Alba Tyres expanding in a contracting market: Premium retreads plus new distribution strategy equals growth for Scotland’s only retreader

Roughly two years ago, Tyres & Accessories visited Alba Tyre Management Ltd for the first time and found a professional retreading operation taking on an increasingly influential position in the Scottish retreading business by following a premium retread strategy. 24 months later, the company has grown by something like 30 per cent. We spoke to director David Wilson as well as company found Alex Wilson in order to find out how Alba has grown at such an impressive rate.

Such is the scale of Alba Tyre Management’s growth, arriving at the same door as two years ago means arriving at the wrong door. In the interim, what was the office has been turned into a distribution warehouse and the newly fitted office (where we began our meeting) is now in a separate building, which the company acquired during the last 18 months. Since then, Alba has further expanded and optimised its retread operation.

The new commercial space came up for auction around a year ago. And Alba Tyre Management has been in the additional area since last summer, moving its operations across as part of a staggered transition. As well as overall business growth, the rationale behind the extension comes down to the broader range of services Alba now offers. The fact that the company is the only retreader for miles around means Alba can offer logistics services, major repairs and new tyre distribution as well as its core retreading operations as part of a regionalised one-stop shop. For example, many customers don’t have dedicated space to keep tyres, so Alba now offers them new tyre logistics.

On this point, the company is able to offer at least weekly deliveries. But in many cases tyres are sent out much more frequently, often four-to-five times a week in the well-populated Scottish central belt, for example.

When it comes to brands, the company doesn’t offer single brand exclusively, rather choosing to offer customers a range that – in line with the rest of the company’s ongoing strategy somewhat prefers premium products.

When it comes to sustainability – both in business and ecological terms – premium retreading has distinct advantages. The premium focus on sustainability brings with it less reliance on casing dealers, making businesses that focus on such a strategy close to self-sufficient.

Alba Tyre Management also has a good track record of doing business with council fleets, a field the company has been successful in for two decades. Indeed, 2024 marks the 20th anniversary of council fleet business, business the company does in partnership with all the major tyre services across Scotland and the North of England, offering tyres for every wheel position.

Alba’s council fleet business has grown significantly over the years for a number of reasons. Firstly, because of the high quality products and service experience that the customer councils receive. Ecological consciousness and more recently the wider topic of sustainability has also played an important role. And that’s why Marangoni commissioned an ecological evaluation of the positive impact of running its products on council fleets by the Fraunhofer Institute. That research looked at roughly 1200 tyres across over 100 vehicles and found that using Alba-made retreads saved 160,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.

Such positive sustainability results go some way to explaining why Alba Tyres now supplies retreads to fleets within not only 15 Scottish councils, but also a few northern English councils as well. That English business is a relatively new addition which demonstrates both the scale at which the company now operates and also the potential for ongoing growth.

Recent years have seen Alba Tyre Management invest in premium retread manufacturing equipment as part of the company’s premium retread strategy (Photo: Alba Tyre Management)

However, while Alba Tyre Management is obviously expanding, that is not to say that the company is aiming to sell it products across the UK and beyond. Rather, Alba Tyre Management is focusing on a truly regional strategy that maximises its sustainability arguments. For example, when a global tyremaker says it is investing in local-for-local manufacturing, that generally means within continents or groups of countries within a continent. To be even more specific, that could mean making retreaded tyres at a key production base in Germany for sale in the UK. To put it another way, in sustainability terms, transporting customer-owned-casings across the continent doesn’t work. Perhaps it is more feasible with the largest of fleets, but that doesn’t account for a large proportion of the market where a big chunk of the business is fleets comprised of less-than 20 vehicles.

Alba would argue that it is far more ecologically efficient to produce tyres for a hypothetical customer in Inverness within Scotland than in Germany – not to mention a lot quicker and easier when it comes to import/export paperwork. However, with Alba Tyre Management based just west of Glasgow, that logic applies just as much to the often-underserved North of England as it does to the Highlands as well as – of course – the thriving central belt between Glasgow and Edinburgh in between.

“We used to think that we are too far removed from the population centres”, David Wilson told Tyres & Accessories, but it is clear that the company now thinks and works differently.

So, where’s next? “Location is less important than service provision, Wilson explained, adding that the company isn’t particularly looking for more manufacturing space, but may consider strategic warehousing in order to support service provision as the geographical scope of the business grows.

The changing shape of the UK retreading business also demonstrates the validity and sustainability of a premium-first retreading strategy. The combined effects of Brexit, Covid, the war in Ukraine and the ongoing economic pressures have taken their toll on the retreading sector as a whole, a reality that is arguably especially noticeable within the UK. Alba however, like the others that have weathered the storms or reinvented themselves, have an ongoing succession plan and are focusing on a particularly premium-focused strategy that focuses on delivering the best products in a sustainable way.

Sustainability and production expansion

And that means a perpetual improvement and investment plan for the factory. During the last eight years technology has moved on a lot. The last time Tyres & Accessories visited the factory roughly two years ago, we saw how the addition of some of the latest buffing and building technology was maximising the potential of the Alba Tyres production line. In addition, examples of in-house initiative such as the development of autonomous tyre transportation robots remain unique innovations within retreading.

The latest developments include the addition of a third autoclave, which increases Alba’s curing capacity by 50 per cent. The new autoclave was added around Easter 2023 at around the same time that the company also invested in a new nail detector. Both growth-orientated investments mean the factory currently produces between 18,000 and 20,000 retreads a year up from 14,000 retreads a year pre-Covid. However, theoretical capacity is nearer 26,000 retreads a year and – especially since the acquisition of additional industrial space – there is plenty of flexibility to increase capacity further.

Nevertheless, while the growth of potential production capacity is evident, Alba executives have taken the conscious decision to focus on modularity over volume for volume’s sake. And that means a continued focus on lean principles and small lot production. That approach also supports cashflow, which means the business is therefore able to be responsive to market needs and external challenges – something that proved very valuable in recent years.

Product-wise the company is now moving into light haulage steer and drive fitments as in addition to its existing truck tyre product base. At the same time, Alba executives have opted to invest in the acquisition of two more delivery trucks.

Other relatively recent investments include the addition of an Eagle Truck 2500 buffer, which was installed in March 2023 plus the addition of large screen monitoring of shearography to improve the efficiency and accuracy of this key quality control process.

Further into the production line, monorail transportation known and loved by the retreading industry has been replaced with a bespoke roller conveyor at one point in the process. This might sound like a minor alteration, but according to executives this small change saves 20 steps a per tyre, which equates to around two weeks of working time a year.

In other words, the combination of investment and that kind of attention to detail plus the expansion of the Alba Tyre Management to include new tyre distribution explains how the company has grown 30 per cent in recent years. The business’s strategy of focusing on premium products as well as premium localised service explains how the company intends to sustainably continue into the future.