Page 25 - RB-60-12-1

KUWAIT
Yehia Soliman, Manager, Retread Division, Al-Zahem Industries
Al-Zahem partnered with Marangoni about one and half years ago. The company carried out expansion in 2008, installing three 11 tyre chambers, and one builder, besides installing a monorail system in the plant. “We installed the Bandag machines as the expansion was planned with the Bandag plant. Last year, after shaking hands with Marangoni, we installed one shearography machine and one ring builder,” informed Soliman, an Egyptian settled in Kuwait who had worked with Bandag from 1997 to 2005 as the technical sales engineer for the Middle East and Africa. He was responsible for 13 countries and installed one plant each in Lagos, Egypt, UAE, Cyprus, Iran, Kuwait
and two plants in Turkey. Al-Zahem invested US$ 3 million in the capacity expansion at its Kuwait based plant in installing equipment, vehicles and hiring new people.
With the expansion over in the Kuwait plant, Al-Zahem is now planning to enter into the markets of member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “We are planning to open two plants, one each in Bahrain and Qatar in 2012. We will start with Bahrain and this plant should be operational by the second half of 2012,” revealed Soliman. It is going to be a huge advantage for both of us, while Marangoni is also expanding its footprint in the Middle East market. “The Bahrain unit is likely to operate with an initial capacity of 6,000 – 7,000 units,” said Soliman.
Al-Zahem is opening the plants in Bahrain and Qatar along with its local partners. It has also been revealed that the partner in Bahrain would continue the co-operation in the Qatar market as well. “The construction sector is booming in Qatar due to the building of the infrastructure for the Soccer World Cup 2022 and the retreading industry should see considerable benefits from this development. The upcoming plant would be opened with an eye on the evolving trend in the construction sector,” observed Soliman. Al-Zahem and its partners plan to make an investment of US$ 2 million each in the plants. “The Marangoni plants would be installed with one 20 tyre chamber each.
Though the GCC governments do not allow the import-export of old casings even among the member states the venture is likely to get permission to import old casings received at the Bahrain unit to be exported to Kuwait, where they would be retreaded at the Al-Zahem facility and sent back to Bahrain. “We have received the clearance from the governments exclusively for this project,” claimed Soliman.
Meanwhile, Al-Zahem has further expanded into OTR repair. “We forayed into OTR repairs a long time ago but we have made further expansion and have bought new machines to cope with the demand emanating from the construction sector in the near future,” Soliman said. The retreader is also a dealer of
Rema Tip-Top, repairing about 100 OTRs per month. The company believes that OTR volumes would be likely to grow further in 2012. The company has also launched Tyre Management System (TMS) with the City Bus Service. “We introduced TMS only about a month back and are also talking to more transport companies. We are planning to aggressively market TMS in 2012,” said Soliman.
Al-Zahem retreads in excess of 20,000 tyres annually and consumed around 7,000 Marangoni ring treads and 13,000 standard contour treads in 2011. “We are also using Brazilian Vipal tread and consumed around 70,000 kg this year,” informed Soliman. It had been consuming around 300 tonnes of Bandag tread
annually. When asked, if the company is expecting any production hike in 2012, Soliman said with some concern, “We are not expecting any further hikes in demand and we will try to maintain the current production level.” He further clarified, “Our clientele largely includes the transport companies delivering goods to American troops stationed in Iraq. But with the complete withdrawal of American soldiers, the business of the transport companies is gone and that may reflect in our volumes in 2012.” Now, it is banking on the construction projects recently declared by the Kuwait Government. “The government has announced US$ 200 billion construction projects over the next five years and we are now looking at that business,” he added.