Earlier in the year, Sailun Group announced it was evaluating the feasibility of producing car tyres in Cambodia, but the plans its Board of Directors approved this month are for a larger and costlier plant than originally reported. Planned capacity has risen 80 per cent, and the proposed investment almost doubled.
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.
The Sailun Group is ramping up production at its plants in China and Vietnam. The manufacturer brought its newest truck tyre plant in Shenyang, China onstream in November 2020, giving it an additional 3.3 million units of all-steel truck radial capacity. In addition, Sailun plans to invest RMB 719.9 million (£81.3 million) to upgrade production at recently acquired manufacturer Shandong Anchi Tyres in Weifang, giving it the capacity to produce 1.2 million truck and bus radials and 6 million high performance passenger car and light truck tyres a year. Most recently, Sailun confirmed plans for the third phase of expansion at its Sailun (Vietnam) subsidiary.
After hiatus last year, the NTDA’s Tyre Industry Awards will be back in 2021, according to the association’s chief executive Stefan Hay.
The Awards are scheduled to be presented to the winners at a ceremony sponsored by Sailun at the NTDA Annual Dinner, which is due to take place on the evening of Thursday 7 October 2021 at the ICC Birmingham, following the daytime Tyre Industry Conference sponsored by GB Tyres Ltd in association with Linglong Tire.
Sailun Group is considering setting up a plant to produce tyres for passenger vehicles in Cambodia. According to a feasibility study published today, the Chinese tyre maker is interested in building a facility within the QiLu (Cambodia) Special Economic Zone in Svay Rieng Province that is capable of making five million semi-steel radials a year. Sailun estimates the project will require an investment of 1.18 billion yuan (£130.5 million).
During January 2021 more than 50 domestic Chinese tyre businesses announced plans to increase prices. And, according to Robert Ho, marketing officer at Comforser Tire Co. Ltd., we can expect still further prices increases in February and March.
Sailun Group recently won the tender to acquire bankrupt manufacturer Shandong Anchi Tyres Co., Ltd., and in January paid RMB 202 million (£22.8 million) for Anchi’s assets. The tyre maker now plans to invest RMB 719.9 million (£81.3 million) to upgrade production within the former Anchi facility in Weifang, China and give it the capacity to produce 1.2 million truck and bus radials and 6 million passenger car and light truck tyres a year.
Vietnamese officials have interpreted the US Department of Commerce (DOC) anti-dumping investigation preliminary conclusions as “very positive” for Vietnam-produced car tyres. There was even hope that cooperative Vietnam-based tyre manufacturers Local newspapers read this mean Vietnamese tyre factories had been “cleared” by the investigation.
During today’s extraordinary shareholders meeting, its first of 2021, Sailun Group confirmed plans for the third phase of expansion at its wholly-owned Sailun (Vietnam) Co., Ltd. subsidiary. Over a three-year period, the company will invest 3.01 billion yuan (£340.1 million) to equip the site with the capacities to produce 3 million car and light commercial vehicle tyres, one million truck and bus radials, and 50,000 tons of off-the-road tyres per annum.
The Sailun Group’s newest truck tyre plant in Shenyang, China is now onstream. The tyre maker held a commissioning ceremony at its wholly-owned Sailun (Shenyang) Tire Co. Ltd. subsidiary on 18 November. The project gives Sailun an additional 3.3 million units of all-steel truck radial capacity.
2020 marks Sailun’s 5th year supporting World Child Cancer as the transportation partner, alleviating the financial burden for families of children with cancer. Financially, Sailun continues its pledge to World Child Cancer – which supports children with cancer in the low and middle-income world – with a recent 50,000 euro donation.
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.
Sailun Tire has entered into a partnership agreement with China’s Apex Motorsport. The deal, signed on 21 August by Apex Motorsport’s Jin Yi and Chen Zheng, deputy director of Sailun Motorsport, gives Apex global sales rights for Sailun Sports Tires including the full range of Sailun Gene R tyres. Sailun believes this agreement marks its “successful shift from the prosumer market to the consumer market following three years of racing events that put Sailun Tire products to various stringent tests.”
Over the last five years of data collection for the Tyres & Accessories’ ranking of the leading tyre manufacturers, a few trends can be observed – see accompanying graphs for more details. Firstly, it is easy to see that there are a few separate groupings of rival companies within the top ten. In our first chart, we can see that Continental has continued to progress in narrowing the tyre sales gap with Goodyear, partially because Goodyear has yet to regain the level of sales achieved in 2015, despite improved results on its half-decade low in 2017. Tyrepress noted in 2018 that based on tyre volumes, Conti looked likely to overtake Goodyear in light vehicle (passenger car and light truck) tyre volumes, showing how it has gained ground on the previous ‘Big Three’. Regardless of their order, it has been appropriate to talk of a global Big Four tyre manufacturers for a few years.
Sailun
E Bouman; Pixabay
Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam [MoIT
Tyrepress.com / Stephen Goodchild
Kirkby Tyres
Sailun Group
Tyrepress