Leiden, The Netherlands – The European retread industry’s trade association Bipaver has called EU regulators to take action against the increasing flow of cheap truck tires imports into the region.
The Chinese tire industry has been dumping truck tires in the European marketfor the last five years,according to an8 June statement from Bipaver.
“Today, the prices of most of their products sold in the EU-28 have fallen below the manufacturing costs of retreaded truck tires,” the trade association added.
According to Bipaver, the European Commision has informed the association that it cannot defend the industry due to “lack of legislation for this specific situation within the retread industry”.
According to the association, market conditions for retreaders have worsened over the last year mainly due to an increase of anti-dumping regulations in the US.
Cheap imports have increased from one million truck tires to nearly 5 million units over the past five years, in a total European truck tire replacement market of nearly 10 million units.
Retreading, meanwhile, has experienced a decrease from six million to around 4 million truck tires, said Bipaver.
“Retreaded truck tires provide sustainability to the life cycle of tires…Tire retreading is performed under strict legislation and technical regulations. In general, retreading companies have a limited economic trading range of a few hundred kilometres and are therefore limited to trade within the EU-28,” noted the organisation which represents more than 400 small and medium size retreading companies.
In conclusion, Bipaver “strongly” advised Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrøm “to reassess what the EU can or cannot do in the coming weeks in order to establish a level playing field and safeguard our industry and its SMEs in particular."
Bipaver — Bureau International Permanents des Associates de Vendeurs et Rechaupeurs de pneumatiques — represents the national retreading associations and leading suppliers to the retreading industry from 10 member states of the EU: Czech Republic; Denmark; Finland; Germany; Italy; Netherlands; Portugal; Spain; Sweden; and the United Kingdom.
Originally formed in Switzerland in 1954 to represent the interests of both tire retreaders and retailers, Bipaver was restructured five years ago to represent the retreading industry exclusively.
The Tire Retread and Repair Information Bureau is an associate member of Bipaver.
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