One of Wolverhampton’s oldest garages has joined the First Stop network, gaining new signage, equipment and access to a range of premium tyres along the way. First Stop Wolverhampton in Chapel was formerly part of HiQ.
Production at Goodyear’s remaining facility in Wolverhampton end before Christmas. According to a statement released by the tyre maker, the Bushbury Lane factory will stop making tyres on 20 December rather than the originally-given date of 31 December. The end of production will be followed by a six month close-down period.
A coroner has connected the death of a former worker at Goodyear’s Wolverhampton factory to years of employment in tyre production. Fred Spruce died in November 2015, just weeks after he was diagnosed with bladder cancer. His 71-year-old widow Valerie has now instructed industrial disease lawyers at Irwin Mitchell to investigate how this happened.
Goodyear Dunlop UK has confirmed the closure of its Wolverhampton retreading plant. Closure will happen on a phased basis. The first roles to be made redundant are likely to occur on 31 December 2015, with anticipated production at the plant ending no earlier than January 2017. “It is important to understand that no alternatives to the company’s proposal have been made”, company representatives wrote in a statement.
Just before the September Retreading Special went to print, Goodyear Dunlop was in consultation on the proposed closure of its Wolverhampton mixing and retreading plant, announced in June. Though the plant was the subject of significant investment as recently as 2012, its viability has ultimately reduced to a level at which Goodyear Dunlop believes “there is no other option” but to close the facility, in the words of UK managing director, Erich Fric, who spoke to Tyres & Accessories shortly after the announcement. Indeed, the company’s exit from Wolverhampton appears the logical conclusion to decades of diminishment since its post-war peak, when Goodyear employed more than 7,000 jobs in the city, mostly manufacturing new tyres, an activity that ended in 2006. With the new tyre manufacturing site the subject of a £150m redevelopment plan to make the area a housing zone, Goodyear Dunlop signed a 10-year lease on the land occupied by its mixing and retreading operations, a commitment that was augmented by a five-year investment plan that brought two new Next Tread retreading machines and a Banbury mixer to Wolverhampton.
According to several national and regional dailies, workers have responded with strong emotions to a jobs notification posted within the Goodyear Dunlop retreading facility in Wolverhampton, which the company proposes to close in response to changing market conditions. The notification in question, as reported by the Express & Star, offers Goodyear Dunlop workers job opportunities within the human resources, production and quality departments of a company plant in Mexico.
Following Goodyear Dunlop Tyres UK’s proposal to close its Wolverhampton mixing and retreading facility, Tyrepress spoke to the managing director of Goodyear Dunlop UK, Erich Fric, who explained the business reasons for the decision. “We’ve taken the decision to put this proposal forward based on the economic environment, and in order to keep our companies competitive in the long term,” Fric said.
Goodyear Dunlop UK has no plans in place regarding redundancies at its Wolverhampton mixing and retreading factory. Responding to a report issued by Wolverhampton Express & Star journalist Peter Madeley, Goodyear Dunlop UK managing director Erich Fric told Tyrepress that the company would wait until after the scheduled consultation on the immediate future of the […]
Another of Goodyear Dunlop’s European plants has today announced plans to cease a portion of its production in addition to the planned withdrawal from Wolverhampton. Tyrepress sister site Reifenpresse.de reports that Goodyear Dunlop Tires Germany informed its employees of its intention to relocate remaining car tyre production from Wittlich to other plants within the region EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa). PCR production has been shifted away from the plant gradually for several years, with the latest announcement completing cessation of Wittlich’s production of these products.
Following the news of Goodyear’s planned closure of its Wolverhampton mixing and retreading operations, Express & Star journalist, Peter Madeley has quoted “a union spokesman” on Twitter, saying that the closure proposal was “out of the blue”.
The proposed closure of Goodyear Dunlop’s Wolverhampton retread plant will bring to an end 90 years of tyre production in the city. The factory was part of the first Goodyear factory outside USA, when the manufacturer first started producing new tyres in the city in response to post-World War One import tariffs designed to boost British industry. At its peak, the manufacturer’s operations in Wolverhampton were estimated to have provided more than 7,000 jobs, making it one of the most significant players in the local economy. This role diminished throughout the 2000s, as Wolverhampton job losses became a regular occurrence.
Goodyear Dunlop Tyres UK has announced a proposal to close its Wolverhampton mixing and retreading facility. Under the proposal, the company would move its compound mixing activities and the production of commercial retreads to other existing sites across the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. It has been reported that the process of transferring operations would be completed over the next two years under the closure proposal.
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