European retreading market loses further ground to imports
A quarter of all truck tyres currently sold in Europe are imported, and as the manufacturers of these products don’t operate production facilities within the region, the tyres aren’t reported in Europool. The extreme nervousness these truck tyre imports are causing some corners of the market can be seen in the European Commission’s anti-dumping proceedings against bus and truck tyres originating in China, which began last summer. Usually the free trade-specialised EU favours other technical or qualitative restrictions to entry into the European market, such as the EU tyre label or other standards, yet as figures from the ETRMA frighteningly illustrate, such measures have no effect on the pressure placed upon European retreading by cheap Far Eastern tyres.