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REIFEN ESSEN
Fedima Still Growing
Carlos Marques, CEO of Portuguese retreader Recauchutagem31, whose brand Fedima has become a regular attendee at Reifen was positive about business. A rationalisation of the domestic market had seen Fedima increase its share of the Portuguese retread sector and by developing treads and markets the company had seen continued
increases in its export orders, particularly in the 4x4 and OTR sectors. Asked about his thoughts on the tyre homologation and labelling rules, Carlos’ view was that it was an issue that he would deal with when it arose, he was not going to panic about the legislation because there would be a solution, he was sure.
Matteuzzi –
Could Not Be Better
GT Radial Offer REE-Tread Programme
A new retread tyre – GT Ree Tread – was among the new product launches from GT Radial at Reifen 2012.
An acronym for reliable, economical and environmental, the GT REE Tread is a high quality, hot cure bead-to-bead retread built on GT Radial casings and designed to both lower costs for operators and reduce the environmental impact of tyres.
pattern and is available in 385/65R22.5 sizing.
Peter Foulkes, Marketing Manager Europe – Truck and Bus at GT Radial, said: “This is our first commercial vehicle retread tyre and we believe that it has the potential to make a real impact in the market. It offers definite cost and environmental advantages along with excellent overall performance.”
GT estimates that a recycled tyre saves 68 litres of oil, 44 kilograms of rubber and 88 kilograms of CO2 across the life of the product. The REE Tread comes in a regional trailer
The GT REE-Tread GTR990 on display on the GT stand in Essen is a bead to bead trailer tyre in size 385/65 R 22.5 featuring GT Radial casings.
One of the busiest people at in the retreading hall at Reifen is always Emilio Matteuzzi. The Matteuzzi stand is one that is busy from start to finish, and trying to find any free time to talk to Emilio Matteuzzi is always a challenge as he is often heavily engaged with clients. However, in a brief interview between customers, Retreading Business managed to get Emilio’s perspective on the show.
“I am happy,” he told us, “The show has brought us a lot of exciting, good quality contacts and we expect positive results from the show. We are seeing more visitors and better quality visitors and there should be some good business done as a result of being here.
“We come to the show to promote ourselves and to consolidate our relationships with our customers in both the new and the retread markets. We are delighted to be able to say that we have not had one single complaint or adverse comment about our equipment or our service, it has all been compliments and congratulations, just nothing but good news.
“We have sold the buffer that is on display to Geyer and Hosaja in
Poland, and Steinbichler have bought a nail hole detector.”
Asked about the current economic climate and its impact upon business, Emilio responded, “If people look at the price, yes, we have a problem, but we sell on quality and when people buy on the basis of quality we have nothing to fear. Even in the price sensitive Chinese market we have recently sold 10 buffers to retreaders there, through our partnership with Newera in Singapore. Low quality is not where our business lies and if people are aiming for quality then they come to Matteuzzi, no matter where they are located.”
Emilio was unwilling to go into the details but was pleased to advise Retreading Business that whilst the new tyre sector was seeing huge investments, resulting in orders for the firm for new tyre equipment, he was also seeing a boom in orders for retreading equipment and had advanced orders that would be keeping the factory busy for some time into the future. “We have orders that will keep us busy and we are currently in a very positive position and that gives us confidence and security for the future.”
32 Retreading Business