Marco Kempin – formerly managing director at Beissbarth GmbH – recently announced his departure at his own request after 14 years. However, it is now clear where he gone. The team at our German sister publication Reifenpresse.de citing Kfz-Betrieb report that he has therefore taken over the management of Hunter Deutschland GmbH succeeding Martin Adams in this position who retired in the spring.
Prinx Chengshan Tire Europe is launching its commercial vehicle tyre programme throughout Europe at the NUFAM 2021 commercial vehicle show, which will take place in Karlsruhe, Germany between 29 September and 3 October. The company will present a range of tyres for trucks, buses and trailers that covers regional transport, long-haul transport and construction site applications under the Austone brand name, as well as Fortune van tyres.
Tyres are but one product that may benefit from Continental’s research into integrating printed electronics within rubber. At a facility in Freiburg, Germany, the company is working to digitalise rubber and plastic products that previously only performed mechanical tasks. Work conducted there under the leadership of Dr Tim Wolfer includes the three-year sensIC (sens for sensor and IC for integrated circuit) project, which is being co-funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research to the tune of 2.9 million euros.
Germany’s IAA motor show moves to Munich this year and, rebranded as IAA Mobility 2021, is the country’s first major international event since the easing of lockdown restrictions. It begins on 7 September and has attracted more than 1,000 exhibitors and speakers. Michelin will be there, and during IAA Mobility intends to highlight plans to make its tyres as sustainable as possible. The tyre maker’s efforts will include six Michelin teams roaming through downtown Munich during the event, encouraging people to recycle plastic waste.
On 25 August 2021, we received the tragic news that Klaus Haddenbrock had passed away, aged 77. The team at Tyres & Accessories, along with those from our sister firms in Germany and Italy, join the Haddenbrock family in mourning a man who was a role model to those who knew him well, a source of ideas and, above all, someone with whom we could share our cares and troubles as well as our interests. We will sorely miss our publisher and managing director, and our grief is only mitigated by the fact that his death – while years too soon – was sudden. This is how he’d wished it.
Yokohama Europe GmbH, the Yokohama Rubber Group’s European regional headquarters, has donated €10,000 to the youth division of the Ahrweiler BC Football Club in Ahrweiler, Rhineland-Palatinate, the German state that suffered extensive flood damage last month.
The past 18 months have been “very challenging and unique”, comments Sailun Tyre Europe. But the company now says it is delighted to announce participation in two forthcoming trade shows. The first is here in the UK: In conjunction with Kirkby Tyres, local distributor of the Sailun truck tyre range, the tyre maker will occupy a 125 square metre stand within Hall 4 of the NEC when the Commercial Vehicle Show comes opens in Birmingham on 31 August.
German Bundesliga club and Europa League contestant Bayer 04 Leverkusen and Kumho Tyre (as Kumho Tire markets itself in Europe) have extended the sponsorship contract they began in 2019. Kumho thus continues to be the club’s exclusive tyre partner as well as its sleeve partner in the German Football Association cup competition, the DFB-Pokal.
Sailun Tyre is the new global tyre partner of German club FC Ingolstadt 04, which plays in the 2. Bundesliga. The collaboration between the ‘Schanzer’ and the Qingdao, China-based tyre maker is set to run for at least three years and is Sailun’s first professional football sponsorship deal with a German team.
Prometeon Tyre Group shares that it recently extended storage capacity at its central warehouse in Germany to accommodate additional stocks of agricultural tyres. The tyre maker says it expanded warehouse operations in order to speed up delivery times throughout the region as well as to offer better its trading partners a higher level of service, however, it that this extra capacity at the Dieburg site, which has been available since 1 July, coincides with growth in its Pirelli IF agricultural tyre range.
Kenda Tires Europe will distribute its full passenger car tyre portfolio across Germany and Austria via reifen.com GmbH. The agreement took effect on 1 July 2021 and means customers can now purchase Kenda’s complete passenger car tyre portfolio from 37 reifen.com customer outlets across the region as well as from its online shop.
Trolleybuses may be long gone from our roads, but the concept behind them is once again being evaluated, this time for HGVs: Although numerous governments and major truck manufacturers are exploring liquid fuel cell technology as a means of reducing CO2 emissions in road freight transportation, Germany is additionally considering an entirely different approach, with a government advisory body recommending railway-style overhead lines along 2,500 miles of its autobahn network. It is still uncertain whether the country will greenlight this unique solution, but automotive systems firm and tyre maker Continental shares that it’s already working to develop pantographs for the system.
Established in 2020, AZuR is a German-based innovation network for end-of-life tyre recycling with a membership list that includes retreading and recycling firms, academia and state agencies. After receiving financial support from Germany’s government for the first ten months of its existence, AZuR has been self-funded under the patronage of the German Rubber Manufacturers Association (wdk) since June 2021. The network recently began a major study into the ecological and economic aspects of retreading, and reported yesterday that the German Federal Environmental Foundation (DBU) has committed to support this work.
Beissbarth; NRZ, Christian Marx
Niso Tech
Kenda