Page 24 - RB97

RUSSIA
Mandatory Tyre
Labeling to Help the Russian Retreading Market
since the beginning of the experiment in 2018. Labels do not stick to the tyre when the stocks are labeled in the cold season in warehouses without heating, which entails the loss of the individual code during transportation or shipment between market participants. At the same time, there is simply no single working system for restoring these labels," the company said.
The new system is expected to
introduce full traceability on the market. During the past few years, several retreaders in Russia have complained about unscrupulous plants releasing poor quality production onto the market. When these products fail, they can spoil the image of the entire Russian retreading
industry.
As explained by Alexander Kuprikov, technical director of the Moscow-based Tyre Retreading Plant, numerous tyre
retreading plants have been opened in different parts of Russia in the 2000s, and almost every year, some of those facilities are put up for sale as an unprofitable business.
"These companies fail to generate profit because they run on some poor-quality equipment, commonly have non-educated stuff, and use raw materials taken from God-knows-where. So, it is happening regularly that when a truck owner decides to take a chance on retreading, he places an order at some unscrupulous company and ends up with his tyres blowing right on the road, incurring him higher costs than he would have to bear opting for new premium tyres right from the beginning," Kuprikov explained.
Some market participants hope that tyre labeling will make their lives easier.
"We have a company running a retreading line in our region, releasing products with inferior quality on the market. The thing is that they take advantage of some partial anonymity, selling tyres through some small-scale shops. Our market is rather small, and when one makes a mistake, it casts a shadow on the entire business. I really hope that the labeling will help customers to separate the wheat from the chaff," said a source in the Russian retreading industry who wished not to be named.
The Russian government has finally prohibited selling unlabeled tyres in a bid to improve transparency on the market. The move is likely to improve the image of retreaded tyres, as fewer poor quality
to the lack of the necessary IT infrastructure. It is believed the entire Russian tyre industry has been working hard throughout 2020 to prepare for the reform, but the coronavirus epidemic thwarted these plans.
retreads are expected to land on the market.
Marking tyres with a unique DataMatrix code in Russia became mandatory from November 1, 2020. Market participants were ordered to get rid of stocks of unlabeled tyres by March 1, 2021.
As explained by the Russian authorities, it was expected that the mandatory tyre labeling would help buyers to purchase only high-quality goods and report illegal products to regulatory authorities through a special mobile application Honest Sign.
In the application, information about the introduction of tyres into circulation, turnover, and withdrawal from circulation can be found.
The reform has not passed without a hitch, though. According to Cordiant, as of late 2020, nearly 70% of market participants in the wholesale and retail chain were not ready for the mandatory tyre labeling due
Cordiant noted that there were a number of factors that complicated the mandatory labeling introduction. For example, from 20 to 50% of the labels fall off
the tyres when they labeled at the production site, and the picture is even worse when the labels are used in retail outlets.
"The problem with the lack of adhesion between the adhesive layer on the label and the tyre is currently not solved by anyone on the market: research [on this] has been carried out
24 Retreading Business