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CHINA
China Retread Sector
To suggest that we have covered the Chinese retread sector in a few pages in Retreading Business would be a little presumptuous on our part. There have been various reports on the sector published, but the reality is that no-one really knows for sure just what the capacity of the market is, the volume of traffic, the number of retreaders, or the quality of the retreaders across the vast country that is China.
In this issue Satnam Singh, our man in the East, visited Jianxin and a number of retreaders in the Fujian Province.
The Chinese government has a global reputation for talking the talk when it comes to environmental issues, and it has supported tyre retreading and recycling on the one hand, but on the other as done little to impose quality standards, and rather than tackle the huge range of quality available in the retread sector, it has chosen to ban the use of retreads on long distance buses. Given the fact that huge numbers of journeys in China are made on long distance coach trips, the exclusion of retreading from that sector has created a bit of an issue for the retreaders. They have lost out on a lucrative market that provided volume.
The double whammy is that their key competition is, rather ironically for retreaders in Western markets, the production of low quality budget tyres from Chinese producers. With the price difference between retreads and new budget truck and bus tyres being as low $10, according to Brave Cai of Jianxin Rubber, it is difficult to sell
retreads to a market that prefers new tyres.
The difficulty is that these $160 new tyres are produced with minimal concern to quality and life expectancy (of both the tyre or the user). The Chinese government has, according to the retreaders visited, made absolutely no move to manage quality control in the tyre sector. So, without the cost restrictions imposed by quality and quality control, the budget tyre sector is booming in China, and according to the rubber supplier?, Jianxin and several retreaders, this impacts negatively on the not only the retread sector but also the tyre sector as it drives quality down, rather than up.
If there is one universal truth in the tyre industry, it is that no-one in the tyre sector has much positive to say about budget Chinese tyres, not even the Chinese retreaders.
As has happened in other more developed markets, retreaders are looking at selling new tyres to support their existing business. In the case of Jianxin, not only will the rubber company be selling new tyres, but it will be manufacturing high quality new tyres that will enable its clients to sell a whole life package to fleet operators.
Nobody has written off Chinese retreading, though it appears to have stalled on the hurdle of a slower than expected economy and a battle for market share with the budget tyre sector. The markets in China are in a state of flux and a visit to the same retreaders 12 months hence could tell a very different story indeed.
Shanghai Fengjiang Tyre Retreading to Switch to Marangoni Equipment
A number of people strongly motivated towards improving technology and processes to produce better products have installed Marangoni equipment in their plants. They have a strong inclination towards identifying themselves with the Marangoni brand by using the title also. “We are retreading around 1,000 tyre per month and during July to September is our best time when our volumes reach around 1,200 tyres in a month,” informed Zhou Ye of Pudong based Shanghai
Marangoni equipment, we have developed the market for our products,” he said. The plant has mix of Marangoni and Chinese equipment. Its clientele includes Shanghai Harbour, the shuttle bus service at the airport and the Shanghai bus service.
The company keenly intends to shift to Marangoni plant but the high price of equipment is stopping it from shifting altogether. Currently, the company has building machines and pressure testing equipment from Marangoni
Zhou Ye of Pudong based Shanghai Fengjiang Tyre Retreading
Fengjiang Tyre Retreading. The musician turned retreader strongly believes in upgrading technology at its plant.
The company started retreading way back in the early eighties but shifted to Marangoni in 2007. “We used to retread only 200 tyres by the hot process but after installing
along with a Chinese-made 13 tyre chamber. “Our goal is to retread for long distance bus fleets and big trailers carrying petrochemical products with ring tread as it is good for highway fleets but the government banned long distance buses and trailers from using retreaded tyres,’ said Zhou.
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