the Hankook Test Engineering Center in Sangju, South Korea. The Sangju site’s planned function is to act as a hub for tyre evaluation technologies, and it will be equipped with state-of-the-art tyre testing facilities.
Kumho Tire has been named a Red Dot Award winner for the third consecutive year. The German product design competition, which has now been held for 60 years, acknowledged three Kumho products, the Ecsta PS91, WinterCraft Wi61 winter tyre and the Wattrun VA31, which is exclusively fitted to Renault Samsung’s SM3 Z.E. This is the first time that a Korean tyre maker has been given a Red Dot Award three years in a row.
Connell Brothers (CBC), the largest distributor of specialty chemicals and ingredients in Asia-Pacific, has announced a partnership with specialty materials company Lehigh Technologies to market Lehigh’s PolyDyne micronised rubber powders (MRP) to the tyre and rubber industries in Southeast Asia.
Nexen Tire will soon make a decision on where to build its new plant in Eastern Europe, and several international news reports point to the Korean tyre maker choosing the Czech Republic. Yet Nexen denies having selected the country, or indeed any particular location, as its preferred site. Responding to news published by Czech News Agency and media questioning, an unnamed company official made clear what Nexen has already decided upon – and what it hasn’t.
In the previous financial year, Nexen Tire only managed to slightly increase its global turnover. The third-largest Korean tyre maker reported a 2013 turnover of KRW 1.73 trillion (£973.38 million), just 1.3 per cent higher than in 2012. Income also came under pressure. While operating profit amounted to KRW 177 billion (£99.38 million) and lay 1.9 per cent below the previous year’s result, net profit decreased 7.8 per cent to KRW 124 billion (£69.63 million).
Kumho Tire and North America’s National Basketball Association (NBA) have entered into a new multiyear marketing partnership that will make Kumho the official tyre of the NBA and NBA Development League (NBA D-League) in the US and South Korea. This is the first official tyre partnership for both leagues and is Kumho Tire’s first partnership with a US sports league.
Kumho Tire has informed the Korea Stock Exchange that its 2013 sales, operating income and net profit were lower than the comparative figures for 2012. According to the company’s consolidated financial statements, total sales last year amounted to KRW 3,698.5 billion (£2.1 billion), a year-on-year reduction of 9.1 per cent. Operating income, at KRW 348.2 billion (£197.8 million), was down 7.2 per cent on the 2012 result. Net income for 2013 was KRW 117.4 billion (£66.7 million) and 10.1 per cent less than a year earlier.
Korea Investment & Securities anticipates that a continually improving financial position at Kumho Tire makes the company good value for investors. In comments published by English-language Korean ICT publication IT Times, analyst Kim Jin-woo said the tyre maker’s debt burden is falling rapidly, and he opines that this financial turnaround isn’t yet reflected in the current Kumho Tire share price. Kumho Tire thus has been given a “buy” recommendation by Korea Investment & Securities and the target share price has been set at KRW 16,000.
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