Page 14 - Retrading Business N102 2022-03

“Hankook pursues a comprehensive and holistic sustainability concept for its commercial vehicle tyres”
INTERVIEW
Hankook Reifen
why we offer Alphatread in the same quality throughout Europe, but from di- fferent production sites. We currently supply Germany and the neighbouring countries from Hamelburg. We have a contractor in the UK (Vaculug) for local needs, as well as plants in Italy, Spain and France covering the southern Eu- ropean market. Our goal is to offer Al- phatread with the same quality in all European markets and to increase the product range.
Which sectors do you currently supply with Alphatread products?
We want to develop and grow niches such as passenger transport and hea- vy-duty transport through the premium quality of our products. Currently we ha- ve five moulds for different dimensions.
With additional profiles and sizes, we want to cover about 80 percent of the hot retread market in the future. Our focus is on trailer tyres, tyres for classic construction site traffic and tyres for re- gional distribution transport - both for trucks and buses.
Sustainability is one of the main reasons for your positive expectations of the retrea- ding market. How do you quantify this?
Hankook pursues a comprehensive and holistic sustainability concept for its commercial vehicle tyres: Hankook SmartLife. Our equation is: longer life means more sustainability. We’re tal- king about the four lives of a commercial vehicle tyre. For the first life as a new tyre we equip it with a more voluminous undertread than usual. With this we
enable the second life - the regrooving of the profile. This alone extends the service life of a commercial vehicle tyre by around 25 percent. The Alphatread retread corresponds to the third life of a Hankook commercial vehicle tyre, which - in the fourth life - can be regrooved again. This also lengthens service life by 25 percent. All in all, we are talking about a service life - across all four lives - that is up to 250 percent longer than that of a standard tyre which is disposed of di- rectly. In terms of carbon footprint, the benefits are evident: With our approach, fleet operators save up to 1.6 tonnes of CO 2 per vehicle per year. With a saving of around 70 kilogrammes of raw mate- rial per vehicle, we are also relieving the strain on natural resources. It would be extremely hard to operate commercial vehicle tyres more sustainably.
P. 14