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DEKK Partner Seek to Exploit “Most Important” Season

Managing director of DEKK Partner, the Norwegian retail co-operative that has 300 Nordic-area dealers, Leif Kristiansen recognizes that, for his organisation “the winter market is the most important season for DEKK Partner and all tyre dealers in the Nordic market.”

In this sector, winter tyres have an obvious place, a fact Kristiansen acknowledges when he states that “50 per cent of the turnover per year is in the period from the end of September to the end of December.” This fact of the market means that the company is somewhat dependent on the seasonal weather arriving on time at the beginning of November for the business to meet its financial targets.

29th July 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

Michelin To Increase Replacement Tyre Prices in Japan

In the second half of 2008 Nihon Michelin Tire Co., Ltd will raise the delivery prices for its replacement market products in Japan. Michelin states this series of price increases is unavoidable: “In the last year or so the industry has registered a continued escalation in the prices of raw materials. Continued efforts to internally compensate for this situation are not enough, obliging us to partially reflect this state of affairs in our prices,” the company said in a press release.

24th July 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

ATS Euromaster Invests £4.5 million in Fleet

ATS Euromaster has begun to receive the products of the company’s £4.5 million investment, comprising in the main new Mercedes-Benz Sprinters, Iveco Dailys and Renault Kangoos. A total of 150 new light commercial vehicles will be integrated into the firm’s operations as part of its fleet replacement programme for 2008. The vans are leased on four to five-year rental agreements.

Designed to take on specific roles in the fleet, the delivery includes mobile fitting vans for both cars and commercial vehicles, frontline rapid-response vehicles for providing emergency roadside assistance, flatbeds equipped to transport agricultural tyres and smaller vans for use in the company’s mobile fleet inspection department.

23rd July 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

TiDiCi Partners with TyreCheck

CIS-based tyre retail specialists TiDiCi have selected the TyreCheck system for paperless electronic tyre service management. The initial implementation is scheduled to start in July, after which it will be rolled out to an additional 27 sites across Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. The implementation will manage an estimated 150,000 vehicle inspections a year. According to a company statement on the news, TyreCheck was chosen for its scalability and due to the fact that it is available in more than 10 different languages.

The TyreCheck platform combines mobile and web-based components. The TyreCheck Mobile component provides the tools needed at the tyre. These include inspections and the tracking of work at the tyre, plus tracking of tyres going on and off vehicles. The TyreCheck Web component provides the management and reporting functionality that is required to centralise the data.

23rd July 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

Goodyear Dunlop MD Discusses HiQ, Christian Salvesen and the Truck Tyre Business

Having spent 17 years working for Procter & Gamble in both national and European positions Mark Brickhill became Goodyear Dunlop UK managing director in May 2007. What followed was something of a steep learning curve. Headhunted from a senior management position overseeing laundry products in Geneva, it was only a matter of weeks before he faced the new challenge of tyres. One year on, and set against an impressive global Goodyear recovery, Tyres & Accessories met Mark Brickhill at the company's Tyre Fort headquarters in Birmingham and asked: How is the UK turnaround going?

Arriving at Tyre Fort in Birmingham, the first thing you notice is the still gleaming Norbert Dentressangle logo that now hangs on the adjacent distribution centre (the Goodyear and Dunlop brands on the side of the huge building excepted). Less than a month after his appointment as general manager was made public, Mark Brickhill encountered something of a sea change in the company's newly revamped distribution setup. In January 2006 Goodyear Dunlop decided to hand over the warehousing and delivery control of most its products to a third party logistics company (3PL). The idea was for Goodyear Dunlop and Christian Salvesen (as it was then) to work together to improve efficiencies and costs for everyone involved. To say feelings about this move in general were mixed would be something of an understatement. And to say the service wasn't as good as all the respective parties had hoped for would be similarly wide of the mark.

21st July 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

Old Versus New

When it comes to the low rolling resistance debate, the gloves are off. This is particularly the case amongst the world’s leading tyre manufacturers, who each have their own brand of high-level tyre technology to offer, but are very much at odds about the benefits and theoretical pay-offs their tyres’ exhibit. In July’s Tyres & Accessories we examined Michelin’s argument that it’s all a question of technology. Or to put it another way, there needn’t be a pay-off between strong wet braking performance and low rolling resistance characteristics if you research and development department is sufficiently advanced. Until recently this concept had been taken as read, but Michelin’s various generations of Energy saver tyres claim to have out-teched this dichotomy.

