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CHILE
Another speciality is specialist tractor tyres for use in vineyards. Here the company extrudes the lugs for the tyres and then adds strengthened sidewalls, necessary due to the damage caused to the sidewalls during the harvest period. In order to meet the specific challenges of the market Irenesa has developed a number of specific tactics
Firstly, according to Nieto, the company has managed to achieve particularly good raw material prices on four key pattern/compound combinations allowing it to keep some key fleet
customers in the Santiago area.
The company has also managed to secure a source of Goodyear casings from buses used within the Chilean mining sector. These buses only travel very short distances so the casings are in particularly good condition, and are used on premium retreads used to compete with Chinese new tyres, whereby Irenesa can show the superiority of both the Goodyear casings and the retreading process. “They are about the same price as the Chinese tyres, says Nieto, “but with the quality of Goodyear and the experience of Irenesa.”
The Vipal team at the Brazilian company’s Santiago office
Vipal Invests in Chilean Operation
looking for new niche business sectors to sell rubber compounds to, such as rubber manufacturers who need black cement and the conveyor belt sector.
Vipal claims around a quarter of the market in Chile, worth around 5,000 tyres per month. There are eight Vipal Authorised Retreaders in Chile, but the fact that Vipal has local offices and storage facilities means that they can supply all sorts of products on a short term basis to retreaders, whose normal suppliers may not be able to supply so quickly.
Accordingly to Barbosa, Vipal has seen particular success with fleets in
the bus sector. Regional bus company Turbus has achieved success with the DWRM regional tread, whilst the Metropolitan Bus Company of Santiago has been using the DVUM3 urban tread. Vipal sells three different ranges of tread in Chile – the Vipal premium range, Ruzi as a standard line and the PB budget range, which is a low cost brand used to compete with low cost tyres from Asia. “Says Barbosa; “We understand that this is not our core business, but considering the current market conditions, we need to maintain a presence in this market too.”
Vipal has recently relocated its representative office in Chile to new office facilities in the Ciudad Empresarial Huechuraba in Santiago. At the same time, the company’s storage and distribution operation has been sub-contracted to a third party logistics company. Vipal’s operation in Chile is part of the Brazilian manufacturer’s South Pacific Sales Region and is managed
by Regional Sales Manager Gilson Dugno. The Santiago office has 11 staff and caters to Chile, Peru and Bolivia. There is another office in Bogota, Colombia, also under Dugno’s control, which caters to Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador. According to Technical Sales Manager Diego Barbosa, Vipal’s main customer targets in Chile are retreaders but the company is also
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