Bandvulc Tyres’ has announced an all time high in its sales volumes, following its achievement of record production levels at its Ivybridge factory.
The company believes that the increase in performance is all thanks to the £1 million investment, which refurbished the company’s facility with a ‘Camelot’ theme, earlier this year.
Continental Tire North America has announced that it will indefinitely suspend tyre production at its Mayfield, Kentucky plant by 31 December 2004. The move will mean that 715 hourly and 112 salaried employees will lose their jobs. Continental hopes that working with the appropriate agencies will ease the transition for affected employees. The Mayfield plant is still valuable to Continental and the company has not plans to close it completely. In the meantime Continental will make use of the plant’s mixing and warehouse facilities.
Pelmar Engineering, the Israel – based dealers in used, reconditioned and new tyre machinery, have recently bought the entire equipment released by Goodyear Wolverhampton as a result of closure of about 50 per cent of their plant. The equipment is now being dismantled and removed; part of it directly to customers and part to Pelmar’s warehouse in Manchester. It includes mainly rubber compounding and processing equipment, such as complete extruder lines, calendering lines, mixing lines and miscellaneous other machinery. Pelmar has seven warehouses in Europe, Israel and U.K., providing machinery, engineering and complete turnkey projects related to the technical rubber and tyre industries worldwide.
Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. will close a warehouse and distribution centre in Lincoln, Nebraska by the end of the year, eliminating about 160 jobs. Goodyear spokesman Skip Scherer said the closure was to improve customer service and has nothing to do with the recent announcement that Goodyear will reduce its reported profit for the past six years by an additional $65 million because of improper accounting.
A fire that started early Wednesday at a tire factory owned by Goodyear (Thailand) PCL damaged a raw material warehouse, but other operations weren’t affected, a policeman told Dow Jones Newswires.
Tyres from Czech manufacturer Mitas will be sold directly on to the Irish market from the beginning of November. The tyres will be sold through subsidiary company Mitas UK Ltd., which will be trading on the Irish market as Mitas Ireland. As well as agricultural and OTR tyres, Mitas Ireland will be selling earthmover, industrial and motorcycle tyres. The organisation will operate from a warehouse in County Kildare, run by sales manager Dave Deering.
Logistics company Menlo Worldwide Forwarding has been awarded “a multi-million Euro” contract to handle the day-to-day airfreight shipments from Continental Temic’s manufacturing plants in Manila, Philippines, to Frankfurt. A sister company to MWF has developed a bespoke warehouse management system specifically for Continental Temic.
Northern Ireland’s Magowan Tyres has joined Group Tyre. This development gives Group Tyre coverage in Northern Ireland and coincides with Magowan’s move from general bulk wholesaling to a more structured and targeted regional wholesaler of quality branded tyres. Daryll Magowan jnr. Says, “This is a new challenge for the business and we see the future as being more structured and more sophisticated. We will be developing the quality of our portfolio and offering a much improved quality of service to our wholesale customers.”
Magowan reported that the company was building an all-new warehouse with 30,000 sq ft of floor space with four tiers of storage giving an equivalent 130-140,000 sq ft of storage space. The new facility , which should be operational within seven months will also house a 22 bay fast fit operation that will se the company move into a wider area of fast fit service.
Hayes Lemmerz has sold off its Reliable Transportation Components (RTC) centre to Nationwide Wheels, for an undisclosed sum. RTC was acquired by Hayes Lemmerz in 1996 and is a warehouse serving the RV, utility and livestock trailer industries. Hayes Lemmerz described the sale as part of the company’s long-term strategy of focusing on core businesses.
A fire at Vredestein’s raw materials warehouse at Enschede on Friday 22nd August was quickly brought under control by local fire brigades and the company fire brigade and personnel. As a result both the Vredestein production shop and the warehouse were saved and deliveries will not be affected.
Dutch wholesaler Van den Ban has undergone considerable changes in the past couple of years, not least of which is a change in management, with Frans van Lenten becoming managing director. The company undertook a review of all its business activities and the decision was made to concentrate purely on core activities, which in Van den Ban’s case meant tyre wholesaling and logistics. Van den Ban recently introduced a new private brand, called Novex, and other own-label brands will be added later this year. The company prefers private brands to exclusive, yet manufacturer-owned, brands, as the former allows Van den Ban total control and different brands can be aimed at different sectors of the market, or sold through different distribution channels. Last year the Van den Ban group sold around four million tyres and plans are under way for the construction of a new 24,000 square metre warehouse, capable of holding 1.2 million tyres.
Anyone in the tyre business who has spent holiday time in the South of Spain will probably have noticed the branding of Confort Auto – the red, yellow and black logo emblazoned across the frontage of the white and black tyre depots along with the eagle logo and the Grupo Soledad inscription. They may not have realised that, with 57 workshops, Confort Auto is the largest independent fast fit operator in Spain. They may not have made the connection with the retread industry either, for the parent company of the Confort Auto brand is Grupo Soledad, which is also the owner and manufacturer of the Insa Turbo retread brand of truck and car tyres. Given the poor reputation of retread tyres in the UK market it may be difficult for some to reconcile a retread operation with the modern and professional approach of Confort Auto. However, the history of the company runs deeper still. The retreading division is based at Aspe outside Alicante, and the operation has grown on this site gradually expanding to take in more and more of the available space here. There is a great deal of development in the area and further expansion is planned in the near future, with a new warehouse at an industrial site a few kilometres away. This will create space at the Aspe plant for further developments.
Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company is investing 250 million dollars upgrading its Lawton, Oklahoma plant. The project will be split into two phases spending 125 million dollars on each phase. The initial project should be completed in early 2003 and the second phase should begin in mid-2003. The project is being driven by the demand for low profile, large diameter tyres and run-flat tyres. The company will be upgrading tyre building equipment and installing new tyre finishing tooling to produce tyres over 18 inches in diameter. There will also be a new 475,000 square foot warehouse facility constructed.
Bridgestone/Firestone has acquired total ownership of stores at Zeebrugge (Belgium). The 59,000 square metres have an option to be extended to 79,000 square metres and will operate as the European hub for the importation of 1.8 million truck and bus tyres per year, which are then redistributed to destination warehouses throughout Europe. Future developments may result in the same logistical flow being applied to passenger car, light truck and off road tyres.
A double management buy-out of former Conti-owned tyre retailer National Tyre Service and wholesaler Viking International was announced today. The buy-outs, which were for an undisclosed sum, were led by Chairman and Chief Executive Alan Revie. The two companies will continue to trade as separate businesses, under the umbrella of a new holding company, Axle Group Holdings Limited. In addition to National and Viking, the group includes a property company.
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