Last month there was something of a disagreement between Michelin and Bridgestone with regard to the energy saving properties of their tyres. The “discussion” followed tyre test results in the French press, which found that there was “no significant difference” between fuel consumption results on the two manufacturer’s truck and bus tyres. This month Tyres & Accessories reports from the ContinentalSafetyExperience – a showcase of Conti’s latest technology including the chance to see the company’s response to the pay-off question in action. Continental was demonstrating its technologies as part of a ContiSafetyExperience event, which the company held at the OAMTC (Austrian AA equivalent) centre in Teesdorf, Austria.

21st July 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

Toyota Becomes Canadian Retailer of Conti Products

Continental has expanded its retail presence in Canada following the signing of an agreement with Toyota. Both Continental and General branded passenger car and light commercial tyres will be sold through 239 Toyota and 30 Lexus dealerships across Canada.

“This agreement gives Toyota and Lexus customers access to our catalogue of passenger and light truck tyres and helps to increase our retail presence without compromising our existing tyre dealer network,” said Guy Hardiman, General Manager of Continental Tire Canada.

21st July 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

Conti to Make Mount Vernon, Ill. Investment

Continental’s North American division is ready to pump US$60 million into its Illinois plant spread over the next three years. The money will go towards expanding production capacity on the facility’s passenger, light truck and commercial tyre operations. The German manufacturer will expand its workforce to the tune of 75 new jobs, increasing production by around two million tyres every year.

News sources suggest that the company will spend around two-thirds of the total figure on new machinery and tools for the fabrication of passenger and light truck tyres, while the remaining third will be spent on updating the factory’s commercial tyre building machines.

17th July 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

Maxxis Signs Premiership Advertising Deals

Maxxis has signed lucrative advertising deals with Everton FC and Tottenham Hotspur FC, who finished fifth and eleventh respectively in last season’s Premier League. The announcement comes in addition to Maxxis renewal of support for Aston Villa FC, where it will continue with perimeter advertising at the Villa Park ground and VIP corporate hospitality package.

For the 2008/09 season Maxxis LED banner advertisements will also be located at Goodison Park and White Hart Lane, in prime positions on three sides of the pitch opposite the TV cameras. Maxxis representatives told Tyres & Accessories the company is changing its advertising to make a “big impact: when the first Premier League matches kick off on Saturday 16 August.

16th July 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

Michelin Clocks Up Half a Million Hours of Training Success

Michelin Training Centre is celebrating delivering its 500,000th hour of high training. The centre, which is close to Michelin’s UK headquarters in Campbell Road, Stoke-on-Trent, was set up at the start of 2002 and sees an average of over 3,000 people from all over the world come through its doors each year. The modern teaching environment provides both internal and external training on everything from basic time management to tyre related aspects of crash scene investigation.

In addition to the company’s own manufacturing and business staff, Michelin’s Training Centre is used by organisations such as the Police, the MOD and retailers to train staff about tyre design, construction and performance. The amount of training now being held at the Centre is being seen as a good indicator of how important Michelin believes the MTC will be for its ongoing success.

16th July 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

Dunlop Sweeps Out of Nigeria

International News

Dunlop, the last tyre manufacturer with a factory in Nigeria, is set to leave the country, favouring the importation of tyres from other nations such as South Africa. The decision is said to be inspired by the persistence of power cuts, unreliable gas supply, a rise in manufacturing costs and inconsistent governmental tariffs, which allowed imported tyres to gain the upper hand in the domestic market.

The company stated that it had reached an impasse with the Nigerian government, after failing to persuade it to alter the prohibitive tariff structure. The government said that local manufacturing could not meet the market demand, though Dunlop argued that the current tariffs, coupled with energy costs and unreliability, made the improvement of production capacity impossible.

14th July 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

Hankook Going up a Gear in Europe

During the recent Reifen Essen exhibition Tyres & Accessories met with Hankook vice president and Hankook Tire Europe GmbH chief operating officer, Seung Do Jin; along with European vice president sales and marketing, Hee Se Ahn. The meeting followed some particularly impressive full-year results that saw the company buck the trend (compared with similar businesses) and post a market leading profit margin of 8.1 per cent. It also followed a particularly impressive result in the recent Auto Motor und Sport tyre test. The result? Hankook is gearing up to announce some big wins in the European OE business, which signal the company’s intentions for future growth.

