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SLOVENIA
Protect Trade – Slovenian Market Leader
product at the bottom end of the market. We have built this business based on quality, and therefore we only offer quality retreads. Recamic is our main brand, but in today’s climate we need more flexibility, and we have to also offer alternative treads. We have tried some of the cheaper brands, but we have not been satisfied that they offer the quality.”
All Protect Trade’s production is now pre-cure truck tyres, and the factor y has some uniquely designed features such as a dual loading monorail. The autoclaves are arranged in line with the doors facing each other, and the monorail slides into position between the autoclaves so that good time management will see one being loaded and the other unloaded and the monorail slid back into the system to allow a reload of the now empty autoclave.
The production of retreads is familiar to anyone in the business. It is the details that make the difference. Tyres are followed through the system using an RFID system. A small chip embedded in the shoulder of the tyre records the tyre’s movement through the process, and details ever y task carried out on the tyre, by whom, and for how long, so the exact cost of each tyre is known at the end of its production.
The tyres are laser engraved before
hardware and the software for their own machine.
Of course, ever y casing is brought in from the yard and dried and warmed before retreading, and ever y tyre goes through the Intact Shearography machine. Any tyre that fails is scrapped.
Protect Trade does a lot of fleet management work and is working to develop better tools to help manage tyres on fleet vehicles. “We can currently give fleet owners full reports on ever y vehicle that we service,” adds Ales Gabersek.
The main market for Protect Trade lies in the internal Slovenian market. Gabersek comments, “We have a major share of the Slovenian market. Last year we produced 9,000 tyres, 90 per cent of which were premium retreads. “The total Slovenian retread market is 21,000 units per year, of which we have almost fifty per cent of the market share. The rest of the retreads come from a couple of retreaders and direct from the tyre manufacturers own retread operations.”
The industr y in Slovenia does face some challenges. The ubiquitous Chinese tyre issue has only recently started to have an impact in Slovenia, but after a period of economic contraction in an industr y where companies were restricted on expenditure the much-predicted climb out of austerity brings with it new
Protect Trade is a Recamic retreader based in Šentjur, Slovenia, a small town close to the main East-West motorway linking the capital, Ljubljana and one of the country’s largest cities,
materials brought in from Marangoni in 1988. By 1995 the firm’s capacity was 500 passenger car tyres per day and so had already taken a step towards dominating the Slovenian market.
Protect Trade’s head office, factory and warehouse facility represents the modern approach that the company has taken to gain its dominant market position
Protect Trade recently upgraded its shearography equipment with an Intact machine. Every casing entering the plant is inspected before being retreaded, or rejected
Ales Gabersek (right) discusses with Marangoni’s Dan Brichta the finer details of the retreading process
Maribor, and Austria to the North, and not far from the main highway to Zagreb in Croatia to the South.
So, whilst not at the heart of the communications network, it is close to main routes and larger towns, giving Protect Trade access to the whole Slovenian market. Begun in 1981 by Milan Gabersek, the business started off with some tyre repairs and selling small quantities of tyres. Seeing the shortage of tyres at that time, Milan started out making car tyre retreads using machinery and
Then, in 1998 Michelin approached the company and, liking the quality orientated ethos of Protect Trade, entered into a Recamic partnership with the firm.
Although a long standing Recamic retreader and being tied to Michelin quality and Michelin products, Protect Trade still maintains an ongoing relationship with Marangoni, even though the volumes may be low.
Ales Gabersek, one of the two sons working in the business says, “We do not offer a low-quality
leaving the factory, and here the expertise of the technicians at Protect Trade starts to break cover. The Laser engraver is not an off the shelf product. It has been built in-house using commercially available components. The saving runs into thousands of Euros, and, perhaps more importantly, Protect Trade have control of the
challenges.
During the economic crisis hauliers made do with the trucks and trailers they had. They cannibalised tyres from mothballed trucks and trailers to keep their working fleet on the move at a minimal cost. As the economy is improving, the hauliers are starting to spend
22 Retreading Business