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.
European Tyre Enterprise Ltd (ETEL) has announced that CEO Shinjiro (Sean) Tanaka is taking on a new role as group chairman. Replacing him as CEO is Yutaka Kimbara, who is currently group director of the Europe & CIS General Products & Realty Group of Itochu Europe PLC, which is part of ETEL’s parent company Itochu Corp. of Japan.
Australia-headquartered tyre wholesaler National Tyre & Wheel Limited (NTAW) has completed its acquisition of Carters Tyre Service Limited, C.O. Tire & Retreading Co. Limited and Tyre Distributors New Zealand Limited (Carters). The acquisition was made through its wholly owned subsidiary, NTAW Holdings (NZ) Limited, and completed on 7 January.
European Tyre Enterprise Ltd (ETEL), which owns leading tyre retail and wholesale operations Kwik-Fit and Stapleton’s, has agreed the acquisition of Murfitts Industries, the country’s leading tyre recycling company. ETEL is buying 100 per cent of Murfitts Group Ltd, the parent company of Murfitts Industries. Murfitts operates a national network recycling the equivalent of around 20 million car tyres per year. Murfitts, which processes and recycles tyres into granulate, has been a long-term provider of post-consumer tyre collection and recycling services to ETEL.
So far, the majority of our ongoing Torque from the Top series of interviews with leading players in the UK tyre business have been with executives hailing from the manufacturing side of things. This month we redress the balance by engaging with Andy Fern who is the managing director of one of the UK’s largest tyre wholesale businesses, Stapleton’s. Here he talks us through the resilience of staff and customers during the turbulent couple of years we have all experience and details the “seismic shift in the market” that has come with increase online demand from consumers.
With multiple sources suggesting that the online tyre business broke new ground during 2020, but with data illustrating that trend less easy to come by, Tyres & Accessories caught up with Micheldever Tyre Services (MTS) wholesale director Graham Mitchell in order to get a leading tyre wholesaler’s perspective. Starting by setting the company’s recent online tyre business performance into the context of its recent history, our interview looks to the future of the online tyre business and touches on the importance of search engine marketing in the tyre trade.
Tyres-N-Parts. This familiar-sounding name belongs to a new B2B digital sales platform aimed at car dealerships and workshops as well as tyre dealers. The Michelin-backed venture is initially launching in Germany and aims to act as an online one-stop-shop for tyres and automotive spare parts. Tyres-N-Parts believes it will become “a model that will define the future of tyre and parts retailing.”
The world of tyres and that of the silver screen seldom cross paths. They notably did so in 2010 when French director Quentin Dupieux brought us Rubber, the tale of an anthropomorphised but troubled tyre named Robert. They cross paths again in 2021, this time via a film jointly written and produced by a major name in the tyre wholesaling sector.
Hindsight is said to be 20/20, yet this isn’t a faculty that helped the tyre industry this year. Early optimism driven by vaccine rollouts quickly turned to despair as sideways-parked container ships, skyrocketing sea freight prices, rising material costs and supply shortages delivered blow after blow. As we enter the final quarter of the year we have a much clearer view of what’s going on, and what we see is that tyres will be pricier in the coming months – assuming we can get our hands on them.
During our recent visit to Magowan’s T&A met with founder Darryl Magowan Snr., Darryl Magowan Jnr, David Magowan and IT manager Ben Tinsley who gave us a guided tour around the bespoke newbuild warehouse and who also explained the thinking that has gone into the project.
Earlier this year a retired tyre industry veteran got in touch to ask if we wanted any of his old copies of Tyres & Accessories. While our archives stretch all the way back to our first edition in 1946, outside the British Library there were some gaps in the first couple of decades. So, we jumped at the chance. The offer of vintage editions from the swinging 60s also comes at a time when we are working hard on digitising our back catalogue. So far, the 132 copies going back to 2010 have been through the process and are now available online. And the first decade of the millennium (2000 to 2010) is also well underway. From here, the goal is to work back in time until we have a full complement. So, should you want to look into the history of your company or find out what happened in the tyre business on an important date such as an anniversary – our digital archive will be there to help you reminisce. And if there is a particular historic article you think we should digitise sooner rather than later, please get in touch via theeditor@tyrepress.com to let us know which edition we should transfer to the digital realm and why.
American Tire Distributors (ATD), the largest replacement tyre distributor in North America, has published its first Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) report. With its release, ATD commits to “identify opportunities and invest in solutions that are designed to improve its holistic community impact while delivering unmatched customer service to the entire replacement tyre ecosystem.”
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.
Peter Gibbons is stepping down as chief executive officer of TireHub, the US-based tyre distributor jointly founded by Bridgestone Americas and The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. Ted Becker, TireHub’s vice-president of sales and marketing, will become interim chief executive officer once Gibbons leaves the company in mid-November to pursue a new career opportunity.
In order to support its ambition of becoming a true Nordic tyre & wheel specialist, independent tyre distribution firm Vimexa has become a corresponding member of the STRO (Scandinavian Tire and Rim Organization) in Sweden. Announcing Vimexa’s STRO membership, managing director Rutger Veerman said “we have realised strong growth in the Nordic (and Baltic) region during the last five years, and with our hub in Helsinki the logistics is optimal.”
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Grupo Andres
ETEL
Murfitts Industries
Stapleton’s
Magowan Tyres
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