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ESTONIA
have a tyre with 270 mm width, thеn we would not like to use tread with width 250 mm or 260 mm,” Juri said.
In general, it is clear that casings with narrow tread would have a lower mileage, according to Suurkuusk.
Hold the ground
In addition, Eurovia M retreads road grader tyres of sizes up to 14/24 and 17.5/25. Basically, the largest truck tyre retreaders in Estonia are not working with these sizes, so this niche almost entirely belongs to Eurovia M.
“The truth is that the Estonian retreading market is not that big, so almost everybody has his own segment and is trying to hold his ground. For this reason, retreaders sometimes have to be flexible in order to keep their customers. For example, we also cooperate with the municipal bus fleets, and when sometimes the actual mileage of our tyres appears to be below the declared figure, we can retread some tyres for free, although it is not very good for business,” Suurkuusk said.
In general, the retreaders in Estonia are in a weak position because competition for customers is fierce. As the result, the customers can expect some reimbursement even if something happens with retreaded tyres and there is no fault of retreaders. According to Juri, because of this situation clients often do not check pressure and do not bother maintaining tyres in proper condition, since they know that this is a “one-sided game”. “Unlike some others, we do not have this ‘infantile sickness’ of making as much as we can, and on every available casing. It is clear that it is better to make 5 retreaded tyres, but to make it in a really good way, than to make 10 tyres just for the sake of the quantity and then to retread 2 or 3 tyres free of charge in order to calm down an unhappy customer,” Suurkuusk said.
The price for retreaded tyres of 17.5/25 size is Eur430 and of 14/24 size is Eur380. In this segment, Eurovia M uses Nokian Industrial treads. The challenge is to find high-quality casings, but the company managed to overcome that, trading with several companies using road graders in their operations. There are two tread patterns, winter and summer, in this segment.
“To keep our customers, we are also offering free storage of their casings on our warehouse. This is a common thing when a customer has some casings in summer tread and he wants it to be retreaded later. There is no point in him
paying for retreading in advance, and so he can leave his casings at our warehouse, and we will retread them, for a specific date. This is comfortable for the customer and we can be sure, he will not go to our competitors,” Suurkuusk said. In past, the owners of the plant were keen to retread every tyre that could be put on an axle, even up to light truck tyres, but the years’ of experience “put ever ything in the right order”, as it appeared very soon that it is impossible to do everything and to be good at it, Suurkuusk added.
One important point for Eurovia M is a strict labeling system. The company puts labels on its
retreaded tyres in order to be able to trace their service life. In some cases, this approach allowed the company to retread one casing five times. According to Suurkuusk, for example, this was with some casings from the local municipal bus fleet.
“This means that every tyre has its own ID. There is information about when the tyre was manufactured, up to the day and week when it was retreaded. So, every tyre has its own file, and all work that has been done in its regard is reflected within. We keep these files for 10 years. We also keep all information about our equipment operations, such as autoclave pressure and so
on, throughout its service life,” Suurkuusk said.
Every year we have our equipment audited by the German company Prüflabor Nord GmbH. Before this audit we send two tyres to Prüflabor Nord GmbH for 47 hours long distance running tyre performance testing in accordance with the ECE – regulation 109.
Every day brings new challenges. For example, just recently transport companies from Estonia started facing some problems when operating in Norway. The Norwegian Transport department issued a law that all trucks on the road in winter period should use winter tyres with special mark –
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