Market Growth Stymied, Says RMA
(Akron/Tire Review) The RMA says it expects 2007 tyre shipments to “decrease slightly” due to continued weakening in the OE market. In its revised forecast, the RMA says the replacement market is up slightly, but not enough to offset decreased OE demand. The RMA now sees replacement market shipments up almost 2 per cent, but OE markets will be down about 8 per cent overall.
Segment by segment, the RMA sees:
• OE Passenger Tyres: Decrease by approximately 4.5 per cent in 2007 to 46.0 million units from 48.2 million units in 2006, due to decreases in domestic light vehicle sales and production.
• OE Light Truck Tyres: Decrease of approximately 12 per cent or 600,000 units from 2006 levels, due to more light trucks being fitted with P-metric tyres rather than LT-metric units.
• OE Medium/Wide-Base/Heavy Truck Tyres: Due to reduced new truck sales, the forecast has been revised downward to a 29 per cent decrease for 2007, or nearly 4.8 million units in total, or approximately 2 million units less then the 6.8 million units shipped in 2006.