Truck Tyres
Today is the third and final day of this year’s Brityrex show. The past two days have seen good visitor numbers at the new EventCity venue and Tyres & Accessories has enjoyed the opportunity to catch up on the latest UK industry news.
The September issue of Tyres & Accessories is now available online in our e-paper format. This edition contains the latest tyre news and views as well as features on Truck Tyres and Winter Tyres, plus a complete preview of Brityrex 2012. Subscribers can read this online now. Simply click more below.
Sailun Tyres appointed Chr. Kapodistrias & Sons Limited as its sole distributor of passenger car and radial truck tyres in Cyprus earlier in the year. The company is the largest automotive parts company in Cyprus. Sailun says the companies will pursue a number of brand awareness and marketing communication initiatives to stimulate sales and growth for Sailun in Cyprus. These will include radio commercials; press advertisements; leaflet distribution; participation in a local automotive exhibition; an appearance on rally and racing cars and events; and an event evening in Nicosia with a joint presentation and cocktail party for key, existing and potential new customers.
Nokian has unveiled a new addition to its Noktop Hakkapeliitta line with a product it calls the market’s first winter tread for wide trailer tyres. The Noktop Hakkapeliitta F is designed particularly for commercial vehicles with low trailers in international operation especially in Nordic conditions. The tread is available for tyre casings in size 445/45R19.5.
The flagship European brand of GiTi Tire, GT Radial may have been selling truck tyres into European markets for less than half a decade, but it has come a very long way in a short space of time. In one of its major markets, the UK, the company believes it now holds third place in terms of market share, saying that it now outstrips big players Hankook and Continental with upwards of 13 per cent of the country’s one million truck tyre unit sales. It believes it holds the global number four spot in the TBR segment. The latest step forwards – unveiled first at the CV Show in Birmingham and then to a wider European audience at Reifen 2012 in Essen, Germany – has been the introduction of the company’s REE Tread development, a hot cure retreading programme, with the GTR990 regional trailer pattern in size 385/65R22.5 representing GT Radial’s first commercial vehicle retread tyre. Significantly, the tyre uses the Chinese brand’s own made-in-China casings and is manufactured by “a renowned retreader located in the south-west of England”, in the company’s words.
Visitors to September’s CITExpo show in Shanghai were able to spot Austyre Australia’s stand from afar, as a larger-than-life inflatable kangaroo greeted anyone who stopped by. But Austyre Australia had more on offer than just air-filled macropods – the Dandenong-based company is the firm behind the Austyre brand of passenger car, light truck, UHP, SUV and truck tyres.
This year was the first time Double Coin Holdings was present at CITExpo as an exhibitor, and vice-president Liu Xue Jun told Tyres & Accessories that the company had met with a good mix of end users, dealers and wholesalers during the show. The Shanghai exhibition was used as an opportunity to meet new customers and to show off the company’s new range Double Coin brand winter truck tyres. “Winter tyres are a new product for us,” commented Mr. Liu. “We’re going to promote these, along with our new 295/60 low profile tyres.”
The Aufine Group says it “enjoyed a very active and successful” CITExpo show this year, with a great deal of interest from visitors. Speaking with Tyres & Accessories at the Shanghai show, company general manager David Sun says that although he’d observed signs of the current global economic situation amongst people he’d met during the exhibition, the Aufine team nevertheless met new contacts and held meetings that offer a good chance for new business relationships.
Stapleton’s became the tyre distribution industry’s first to launch an online ordering system more than a decade ago. More recently the company upgraded this and now the recently revamped ProfitLink2 reportedly remains a leader in the field, putting the leading distributor’s nationwide 1,200,000 units of tyre stocks at its retail customers’ fingertips. The latest development relates to the tyre labelling legislation that will take effect shortly after this article is published in print at the back end of October.
Don’t you just hate it when you’re driving down the road and people start shooting at you? Apart from the noise and inconvenience involved, a stray bullet can really wreak havoc on your tyres. Fortunately, one Hangzhou, China-based tyre maker has the answer for those who want to avoid weapons-related punctures.
At this week’s IAA Commercial Vehicles show in Germany, Goodyear is launching its first ever dedicated European-market coach tyres, the Goodyear Marathon Coach and Goodyear Ultra Grip Coach winter drive tyre. Both tyres are available in 295/80R22.5 and 315/80R22.5, with all products to be available on the market by the end of October.
Within Europe, Bridgestone is progressively replacing its R297 steer and M729 drive tyres with the newly-developed R-STEER 001 and R-DRIVE 001 regional application truck tyres. Commenting on the pair’s launch, which coincides with the IAA Commercial Vehicles show in Germany, Bridgestone says the new tyres are “designed for robustness in versatile usage, providing high-level performance and a long lifecycle in a wide range of operating conditions.”
Visitors to Michelin’s stand at the IAA Commercial Vehicles show in Germany, which opens to the public today, will be greeted by a whole new range of tyres from the French manufacturer. The world premier of the X Line Energy range is being held at the show; Michelin says the launch of the new range comes at a “special time” as it coincides with the introduction of the European tyre labelling programme.
Dutch industrial, off-the-road and commercial tyre manufacturer, Magna Tyres Group, has launched a renewed website at www.magnatyres.com. Employing the business’s new corporate imagery, the Magna Tyres website provides online visitors with a visual presentation of its whole product line, including off-the-road tyres, industrial tyres and truck tyres.
Goodyear has launched an information campaign about winter road safety aimed at commercial vehicle owners and fleets. The manufacturer says it has identified a common misconception, with many commercial vehicle operators assuming that winter tyres are only suitable for snow and ice. Of course, readers of Tyrepress.com will be well aware that winter tyres are developed not only for extreme weather conditions; they also perform better than other tyres at temperatures below 7°C, because of optimised designs and softer, high-silica compounds that don’t harden like regular driving compounds.
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