Hankook boosts European Alphatread offer with expanded plant

Hankook Tire has marketed its Alphatread range of mould cure or ‘hot’ retreaded tyres for almost a decade now, and today satisfies demand for these products from plants in the UK, Spain, Italy, France and Germany. The last of these is the former Reifen Müller facility in Hammelburg, some 60 miles east of Frankfurt am Main. Hankook recently expanded its Alphatread operation at this site by setting up a separate mould cure retreading operation, significantly increasing capacity.

The new mould cure retreading production area takes up around 2,000 square metres of a facility that now measures 15,000 square metres, with a similarly sized warehouse area. The total area can be increased to a space of 20,000 square metres if and when needed. Although Hankook officially unveiled the enlarged facility just last month, it has already been up and running for about a year now.

“With the completion of the new plant, we can meet the increased demand for hot retreaded tyres,” says Manfred Zoni, TBR sales director at Hankook Reifen Deutschland. “Compared to the old factory we have been able to almost double our production capacity. We can now produce up to 100,000 hot retreaded tyres each year. Alongside state-of-the-art technology, the decision to exclusively use A-carcasses helps to make Hankook Alphatread profiles the highest quality.”

“Hankook recognises the ever-increasing challenges of our Fleet and Dealer partners across Europe,” adds Guy Heywood, vice-president marketing truck & bus tyres at Hankook Tire Europe. “To deliver more cost-effective, safe and environmentally friendly solutions, we are investing in our retread range and production facilities. We aim to offer more dimensions and to focus with our fleet partners on extracting all of the value Hankook build into our premium new truck tyres.”

Seven-figure investment

The growth potential offered by the enlarged facility is impressive when considering that of the 100,000 truck tyres retreaded in Hammelburg last year, only around 20,000 were mould cure retreads. These weren’t exclusively Alphatread retreads either, with output also covering products such as the RM (Reifen Müller) retread range.

The Hankook subsidiary intends to produce 35,000 mould cure retreads in Hammelburg this year in the 14 Cima vulcanisation presses now installed in the plant, up from ten in the previous production facility. Hankook will install a further six in the near future, and when this takes place the plant could, should it adopt a three-shift system, produce 80,000 Alphatreads a year as well as other mould cure retreads.

The aforementioned vulcanisation presses were just one item on Hankook’s shopping list for Hammelburg. The company installed a range of new equipment, such as buffing machines and extruders. During the official opening Guy Heywood told our German colleagues from Neue Reifenzeitung that this investment represents “a commitment to retreading,” but he wouldn’t disclose the size of this commitment, commenting only that it was “well into seven figures.”

Hankook wants to produce 35,000 mould cure retreads in Hammelburg this year (Photo: NRZ/Arno Borchers)