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PORTUGAL
António Ramôa, general manager (left),
and Rui Fernandes, the company sales manager (right)
Recauchutagem Ramôa
North Africa, Central America and the North of Spain. “We are looking to develop our service in the North of Spain as it is easily within the scope of our transport operation. The difficulty that we have is over the legal status of the casings we import or export. Since they are classified as waste we face barriers to importing. Elsewhere, we find that there are often trade barriers that make exporting retreads difficult.” Said Fernandes. Other challenges for the company are, as always, competing with low priced Chinese tyres and the draw on casings by the main tyre manufacturers for their own operations. However, Ramôa is operating with Continental to provide a regional retread service to the tyre manufacturer. So Conti Tread is another brand that the company utilises in its
acted upon.
“Of course we lost some customers who were themselves victims to the crisis, but we have always been careful and watchful and we have managed to remain sustainable. The firm is growing, little by little.”
Fernandez adds, “In general terms the market has been looking for a lower quality product. There has been an increase in focus on low cost solutions. However, we maintain our quality operation.
“Ecovalor (the regional tyre collection service) supply our casings, we carry out the inspections and Ecovalor take away the unsuitable casings. This is all part of the valorisation process for waste tyres. The rejected casings get sold to the recycling sector.”
The two issues that cause some
Recauchutagem Ramôa is a regional retreader based in the north of Portugal with its head office and warehouse in Palmeira, Braga. Ramôa has eight retail outlets plus a fuel station that serve as outlets for the company’s own retreaded tyres. However, the bulk of truck tyre business is nowadays done through fleet contracts.
Retreading Business met with António Ramôa, general manager, and Rui Fernandes, the company sales manager at the company head office in Palmeira. The company was begun by Manuel Ramôa, now 85 years old and still visiting the business every day to keep an eye on things. Currently, in its third generation, there are high hopes that the fourth generation of the family will eventually step into the business. “Ramôa has been in retreading for almost 50 years,” said António. “We became a Marangoni agent back in 2000 and for the past six years we have been working largely with the Ringtread operation. Two years ago we bought a top quality shearography machine from Marangoni and we now focus on producing top quality tyres.” Rui Fernandes pointed out, “There is a constant demand for price and a move away from quality in the market. However, we believe that offering quality products at the right price will win in the long term. Since we do most of our business in Portugal with fleet contracts working
on a whole life tyre approach, we sell new tyres and retreads, and when we show that there are long term savings due to better mileage through managed tyres, then the tendency to buy retreads from us is much stronger”
The average fleet size is somewhere between 60 and 100 trucks but there are one or two larger operations and of course many smaller operations. However the recession has hit hard and many small and medium firms have closed, and some still running are stretching the use of their tyre stock through either running them into the ground or using spare tyres from laid up vehicles.
Ramôa retreads mostly with Marangoni materials for both hot and cold processes. António Ramôa explains, “We know that the market is price sensitive, but our customers are quality sensitive, so we use a high percentage of Marangoni materials across the range of tyres we produce. We also use some supplies from Portuguese sources and a little Vipal for special treads or uses. We are not the cheapest around, but our customers appreciate the quality of our product.”
With Ramôa being based in the North of Portugal with regional outlets serving the local market one might imagine that this was their market. That would not be entirely wrong, but the company also exports to a number of customers in Europe,
portfolio. In
conjunction with the
Conti package Ramôa
now has three agents;
two in Portugal and
one in Madeira. “The
contract gives us
security in
manufacturing and
also makes us a
reseller of
Continental tyres.
Selling Conti helps
build consistency in
the whole life tyre
management
operation.
What does the future
hold for Ramôa in a
depressed market with
retreading in recession.
“We are holding steady,” said Fernandes, “but we are working to develop increased fleet business and we expect to increase our exports. It is important to produce a high quality retread to meet the quality market. Our biggest foreign market is France, but we are always looking for opportunities in new markets.” António Ramôa adds, “We are looking at tyre life management. We want to try and take the tyre management issues away from the fleets, they can concentrate on their business and we can keep their tyres managed at an optimum level that benefits the client, the environment and of course Ramôa.”
It is hard to avoid the term in Portugal, but the economic crisis of course comes into almost any conversation, this was no different. “The economy today is not so good,” says António Ramôa, “but there are benefits as well as constraints. The obvious benefit is that competitors have closed as they were over extended financially, sometimes with their suppliers and by their clients. Ramôa is 100 per cent self funded, we owe no-one anything and that helped us avoid that element of the crisis, and whilst others vanished, there opened up sales opportunities that we
It should be noted that housekeeping is a top priority at Ramôa. The firm had just an hour or so notice of our visit and had no time to clean and polish the equipment before Retreading Business arrived. This is, despite the appearance, a working retread plant
annoyance to retreaders such as António Ramôa, are the questions of used tyres and fuel transport. The former is concerned with the uncontrolled import and sales of used tyres. There are no safety inspection standards and the sellers very often don’t pay VAT or recycling fees, but there is a sector of the market that will buy used tyres because they are perceived to be cheaper, though in fact they rarely are.
The fuel transport issue is one that is unique to Portugal. Retreaded tyres are banned from use on fuel transporters. There is no logic to the argument, for the common perception that retreads delaminate in use has been shown to be a myth by the US NHTSA and in fact where there are separations the mix is almost half and half with new tyres. Plus, if the tyres are managed properly, then failures become very rare anyway. António Ramôa adds, “there is no logic, retreads can carry all sorts of other precious goods and people, but they have drawn this line at fuel transport. We have been lobbying Valorpneu to push the government for a change in that law to bring us into line with the rest of Europe.”
30 Retreading Business