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COMPANY NEWS
Grupo Soledad Continues to Develop Circular Economy Concept
In the last issue of Retreading Business we reported on some of the investments currently being made at the Spanish retreader Insa Turbo. However, Insa’s
intelligent strategy of diversification.
Today Grupo Soledad, whose headquarters are in Elche, near Alicante has a turnover of 350
operates four different segmented retail networks, Confort Auto, Black Tire, Ecological Drive and FixCar. The first of these, Confort Auto, is the Group’s premium network, consisting of 700 outlets, which focuses on Hankook as its key brand, and which operates the Group’s online sales business. Black Tire,
own factory.
This brings us onto Insa Turbo’s retread manufacturing plant at Aspe, which over the years has developed into much more than a retread facility. Fuelled by the company’s own biomass plant, the Aspe site houses several related recycling businesses, which process the thousands of
strategy to increase sales of its retread products is only half the story, and in this issue we wanted to focus on the parent company, Grupo Soledad, and how the family-owned operation has evolved from its original status as a tyre distributor and retreader to its current position as a multi-faceted group of companies, which remains a major player in the tyre and rubber sector, but which successfully leverages its position
million Euros and employs 1,100 people across its various businesses, which in addition to its original businesses of tyre distribution and retreading, now includes rubber compounding, engineering, tyre recycling and fleet services as well as more diverse businesses such as an IT Consultancy, an insurance company, a travel agency, a construction company and an almond plantation.
Today, the Group’s position as a
at the heart of the Circular Economy. The Group’s success serves as an excellent example of how retreaders can guarantee a successful future through an
retreader and recycler is effectively supported by its tyre distribution arm, which makes up Southern Europe’s largest tyre distribution business. The Group
consisting of around 1,000 outlets, is a midrange network boasting Nexen as its key brand. Ecological Tyre is a niche network of 50 outlets developed to promote Insa Turbo retreads, whilst FixCar (120 outlets) is specifically targeted at car dealers.
The vast majority of these outlets are independently owned outlets, but the Group does own 80 stores of its own and is aiming to increase this to 100 in the near future. Around 30 stores within the Group’s networks operate as specialist truck service centres, promoting Hankook, Sailun and Kelly branded new tyres as well as Insa Turbo’s own mould cure retreads as well as Vipal precure retreads manufactured in Insa’s
tonnes of End-of-Life tyres which flow through the company’s gates.
Firstly, there is the company’s well-established retread plant, which currently produces 200,000 passenger retreads per year, 180,000 4x4 tyres, 50,000 truck retreads (evenly split between mould cure and precure) and 20,000 other tyres including agricultural and OTR retreads. Like all companies who have been involved in passenger retreading, production used to be much higher, but in 2000, when it became clear that managing a tyre recycling business that only did retreads was unsustainable, the company decided to expand into other recycling activities, whilst constantly looking for
38 Retreading Business