moveero (the new name for GKN Wheels) has appointed Hugo Burgers to the position of chief sales officer (CSO). Effective 1 September 2021, Hugo joins the business with experience of senior level appointments in businesses across the off-highway industry, including at Yokohama Off-Highway Tires (where he was sales director/head of Europe West for four-and-a-half years), Warn Industries and John Deere.
Railways are typically best suited to vehicles with metal wheels, and a backhoe is thus not on home turf in such an environment. It requires a tyre able to cope with driving over thin metal rails, something which can cause uneven wear and shorten tyre life. Nokian Tyres says it has been perfecting a specific tyre for railway use for several years and is now introducing the Nokian Ground Kare Semi-Slick. With this new tyre, the manufacturer says it “solves many problems that were previously typical when using a backhoe loader on railroads.”
Mahansaria Tyres Private Limited (MTPL) has made an agreement in-principle with Tyres International Inc (TI) to buy a majority stake in the US-based tyre wholesaler. According to MTPL, the move is the latest part of its bid to build a global, market leading off-Highway tyre business and the first part of MTPL plans to build its distribution network in North America.
Michelin continues to expand its network of approved dealers north of the border, with the addition of Redpath Tyres to its Quality-Approved Centres list. Specialising in commercial, agricultural and earthmover tyres, the family-run business has grown substantially since it was founded in the Scottish Borders by Peter Redpath in 1974.
With 150 years in the business, Continental may well just be the oldest firm in existence still making tyres today. The company has been offering solutions since the days when horsepower was indeed horsepower, but Continental’s off-highway tyres are a much more recent addition – it’s only a little under a century since the first products came to market. As its celebrates its sesquicentennial jubilee, Continental looks back over its activities in this sector from the very earliest days.
Continental launched its first earthmoving tyres under the General Tire brand name early last year, and is now expanding its General Tire portfolio for the earthmoving industry with the General TE95. The tyre maker says the General TE95 “impresses with high traction, especially for soil compaction work” in road and construction applications, and the tyre is equipped – as is the entire product line – with V.ply technology.
Michelin is now offering expert tyre fitting and maintenance training for operators of industrial and heavy-duty machinery via two new one-day courses. The Safe Earthmover Tyre Fitting and Safe Crane Tyre Fitting programmes are delivered at the customer’s site by experts from the Michelin Training & Information Centre (MTIC). The sessions are appropriate for in-house technicians, or tyre dealers, working in a variety of sectors, including surface mining, underground mining, quarries, construction and materials handling.
Yokohama Off-Highway Tires Europe Middle East and Africa (YOHT EMEA) has announced across-the-board price increases of 4.5 to 5.5 per cent. An official statement specified that the first price increase of 4.5 to 5.5 per cent was implemented on 1 Jan 2021. The new pricing will apply to the entire portfolio of Yokohama Off-Highway Tires EMEA (including the Alliance and Galaxy brands) and will take effect from 1 April 2021.
The BKT off-highway tyre range now includes more than 2,700 SKUs. A recent addition to the BKT portfolio is the Earthmax SR 412, which the tyre maker first announced in the middle of last year. This tyre for articulated dump trucks, loaders and dozers is now available in two sizes, 29.5 R25 and 750/65 R25.
Mike Leedham has been appointed as the new off-the-road (OTR) Sales Manager for Continental Tyre Group. Leedham will be responsible for developing Continental’s OTR business in the UK and Ireland, as the company continues the development of its earthmover tyres, launched to the market in 2016.
Trelleborg Wheel Systems is gearing up to release the newest additions to its EMR range of earthmover radial tyres for critical construction applications. Further sizes within the EMR 1042 and EMR 1051 ranges will be released into the market in early 2021.
Following a corona-related delay, off-highway tyre specialist BKT is gearing up to introduce a new, supersized OTR tyre. It has now produced a prototype of its BKT Earthmax SR 468, a size 40.00 R57 tyre developed for use on rigid dump trucks. Over the coming months, the tyre maker’s engineers will test the prototype ahead of the line’s market debut.
Today Yokohama announced that it is consolidating its OTR tyre businesses into Yokohama Off-Highway Tires, which could be read as a prelude to the announcement Yokohama’s bid for the Prometeon tyre business. Roughly a year after the story broke, Yokohama’s bid for Prometeon isn’t the best kept secret in the tyre industry. Tyres & Accessories first heard talk of Yokohama’s bid for the ex-Pirelli industrial and commercial vehicle tyre business back in July 2019. The news was reported world-wide after we broke the story in September 2019, followed days later by third-party confirmation from the Chinese side of the deal. At that time, the deal was set to go public by the end of 2019. A few months later at the start of 2020, the timeframe switched to an end-of-first-quarter 2020 deadline. Then the coronavirus pandemic happened. And in the months that have followed things have gone quiet. So, where is Yokohama’s bid for Prometeon up to? The latest news is that deal is still on-track, but that there have been a few changes along the way. Here, Tyres & Accessories brings an update on the status of the acquisition and offers a different view on the deal by looking at it from a South American perspective.
BKT says it is “ready to take up the challenge” of developing tyres for the coming generation of self-driving and electric off-highway vehicles. The tyre maker is already addressing changes within the agricultural and construction sectors with a range of solutions, drawing upon its almost 30-year experience and in dialogue with end-users.
moveero
Yokohama OHT EMEA
Continental
Hillhead
BKT