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BULGARIA
Dobrin Ivanov of Omnifak
from Avon’s production facilities in Turkey.
Since the very beginning Omnifak has been collecting casings in the European market, with up to 90 per cent being imported, primarily from Poland and Germany.
“We have a man who is in charge of casings’ collecting. He used to go abroad to find some casings with appropriate quality and the sizes that we could buy and sell. He has a great experience in tyres and can easily say if the casing is not fit for retreading. Although, not every time, some hidden defects can be seen with the naked eye, so when the casings come, we
domestically, but the main reason was the strong fall in demand for retreaded tyres in the Bulgarian market.
Darkest hour
Just several years ago Omnifak was retreading 14,000 truck tyres per year, cooperating with the big Bulgarian transport companies that were operating all over the European Union. However, everything changed when the Chinese products hit the market, as today nobody in Bulgaria is willing to deal with retreaded tyres, simply because it is not too
into the segment of winter tyres, where the position of economical Chinese brands is believed to be not so strong. And the transport companies in Bulgaria don’t have the same strong attitude to retread their used tyres in order to save the environment like, for example, in Finland.
Also, there is no environmental legislation that would obligate them to do it - at least not yet. In this regard, it is estimated that the combined operational performance in the industry dropped nearly tenfold in the period from 2013 to 2017, so today it is unlikely that Bulgaria produces more than 40,000 retreaded tyres per year.
Out of nearly 25 plants that were operating in the local market once, only 7 companies keep retreading nowadays, and even those who left are continuing only in the hope that one day things will return to the way they were.
Being ahead of the curve
Omnifak - one of the oldest and the largest retreading plants in Bulgaria – really does anticipate an imminent recovery in the domestic retreading market, according to Dobrin Ivanov, the company’s general manager. In 2017 its retreading division had produced 3,500 – 4,000 retreaded tyres, and that was roughly one third fewer than the company has the capacity to produce, Ivanov admitted.
The company was founded in 1992 from the small facility, that Ivanov describes as a “very small- size garage” where some fitting services were provided to private customers. The owners thought about expansion and have several ideas of where to invest their money to. As so often happens, everything changed by a chance.
“It is an interesting story. In 1994
one truck stopped on the road-side right next to our facility, because of problems with two tyres. The driver came up to our garage and asked us to help him, to do something with tyres because he couldn’t continue his journey and had no spare tyres. Those were the first two tyres that were repaired at our facility and it gave us an idea about the new business opportunities. We decided to closely study the issue of tyre repairs,” Ivanov said.
“At that time in Bulgaria it was almost impossible to find tube tyres and nobody in the market had been performing tyre repairs or retreading. Things started to change, as we started to look into the “trash”, and look what we could do, and it turned out that in some particular cases we can use casings to give a second life to the tyre and make some money from that. And as we were the first company in this niche, at that point we earned a lot of money”. In 1996 the company had started cooperating with Kraiburg, using its technology to launch its first retreading plant in Sofia, Bulgaria, Ivanov recalled. Omnifak had conducted some research into the market and figured out that the demand for the retreading service in the country’s capital was especially huge. That was the time, when after decades of communism the private business had been perking up and a lot of money had been invested by transport companies in new trucks. Omnifak keeps working with Kraiburg even now, purchasing primarily cushion rubber and some envelopes, although over these years the list of the raw material suppliers has been expanded with some other market players, including Marangoni and Avon. The company imports some materials under the brand Cooper
perform the incoming inspection. When we purchase the casings, we secure the right to reject them, in case, if during inspection some hidden flaws are revealed,” Ivanov explained.
At the same time, in recent years Omnifak has had to reduce the number of casings that it has been importing. To some extent this change could be attributed to the fact that the company has been able to collect more casings
attractive pricewise.
“In our order book, 95 per cent of
clients are Bulgarian transport companies, but most of them are not operating within Bulgaria, as they are handling transport flows either between the members of the European Union, or between Europe and China. We are located in Central Europe, so our truck companies are taking advantage from their geographical position,” Ivanov said.
Omnifak keep production going in the hope of an industry revival
46 Retreading Business