Page 6 - RB-61-12-2

EDITORIAL
End of the Line for Retreading?
BIPAVER Pushes to Avoid Doomsday Scenario as Retyre Project gets Underway
It can hardly have escaped notice that environmental labelling is becoming de-rigeur on everything from kettles to jumbo jets. Tyres too now have to show an environmental performance label, it looks exactly like the one you saw when you last bought any domestic electrical appliance.
To obtain the label, is, as Michael Schwämmlein says, “is a good thing, but in order to get there first the retreading sector has to establish a method of homologation for retreaded tyres. That is the tyres must meet with UN-ECE Directive No. 117, which is a mandatory method for type- approval of tyres and the output of these homologation tests are the data required by Regulation 1222 / 2009. Specifically in the first instance low pass by noise levels, and in future rolling resistance and wet grip – Retreaded tyres have an exemption until late 2017 on some aspects. “Beyond that date”, Michael states, “It is the end of the road for retreaded tyres. The industry has to wake up and realise that if we do not find a solution, the business is finished”. In some aspects this is a double challenge, for without the labelling, there can be no retread sales, without the testing there will be no labelling.
For new tyre manufacturers, at least the bigger names, producing tyres to meet the required modern standards and testing the tyres to ensure they continue to meet those standards is a pretty straightforward extension of the ongoing tyre testing that they carry out as a matter of course on any product range they have on offer. They will be replicating production on a relatively limited range of tyres., often in production runs into hundreds, even millions of pieces, each identical. The
retreader has, according to BIPAVER, a mix of some 8000 possible options, based on original
producing tyres to a standard and producing truthful labelling is not going to be an issue. In real terms
So, tyre labeling, is a “good thing” for many reasons. Firstly, it drives competitors to ensure that they have the best product they can offer, for who would wittingly buy a lesser performing truck tyre if the evidence was staring them in the face? It makes the consumer think more about his purchase, and in turn that drives the consumer towards a better quality product.
The tyre manufacturers can continue serving the whole market with their whole life costs, including regrooves and multiple retreads (depending upon the market rules). However, the retread industry was potentially left floundering, as legislation meant that it would become illegal to sell retreaded tyres without the same labelling as new tyres. This could have marked the end of retreading for the SME retreaders unless they opted for one of the tyre manufacturer franchises. BIPAVER, however, was not going to let things go quite so easily, and to cut a long story short, won concessions to allow time to develop a strategy on tyre labelling, a project called ReTyre. Led by Ruud Spuijbroek and Hans Jürgen Drechsler, BIPAVER worked to find a way ahead. Back in October 2010, Ruud had a meeting with the Directorate General Enterprise in Brussels to seek funding for a project that would establish a labelling procedure for SME retreaders, and help them develop their businesses professionally in the future. It needs to be understood that to establish any meaningful European labelling system there has to be a standard and that standard has to be researched and validated and meet a set of EC requirements – that research and validation is a costly business and generally the funding comes from the EC budgets, of which there are many.
However, at that stage the approach came to nothing and it was back to square one. Then, with a reviewed strategy BIPAVER returned to Brussels in December 2011, this time to the DG Research and Development, with a new strategy aimed at retread tyre labelling for the SME – the project was to be innovative, sustainable, improve environmental performance, save on raw materials and be replicable across
Labels like this will become a requirement on retreaded tyres in the future
casing, tread compounds, patterns, method, shore hardness etc. to chose from, and production can
be in the tens or hundreds by comparison.
The test centres are continually testing tyres on drums, rollers and on the road to measure performance in set circumstances. They have the finance, the facilities and the data to build upon, and for Michelin, or Bridgestone, or Continental, or Hankook, etc.,
the cost is probably nothing more than an adjustment. That is also true for retreads and retread materials produced by the larger tyre manufacturers. Again, they are already testing these products and maintaining standards and retaining data and can say with some certainty how well a retread produced by them, on one of their own casings will perform – for it is true that the big manufacturers prefer to retread only their own casings as first quality retreads, and it may be that in future they may only retread their own casings in order to be able to satisfy the requirements of the tyre labeling system, for they have a known quantity when they deal with an own casing, they introduce a variable when they retread a competitor’s casing. If the SME is forced to follow the same path as the new tyre manufacturer the testing, per tyre type, could cost in excess of 5,000 Euros, making retread production by the SME commercially unviable.
6 Retreading Business