Page 40 - RB-105-2023-2

COUNTRY
REPORT - BAHRAIN
The most important factors that affected the tyre retreading industry in Bahrain in the beginning were the low quality of precured rubber used by some retreaders, badly trained tech- nicians, the low price of new Chinese tyres prices and finally poor-quality repair materials,” he continued.
According to Ayoub, a key milestone that positively impacted the Bahraini retread market was the lack of new tyre stocks during the Coronavirus pandemic coupled with the ready availability of raw materials at the retreaders, which helped in- crease the production and sale of retreads dramatically.
MARKET OVERVIEW
Most of the retreaders in Bahrain, are using the cold process. The main suppliers to the market are from India, although Trisons regular raw materials suppliers are from Turkey, Ma- laysia and India. “I bought the machines from China and raw materials from Malaysia, explained Ayoub, “and you can’t im- agine how much the first curing was a dream comes true for me.” The factory is built over an area of four hundred square metres, in addition to two warehouses. Ninety percent of the equipment is from China, with the rest coming from India and South Africa.
“We have a dynamic and professional team,” he continued. “Our technicians are all from ex-Bandag dealers in Africa and India. There is no support from our suppliers at all, and we depend on our previous experience.
“Our production line has one buffer, and we do not have an ul- trasonic inspection machine, depending on the inspection ca- pabilities of our experienced technicians. Producing over eight thousand tyres every year, we succeed in covering the needs of the big fleets that we serve, both in terms of quantities ordered and quality. Our claims due to technical defects is less than one percent, and we concentrate thoroughly on decreasing this percentage.”
FOCUS ON CUSTOMER VISITS
We asked Ayoub about Trison’s marketing activities. “Due to the fact that the prices of new Chinese tyres are very cheap and that customers neglect the fact that cheap tyres are also subject to defect, they always blame retreaded tyres only. We overcome that challenge by making more visits to customers to explain the environmental and cost benefits of tyre retread- ing. Occasionally I seek the expertise of well-known characters from the retreading field to come and give tyre lectures to my staff and the responsible people at the end users. We also do training on the technical knowledge of tyres, retreading and repairing for our customers’ technicians and offer a free tyre mounting and dismounting service to our end users.
“With regards to our purchase of retreadable casings, we buy them from truck tyre shops and casing dealers. We also coor- dinate with the premium quality tyre distributors to urge their end users to retread their tyres with us,” added Ayoub. “We are trying to influence the concept of buying new tyre’s according to their retreadability.
The next major challenge for Trisons is to gain a foothold in the public sector transport fleets in Bahrain. At present, Bahraini Public Sector Transport fleets do not retread their tyres, whilst sixty percent of the private sector transport companies deliver their tyres for retreading. “I believe,” added Ayoub, “that our next step is to demonstrate to government officials the ben- efits of tyre retreading to be able to deliver service to those fleets.
“My Mission is to reach all customers to solve their transport problems and reduce their costs,” he concluded.
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