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SUSTAINABILITY IN FOCUS
Another area which came into focus during the conference was sustainability. “There are certainly opportunities for retreading with the increased focus on sustainability,” com- mented Dick Gust, “especially considering the increased at- tention of the tyre manufacturers to this topic.”
This trend was highlighted by the fact that one of the key speakers on Day 1 of the conference was Ana M Arce, Se- nior Manager Corporate Sustainability and Governance at Bridgestone Americas Inc, who talked in depth about Brid- gestone’s E8 Commitment, which emphasises the importan- ce of sustainability to everything that Bridgestone does. A key goal, said Arce, making a call to attendees to consider a purpose beyond increasing revenue, was for Bridgestone to be “a company that adds value to society and to customers.”
A regular part of the TIA OTR Tire Conference is the Econo- mic Forecasts provided by the Association on Day 2 of the event. The US Forecast this year was presented by Kevin Rohlwing and the Canadian one by Carol Hochu from TRAC
A key point of Rohlwing’s presentation was that most OTR markets are currently exhibiting flat growth. However, the- re are currently forecasts of a big decline in coal mining, offset by growth in the construction sector, particularly
CONFERENCE
REPORT
in multi-family housing construction and road and bridge construction.
Overall, said Rohlwing, there are enough markets exhibiting positive growth to offset the negative impact from those expected to contract. As such however, Rohlwing pointed out that dealers and retreaders with diversified customer bases would be best positioned to deal with these variations.
Last, but not least, another hot topic at the moment is au- tomation in both retreading factories and in terms of tyre service. This topics was dealt with in one of the breakout sessions on Day 3, in which Daniel Zeledon, President of Tesco-Italmatic LLC, gave a fascinating insight into some of the technological developments being made in robotics by Italmatic’s subsidiary company Go Energy Srl (now renamed Italmatic Robotics Srl). Zeledon highlighted the huge savings that can be made in terms of the resources employed in the tyre repair process by using the latest automated equipment. In the OTR sector, preparation work, agreed Zeledon, proba- bly makes up of in excess of the processing cost of retreading and repairing an OTR tyres. The latest robotics equipment, he said, can cut hours off preparation times, whilst also eli- minating pain points for operators in order to increase safe- ty, efficiency, productivity and profits.
“Automation will certainly play an increasing role in re- treading going forward, and will help towards the difficul- ties currently being experienced in getting labour,” said Dick Gust. “This is a natural evolution, but it will be interesting to see how small retreaders will handle the challenge.”
The 69th TIA Off-Road Tire Conference, will take place next February at the Red Rock Casino Resort Spa in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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