Yokohama Invest In Philippines
Yokohama Rubber has announced that it will invest some 10 billion yen (£50. 9 million) at its Yokohama Tire Philippines subsidiary in a bid to increase its production capacity to 7 million tyres, by September 2006.
Yokohama Rubber has announced that it will invest some 10 billion yen (£50. 9 million) at its Yokohama Tire Philippines subsidiary in a bid to increase its production capacity to 7 million tyres, by September 2006.
Yokohama Rubber Co, Ltd has announced that its flagship sport tyre Advan Sport has been as the 20 inch option tyre for the Bentley Motors Continental GT. Bentley has adopted the 275/35ZR20 for the Mulliner Driving Specification Continental GT, on both front and rear axles.
Yokohama Rubber has announced that it will create a hoses and coupling division as of the 1 October.
The company will merge the operation of Yokohama Hydex, a wholly owned subsidiary, so that the production and assembly of hoses are integrated under one chain of command. The move will be made in an attempt to improve the efficiency of the business.
The new division will head a hoses and coupling sales department, engineering department and quality assurance department. The Yokohama Hydex head office in Tokyo and Nagoya will be integrated with the MB Tokyo Office and MB Nagoya Office of Yokohama Rubber, respectively. And the branch office functions in Osaka and Hiroshima will be transferred to the new hoses and coupling sales department.
Hydex Tokyo and YH America, will now become 100 per cent subsidiaries of Yokohama Rubber. Yokohama Hydex employees will be transferred to Yokohama Rubber.
Yokohama marked its IAA debut by featuring its new HiTES pressure monitoring system as the centrepiece of its stand.
Yokohama Rubber is to launch its new ADVAN brand at the Paris Motor Show 2004 (Mondial de l’automobile 2004), which commences on the 25 September.
The company describes the new product as its “symbolic” brand, representing its “global concept.” Yokohama plans to aggressively confront its new business strategy through the new brand, which includes developing flagship tyre products, participating further in motorsports, and co-developing activities with world leading carmakers and tuners. ADVAN is said to represent the company’s spirit of pursuing high performance and high quality products.
The new products will be introduced in markets around the world and sale of the tyres is scheduled to begin in 2005.
First introduced in 1978, ADVAN has been used for motorsports activities and high performance tyres in Japan. Its presentation at the Paris Motor Show will be the first fully-fledged introduction in the European market. Yokohama will exhibit ADVAN Sport and ADVAN S.T, its SUV tyre. The company’s run flat tyre systems, including the Z.P.S. and the Support Ring System will also be displayed at the exhibition.
Chinese company Qingdao Doublestar has announced that it is forming a joint venture with Continental in China.
In a statement to the Shenzhen stock exchange the Chinese company is said to have reported that Conti is expected to start negotiations on financial terms and other venture details.
Once again the market’s focus is on China, where passenger car sales surged 76 per cent last year to 1.97 million units. Goodyear Tire & Rubber, Michelin and Yokohama all have existing operations within the expanding market.
A US court has banned wholesaler Zisser Tire from selling Wanli S-1099 tyres, which, according to the ruling, infringe Yokohama’s trademarks.
Paris Motor Show 2004 will provide the venue for the European debut of Yokohama’s ADVAN brand, the company has said.
The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd. yesterday announced its consolidated results for the first quarter ended June 30, 2004. During the quarter, net sales increased 7.5% to 91,072 million yen, operating income 11.8% to 3,287 million yen, ordinary income 34.5% to 2,856 million yen, and net income 59.3% to 986 million yen.
Ruedatec has officially joined the European network of Bandag dealers. Its new retreading shop and administrative building have now been formally inaugurated in the presence of Bandag’s Peter De Cabooter, sales director for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Danny Van Essche, EMEA marketing director.
