Positive impact expected from Bandvulc deal

Continental Tyre Group has “broadened its fleet offering” following the acquisition of leading truck tyre retreader and fleet management service provider Bandvulc Group.

The deal added Bandvulc’s retread production facility in Ivybridge, Devon, to Continental’s stable, as well as the fleet management portfolio of around one million wheels, 460 employees, five tyre servicing centres, 70 mobile fitting employees and three distribution facilities.

As a result of the deal, Arthur Gregg became integration manager at Bandvulc having previously spent 14 years at Continental.

He said: “Fleet is a crucial sector for Bandvulc in the UK.

“This acquisition broadens our offering so we can now look at fleets which expect a very tight turnaround on jobs.

“Another area where it helps us is when a fleet is running on competitor products and if that gets worn, we can now take that tyre case in and that can go through the Bandvulc process, which we couldn’t do before.”

The company said the acquisition is not expected to have an enormous impact on sales of the Continental-branded tyres, but it is thought it will have a marked effect further down the group’s brand tree.

An indication of this came in December 2016 when the company announced that its Uniroyal truck tyres would now be exclusively distributed by Bandvulc, whereas previously they had been distributed by a Kings Road Tyres subsidiary.

Gregg added: “We can now say to a fleet operator that we can give them a complete offering to take care of all of their requirements in one place.

“The concept of having a one-stop shop for tyres works well because most logistics companies have a range of forklifts, a lot of supermarkets have a range of vans, etc.”

Under the acquisition, which was announced in July last year, the current UK factory at Ivybridge will continue to offer retreads in both ContiRe and Bandvulc brands, with plans for further investment to widen the range of ContiRe produced in the UK. 

Production will continue as normal at the ContiLifeCycle plant in Hannover-Stocken.

Gregg added: “For the UK we now have a local plant able to supply most of the Continental retread demands, manufactured close to market, which improves efficiency, availability and flexibility.”