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INDIAN RUBBER EXPO
market is made up.
Like many countries in the world, the US retread market is dominated by pre-cure retreading. Indeed, 94 per cent
which over 90 per cent are controlled by the new tyre industr y. Without a doubt this consolidation in the market has been largely caused by
tyre receives EPA certification, fleets using those tyres will be compliant with CARB regulations for low rolling resistance tyres. Since 2010 a committee of tyre manufacturers from within the US Rubber Manufacturers Association has been working on defining a test method and reporting system.
Although at this stage there are no approved retread products on the SmartWay approved
that this is largely due to a “completely scattered EU market with 27 different legal frameworks applicable to casings, to the administrative burden arising from the waste status applied in some member states and a lack of quality of some retreaded tyres, which could be much improved by the application of end of waste criteria”.
In truth the current state of the market varies widely between
of the country’s retreads are manufactured by this method. Also the market is largely dominated by the new tyre manufacturers, Michelin, Goodyear and Bridgestone Bandag. Indeed, according to Modern Tire Dealer, in 2011 as much as 93 per cent of the market was controlled by the Big Three, leaving Marangoni and a few other independent retreaders to fight over the rest. No wonder the US market is so hard to penetrate. The number of independent retread shops in North America is now relatively small.
The market in the USA has also consolidated substantially over a fifty year period. In 1950 there were around 12,000 retread plants in the USA. Even in 1990 there were three thousand. Now there are less than a thousand retreaders of
improving quality standards in the retread industr y, much of which has been technology driven, as well as tougher legislation.
In the United States tyres are retreaded according to standards set by the US Department of Transportation and carry a code number on the sidewall saying when and where a tyre was retreaded. Due in part to the standards established by the retread industr y the US DOT has not developed specific regulations for manufacturing retreaded truck tyres.
The latest development in the US market has been the development of a verification programme by the US Environmental Protection Agency under the EPA Smartway Certification Programme. Once a retreaded
rolling resistance programme*, the EPA has stated that verified low rolling resistance retread products must provide reductions in fuel consumption of at least 3 per cent compared to the most popular retread products currently in existence. Let us now turn to the European market, which has been even more affected by legislation in recent years.
A recent technical report by the European Tyre and Rubber Manufacturers Association suggests that the retread market in Europe is steadily falling and
market. The UK has been extremely buoyant for the past couple of years and France has also increased its retread quota from 43-46 per cent. Italy, for example, on the other hand,
has seen a fall off in the share of retreads, suffering due to
quality prejudices, a strong used tyre trade and an underdeveloped casing collection system
In Europe there are significant differences between the various regional markets. Let’s take the retread quota across the whole of the continent to begin with.
*At the time of writing