The Yokohama Rubber Company Ltd has formally announced that it will formally start using a new management structure as of tomorrow (2 July). The structure will be headed by new chairman and representative director, Yasuo Tominaga, and new president and representative director, Tadanobu Nagumo. Currently the pair are both representative directors and are president and executive director respectively.
In what is proving to be a bad year for Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., the company has announced that it is one of several tyre producers that are under investigation from Japan’s Fair Trade Commission for alleged price rigging.
The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., announced that it reached an agreement to license ExxonMobil Chemical Company, a division of Exxon Mobil Corporation of the United States, technology in connection with the Yokohama Advanced Liner (YAL), a new patented inner liner for automotive tyres. In addition, Yokohama and ExxonMobil Chemical are combining their respective expertise in the field to improve and advance the performance of YAL. The agreement also grants ExxonMobil Chemical rights to commercialize and globally market YAL related materials in the future.
The global tyre market may be dominated by a handful of large players, with a number of “second row” players, followed by the rest of the world. The gap between the primary three and the fourth and fifth place manufacturers is considerable, and between the fourth and fifth and the rest of the market there is a considerable gap. However, the impact of the rest of the world on the market conditions enjoyed by the top five players is quite considerable. Tyre quality used to be such that there was a clear and distinct difference between the market leading brands of Michelin, Bridgestone, Goodyear, Pirelli and Continental, (and we must include Cooper here) and those of any of the other manufacturers. The reality though has been changing and increasingly brands from smaller manufacturers such as Toyo, Yokohama, Hankook, Kumho and latterly Federal have been increasing their market share by improving the quality of their products and building their brand image – often in the high performance sector.
Today, the market dominance of the key players is under pressure. Profitability is being eroded across tyre ranges by the increasing availability of low cost budget tyre brands. The commodity tyre requires no brand loyalty and sells on price alone. Thus, the high volume market necessarily targeted by the budget tyre manufacturers has largely become their domain. It has in essence been abandoned by the big brands. Yes, if you need a 155/13 from Michelin, or Goodyear you can still get it, but increasingly that tyre is being manufactured in a low labour cost centre in a joint venture with another tyre manufacturer who is also feeding his own budget tyres into the same market at a fraction of the price of the main brand names. If a big player is using a JV, or an offtake agreement in the Far East to fill commodity demands, he has surely all but abandoned that market. Indeed, if there is so little margin left in commodity tyres, if it were not for market shares, corporate egos, overall economies of scale and public relations where is the logic in continuing to offer branded commodity tyres?
The “great white hope” for the leading players, who have lost margins to the budget brands, is to develop a technologically advanced premium sector where quality and premium branding help create an exclusive market offering higher margins to the manufacturer, the wholesaler and the retailer. The high performance market offers just such an opportunity and the leading manufacturers are concentrating their efforts on the UHP sector in spades. Every new tyre launch is about UHP. Summer tyres, SUV tyres, winter tyres, all have an emphasis on the UHP market. Repeatedly the message is that the sector is growing in Western Europe and that it is destined to expand rapidly when Central and Eastern Europe follows the Western trend. However, it is not just a trend in Europe; it also follows in the USA – though perhaps surprisingly performance tyres account for only 13 per cent of the US market, whilst they amount to some 54 per cent of the European market according to Michelin; in Russia as an emerging market and in the Indian sub-continent – long ignored by the main brands as too poor an economy or too competitive a market. Here too the main brands are setting up camp and preparing to take market share from the domestic producers with high performance tyres. Pirelli being one of the first to see the potential and react with an improved sales operation.
The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., announced its consolidated results for fiscal 2004, ended March 31, 2004. Owing in part to favorable export sales, net sales increased 0.3%, to 401,718 million yen. However, operating income declined 9.1%, to 21,073 million yen, owing mainly to an increase in the volume of tire exports and higher prices for shipping and raw materials, such as natural rubber. Ordinary income decreased 8.2%, to 17,258 million yen. On the other hand, a tax reduction helped boost net income 1.8%, to 10,331 million yen.
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