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PORTUGAL
Fedima – Portugal’s Largest Retreader
countries, including France and the UK. The biggest export market is France but exports go to some 30 different countries.
The key to this success? Carlos Marques works hard and lives, eats and breathes retreading. His wife and two daughters work in the company offices. Carlos Marques knows his business inside out. He adapts to meet the markets. He juggles cleverly at all the levels of retreading that he is involved with. Touring the factory one could not help but notice that there has been a continuous development of both processes and equipment. There is a huge MGT OTR buffer – now manufactured and sold by Italmatic - the Marangoni Shearography machine, a Ringtread operation, Black Dragon twin tyre builder, multiple autoclaves and more. The warren of buildings, stacked full of tyres and equipment is a hive of activity from tyre stocking through to final testing and dispatch.
retreaded in Europe, sometimes, if they chuck out a block of tread they will not even be repaired. However, it is possible to retread agricultural casings, and by and large this has been done manually, laying on individual tread blocks. The end result is not pretty, but it serves a purpose and meets a demand. Earthmover tyres either tend to be built using an orbitread and moulded in huge hot cure moulds, or retreaded with precure section by the cold process. Fedima is in the process of changing that.
On a trip to Peru, Carlos Marques met up with Peruvian retread materials supplier Indelband. Fedima now imports precure tread bands for earthmover and agricultural tyres and this latest development places Fedima in a position where it can offer almost any solution in retreading up to 49 inch diameter, in four different patterns.
Tyres using the Indelband tread are
Carlos Marquez with the showroom of currently available tyre ranges from Fedima
Fedima is the brand of Recauchutagem 31, a long established retreader based in central Portugal on the outskirts of Alcobaça. It would be fair to say that the company has grown from its original 400 square metre factory on the hillside to something considerably larger that has evolved above, to the side and around the original building. The plant is a maze of operations, storerooms, and even has a staff car park, set between the pillars that house the Fedima showroom. The site is an example of old fashioned step by step development. Despite its appearance of chaos, the plant produces some 600 tyres per day, making it one of the busiest in the countr y.
The company started in 1969 and now produces passenger car and light truck, 4x4 retreads by hot cure, truck and bus by hot and precure,
agricultural by hand building, though this is changing, and earthmover by precure, plus earthmover by hand building. Carlos Marquez, the Chief Executive of this family business makes a point in starting our visit with a visit to the showroom. Outside there is a sign that says Fedima has the widest range of retreads in the world. When the lights come on in the showroom the claim certainly looks like it might stand up. There is everything here from car and light truck, through various motorsport specialities, to truck and bus and earthmover and agricultural. Carlos talks about the range with pride and knows in great detail what his company manufactures and sells. No mean challenge with a range as wide as Fedima’s.
Today some 60 per cent of Fedima production is exported and the company has agents in various
Rather than describe the retread processes that readers are all familiar with there will be a focus on two slightly different areas of retreading.
Agricultural tyres are not always
prepared as per normal, gum applied and the precure tread fitted and stitched. However, rather than use envelopes for curing in a vacuum, the tyre is wrapped with a ratchet belt that applies even
The MGT 63 buffer, now provided by Italmatic, going through the cutting process with a hand build earthmover tyre