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URUGUAY
“We also control tyre pressures for our clients and advise on higher pressures and ongoing pressure monitoring in order to optimise fuel economy as well as to optimise safety.
“We don’t manufacture a huge quantity of tyres,” he concludes, “but we do try to do our best to ensure quality of product and service.”
According to Ghiringelli, the
company may well be prepared to invest in equipment in the future to expand and upgrade its retread production facility. Indeed, the company has additional warehousing space at its disposal where the plant could theoretically be relocated, but he emphasised any such move would be dependent on market conditions.
not only down to this – it’s also partly down to the economy. Nonetheless, he believes that the market lost can potentially be regained but does not know
with the Chinese.
“We believe it’s important to get the customer not to think about the initial cost of a retread,” he concluded. “We want them to
Recomer Invests in Quality
Vipal retreader Recomer, based in Mercedes, a small town of 40,000 people on the banks of the Rio Negro river in the west of Uruguay, is unusual because, unlike the other leading players in the Uruguayan retread market, the company has not
Despite this approach, Labadie agrees that it is difficult to sell the concept of quality. “The answer,” he says, “is to make sure that our salesmen know the product and that the client knows that they are being offered the best option. We also
Recomer are proud of their new Vipal Smart Duo buffer
really expanded into new tyre distribution.
Instead, the company has focused its resources on investing in its retreading facility with a view to proactively selling the concept of quality retreading. This has most recently included the purchase of a Vipal Smart Duo buffer, one of the first retreaders in South America to do so.
“We are proud to be the only retreader in Uruguay working exclusively with Vipal,” says Recomer owner Mauricio Labadie. “This is important to us as we believe Vipal are the best in the business. We believe that quality is the key to success in the retreading industry, and in the importance of investing in better products – not in chasing lower prices.”
focus on the importance of the environment and tr y not to let people forget the role that retreads play in this.
“We are helped by the fact that Recomer has a strong knowledge base,” he adds. “For example, our factory manager Luis Cabrera has been with the company for 42 years. There is a great deal of experience among the employees at the plant. We are also helped by Vipal who regularly send their technicians, whilst we also send technicians to Vipal’s technical centre in Nova Prata, Brazil.
Recomer currently produces around 1,200 tyres per month on average, but they used to make around 1,800. This situation, says Mauricio Labadie, is partly due to the impact of Chinese tyres, but it’s
for certain.
In terms of the company’s aims, Mauricio Labadie says that they will need many things to make the business work. They will need to invest in technology, invest in service, and focus on the importance of the environment also. The control of dumping will also be important, he adds, but calls on tread producers to help them compete
think about issues such as quality and the lowest cost per kilometre. With that in mind, we are trying to persuade clients to invest in good quality new tyres. Meanwhile, the investments we are making make us believe that retreading really has a future.
Mauricio Labadie and his team at Recomer
16 Retreading Business