Hankook expands European R&D team with new appointment

ERJ staff report (RD)

Neu-Isenburg, Germany -- Hankook Tire has appointed Claus Oberbeck as its new head of development in the company's European research and development centre, the ETC (European Technical Center), in Langenhagen near Hannover, Germany.

Oberbeck will be in charge of directing development activities of the ETC, including the areas of original equipment and compound development as well as EU regulations, a 10 March Hankook statement said.

With over 6 years of experience in tyre development departments, Oberback most recently headed an international project to develop state-of-the-art UHP (ultra-high-performance) tyre concepts and put them into production.

Hankook's engineering team at the ETC has now expanded to 40 members, working on developing customised solutions for the European tyre market that can be produced at the company's manufacturing plant in Hungary.

“Thanks to our in-house research and production operations in Europe, we are already able to deliver on customers requests more quickly and efficiently than many of our competitors,” said Jin-Wook Choi, head of European tyre manufacture at Hankook. “The top-level qualifications of our tyre engineers and developers have formed the core of our business and help ensure that our European customers will be able to continue to benefit from the high quality of our products,” he added.

Despite the economic crisis, Hankook said it has achieved record global sales in 2009 and has seen strong growth in demand on the European market, in particular in the OEM business.

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Press release listing from Hankook Tire