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’s SDR1 truck tyre has attained TÜV SÜD MARK certification, the first Chinese manufacturer in the tyre industry to do so, according to the company.
The SDR1 series of tyres from Sailun are sold in more than 30 countries and regions in Europe, such as Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland, and Spain and has been well received by all Sailun dealers in Europe. For Sailun, gaining TÜV SÜD certification “not only demonstrates Sailun’s strengths in development and production in high-end tyre products, but it also signifies the approval of the European market towards its products, laying the foundation for growth in this high-end market”.
Tyrepress has published its 2020 ranking of the world’s top tyre manufacturers. Our ranking lists the top 20 tyre makers ordered by turnover from tyres in the previous calendar year. For example, Continental turned over nearly 45 billion euros in 2019, but 26.4 per cent of this was from its tyre divisions, making it the fourth largest tyre manufacturer in the world with 11.7 billion euros. The ranking presents a baseline for discussing the relative positions of the largest global players in tyre production. In 2019, we noted that Bridgestone had opened up a gap at the top of our ranking, around 2.65 billion euros ahead of second-placed Michelin in tyre turnover. This year, the French giant has reduced this gap to just over half a billion euros, reflecting its most recent acquisitions.
Jinyu Tire Group hosted the groundbreaking ceremony of Jinyu (Vietnam) Tire Company Ltd’s 2 million tyre a year factory in Phuoc Dong Industrial Park, Tay Ninh Province, Vietnam on 18 June 2020. Local industrial park leaders as well as customer, supplier and construction representatives attended on the behalf of Jinyu Tire Group partners in light of the Covid pandemic
Sailun Group has appointed Gareth Passmore as senior vice president (PCR and TBR Tyres). The manufacturer states that his appointment is designed to strengthen the company’s management team in Europe, aligned with its objective of growing its European market share. Passmore is making his return to Sailun having previously served as president of Sailun Jinyu International in 2016-17. Fluent in several languages, Passmore has previously held a number of international focused roles with Falken, Apollo, and Continental.
Sailun Group is investing just over RMB 2 billion (£226 million) to increase truck tyre capacity at its Liaoning, Shenyang Province plant by 3 million pieces a year. The company’s wholly-owned Sailun (Shenyang) Tire Co. Ltd. subsidiary broke ground on the project on 1 March.
TBC Brands, one of the largest distributors of private brand tyres in North America, is offering an enhanced Sailun Advantage truck tyre warranty. According to the company, the new warranty programme is a “game-changing” combination of outstanding quality, competitive pricing, expansive product selection, enhanced warranties and multiple retreads.
The Sailun Group is investing around RMB 1 billion (£110.6 million) to boost passenger car tyre capacity at its factory in Dongying, Shandong Province to 27 million tyres a year. This growth will take place as part of Sailun’s ‘HP Tire Expansion Project’ and is considered a “necessary guarantee for the group to impact the domestic mid/high-end OE market.”
Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam [MoIT
Tyrepress.com / Stephen Goodchild
Kirkby Tyres
Sailun Group
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Sailun
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