Giti Tire sets up technical centres in Germany, the US
Giti Tire has announced the establishment of new technical centres in Germany and the US. The two sites will work in collaboration with the company’s MIRA-based UK facility as well as its centres located in Indonesia and China. Giti now employs more than 600 R&D personnel and describes the creation of a European and North American technical centre as marking a “significant development in the research and development capabilities of the company.”
Continue ReadingTitan withdraws 2013 guidance
Titan International announced on 19 September that it has withdrawn the elements of its 2013 guidance related to revenue and EBITDA. In a statement, the company said it “does not anticipate issuing any further updated guidance until its 2014 guidance is issued by January 2014.”
Continue ReadingMarangoni Retreading Systems expands Central Europe presence
Marangoni Retreading Systems reports that it has consolidated the presence of the Ringtread system in the Baltic region and the Ukraine by strengthening its partnerships with two important operators in the truck tyre distribution and service sector.
Continue ReadingGoodyear reintroduces shareholder dividends
At an investor meeting on 20 September, Goodyear Tire & Rubber announced the return of shareholder dividends after an absence of 11 years. The company’s new capital allocation plan calls for the reinstatement of a quarterly cash dividend on its common stock and a $100 million share repurchase programme.
Continue ReadingTyre24 goes live in Italy
Germany’s Tyre24Group has opened a new B2B online platform in Italy. The new tyre24.it site went live on 16 September and brings the company one step closer to gaining a presence in the major European tyre markets. Tyre24 is already active in Germany, Poland, France and Austria.
Continue ReadingBranding expert a football sponsorship sceptic
Edward Freedman, the football branding guru who headed up merchandising at Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur FC in the late 1980s and 1990s, has questioned the effectiveness of sponsorship from companies such as tyre manufacturers.
Continue ReadingImproved jobs listings on relaunched Tyrepress
Tyrepress launched a new newsletter product in February 2013 aiming to improve the targeted job advertisement opportunities offered by Europe’s leading English language magazine and website for tyre and wheel professionals. The weekly newsletter, which also collates the most recent Career Tracks news every Wednesday, will continue to link to greatly improved listings on the relaunched Tyrepress website, putting advertisers’ job vacancies in front of the widest possible range of European tyre and wheel professionals.
Continue ReadingBridgestone contemplates second Turkish plant
Brisa Bridgestone Sabancı Lastik Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş. (Brisa), the joint venture company run by Bridgestone Corporation and Turkey’s Sabancı Holding, is evaluating potential sites within the country for a second factory. Brisa intends to construct a passenger car radial factory to complement the company’s existing passenger car, bus and truck radial plant in İzmit, which entered volume production in 1990.
Continue ReadingMichelin discusses mid-term targets
At the Autumn Conference organised by Luxembourg-based broker Kepler Cheuvreux and held in Paris on 18 September, Michelin chief executive officer Jean-Dominique Senard confirmed the tyre maker’s 2015 operating profit target of €2.9 billion, some 20 per cent higher then 2013 estimates. He also said that capital expenditure is expected to peak between €1.8 billion and €2.2 billion in 2014 and 2015 before declining to between €1.6 billion and €1.9 billion in 2016 and €1.5 billion and €1.8 billion in 2017.
Continue ReadingSeparate Cooper contracts required before Apollo deal proceeds
As well as needing to sort out issues at the Cooper Chengshan plant, Cooper Tire & Rubber and Apollo Tyres now face an additional barrier to acquisition. Last Friday an arbitrator ruled that Cooper cannot sell its Findlay and Texarkana plants in the US until Apollo secures new collective bargaining agreements with the United Steelworkers union and the 2,500 or so unionised workers at the two factories. This agreement is separate from the existing contract the union has with Cooper Tire.
Continue ReadingBetter integrated Business Directory on relaunched Tyrepress
The relaunch of Tyrepress will also mark the relaunch of the Business Directory service. This feature, which has been available in two incarnations before this vastly improved third generation, enables tyre and wheel related businesses to direct the website’s 240,000 monthly visitors towards their own websites with a range of listings options available for an annual fee; web URLs are also listed in the back of Tyres & Accessories magazine each month, increasing exposure to print readers too. The Tyrepress Business Directory 3.0 is better connected to the rest of the website, with entries searchable alongside articles.
Continue ReadingNew Zeetex website
The Zeetex tyre brand launched a new website on Thursday 12 September 2013. According to the company, the site has been “aesthetically upgraded, is user friendly and boasts of enhanced functionality and dynamic tools”. The goal appears to have been to create a “visually appealing, polished and professional website – which also offers region-specific capabilities.”
Continue ReadingDelticom offered shares as part of Tirendo deal
Following on from the news that Delticom AG purchased fast-growing online tyre retailer Tirendo on 17 September, Delticom executives have also revealed that company’s founders and main shareholders Rainer Binder and Andreas Pruefer also sold around 500,000 Delticom shares to a subsidiary of European Media Holding AG (EMH), which itself is a founding shareholder of Tirendo. In addition EMH was granted options to purchase up to a further 1.6 million shares. Apart from increasing the apparent combined value Delticom attributed to Tirendo, it is also likely to have consequential effects on market pricing.
Continue ReadingTyre tests database a new feature on relaunched Tyrepress
A new feature coming to Tyrepress in the relaunched version of the site is a database of European tyre test results. The feature has been a part of German sister site Reifenpresse.de’s service for some time, and as a result the database offers more than 3,500 tyre test results. Tyrepress editor Chris Anthony says that the feature forms “a key part of our newly updated website.”
Continue ReadingResponsive design improves mobile Tyrepress
In 2012-13 record numbers of visitors to Tyrepress have been accessing the site via tablets and smartphones, and with this trend continuing to grow the relaunched Tyrepress website will offer readers an improved user experience through responsive design. The chief benefit of responsive design will be to resize and rearrange elements of the site automatically to present it in a format better suited to smaller screens – whether this is a 10” iPad, a 7” Nexus 7 or a 4” smartphone – making it easier to read and navigate.
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