Susanna Tusa has been appointed general director and vice president of Nokian Tyres Romania Operations. She will also lead the Oradea, Romania factory project. The factory is scheduled to produce its first tyres in the second half of 2024. Commercial tyre production is set to start in early 2025.
In spite of a steep year-on-year drop in operating profit during Q2 2023, Nokian Tyres believes it has made significant progress towards rebuilding the company following the decision to cut its ties with Russia. It expects a stronger second half to 2023 due to winter and all-season tyre sales and the contribution made by contract manufacturing.
Nokian Tyres has initiated work on its Oradea, Romania passenger car tyre factory, billed as the tyre industry’s first zero CO2 emission plant. An event marking the groundbreaking was attended by the Prime Minister of Romania, Nicolae Ciucă. The President of the Bihor County Council, Ilie Bolojan, and other high-level Romanian and Finnish officials also participated along with the chair of Nokian Tyres’s board of directors Jukka Hienonen. The first tyres are estimated to be produced in the second half of 2024. Commercial tyre production is expected to start in early 2025.
Nokian Tyres’s well-publicised exit from Russia has left it with a similarly well-reported production gap that continues to impact the company’s ongoing business. Speaking as part of the company’s first quarter 2023 results presentation, Nokian Tyres executives emphasised that “new capacity is our #1 priority” and shared further details of how they are planning to fill the firm’s production gap. We already knew that Nokian plans to expand its existing factories in Nokia, Finland and Dayton, USA as well as build a new factory in Romania and make off-take contracts with third-party manufacturers, what’s new is the detail and time frames associated with “building the new Nokian Tyres”.
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.
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