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KRAIBURG CONFERENCE
Hans-Jürgen Drechsler of the BRV
Michael Schwämmlein, Technical Consultant to BIPAVER
BRV and BIPAVER Initiate Pro-Retreading Activities
During the Kraiburg Retreading Summit it was revealed that BIPAVER, led by special impetus from the German Retreaders Association BRV, have been looking at the potential for carrying out a number of activities to promote retreading including an industry-wide PR campaign, potentially with pan-European reach,
in 2012, whilst figures for the first quarter of 2015 show a huge 13 per cent decline in retread sales against an overall truck market which is only 2 per cent down.
Interestingly, mould cure retread sales in the long haul sector are healthy, primarily due to the domination of the mould cure sector by the major
and a political initiative to introduce anti-dumping measures against the Chinese new tyre industry. These activities were described in detail by Hans-Jürgen Drechsler of the BRV and Michael Schwämmlein, Technical Consultant to BIPAVER.
The idea for a PR campaign for the retreading industry arose out of a BRV retreading meeting, which took place on 7 May in Frankfurt, where the current downward trend in the
tyre manufacturers, but all other sectors are showing decreases that border on crisis levels. Pre-cure sales in regional applications are over 20 per cent down.
According to Drechsler and Schwämmlein, the figures prompted German retreaders to ask the BRV what could be done to reverse the trend. The result was a two-pronged approach, in part in conjunction with BIPAVER, involving a PR campaign
groups for the campaign would be widespread, covering end users, tyre service providers, public agencies and organisations across the German transport and logistics sector.
From the outset the BRV accepted that such a campaign would not be cheap and therefore earmarked a budget of 100,000 Euros for the campaign, telling its members that each truck tyre retreader in Germany would need to pay 1,500 Euros to support the campaign. Amazingly (and commendably) the BRV has reported that as many as 45 of the country’s 60 retreaders have already committed to contributing to the campaign along these lines. The BRV notes that there are always those who refuse to contribute and then freeload afterwards so the Association is looking at the potential of introducing a quality label so that only those contributing can benefit.
In addition it has been taken for granted that the principal material manufacturers (and BRV mentions Kraiburg, Marangoni, Bandag and Recamic by name) will also contribute to the programme.
The BRV says it put out a tender out to two PR agencies with a deadline of 12 June and a commencement date for the campaign set for the beginning of 2016. The BRV suggests that, if successful, the idea could be
expanded to a European-wide campaign managed under the auspices of BIPAVER.
The other area that has been looked at by the BRV and BIPAVER, the analysis of potential anti-dumping actions, appears to be less promising, not least because such actions are only possible on a European level via the EU, but also because they are complex and time-consuming. There is also currently high political sensibility with regards to creating additional trade barriers, apart from which all EU anti-dumping proceedings have to be approved by the World Trade Organisation. According to Drechsler and Schwämmlein an initial informal exchange between BIPAVER and DG Trade was carried out in March. Feedback was generally positive, but lots of back up information is required if an anti-dumping action is to be initiated. In addition, the position of the new tyre manufacturers is not yet clear so BIPAVER’s expectations for the whole project are not that high. However, the Federation says it they will try anyway and has given a timeline of end of 2016- beginning of 2017 for the project.
German truck tyre retreading market was discussed.
Figures amalgamated from a number of sources (principally ETRMA, WdK and BRV) show that there was a huge increase in new truck tyre imports into Germany during 2014 – imports rose from 1.97 million to 3.22 million units. Although 2014 figures for the retread market show only relatively small decreases in the size of the retread market, retread share has now fallen to 35 per cent from 39 per cent
and an investigation into anti- dumping measures.
The proposed BRV PR campaign aims to focus on three areas – on the high quality mileage performance of retreads as type homologated products, on the importance of retreading in relation to environmental and resource-efficiency aspects, and finally on the demonstration of retreading as a modern, high-tech process, focussing on shearography, CTC etc. Target
52 Retreading Business