Donald Trump appears to be making good on his promise to impose tariffs on products imported into the USA, having said he will impose tariffs of an extra 10 per cent on Chinese goods as well as tariffs of 25 per cent on all imports from Canada and Mexico.
The European Tyre and Rubber Manufacturers’ Association (ETRMA) has published its members’ replacement tyre sales figures for the third quarter and first nine months of 2024, comparing these results with statistics for tyre imports during the period. Adam McCarthy, the association’s Secretary General, notes that while member sales volumes for Consumer segment tyres are improving, mainly driven by rising demand for all-season tyres, volumes are still negative in the Truck segment. Significantly, both are still far from their pre-pandemic volumes.
Since September, the International Trade Administration Commission of South Africa (ITAC) has launched an investigation into the circumvention of anti-dumping investigations by redirecting tyres from China to Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam.
Australian headquartered tyre and wheel importer, distributor and retailer National Tyre & Wheel Limited has a new name. From 9 April 2024, the company call itself NTAW Holdings Limited. Shareholders passed a resolution to rename the company during an extraordinary general meeting on 26 March 2024.
In early September 2023, Jiangsu General appeared at The 18th China International Tire Expo (CITExpo 2023) at the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition & Convention Centre. At the exhibition site, the staff of the tyre manufacturer told Tyrepress China that most of the customers they received this time were from Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Russia and South America.
In early September, the 18th China International Tire Expo (CITExpo 2023) was held in Shanghai. After three years of waiting, this year’s show attracted many dealers from overseas. An exhibitor from Jiangsu General told Tyrepress China: “The results of this year’s China International Tire Expo are quite good. We made appointments with 60 customers before the exhibition. Basically, all of them came. At the same time, we also met many new customers at the exhibition today.” At the popular CITExpo 2023, Tyrepress China noticed that China’s tyre industry is showing two new trends: recovery and transformation.
The ups and downs of European retreading continued last year. According to current figures from the European Tire & Rubber Manufacturers’ Association (ETRMA), the association members retreaded and marketed a total of 4.298 million truck tyres in Europe (excluding Turkey) in 2022. This corresponds to a decline of at least 6.2 per cent compared to the previous year, but is still 4.9 per cent above the figures for the previous year. However, since the new tyre business of the ETRMA members was largely stable (down 0.5 per cent), the importance of retreaded truck tyres fell again significantly compared to the new tyre market and was only 37.2 per cent at the end of last year. The association’s figures also show something else very clearly: the EU tariff effect, which had reduced imports of truck tyres (by non-ETRMA members) for a number of years, has now completely fizzled out.
Toyo’s European operation held an opening event at its Serbian factory on 5 June. The company was celebrating the start of deliveries to Europe of tyres manufactured at the plant; it had already been producing tyres for the North American market in Serbia as the plant went through the process of obtaining the correct certifications for Europe. With these procedures completed, the plant is now producing two patterns for Europe: the best-selling Proxes Comfort and the increasingly popular all-season tyre, Celsius AS2. These two products alone represent around 30 per cent of all of its tyres sold in Europe.
Five months after the opening its new tyre factory in the Municipality of Indjija, Toyo first Serbia-made tyres have arrived in the UK. Aboard this historic shipment are the Proxes Comfort, the passenger and eco car-targeted offering from the Proxes range.
The United Kingdom and European Union is importing an increasing tonnage of Off-The-Road (OTR) tyres, as the sector responds to internal and external trends. Externally, sinking shipping costs and relatively controlled production costs are particularly favouring Asian manufacturers. And with Russia’s war on Ukraine making the country a pariah in European trading terms, there are additional reasons to source increasing numbers of OTR tyres from South Asia. Trading relations with Russia’s closest supporter Belarus are also frosting, which could see further gains for Asian factories, while emerging tyre producing nations like Serbia could also reap the benefits. While the size, weight and per unit cost of the largest tyres could present arguments in favour of more localised production, lower manufacturing and materials costs weigh even more heavily in this balance of factors.
Based on stock market reporting for the third quarter of 2022, the top nine Chinese listed tyre companies ranked by revenue are Sailun, Linglong, Triangle, Huayi (the holding company of Double Coin), Guizhou Tyre, Sentury, Aeolus, Jiangsu General, and Doublestar. (The leading Chinese tyre company according to Tyrepress global rankings is ZC Rubber (Hangzhou Zhongce), but it is not listed.) The figures show that Sailun has completed a meteoric rise this year to become the Chinese tyre industry’s stock market leader, with an income of more than 6 billion yuan in the quarter, putting it within reach of the global top 10 tyre manufacturers.
Since March, cumulative passenger car and light truck tyre imports to the European Union and UK have, for the first time, recovered to run above pre-pandemic levels. This is despite the well-documented impact of sharply higher ocean freight costs in this period, and disruption to production in some source countries. A newly published report by Astutus Research, “European PCLT Tire Demand and Supply Forecasts to 2026”, shows that in the first seven months of 2022, European (the EU-27 plus UK)* imports from outside the region were 11% higher than the same period last year and 5% higher than the equivalent pre-Covid period in 2019.
South Africa’s International Trade Administration Commission (ITAC) announced in January that it would look at allegations of dumping levelled against importers of tyres from China. This investigation is still ongoing, but opponents warn that if authorities decide to apply duties to these products, the cost of tyres could increase by up to 41 per cent, with price rises for transportation and essential products a knock-on effect.
Extraordinary market conditions in sea freight are now expected to persist well into 2022, according to analysts. Meanwhile, long-haul air freight belly capacity is only expected to gradually return between 2022 and 2024. Of course, freight forwarders/shipping firms are the biggest winners in this scenario, with the same analysis produced by Jefferies further raising pre-tax profit (EBIT) estimates by 18 per cent on average in the sector for the 2021 full year and by 14 per cent in 2022.
As if the Covid-related troubles combined with complex shipping challenges and rising raw material costs weren’t enough, Chinese government policy is now adding to the pressure on tyre manufacturers making tyres for export from the People’s Republic. Specifically, the Chinese central government environmental policy has led to power rationing across the country since mid-September, which has had a marked impact on manufacturing business including the tyre industry. Indeed, more than 20 tyre manufacturers have experienced power-rationing-related temporary shutdowns and/or have implemented price increases because of these product headwinds. And these are having a marked impact on tyre production.
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