Hankook has announced the official opening of its newly constructed test centre on the premises of Applus+ in Idiada, Spain. All areas that previously had to be accommodated separately on the premises are now housed under one roof in the new workshop due to the constant growth in testing and development requirements over recent years.
20 per cent of Spanish tyre distributor Grupo Andrés’s sales are made outside Spain. And, with the company positioned as market leader in the Iberian peninsula along with investments in systems and infrastructure, sales are projected to grow.
Sentury Tire, the tyre manufacturer behind the global Landsail tyre brand, has outlined its plan to construct a 522.59 million euro car and light truck tyre plant in the Galicia region of northwest Spain. Qingdao Sentury Tire Co, Ltd’s board of directors approved the proposal to build capacity for 12 million high performance and light commercial tyres on a three-year schedule at a meeting in the last quarter of 2021, announcing this intention to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange on 19 December. The company has implemented a 100 per cent owned subsidiary, Sentury Tire (Spain) Co, Ltd, via its Hong Kong trading company for the project, and wants to ramp up production in two phases; it expects the plant to reach 50 per cent capacity (six million tyres) after two years, with the second half added after three years. Sentury wants to achieve these milestones in 2024 and 2025 respectively, pending construction conditions in Spain and the availability of funding, which Sentury plans to self-raise.
The solar-powered Visitor Centre Building at Nokian Tyres’ Spain Test Centre has earned LEED v4 Platinum certification – the highest LEED certification level – for green building leadership. Nokian Tyres’ 300-hectare Test Centre is situated in Santa Cruz de la Zarza, a small town about one hour’s drive south of Madrid. The Test Centre includes 10 test tracks and the Visitor Centre. Inspectors highlighted the Visitor Centre’s innovation in design, energy efficiency and indoor environmental quality as key drivers of the high certification level.
Life for Tyres (L4T) Group has signed a ten-year offtake agreement with Spanish base oils supplier Nexolub to market oils extracted from end-of-life tyres processed at the plant it is currently setting up in Puertollano, Spain. The L4T facility is scheduled to be completed in December and become operational the following month with an annual capacity of 27,000 tonnes – a quantity equivalent to eight per cent of the end-of-life tyres generated in the country each year – it will be one of the largest facilities of its type in Europe.
Leading Spanish retreader Insa Turbo, which is part of the Soledad Group, has signed a collaboration agreement with Kraiburg Austria that leads to the use of Kraiburg retreading materials at the retreader’s Aspe (Alicante) factory. According to an Insa Turbo statement, the alliance includes a roadmap which “defines the gradual implementation of Austrian technology in the process of hot retreading and pre-curing of truck tyres.”
Hexpol completed the 48 million euro acquisition of 100 per cent of Unión de Industrias C.A., S.A. (Unica) from Espiga Capital, a Spanish based Private Equity firm on 7 July 2021. Unica’s turnover in 2020 amounted to 40 million euros, with a profitability “below Hexpol Group”, according to the business’s new owner. Unica will be consolidated into Hexpol from 1 July.
Kenda Tire Europe has appointed Safame Comercial SL as a tyre distribution partner in Iberia. Effective immediately, “Kenda’s complete tyre portfolio will be available to purchase through Safame’s distribution network of more than 7,000 outlets across Spain and Portugal.”
Hankook Tire has expanded its testing and development capacities in Europe with the commissioning of a new test centre in Spain. The facility, located some 40 miles southwest of Barcelona on the premises of the Applus+ IDIADA Group, will enable the tyre maker to “build on even more efficient and state-of-the-art, fully automated test logistics for European tyre development in the future.”
Reporting on its response to the fire that broke out at its plant in Manresa, Spain on Monday, Maxion Wheels shares that the company’s Incident Management Team is on site today to “oversee fire damage restoration.” Depending on circumstances, some production may resume there as soon as next week.
Conflicting reports on the damage to Maxion Wheels’ Manresa plant in Spain are currently circulating. While local news sources suggest that the fire that broke out in the facility on Monday has completely halted production and will affect it for some time, comment from Maxion Wheels challenges the veracity of these reports. The wheel manufacturer intends to issue an official statement on the matter in due course.
Firefighters have extinguished a blaze at the Maxion Wheels light vehicles steel wheel plant in Manresa, Spain. According to local media sources, the fire service received a call to the site at 6:45pm yesterday afternoon. They had brought the fire under control by 8:30pm. While there are no reported injuries, four pieces of plant machinery are apparently affected. The factory building’s roof has also sustained some damage.
After commencing tests of its tyres in Europe last year, Prinx Chengshan returns in 2021 to continue its testing programme. The Chinese tyre maker is utilising a number of sites, including Applus IDIADA in Spain and a facility in Ivalo, Finland, in order to test its winter, all-season and UHP summer tyres.
Tyre testing has commenced at the new Nokian Tyres Test Center in Santa Cruz de la Zarza, Spain. The tyre maker is utilising all ten tracks at the site, including the ‘crown jewel’, a seven-kilometre oval track circling the facility.
At the start of 2021 Grupo Andrés, started work on the construction its new headquarters. According to the company the new facilities will result in “a significant improvement in distribution” due to the “robotization of the logistics process and a notable streamlining of work and the flow of orders”.
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