The NEC in Birmingham opened its doors to the well-known LAMMA agricultural equipment exhibition this morning (10 January 2023). Normally queuing round the large exhibition centre’s internal road system is a bit of a bind, but this year it was a harbinger of good news for exhibitors that have, in general, fought for visitor numbers to return to pre-pandemic levels – footfall appears to be very healthy.
After a successful return to participating in LAMMA last year, Kirkby Tyres will once again be exhibiting at the UK’s premier agricultural machinery show on 10 and 11 January at the NEC. Occupying the same 225 square metre space in Hall 9 of the National Exhibition Centre, the wholesaler is looking forward to showcasing its main and exclusive agricultural brands including Alliance, BKT, MRL and Pirelli.
As of October, Kevin Burke Tyres is offering the entire Alliance tyre portfolio in Ireland. Yokohama Off-Highway Tires says that this new partnership, along with its long-standing relationship with Kirkby Tyres, will “ensure an even wider array of tailor-made solutions for the Irish market.” Kirkby Tyres remains exclusive partner for the Alliance brand in England, Wales and Scotland.
Liverpool-based Kirkby Tyres has played a leading role in the UK tyre business for much of its post-war history. Much has changed during that time, so with Kirkby Tyres’s parent company celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, Tyres & Accessories spoke to chairman Gordon Rosenthal in order to find out more about the past, present and future of the well-known tyre wholesaler.
Kirkby Tyres’ stand in Lamma 2022’s Hall 9 focused on the comprehensive technical tyre support the large tyre specialist can offer to farmers and the Alliance Agri Star II. Kirkby Tyres is the exclusive partner of Yokohama Off-Highway Tires’ (YOHT) Alliance brand in the UK and Ireland, and it describes the tractor tyre as a great success. The company also displayed new sizes of the versatile Alliance 590 tyre for a broad range of transport applications, and the Alliance 372 VF and Alliance 389 VF tractor trailer tyres. On the latter tyres, Kirkby showed evidence presented by Danish SEGES Innovation which evidences the effective soil protection, and therefore yield increases, the tyre combination can achieve during the application of liquid manure.
Yokohama Off-Highway Tires (YOHT) aims to be a top-three player in the global off-highway’ tyre segment and the company hopes that the recent expansion of the Alliance Agri Star II range as well as the performance of its other products will help it reach that goal. Highlighting the 4,000 plus SKUs it already offers, YOHT used the occasion of a virtual briefing to launch the Alliance Agri Star II range in 70, 85, 90 and 95-series fitments. In short, the company launched an additional 12 sizes and shared on-the-ground experiences of farmers as well as the results of recent research.
The National Tyre Distributors Association has presented a bumper crop of awards during its 92nd Annual Dinner in Birmingham. In the headline awards, Merityre was made the Overall Tyre Retailer of the Year, sponsored by Pirelli Tyres, Bridgestone took first place in Tyre Manufacturer of the Year, sponsored by The Commercial Vehicle Show, while Stapleton’s Tyre Services became 2021’s Tyre Wholesaler of the Year, sponsored by Compilator / Team Systems. Tyrepress reported the announcement of the award winners, in addition to the day’s Tyre Industry Conference, live via Twitter.
When we met Avishay Novoplanski at a major agricultural fair prior to the first lockdown, he was holding a paper takeaway coffee cup and reflecting upon the utility of air. But he hadn’t just taken a caffeine hit, nor were his musings on the invisible, gaseous substance that surrounds us out of place. For Novoplanski is the inventor of the Galileo CupWheel, and this explains his interest in both.
Kirkby Tyres has invested 3.5 million euros in moving to new, larger premises in Dublin, Republic of Ireland in a move that was completed on Wednesday 21 July 2021. According to the company, “Kirkby Tyres Ireland operations serves all geographical areas in Ireland” and made the investment due to “increased sales activities and opportunities”.
We’ve emerged from lockdown into a market environment of rising raw material prices, a global imbalance of containers and exploding shipping costs, not to mention continuing port disruptions. These combined factors have already led to higher tyre prices and product shortages in some instances, but the extent to which customers are affected can be tempered by good stock management.
The growth of the construction and industrial sectors is currently faster than any other part of the private sector economy, says Kirkby Tyres, Speke-based distributor of OTR tyres. In order to support this growth, Kirkby adds that it is positioning itself to supply a comprehensive line-up of tyre patterns and applications to serve its customer base. While this growth is encouraging, wholesalers must contend with the unprecedented challenges currently affecting global supply chains, including long production lead times and increases in raw materials and shipping costs. Kirkby marketing director Michael Rosenthal tells Tyres & Accessories that these challenges are presenting a bottleneck to economic recovery. The wholesaler says it is working to reduce the impact of these challenges and support its customer base by replenishing its stockholding continuously and holding good stocks of the most common OTR tyre sizes.
During the summer Alliance Tire Group began showing off its Agri Star II Alliance 372 Agriflex+ VF and lines. The first of these debuted at the LAMMA show in January, but both tyres came to market during the first corona lockdown. Tyrepress.com saw these products in action on a farm in Germany a couple of months back, but the UK’s second lockdown put paid to plans for a real-world 372 VF launch over here. So instead of togging up in extra-thick jackets and pulling on our wellies, on 1 December we headed over to the virtual farm and caught up with ATG and Kirkby Tyres, who exclusively distributes the Alliance brand in the UK and Ireland.
While the challenges of the pandemic to the light vehicle markets are familiar due to the day-to-day experiences of people around Europe, commercial, industrial and agricultural markets experienced different levels of lockdown, as many companies in these sectors worked hard to reinforce supply chains. In the tyre wholesale sector, this meant distributors of products and services to these segments needed to stay strong to supply the rubber that kept countries rolling. Michael Rosenthal, marketing director of the UK and Ireland’s largest and most comprehensive distributor of off-highway tyre and wheel solutions, Kirkby Tyres, told Tyres & Accessories about the latest news from the Speke-based wholesaler.
When Kirkby Tyres received the prestigious Truck & Agricultural Tyre Supplier of the Year Award (2019) on 3 October, it marked the second consecutive year that the Liverpool-based wholesaler had won the award.
Alliance Tire Group (ATG) has doubled its warranty on specific agricultural radial steel belted tyres, introducing a new ten-year workmanship and materials warranty as of 1 January 2019. This makes the guarantee one of the longest warranty periods offered in the sector to date. For all other ATG agricultural tyres, the warranty is now extended to seven years.
Kirkby Tyres
Kirkby Tyres
YOHT
Kirkby Tyres
Kirkby Tyres