Tyres Europe urges EU regulators to support “strategic” tire & rubber sector

Cologne, Germany – Tyres Europe is calling on EU regulators to support the region’s tire manufacturing industry in dealing with ever increasing pressures linked to a continous flow of new EU regulations, disadvantaged production costs and undercutting by low-cost, less regulated competitors overseas.

Europe’s tire manufacturing industry contributes about €44 billion to EU GDP – supporting around 500,000 jobs directly and indirectly, across now 70 manufacturing plants and supporting facilities, Adam McCarthy, secretary general of the industry association, said in a presentation at the recent The Tire Cologne expo.

However, “the industry is in crisis at the moment,” with nine major tire plant closures across the EU in the past 18-24 months, impacting more than 5,000 jobs directly and many thousands more indirectly, the Tyres Europe leader set out at the event held 9-11 June, in Cologne, Germany.

“We are seeing increasing numbers of imports coming into the market,” added McCarthy, while noting last year’s five-year extension of EU anti-dumping duties on truck & bus tires from China, as well as an imminent decision on anti-dumping duties for Chinese-made passenger  car tires.

But EU tire makers, he insisted, need much broader support from regulators – starting with a recognition of the criticality of the industry and its products to the EU economy as well as of the need for a level playing field with competitors when it comes to regulation & enforcement.

In particular, lawmakers should “position the tire as a critical end-product, and the manufacture of tires in Europe as a strategic sector to ensure “ready access to a product [tires] which is critical not only to our mobility but is also to our prosperity and increasingly our security.”

To safeguard the future of tire production in Europe, McCarthy urged “policies that ultimately reduce the cost of production, particularly energy costs, and also support the uptake of higher performance tires that can have a “huge positive impact” for road safety and the environment.

And, while backing new & emerging EU sustainability & circularity rules, McCarthy stressed the need for more effective enforcement of regulation: “There’s no point in having a fantastic regulatory framework if we’re actually unable to enforce those rules or ensure a level playing field.”

“Impactful” legislation

McCarthy went on to discuss the details of EU legislation being introduced or under discussion, including the Ecodesign Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) – a framework legislation for setting efficiency and sustainability requirements for many products.

Tires have emerged as the third priority – after steel, and textiles – for regulators in drawing up the ESPR, with requirements such as minimum content of recyclate and bio-based content as well as rules around reuse and refurbishment on the cards.

Further ESPR requirements on tires could range from providing information about the environmental footprint of manufacturing to detailing the presence of substances of concern.

This will be “very impactful” to the industry, telling all tire manufacturers that if they

want to place a tire on the European market they have to achieve these rules, the Tyres Europe leader told the audience in Cologne.

“We are in the middle of a process where the European Commission is working with external consultants to really come up with some proposals,” reported McCarthy, who expects the ESPR requirements on tires to emerge over the next 12 months or so.

For its part, Tyres Europe has called on the EC to ensure that “in setting rules around eco design, we are not negatively impacting some of the other tire properties.” It also warns against ‘double-regulation’, so that ESPR does not cut across existing pieces of legislation, such as Euro 7.

“Clear and standardised definitions” are also critical, continued McCarthy: “If we have to have X percent of sustainable material in a tire, we all need to agree on the definition of a sustainable material.”

Also essential is a “practical and enforceable” reporting framework: “There’s no use, again, in creating legislation if we are not able to enforce it, or if we are not able to make sure that tires being placed on the market comply with the legislation.”

Game-changer

An even bigger game-changer, perhaps, is the Euro 7 regulation, which for the first time regulates emissions from tire abrasion, McCarthy noting that this is the first time anywhere in the world that such standards are being set.

“We now have an abrasion threshold set for passenger car tires that has been agreed at the United Nations in Geneva and those thresholds will be transposed into European legislation within the next six months,” the industry leader reported.

Regulators have adopted a two-stage approach: setting limits for stage one, and then, five years later, introducing reductions of the thresholds – with some specific allowances for certain tire types. Measurement of tire wear will be via either a road-test method or laboratory/drum test method, both included in the UN agreement. 

McCarthy went on to detail other pieces of EU legislation in the pipeline that will have significant impact on the tire industry, among them moves to amend the tire label regulation.

A Tyres Europe-commissioned study found that tire labels have not produced the hoped-for shift in consumer behaviour, with buyers still very much focused in the [lower] C and the D class of the market.

On yet another front, widely used tire-rubber anti-oxidant 6PPD is going through a reclassification as a substance, particularly in terms of its harm characteristics, according to McCarthy.

But of more significance, he said, is a process started under the EU’s REACH chemicals safety legislation which will essentially ban the use of 6PPD in tires.
Indeed, he said, “the only question to be answered is about how long will we have to phase out the use of 6PPD. The industry is asking for 11 years, but it could be five years; it may be eight years.”

Overall, though, within the next 10 years or so, the use of 6PPD in tires is going to be restricted in the EU and [legislation] will probably move more quickly than certainly other jurisdictions, including the US.

Also on the association’s priority list, is to ensure that the EU’s digital product passport scheme “makes sense, that the information within it is achievable and that it also works with existing pieces of legislation.”