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Preparing a tyre for the VMI extruder at Blotech
necessarily the best and most profitable business to be in,” he admits, “but it’s the best way of knowing what’s happening in the fleet – so it’s not just profit that’s under consideration, it’s the contact with the fleet that’s important.”
He also has an open-minded view on how to approach fleets regarding the viability of following a retread policy. “A fleet’s return on its assets are critically important,” he explains, “in particular the time it takes to achieve that return. The speed of return depends on the time taken to use up the assets, so big fleets can see the return on their assets quickly. For many, the time taken to get a return on their investment could easily be 4-6 years if they follow a retread policy. More than half of fleets are in a position where they don’t know where they are going to be in 6 years’ time, which is why the total cost of ownership argument is often superfluous when it comes to selling retreads.”
Eduardo Convalia’s solution to this problem is twofold. Firstly, since the acquisition of the plant, he has been investing in technology, and in particular in information technology to control sales and production. The company has developed its own management system, so factory manager Luis Oyarce can see immediately what is happening in the plant.
The second part of the solution is to develop a diversification plan, which allows the company to provide a wide range of services to fleets, not just in retreads, but in new tyres as well. The company is currently looking at opportunities the enter new tyre business, the idea being to develop this in parallel with the growth of the retread plant.
“The strategy,” says Convalia, “is to have a world leading brand plus a couple of budget brands, in order to cover all sectors of the market. Our plan is to test three leading
brands and then choose one of them. That choice will be based on cost per kilometre values.
“We believe the leaders in tyre technology are losing opportunities because they are not able to produce cheap tyres to compete with the leaders of the cheap segment. We would prefer to have one supplier to cover all segments, but this, unfortunately, does not exist.”
In addition to moving into new tyres, Blotech have also been looking at new technologies, particularly technology relating to tyre inflation. In researching this topic, the company carried out a project in conjunction with six major fleets to gather inflation data, and discovered that tyres in those fleets were, on average, 12 Psi below recommended values. Blotech is now working with Ventech from Germany and Haltec from USA. Ventech system can calculate in seconds tyre pressure, tyre tread, axle load and total vehicle weight by evaluating thousands of data and relates them to the vehicle's license plate, or RFID tagging. These are sent to a database and, therefore, allow an analysis with traceability. With inflation equipment provider Haltec, the aim is to create change in attitude to tyre inflation. “If the country can sort out the problem of air pressures, we will save a huge amount of money,” he says. Blotech’s long-term aim is to become the leader in retreading in Chile, both in terms of quantity and quality. The company’s overall production target is 2,500 tyres per month, but Convalia admits that they are still some way away from achieving this, even though they have the capacity. “We need improvements in the economy and are waiting for the concentration of industry as a result of new investments,” he added. “When that starts to happen, then we will start to move forward.”