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THE EMIRATES
Retreading in UAE
UAE Retreaders Expand
Rapidly in Middle East and Africa
aims to produce camelback for conventional hot retreading and is expected to be functional by mid 2014.
The UAE’s retreading industry is banking on recovery as a result of Expo 2020, with the government announcing a number of infrastructural projects that will start by 2015. Despite talks of economic boom, the market leader in the UAE retreading industr y seems cautious about any expansion plans and remain kept its cards close to the chest. “There is lot of hype generated by the government with the announcement of Expo 2020 but it is too early to actually go on an expansion as we have spare capacity left unutilised,” stated Surender Singh Kandhari,
Managing Director, Al Dobowi. The UAE market has around 25 retreaders and almost 20,000 tyres are being retreaded every month. The retreading market dipped to around 15,000 tyres when the economy crashed in 2009 for some time. But again it picked up and reached the 20,000 level during the last couple of years. The market has the presence of all kinds of Indian and European tread rubber
brands and it consumes around 300 tonnes of rubber each month. The OTR market is also growing and between 300 – 400 OTRs are being retreaded and repaired annually. In 2013, five companies were closed down as they failed the certification standards to continue by ESMA.
The UAE retreading industry is having to cope with an economic slowdown as well as the confusion created by the authorities over the use of retreaded tyres. Despite uncertainty as to whether
Saudi Arabia. Universal has already sets-up a retreading facility in Nairobi and now plans to build plants in Tanzania and Uganda as part of further expansion in the continent. It is also planning a retreading plant in
retreaded tyres are allowed to be used, authorities continue to fine fleets running on retreaded tyres. On the other hand, the UAE government continues to develop its retreading network. State owned Emirates Transport, for example, opened a retreading plant in Dubai in the early 2013. Emirates Transport has ambitious growth plans as one more plant with an investment of AED 3 million is in the pipeline for the next couple of years.
Meanwhile, the UAE police keep stopping fleets running on retreaded tyres, typically fining the vehicle owner AED 800 as well as putting the vehicle off the road for three days. “It is ironic. When all the government agencies have certified the retreading companies to retread tyres then why are the police fining vehicles running on retreads. We wonder why government bodies or accreditation agencies like the Emirates Authority for Standardisation & Metrology (ESMA) do not come out with clear cut guidelines,” argues Danial Ninan of Tyre Care Plus. Meanwhile Chinese tyres, many of dubious quality, continue to flow into the country.
Despite the slowdown in the UAE market, retreading companies keep expanding in other markets. An example is Universal Tyres & Retreading Systems LLC, which is expanding rapidly in Africa and
Dammam in Saudi Arabia.
Top Tyre, meanwhile, is fast emerging as a significant retreading company in the Middle East with plants spreading over the UAE, Oman & Egypt. The company has also finalised plans to enter both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia by the end of 2014.
Tyre Care Plus LLC, who started operations in Abu Dhabi in 2005, also finds market conditions in the UAE slow at the moment and is planning to expand into Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile as a fall-out of the Syrian crises, the industr y of neighbouring Jordan has also been affected, due to the influx of large number of Syrian refugees. As a result Syrian retreader United Planet tyres has been forced to close its plant in Amman and relocate to the outskirts of Dubai in the Ras Alkor Industrial area. Due to the authorities’ antipathy to retreaded tyres being focused mostly on the precure process, there has been a revival in the fortunes of the conventional hot market with Ajman based Standard Retreads giving a new lease of life to the mould cure process.
Even Indian company Tolins Tyres & Tread, which had entered the UAE earlier by setting-up a bonding gum plant, is now graduating to manufacturing conventional treads in a new plant in Ras Al Khaimah. The plant
With the slowdown in the UAE retreading market and overwhelming competition, production levels of retreaders have been hit during 2013. Most retreaders blame the competitors in the market but when it comes to them, they seem to be willing go down to a level that further makes a new benchmark in low pricing. “We are charging AED 350 for retreading a tyre, we could go down even further for the business,” stressed Mohammed of Shanghai Tyres Factory.
Shanghai Tyres production has gone down a slowdown in work from some of its client base. “Some of our clients have 100 trailers but hardly 20 of them are running and the majority of them are parked due to the slowdown in the market,” said a concerned Mohammed.
According to him, “Business has gone from bad to worse due to low priced Chinese tyre brands flooding the whole market. A Chinese tyre plus tube is sold for as little as AED
700. We have no option but to reduce the price to remain competitive and survive in the market.” Shanghai Tyres retreaded 50 tyres a day about couple of years back when the
market was at its peak.
Now the company hopes that the hype generated by the announcement of Expo 2020 will generate positivity in the market. “The market will most likely pick up in 2015, when we hope to make the earlier numbers,” he said.
Shanghai Tyre is a conventional and precure operation, running on Indian tyre chambers from Hi-Tech and Chinese manufactured presses. The Abu Dhabi based plant has one eight tyre chamber making 20 tyres per day and four presses for hot process making 16 tyres per day. Midas has shipped around 15 tonnes of tread rubber to the company from India. “Hot is still prevalent in the market, though 90 per cent of the market is dominated by the precure version,” said Mohammed.
Mohammed of Shanghai Tyres Factory
Shanghai Tyres Looks to Regain Lost Ground in 2015
42 Retreading Business