Asked what led to the company’s particularly impressive first quarter sales, Mr Jin explained that one reason is they came “as a result of becoming a marketing driven company.” European sales growth is particularly driven by sales in the UHP segment, he added, and according to Mr Jin, the leading car manufacturers based in Germany continue to drive these trends. So, with Hankook’s Dunaujvaros, Hungary production plant currently producing around 4.5 million passenger car tyres a year (15,000/day), the South Korean-based manufacturer is increasingly ready to go up a gear and carve out its place in the European OE business.

At this point it is worth pointing out Hankook’s recent success in securing some pretty high profile OE contracts with volume manufacturers such as Volkswagen. The word in Essen was that Hankook is very close to sealing an OE contract with Audi, a deal Hankook “is convinced” will be completed by the end of 2008. This would see the South Korean manufacturer supply both the A3 and A6 models in Germany and the A4 and A6 models in China. The contract would involve supplying 16, 17 and 18-inch tyres in “relatively small” quantities to begin with. Hankook is also said to be in discussions with BMW and Mercedes (who the company already supplies spare tyres to), not to mention Toyota.

European proving ground?

Coming back to Mr Jin’s earlier comment that Hankook’s positive results at least partly come down to its development into a more marketing aware company, rumour has it that Mercedes actually approached the South Korean company with reference to an OE deal on the S-Class, following Hankook’s impressive Auto Motor und Sport tyre test win.

With the market (and various proposed pieces of legislation) increasingly focussing on rolling resistance and fuel economy, research and development is as important as ever for Hankook. The company’s particular attention on market-focused R&D is demonstrated in its increased use of European testing facilities – including sites in Vienna, Austria and Barcelona, Spain. Mr Jin explained that Hankook has invested a “huge” amount of money in gaining the exclusive use of a new specially made handling circuit all-year round. Sooner or later this policy would result in “our own proving ground.” Mr Jin hinted.

Seung Do Jin, himself a former Hankook UK managing director, reserved particular praise for Hankook UK’s growth under the leadership of Richard Page, and the rapid development of Hankook’s market position in the UK truck tyre segment. Following the launch of four new truck tyres at April’s CV show (including one winter fitment); and two more in Essen, Hankook is experiencing something of a rapid ascendancy in this particular area. However, with more ‘economically competitive’ products being imported into the UK than ever, the obvious question is how does Hankook feel about an influx of products competing on price?

“At the moment I am not worried about the Chinese catching us up. There is already a technical knowledge gap. We invest 5 per cent per year in research and development, so we can learn faster than they can follow,” Mr Jin answered. So does this mean Hankook is likely to follow its construction of a passenger car tyre facility in Hungary with European truck and bus capacity?

According to Mr Jin it all depends on the market situation. However, he did point out that, despite the fact that production costs are up, there is still space on the Hungarian PCR production site. And therefore there is always the option of adding truck and bus tyre capacity “in a few years time.”

14th July 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

Goodyear Plans Commercial Tyre Unit for China

Chinese news sources are suggesting strongly that plans are in progress at Goodyear for a new US$500 million facility in Dalian, China. It is said that the plant will be launched in 2010, and will produce commercial truck tyres for the Chinese market – a first for the US giant.

Perhaps these reports are a little more speculative than they first seem. Back in February, T&A reported on www.tyrepress.com that Goodyear were on the verge of signing an agreement to invest up to US$1 billion – a huge figure by anyone’s estimations – in a Dalian-based venture.

11th July 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

Mona-flexible: Monarch Vulcanising Systems

An effect of the cost pressures of rising retail prices and the refocusing of companies onto issues relating to the environmental impact of their operations is that organisations are increasingly looking to mend, rather than replace, damaged tyres. Guernsey-based manufacturer of tyre repair machinery, Monarch Vulcanising Systems, is able to provide a number of machines for just this purpose. Not only, Monarch claims, are their Monaflex systems suitable for fixing any tyre used in the world today, they are also easily transportable, relatively simple to use, and quickly assembled.

10th July 2008/by Tyrepress Editors

Pirelli to Invest $100 million in Doubling China Tyre Capacity

Pirelli & C has announced that it will invest $100 million in expanding the capacity of its Chinese tyre production operation over the next two years. The investment is designed to double the company’s passenger car tyre production capacity by 2011, while also increasing truck tyre output. According to the Reuters news agency, the expanded capacity could double Pirelli’s share of China’s market to 10 per cent within five years.

The investment would mean Pirelli’s total Chinese tyre capacity would rise to 11 million passenger car and truck tyres and could help China become Pirelli’s second largest global market within five years, Reuters quoted Pirelli chairman, Marco Tronchetti Provera as saying.

10th July 2008/by Tyrepress Editors