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RETYRE
ReTyre Project Update
labelling. This exemption, however, is in principle valid only up to spring 2015, that is till the first evaluation and ultimately November 2017 when the existing regulations as 92/23/EC will be replaced by the General Safety Requirements, as described in 661/2009. Furthermore BIPAVER anticipates that haulage companies and public transportation will get used to the labelling and want to compare all tyres, including retreaded ones on their environmental and safety performances during the purchase process and consequently implement these
developments into their company policies. Therefore BIPAVER needed to come with a solution and a correct and viable answer to the tyre labelling question.
The ReTyre Project.
The dual demand to comply with tyre labelling legislation and to prepare a true type approval procedure required that a particular initiative was developed. This initiative, called ReTyre, was in an earlier stage developed as a BIPAVER Project together with the German BASt institute to anticipate the coming labelling legislation by means of comparison testing to
On the 16th April at the 2nd Sustainable Tire Innovations Conference April 16th 2013 in Berlin Ruud Spujbroek, representing BIPAVER, the Federation of Associations representing independent European retreaders issued an update on the ReTyre project that aimed to give independent retreaders the technology to be able to predict performance and economy, to enable them to produce tyres that met future standards and were able to be labelled in line with EU regulations for efficiency ratings. Ruud highlighted, in brief, the economic and environmental benefits of retreading, particularly truck tyre retreading, before talking about the ReTyre project, he also explained the technological advantages brought by shearography in improving standards in retreading.
As a precursor to the ReTyre update there was a need to outline the background in legislation. It was explained that it took more than a decade of discussions and proposals before UN-ECE Regulations R108 for car tyres and 109 for truck tyres were developed to secure the quality of processes and the conformity of production, followed European wide by the certification of retreading workshops and later on in 2005 transferred into European Regulations. Summarizing one hundred years of development, he pointed out that the retread today is a mature and safe product and retreaders are certified and registered within BIPAVER. However, BIPAVER still feels that some final steps need to be taken to position the retreaded tyre in this professional environment. If new tyres are regulated through Regulation 30 and 54, i.e. car and commercial tyres, the regulation 109 should, as it is combined with Regulation 117, be ready for the next step towards a true type approval thus securing the retread in the truck tyre market. Over approximately the same amount of time regulations concerning environmental performances were developed, first the S-marking and, implemented as of last
November, tyre labelling and the General Safety requirements were developed. It is clear that with a great number of makes in the market, a huge number of casings are presented to the retread market, combined with an equally considerable number of treads and patterns. This makes it hard to comply with tyre labelling without devastating economical consequences for the SME retread industr y.
BIPAVER was therefore pleased when the European Commission decided to exempt the retread from
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