Yokohama has announced that it will launch a new all-season tyre for European and Russian vans, the BluEarth-Van All Season RY61, in spring 2021. The tyre will be available in 23 sizes, from 225/55R17C 104/102H to 195/70R15C 104/102T. The manufacturer joins the trend of the world’s largest tyre manufacturers introducing new products in the segment, an intersection of two growth markets in Europe.
Shares in Japanese firms hit a 30-year high after Joe Biden was named as the president-elect of the US in a phenomenon being called the “Biden bounce”. Tokyo’s Nikkei index rose 2.6 per cent when the market opened on 9 November. It closed up 2.1 per cent at a level not seen since 1991.
Today Yokohama announced that it is consolidating its OTR tyre businesses into Yokohama Off-Highway Tires, which could be read as a prelude to the announcement Yokohama’s bid for the Prometeon tyre business. Roughly a year after the story broke, Yokohama’s bid for Prometeon isn’t the best kept secret in the tyre industry. Tyres & Accessories first heard talk of Yokohama’s bid for the ex-Pirelli industrial and commercial vehicle tyre business back in July 2019. The news was reported world-wide after we broke the story in September 2019, followed days later by third-party confirmation from the Chinese side of the deal. At that time, the deal was set to go public by the end of 2019. A few months later at the start of 2020, the timeframe switched to an end-of-first-quarter 2020 deadline. Then the coronavirus pandemic happened. And in the months that have followed things have gone quiet. So, where is Yokohama’s bid for Prometeon up to? The latest news is that deal is still on-track, but that there have been a few changes along the way. Here, Tyres & Accessories brings an update on the status of the acquisition and offers a different view on the deal by looking at it from a South American perspective.
The Yokohama Rubber Co. Ltd. is consolidating its various off-highway businesses into a single entity. The new division – Yokohama Off-Highway Tires – will include Alliance Tire Group (ATG), which Yokohama bought four years ago and Yokohama’s off-the-road (OTR) tyre businesses across the globe. The move can also be interpreted as a prelude to the announcement of the result of Yokohama’s bid for the Prometeon tyre business, talks about which got underway last year.
The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd. is set to build a new plant at Atchutapuram Industrial Park, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India to expand ATG’s (Alliance Tire Group) tyre production capacity. The new plant will have a daily production capacity of 55 tons (rubber weight), with planned capital investment totalling US$165 million. Construction will start in the third quarter of 2020 and the new plant is scheduled to come on line in the first quarter of 2023.
Michelin and Pirelli are leading the way on tyre and rubber sustainability, according to a recent report from Context Group. Context’s ranking assessed 11 members of the Tire Industry Project (TIP), namely Bridgestone; Continental; Cooper; Goodyear; Hankook; Kumho; Michelin; Pirelli; Sumitomo Rubber; Toyo and Yokohama.
Context analysed the sustainability content on each company’s website to see if it included communications covering some of the main issues associated with the life cycle impacts of tyres, including the four focus areas of the TIP: tyre and road wear particles, sustainable natural rubber, end-of-life tyres and environmental performance. The researchers assessed how well the companies tell their sustainability story by looking at their use of multimedia, news articles and social media.
The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd’s first half 2020 profit might have declined 92.5 per cent compare with the same period of the previous year to 1.3 billion yen (£9.321 million; 10.322 million euros, US$12.220 million), but the company did remain profitable as all tyre manufacturers have faced serious headwinds due to coronavirus. Operating profit fell 86.8 per cent to 2.9 billion yen. And salves fell 20.6 per cent to 247.1 billion yen.
Alliance Tire Group (ATG), A Yokohama Rubber Corporation group company, has appointed Jason’s Tyres as its Galaxy OTR tyre brand distributor in the Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg (Benelux) region. An OTR tyre specialist with 20 years of experience, the Jason’s Tyres Extreme division will distribute the entire portfolio of both bias and radial Galaxy OTR tyres in the earthmoving segment with immediate effect.
Yokohama has been chosen by Mercedes-AMG to supply original tyres on several new models. The Mercedes-AMG GLE 53 4MATIC+ Coupé, GLE 63 4MATIC+, GLE 63 4MATIC+ Coupé, GLA 35 4MATIC, GLA 45 4MATIC+ and GLA 45 S 4MATIC+ will all run on the Japanese tyre manufacturer’s Advan Sport V107.
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.
In the US, for the third year-in-a-row, Yokohama Tire Corporation has been recognized by Subaru of Indiana Automotive (SIA) with a supplier’s award. The third consecutive award earned the tyremaker a spot in in the prestigious Superior Excellent Performance category. Yokohama earned the award for its supply of the Avid S34P (P225/40R18 88V) tyres on the Impreza and Avid GT S35 on the Legacy (P225/55R17 97V and 225/50R18 95V), and on the Outback (225/65R17 102H and 225/60R18 100H).
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.
In addition to being the strongest brand globally, according to Brand Finance, Michelin has been named the world’s most valuable tyre brand for the third year in a row. However, the gap between first position and second-placed Bridgestone narrowed, meaning the Japanese tyre manufacturer is well-placed to regain pole.
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ATG; Jason’s Tyres
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Brand Finance