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BULGARIA
Stock ready for distribution at Vanina
contests, although these cases were more like experiments, than a real business.
Just like Medina Med, Vanina Export started the operation of its retreading plant in partnership with Kraiburg, although in recent years it had to switch to other suppliers of raw materials.
“There are strong differences between the tyre market in our capital, Sofia, and in the provinces. Generally speaking, in Sofia business is slightly wealthier, so transport companies could pay slightly more for a retreaded tyre. In the provinces, the price matters and the price, in fact, is critical above all other considerations, so we had to reduce the share of raw materials purchased from Kraiburg in recent years, to use not such premium brands in our production cycle,” Bagerov admitted.
Kraiburg once was very strong in Bulgaria, before the current crisis with the Chinese tyres took the market down. Bagerov recalled that to a large extend that was thanks to Slavy Gerkov, his close friend, who was the senior salesman of Kraiburg in past and who put a lot of efforts into cooperation with retreaders. He was organising training, business meetings and had good relationships with almost everyone in the industry, but, unfortunately, he passed away several years ago.
Casings are not an issue
When the retreading market in Bulgaria was in its peak it was not easy to find high-quality casings in the domestic market. Just like everywhere else in Eastern Europe, the communist regime left the country with roads in rather bad condition and the
absence of any culture of responsible tyre use. As a result, Bulgarian retreaders have to import most casings.
Vanina Export, in particular, used to import most casings from the United Kingdom, Bagerov
revealed. He said that his partners in the country have been offering him the best price, especially when ordering big shipments, however, those days are gone. “Today we are importing many fewer casings than before, only small shipments, primarily from France and Germany. In the past I used to go abroad myself to check the quality of casings, but now there is no need for that, because the shipments that we purchase are really small,” he said.
Medina Med is able to collect casings through its broad network of service centres located across the country in the major cities, including Stara Zagora, Sofia, Pazardzhik, Plovdiv, Burgas, Varna and others. Its central warehouse is located in Stara Zagora next to its retreading plant, and the
company delivers the casings, including agricultural, from all service centres there.
It is believed that Medina Med now is focused on working with the clients’ own casings. It has its own fleet of vans that is used to transport the used tyres from the service centres to the central warehouse, and after the retreading, back to clients. Vanina Export is also retreading tyres primarily “on request” on the casings of the clients, Bagerov said. With the current state of affairs at the domestic market there is no point to collect too many retreaded tyres at the warehouse, he added.
“Basically, we are working with all brands of European tyres”, Bagerov said. “Unlike some other retreaders we never retread