Is Nokian Tyres a takeover target?
How the Russia-Ukraine war, the company’s low share price and other challenges make Nokian Tyres prime takeover material for a premium brand with the money and desire
How the Russia-Ukraine war, the company’s low share price and other challenges make Nokian Tyres prime takeover material for a premium brand with the money and desire
The government of Romania has approved state aid of almost 100 million euros to Nokian Tyres PLC. The tyre maker intends to establish a new factory in Oradea, and the ad hoc regional state aid will finance the costs related to the factory’s establishment and address the financing gap related to this greenfield investment.
At the end of June, Nokian Tyres announced that it was executing a “controlled exit” from Russia. By August Russian news sources were reporting that Nokian was accepting “binding offers” for its Russian tyre plant up until the end of September. At the end of October, Nokian confirmed that it had agreed terms with Tatneft to sell its Russian tyre operations for roughly 400 million euros. More than a month later, Nokian Tyres spokespeople are speaking of “substantial uncertainties” relating to the Tatneft deal.
Nokian Tyres’ is investing around 650 million euros in a new passenger car tyre factory in Romania. The new greenfield factory will be located in Oradea in the North-West of Romania, near the Hungarian border. The annual capacity of the factory will be 6 million tyres, with expansion potential for the future. According to an official statement, the site will also house a distribution facility for storage and distribution of tyres. Construction is scheduled to begin in early 2023 and the first tyres are estimated to be produced in the second half of 2024. Commercial tyre production is expected to start in early 2025.
The executive vice chairman and CEO of the Pirelli Group, Marco Tronchetti Provera, was recently named as a Commander of the Romanian order of “Industrial and Commercial Merit” in appreciation of his “important contribution to the strengthening of the bilateral relationship” between Romania and Italy.
Founded in roughly 1994 as a casing collection company which focused on imports, Radburg is now one of the leading retreaders in Europe and certainly the biggest car tyre retreader in Eastern Europe and Romania. What’s different about Radburg compared with most of the other retreaders across the continent, is that the majority of Radburg’s annual retreaded tyre output (70 per cent) is made up of passenger car products.
Kingpin Tyres, one of the last remaining passenger car tyre retreaders in the UK, has sold its Kingpin brand name and retread production line to Romanian retreader SC Radburg Center Srl. The transaction took place during the summer of 2020 following several months of negotiations, representatives of new owners Radburg told Tyres & Accessories during a recent interview.
Autodata has launched a version of its e-commerce website in the Romanian language. Autodata is an e-commerce technical solution for body shops around the world. In addition to the platform, it is also available as an API, and provides comprehensive Original Equipment (OE) sourced technical information for the service, maintenance, diagnostics, and repair of 90 per cent of vehicles on the road in Romania.
Pirelli is suspending activity at its plant in Slatina Romania on 23-31 March. The plant, which produces car and motorsport tyres, has around 4,000 employees.
Carlos Bernabé has returned to Continental’s tyre factory in Timișoara, Romania to take on the role of plant manager. The four-decade Continental veteran officially began in this position on 1 February after managing the company’s tyre plant in Alor Setar Malaysia for three years; prior to his sojourn in Malaysia, he worked at the Timișoara plant as production manager.
Global retreading supplier Vipal Rubber’s VT110 tread has been approved in Romania following trials conducted by fleet operator Senidav Trans SRL. The Eastern European fleet company carried out performance tests using retreaded tyres with the VT110, recording favourable results against a competitor brand. Measurements were recorded by Vipal’s Moldovan partner, Tehno Profil, after 260,000km on Romanian roads, which present adverse track conditions, with mountains, slopes, snow, and other problems.
Acces Auto-Trading has become the latest company to join the International Tyre Manufacturers’ Association (ITMA) and the first from Eastern Europe.
Pirelli has commissioned Belgian industrial property developer WDP to construct a new 62,000 square metre warehouse alongside the tyre manufacturer’s existing Slatina, Romania manufacturing operation. According to WDP, the news comes as part of “an expansion of the tyre manufacturer’s existing production facility”. WDP predicts that the project will cost around 40 million euros.
With the purchase of 32 hectares of land in the Romanian city of Timişoara, Continental aims to expand its storage capacity and optimise the overall cost of its logistics. The land was purchased from the UMT and Prompt groups for an undisclosed sum and is located close to the Continental tyre factory within the city.
Four million euros are being invested to reduce olfactory emissions at the Continental tyre factory in Timişoara, Romania. The investment will facilitate an expansion of the plant’s regenerative thermal oxidiser system in order to stop odours arising from tyre production wafting beyond the factory site.